alistair-aitcheson

Year	LD	Theme		Game	Division	Rank	Ov	Fu	In	Th	Gr	Au	Hu	Mo	Cm	Co
2011	22	Alone		Omega Men	compo	72	3.40	3.40	3.44	1.88	3.72	2.73	2.71	2.28	3.29	14
2010	18	Enemies as Weapons		Mind Control Monster Mash	compo	131	2.36	1.88	2.92	3.56	2.72	2.13	2.57		3.40	20

dudidadala by sirGustav 2010-08-23T07:44:00

I fell into the same trap at the beginning too, but later realised you can wall-jump up walls. Just thought I'd point that out for future players!

A fairly literal and obvious take on the theme, but it's clean and quite polished, is very playable. Maybe a little too easy to die, especially with those gun enemies which can hurt you way faster than you can throw something at them!

The graphics are nice and clean, and I like the grins on the walls, although visually it would have been nice to have some more varied colours. Plenty of personality on the player character.

Overall, it's not blow-you-out-of-the-water inventive, but it's polished and works, and it's fun to play, which is commendable in itself :)

Psi Keepers by XMunkki 2010-08-24T04:11:00

Good simple fun, definitely one of the more enjoyable entries I've played so far. The concept is simple and effective, the graphics look nice when they're all moving, and having a huge swarm of enemies following me was great fun. You should add some Benny Hill music in your next version :P

I'm not sure I got the strategy element of it though, and I felt it could do with more variation too. Maybe some more enemy types, or some power-ups, or some way to chain combos together. But what you already have is already good solid and polished fun. Nice stuff!!

The South and the North suck yorkshire puddings! I'm from the Midlands me! by cptalbertwesker 2010-08-25T03:11:00

Lol, what a weird idea. Was surprised that it only took one comment to win the game, but you could easily expand it if you wanted. Sure, there's not a lot of content in the game, but it's a nice idea and wonderfully silly. Well done ;)

Deflector Beam by MrPhil 2010-08-23T07:07:00

A nice attempt, but in need of a lot of tweaking before it shows its full potential. Would be nice to see some sounds and maybe some explosions, and the beam would be nicer if it moved faster and gave you more control over bouncing the bullets.

Still, good try, and a very appetising journal! :P

Infiltrator by ChainedLupine 2010-08-24T13:42:00

A very interesting take on the theme, and I like the way it didn't rely entirely on the "enemies as weapons" - there was a lot of variety in the ways you could defeat the enemies. Although I did find it quite hard to start fights between the two sides, as they always seemed more interested in me. Possibly the only real gripe I have with the game. Maybe I just need to spend more time on it.

It's pretty hard, but I can see myself coming back to this one for more ;) Very well made and polished, and a very clever take on the theme that works well. Good work ;)

AfterDark by AClockWorkLemon 2010-08-24T05:52:00

A wonderful concept, definitely one of the most interesting takes on the theme I've seen so far. Simple and efffective. The main problem I had was that it was hard to tell when a block was going to fall near you. The alerts need to be more obvious, maybe with a sound when something's about to fall on you, or a beam of light showing where each block is going to land. The black-on-blue colour scheme looked wonderful, but it made it hard to tell when something was going to fall on you.

That aside, this is a cracking entry! One of the most interesting I've played so far :D

Exterminate 48 by Codexus 2010-08-23T14:55:00

Really nice! Simple but effective. I agree with LastBanana about the seemingly random AI, and I didn't get far through before getting stuck (also about level 6 or 7). But fun, simple and clean. A great accomplishment, well done!

Purple by roBurky 2010-08-23T06:42:00

I love the way the player and enemies bounce around, and the controls and graphics are neat and simple. It did slow down a bit sometimes, possibly from spawning too many enemies, but once I knew what I was doing it didn't seem too bad. As LastBanana said, the sounds are great, and you could really expand on this idea :)

Good work!

Eneapon by Tyler 2010-08-25T09:53:00

Couldn't really see what I was doing in this game. Could be a power-of-two issue with Windows XP. I'm running SP3, and I've had this problem with C++/OpenGL games that don't have power-of-two graphics dimensions before.

As it was, I was a bunch of black bubbles moving around under a spotlight and I really didn't get what I was supposed to do.

