Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Network Bridge
By coda-highland, jason-higerd and Immamoonkin
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 343 | 3.68 | 24 | |
| Fun | 334 | 3.50 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 684 | 2.91 | 25 | |
| Theme | 506 | 3.58 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 492 | 3.61 | 24 | |
| Audio | 272 | 3.65 | 25 | |
| Humor | 189 | 3.47 | 21 | |
| Mood | 397 | 3.67 | 25 |
Easter egg: On a technicality, this is my first game soundtrack to feature lyrics.
What, you don't hear them? Here's a transcription:
> SIGNAL SIGNAL SIGNAL. > > SIGNAL. > > SIGNAL. > > SIGNAL.
``` ... .. __. _. ._ ._.. ```
Really charming! The aesthetic is such a throwback to DOS games I used to play for hours on end. Feel like inertia could add an extra layer of gameplay as well!
Very well done, love the art style and the audio is well done (I cannot hear anything other than the pacman sfx, lol). The enemies are aggressive, especially the laser one that tracks you, good enemy to stay AWAY from. Overall enjoyed it and getting that scare of seeing what looked like a hundred enemies on the radar, lol. Good job :D
The game is really nice. The graphics and the 8 way movement bring some retro vibes to it. I think it will be helpful to add a restart feature so the players won't have to reload the game when they lose.
Oh, the polish on this is really high. I’m really impressed with the whole package.
I love that the mini-map feels diegetic as a ship radar. The feedback from shooting enemies is great, especially the little explosions and particles. The full screen effects when transitioning between levels or hitting game over also feel really good.
These are pretty minor points, but I do wish the player ship had more satisfying audio, closer to what some of the enemies have. I also wish the laser enemy was more interesting to interact with. Right now the best strategy is to outrange them, which means you don’t really get to see or hear their laser much, which is a bit of a shame given how cool it is.
I had a lot of fun playing this (I’m admittedly a sucker for shoot-em-ups), and the level of polish really stood out.
Loved it. Good enemy variety, interesting characters (Hi Rocky!). I wish there was mouse controls, that would make it a 10/10 game for me. It was kinda hard to move and shoot at the same time. Decently funny, I liked the optional objectives of helping people and they would give you upgrades.
The universe: Connected The magnetar army: Crushed Game: enjoyed Transitions: Cool
@mr-flower If you heard 80s arcade sound effects then I have succeeded at my goal! :grinning:
@pojemnik I don't understand. There is a restart feature. You can quit from the pause screen to go back to the title screen at any time, and there's a "Back to Title" button on the game over screen.
@prismapunch The control scheme issue was something I knew about during development. I would have liked 360-degree control but my custom game engine doesn't support arbitrary sprite rotation. I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway!
@beastpanda I really appreciate the detailed feedback. Thank you very much! :slight_smile: The player ship should have just as good of audio as the enemies because it's using the same code... I made the player's weapons fire quieter because you were going to hear so much of it. Did I maybe make it too quiet?
@yodak Feedback: Appreciated!
@coda-highland i guess i really just wanted to hear myself shoot at the enemies :)
Niiiice, Adam and team :) ! This is a very hooky game. I think you nailed it with this one - it's neither too easy, nor too difficult. I had just 10 minutes to play it but will play further. It's very cohesive and I am genuinely enjoying the skirmish : )))
It's hooky and retro! Love both. Even the awkwardness of moving the ship like it has has an "implosion" engine :D is sweet and gives it its own aesthetic!
**EDIT**: just played a bit more. Got to level 4, where it may be gets a little harder due to the may enemy ships. One small addition I would make that would have made it even more fun would be some Special weapon that reloads for a given time, to clear a portion of the screen. E.g. a shockwave. That would "save" the player in a few occasions where death is near :D. Apart from that, great job overall!
@aweskybear Heyo, nice to hear from you again! Yeah, my son was pushing for a smart bomb weapon too but I didn't want to overcommit during the development time -- likewise I didn't have time to work in another enemy design he had created assets for. In the end, it ended up being the right call: it meant I was able to wrap things up into a complete package before the deadline, even if I did have to cut some pieces that I would have wanted to include. (I wanted an actual boss fight, I wanted some ending music, I wanted a victory splash screen with more artwork to make it more rewarding.)
