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Crab Royal
Crab Royal
By woona and Panzer911
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 629 | 3.27 | 36 | |
| Fun | 378 | 3.45 | 36 | |
| Innovation | 781 | 2.61 | 36 | |
| Theme | 355 | 3.82 | 36 | |
| Graphics | 558 | 3.41 | 36 | |
| Audio | 448 | 3.13 | 35 | |
| Humor | 266 | 3.26 | 36 | |
| Mood | 573 | 3.35 | 36 | |
Comments
Hi Woona, here we meet again! I was wondering whether you would participate or not. I got a notification and here I am.
A pause during the tutorial screen would be a good addition as I tend to be a slow reader. :D I started taking damage while reading the hints => had to restart the game to get a fair start.
Holding to fire non-stop is a good thing. :D I would hate to click so many times in a game. It's usually the opposite: the player still needs to repeatedly click even if there are no real penalties to fire as fast as you can click (e.g. the ammo is unlimited).
The crab scared me. xD It turned out that sharks and other critters are more dangerous as they attack from different angles and some of them are very fast.
For a small game, there is some enemy variety that changes with the depth level. I like the artstyle, it's quite consistent. The options screen blur is weird though. :) Also, adding so many settings (lang, window mode, audio) for a jam game is a rare stuff. I ran out of time (and juice), so my settings button basically does nothing. Sharks are PROBABLY too fast, a 20% speed reduction wouldn't hurt the game, but since I managed to beat the game on the first try, it could be irrelevant. Still, they're on annoying side of things. Their damage is relatively low, this is their saving grace. :D
From a gameplay perspective, it was hard to tell the area of mine explosion, they also trigger each other in an instance. A delayed chain reaction would be easier to work with from the player's perspective, but it would require more coding time of course. If the explosion hitbox would grow as the animation progresses, it would solve my hitbox issues as well (right now it damages you without an apparent hit).
The end-game gameplay is a bit hectic. I'm bad at bullet-hell like games and this game was close to my reaction limits. :D
I tried to cheese the game a bit by moving in a narrow zig-zag pattern, firing downwards. It wasn't as effective as enemies attack from all sides. :D
The game runs OK in firefox, but I think it was around 20-25 FPS. Maybe there are too many particles/sprites for the engine thruster effect (bubbles)?
The music is fitting. Makes me jealous a bit as I spent ~40 minutes trying to make a single soundtrack to no avail. What did you use to create your music?
The UI is simple, but clean. However, I would mention that it's hard for me to tell which button is being focused right now.
I also see Linux native build, which I appreciate. I would restrain from using it, as there is a web version; and I'm also afraid of installing all crypto miners in the world.
win.png
woona
2025-04-07 18:15
@quasilyte Thanks a lot for your feedback! I'm glad you managed to beat the game and didn't encounter any major bugs.
It's a shame that we didn't even think about mine chain explosions while developing, I think it's a great idea! Should have focused on that, together with some performance improvements (but sometimes it takes long to find the bottleneck...)
For audio, I used Reaper and Surge synth. There is a big collection of presets in this synth. Other sound effects are mostly voice recordings with some Audacity editing.
Thanks again for your detailed comment!
@woona are there any bugs to explore? :D Now I'm curious. I found none
That's great, and a lot of settings for a short game jam, it's cool ! i had fun, at first i didn't hod; the shoot button, but implementing th auto short while holding is really grat; the best is that the mine trigger other mines, really cool ! But maybe the mines could hurt the crab ? i was a little disapointed. Nice work !
A boss fight in a Ludum Dare entry is insanely brave. I had a fun time going deeper to find the crab. Would have been cool if killing enemies gave me something so that my only strategy wasn't to go down straight away. Though I really enjoyed the boss fight! Awesome stuff!
Just played the game and it is very similar to mine (submarine wise!). The fish felt that were coming a bit too fast but I liked that you can kill them with the mines. It would have been cool for the light to diminish as we go deeper and have to use a light but I understand that in a game jam not all is possible. The controls felt smooth and responsive, and the music was fitting.
egor-iv
2025-04-08 10:00
меня краб победил) но я все ровно приду за ним))
Only problem i have with this game is that constantly having to click the mouse button gets tiring after a while, but apart from that it's really fun! The controls especially are really nice.
koolruz
2025-04-08 17:05
I agree with Mega Marlon that this is a very brave game to make - Boss battles are hard to do, especially on such a tight time crunch! Good job! :)
After playing a few times and getting the hang of things, I realized that the best strategy for the descent was to just hold down and get to the boss fight, which was a bit of a bummer, so I figured I'd pass along that feedback! It might be nice to either skip the descent after a player has encountered the boss for the first time, or to let the player power themselves up by exploring during the descent, so that it feels more integrated into their objective of killing the boss!
I didn't run into any issues, and the game ran smoothly in Firefox for me. :) I was sadly never able to beat the crab (I got it down to around 25% health at one point), but that may just be a skill issue on my end ;) A quicker restart definitely would have helped for me!
Overall, well done!
lllarso
2025-04-08 17:55
I like the submarine sprite and animation. It was simple, but effective with the bubble-particles. The soundtrack was relaxing and fitting to the theme. But it didn't fit to your storyline (the king wants the crab fast!)
I like that the traps had a chain reaction. A visual feedback for damage would improve the game even more. A little screen shake or a colour change of the submarine could help.
Important for this game is the controls and they felt very good. The turning of the submarine felt intuitive. Good job! :)
Wow that was difficult! Really cool and consistent artstyle, especially the crab. The biggest challenge for me were the randomly spawning mines and the flood of sharks during the boss fight. But after about 5 tries, I finally beat the crab. Movement also felt good, even though I missed a couple of repair kits because of the momentum.
I beat it pretty fast. I just went straight down and killed crab. Fun little game and cool sprites.
Cool game! The crab looks really good! Great work overall!
farzher
2025-04-11 09:18
Giant Enemy Crab
noagard
2025-04-11 11:22
Fun, polished, and ambitious for a jam entry! The crab was an awesome surprise. Great job!
Fun short game! If the king had ordered shark feast also, he would be more than satisfied after crab meal. I wish the crab would fight alone but fortunately repair kits are easy to find so this should be enough.
Looked really nice! Shooting felt nice. Movement felt a bit "floaty", causing it to dodge things a bit difficult. The boss looked cool! Only a bit frustrating sometimes that it was hard to see the crab, because it went off-screen (because of its size).
tive
2025-04-15 21:02
The gameplay felt satisfying. It got a bit chaotic at the end but it was pretty fun!
Great game! I loved the intro - really set the mood. The game went from "oh this is pretty easy", to "omg a jumping gigantic crab while being swarmed by sharks!". I died the first few attempts, but then found the perfect depth where I could hit the crab (but couldn't see the health bar), and couldn't be touched by it. Fun game, felt complete - great submission!
Wow what a cool entry! I loved how the creatures got bigger the deeper you go. I also like the water gradient getting darker and darker as you explore the depths. Took me a couple of tries, even had the crab slam me on the ocean floor once! Great length of a game for a Jam!
Since the game tried to pull some tricks on me with the sharks from all over the place, I also started to cheat by shooting the crab from miles away :P I love that this is a compact and fun game with a little funny intro :)
Fun game! I enjoyed making my way down and the bossfight is interesting and fun to try and beat the giant crab! love the literal depths, nothing wrong with going for the literal interpretation when you do it right!
texugo
2025-04-26 01:13
This game made me want to eat crab. Well, now I'm hungry! Pretty fun!