Sorry I can't say much else. Sounds like it could have been interesting! If you patch up these issues and release a newer version outside the competition, let me know and I'll take a look for you :)

Enemy Maze by goffmog 2010-08-23T07:21:00

Ran the installer and it seemed to install fine, but when I open the game it crashes immediately. :(

I'm on Windows XP SP3

Wonder Cupid by Nora Shishi 2010-08-23T06:29:00

Neat and simple. I love the animation when you click to start! :D

Cat Splat! by masterhyjinx 2010-08-24T09:05:00

Wonderfully daft! I particularly like the "miaow" noise :P

I always thought that picking up and throwing was the obvious interpretation of the theme, but using a physics-controlled robot arm from a helicopter is something I would never have thought of. Nice :D

Definitely the funniest game I've played, even if I never really got the hang of throwing the cats.

Protractor by KilledByAPixel 2010-08-24T08:09:00

A very nice idea that looks wonderful. Clean and simple. Fresh, interesting and polished.

If there's one issue I have with the game it's that the controls are too awkward. There's just too many things to think about. Which way is my ship pointing, where is my cursor, having to manually pull ship parts onto the ship... there's just too much to handle. Some of it would probably be best done automatically. Maybe ship parts should gravitate towards you, instead of having to follow the mouse, and you could find some other way to rearrange the ship parts.

Overall, a wonderfully fresh and polished game, which is very fun despite its drawbacks :)

Odd Castle Wars by Vladp995 2010-08-24T14:22:00

A nice try. Possibly some nice ideas in there, but unfortunately it's hard to tell at this stage. I didn't really get how the game worked. It was my turn to attack, so I sent in all my guys and they attacked the fortress, and then it didn't do anything.

But hey, everyone's got to start somewhere, and things don't always go the way we plan. I'm sure next competition you'll be awesome :D

Biker's Rebellion by blitzgren 2010-08-24T03:49:00

Firstly, a note on XNA (I use it a lot!) Not everyone likes to use an installer for small games like this, and some would prefer to just run the game from an executable. To do this, just compile the game as "Release", and create a zip of the folder "bin/x86/Release" (it might be called something different. You can upload that and put a separate link on this page. The advantage of the installer is that the user doesn't need to have XNA or .NET installed. The installer will check if they do and download them for the user.

Not that I'm marking you down on this, I just thought it might be helpful to you!

As for the game, it was a very neat idea, and an intelligent and funny use of the theme. It would have been nice to see the cars swerve around rather than just move left-to-right, but that could be added in the next version.

I also thought the graphics were nice - you'd obviously made a stylistic decision and it is very unique. I did find myself dying quite often, and it was hard to coax the cars into the gas stations, but it's an awesome idea and I'd love to see you take it further.

Good fun and a very fresh take on the theme. Nice work ;)

48 Hours Later by mikeysee 2010-08-24T14:12:00

SWEET!!

This game is wonderful. Simple and effective, cute and macabre at the same time. Wonderful. The sounds are great, I love the rolling animation of the tank, and the whole thing has so much personality.

Using enemies as a source of ammo isn't massively innovative in itself, but this game takes a wonderfully literal take on that concept. It's grosstastic :D

Had a lot of fun with this, and I particularly like the way you have to concentrate on enemies going in both directions. Mentally very stimulating.

Wonderful wonderful work!!

EnemiesOfTheLetterB by milsom 2010-08-24T09:28:00

First of, the graphics are AWESOME.

The game was alright. I didn't think that picking up and throwing enemies was a massively outside-the-box concept, but mixing it with a defend-the-tower mechanic was fresh and worked well. I loved the explosions!

Very simple to control, although it took me a while to get that you could only throw the little guys if you were facing a big enemy. To be honest, I think it would make more sense if you could always throw them.

The audio was creepy, but also a little annoying. I also didn't work out how to defeat the big purple guys. They seemed immune to the little guys being thrown at them.

Wonderfully polished, and some of the best graphics I've seen in the competition!

Man And Robot by quoj 2010-08-24T05:10:00

looks fun, but it runs very slow on my machine. I'm running Windows XP SP3 with Firefox. Tried in IE and it didn't seem to run.

The visuals are really cool and I love the music. But I didn't get the controls, as they all went by very slowly in the opening sequence. Could you put them in the description?

There's probably great stuff here as the concept sounds really interesting, but for now I'll just rate what I can (graphics and audio).

Anthill by G@briel 2010-08-24T13:55:00

First off, I think the artwork and sound are great, and the idea is fairly simple and neat. Couldn't get past level two though, as it was quite hard. The leaves should probably refill your health entirely, otherwise you lose way more health trying to get them than you gain back! I also didn't like getting stuck to the walls, as that was my most common cause of death.