Better than most of the games here)
Overall very well done, really liked the space atmosphere with the retro SFXs. Wasn't quite sure what to do about the lasers but everything else was well thought out in my opinion.
@itero-proto Thanks!
@6knowledge Yeah, balancing the lasers was tricky... I wanted them to be scary enough that you couldn't just zoom past them and ignore them, and I added a hint section specifically to say how to beat them, but I also know that sitting outside of range and beating them down isn't very satisfying. Glad you had a good time though!
This was a great retro style game I had fun blasting away at the enemies and saving the day!
I wished there was controller support for some analog movement, but I get that the 8 way retro style was intentional :)
Some minor bugs I encountered: - The game over screen was stuck for me. This might be what Pojemnik also experienced. There was no back to title button and the pause menu also didn't function anymore. There was only "Signal lost - auto-recall in progress" on the screen. - In the second level the starry background broke. There was only a lot of pixel noise on the top line of the screen, which I assume was supposed to be distributed all over the screen to form the stars.
Still well done, our game has bigger bugs :D
@ty-victorson Thanks! Glad you had a good time.
@arnage Oh. I think I figured it out. The animation isn't properly cleaning up because the game ends in the middle of it, and that breaks the state machine. Thanks for the report. (There's also a known issue where those animations interact poorly with the focus-lost detection.)
Not sure what's up with the background breaking, though. I only saw that a single time during development and I fixed it right away... I don't see an obvious way that could break at runtime.
One of these days I want to add controller support to html52d. I was thinking about it for this one but I didn't end up having time before the jam started and I didn't want to spend time during the deadline hacking on the engine.
Saw your post about overall and decided to give your game a shot. Had a lot of fun! I loved the artstyle and felt like I was playing some arcade game. With the talking system it was fun meeting different characters especially rocky! Overall, a really fun game, good job :)
@gecko64 Thanks for pushing me over the line, and I'm glad you had fun!
Pretty neat jam entry! Getting some cool retro vibes from this one in the best of ways. There's a decent variety of enemies, making you find different ways of handling them. I really liked dealing with the mines, especially in the final level, where I just flew around to collect all of them before turning around and destroying them all at once. ;) Getting some nice upgrades for your ship as you progress is always good to see, definitely a good choice on making them rewards for rescuing everyone instead of just going for the relays.
Sound effects are pretty well done! I especially loved both the pea-shooter and laser enemy sounds. ;) I wish there was some simple ambient music to acompany the experience, but I know it's tough to fit everything in such a short development window. The artstyle looks really cool, I loved all the character portraits and played several times to make sure I've seen them all. Looked like a lot of nice HotS callbacks in there, along with some Sailor Moon and - of course - Rocky. :)
I also experienced the bugs Arnage mentioned - no victory screen, and pressing escape just stops everything and no pause screen shows up either. I know that they're there since they show up for a few seconds when the game first starts, but they never display properly during gameplay. And finishing the game just leaves you in the void in an "undefined" location. I rescued everyone, but got lost in space myself.
screen_scaled.png
Overall, it's a really cool jam game! Nicely done!
@lcstark Hm? There's music, was it not working for you? You can listen to it here: http://greenmaw.com/webgames/ld59/assets/bgm.wav
@coda-highland Yeah, it's not working for me in the game at all. I can hear all the sounds, but there is no music.
@lcstark What browser / OS are you using? That's really surprising; I used .wav specifically for maximum compatibility...
@coda-highland I'm on Firefox (specifically, Waterfox) on Windows. This is what the console is showing me: screen2.png
@lcstark Thanks. I'll look into it. I guess Firefox's idea of when an AudioContext starts is different from Chrome's idea of it -- Chrome doesn't consider the context to start until the first call to `play()` (which happens after you click Start Game) but apparently Firefox is considering the context to start the moment it's initialized.