I'm not really sure where the theme fits in. I tried getting two towers to fire at each other and blow each other up, but it was too hard to avoid getting shot myself. Other than that I don't know where the theme could be!

But well done on a nice attempt at a 48-hour game, and it does work. You could be proud of what you achieved in the time, and good luck with the next compo :)

Head Trauma by GreaseMonkey 2010-08-24T05:18:00

The graphics, the sounds, it's like being hugged by wonderful childhood memories :')

As for the game, I thought picking up and throwing enemies was a fairly obvious solution to the theme, and I found it easier not to bother picking up enemies anyway.

The real star of the show is the Master System style though, and although that in itself doesn't really have much to do with the theme it is still pretty awesome. Mega kudos for that ;)

Robocolosseum by Toeofdoom 2010-08-24T09:41:00

I seem to be the only one posting here to say this, but I really don't get what I'm supposed to do. I played the web version, and maybe there's something missing there. Are the things that fly towards me supposed to look like enemy bodies? That might have been a bug.

I think maybe the camera should be pulled back so that I can tell what I'm doing, and apart from that maybe a clearer explanation or a video of the game in action.

It sounds like a cool idea, and I love the setting, but I'm at a loss as to what to do :(

Mind Control Monster Mash by Alistair Aitcheson 2010-08-23T07:53:00

@jakkarth

Thanks very much for the feedback. I've added instructions to the submissions page. Sorry you couldn't get the hang of it and I hope you have better luck now!

The reason the in-game instructions are so poor is because it was getting close to the deadline when I added them. My bad ^^;

Thanks for letting me know :)

Mind Control Monster Mash by Alistair Aitcheson 2010-08-23T12:59:00

Just to let you know I've added a tightened-up version for the Jam. It's still rough around the edges, but the controls and interface have been improved. It's more clear what's going on, and the camera doesn't zoom around everywhere anymore!

Death Wheel by Acheron 2010-08-24T13:22:00

A very interesting idea. I've seen quite a few games where you can attach enemies to yourself as weapons, but using them as swords instead of guns is very unique. So in that respect you've definitely gone one step beyond the competition ;)

I also liked how clean and polished this game was. It was fairly simple, and while not outstanding in the audiovisual department, the graphics and sound were simple and effective.

The only problem is that I found it very hard to get behind the enemies without getting hit several times myself. But apart from that, a neat, simple and polished game that's pretty fun. Nice work ;)

Smores Attack by devinmoore 2010-08-23T15:10:00

Had real trouble with this. Sorry :(

It took a few attempts at loading to get it to run (I'm in Firefox on Windows XP), which is understandable as I guess you didn't get much of a chance to test it on other machines.

Once it did run it was way too hard, and I had real trouble hitting any enemies with other enemies. The choice of keys was bizarre and made the game even tougher to get into.

I can tell from your journal that you worked really hard on this, but I just couldn't get much out of it. But I think your journal is very positive, and I'm glad to see you've taken the time to analyse the project at the end. Perhaps after the feedback you could make some pretty small improvements and it would be dramatically more playable.

A nice attempt, but maybe some more testing on other humans (always a sparse resource in 48 hour compeitions!) would have helped. Good luck with the next competition! :)

Weapon-E by hukacikanaka 2010-08-25T10:03:00

Not really sure what to do in the third level. I played around with the spring guy for a while but never worked out what I was supposed to do. I went to the door and it did nothing.

A decent attempt, and maybe the enemies get more interesting after a while, but unfortunately I've not been able to experience them :(

Alien Parasite by itzmattu 2010-08-24T13:29:00

Kudos for trying, and especially for learning a whole new language and framework during the competition! You deserve a sticky gold star for that ;)

Would have been great if it had all come together, and I'm looking forward to the next version. Best of luck!

Dastardly Shapes by philh 2010-08-24T14:00:00

Would love to rate this, but cannot for reasons I am sure you are aware of. Would you accept a hug instead? :P

Lolcat. by AndrewBC 2010-08-25T03:51:00

Okay that was a bit weird, but in a cool way. One of the more bizarre takes on the theme. I must say the cat animation and puke effects are awesome, and from reading your postmortem I think you're aware of what that's meant for the rest of the gameplay!

Unfortunately, the game itself is pretty bland. There's not really much to it. You go left and right and if a zombie's near you you press space, and eventually you die. It would have been nice to have a bit more variation in there.

Still, a great attempt, and seriously, the cat looks superb. Great to read your journal too. Everyone has to have a first time, and even seasoned veterans seem to struggle at these competitions. I suppose that's what makes them so exciting! My own entry is pretty ropey, and I was amazed how fast the time crept up on me!

So yeah, I can see you've learnt a lot from this experience, and I'm sure you'll come back to the next competition and pull out something awesome ;) I love the sense of humour behind the idea!

Abomination|Descent by InfiniteStateMachine 2010-08-24T08:38:00

A wonderful idea that goes a bit beyond the obvious interpretations of the theme. The first time I threw a vial at an enemy he went bezerk and killed all his buddies. It was awesome!

Unfortunately, and perhaps the only drawback to the game, is that I never managed to do this again. Normally the enemies just went for me rather than each other. Perhaps I'm not doing it right, and some more instructions are needed in-game.

There were also some bugs that got in the way a bit. Sometimes I couldn't throw a vial in a particular direction (normally up or down), and sometimes when I died I'd respawn with only 10% health.

Without these issues I'm sure this would be a cracking game, and due to its nice music, wonderful atmosphere and an excellent concept, I would probably rate this as "almost awesome". Which is great going for a 48-hour compo!

Robots <3 Monster by timgarbos 2010-08-24T12:53:00

Fantastic! The best LD game I've rated so far! Simple, effective and polished!

The music is lovely, the effects are gorgeous, the characters are charming, a neat interpretation of the them (I love the way you've got two types of robots, which spices up the "make enemies collide" mechanic a lot). Wonderful to look at, easy to play, and I know I'm going to be coming back to this one.

I can't even think of a problem with it! Top notch, sir, I bow down to you! ;)

BOMBCRASH by Xander Davis 2010-08-24T10:06:00

Looks lovely, and a nice idea, but I found it quite hard to get the bomb robots to collide with each other. Which is a shame, because it's a neat concept!

Other than that it was very polished, and beating a level was quite satisfying. I like the countdown overlay in particular.

Very polished, and maybe if getting robots to smash into each other was easier then it would really sing as a game :)

Clinging to Life by Myx 2010-08-24T13:23:00

The Megaupload link says "The file you are trying to access is temporarily unavailable". I've tried several times since yesterday and it still says that :(

Robot Maze of Doom by MetroDriver 2010-08-23T07:31:00

I don't see the entry link either. Try editing your submission.

Had a go at the game using the link you supplied above. A nice attempt, but I don't really see where the theme fits into it. Some issues with collision detection on the walls, as I seem to get stuck in them if I walk too close to them.

A nice attempt at a 48 hour game. Good luck with the next one ;)

Robot Maze of Doom by MetroDriver 2010-08-23T07:32:00

Robot Maze of Doom by MetroDriver 2010-08-24T14:25:00

@MetroDriver
Sorry to hear you can't fix it. Not sure what to suggest! And yeah, I have plenty of problems with my game that I couldn't fix in the time limit so I know how that feels. Are you going to work on it more now the compo's over?

Magno-Warrior by TheLastBanana 2010-08-24T04:54:00

I agree with pretty much everything timgarbos said.

Not sure what I can add, other than to say it was a very fun entry! I probably would have enjoyed it more if the guns were easier to control. Perhaps it doesn't need to mouse control at all, or maybe you could get rid of the keyboard control and make the ship follow the mouse pointer. That way it might be more obvious where the player is facing.

A very nice entry, and I love the music. Well done! :D

Tactics Lasso! by Kayamon 2010-08-23T06:33:00

I get an error: "Error creating D3D device" :(

I'm running Windows XP SP3

Tactics Lasso! by Kayamon 2010-08-24T04:18:00

Downloaded the latest DirectX and still having the exact same problem. The screenshot looks so cool, I really want to play! :(

Doors and some other stuff by Hempuli 2010-08-24T09:16:00

Still can't beat it, but it's an awesome concept with amazing graphics. Top stuff!!

Dodger by kd5bjo 2010-08-24T03:56:00

Could have been great fun but was too slow. I didn't feel like I had much control over where the enemies were shooting, as I spent most of my time just waiting for them to face me.

Nice try, and there is the germ of a good game in here, but for your next version you should (a) make it so that the guns spin faster, or (b) make it so the guns always face the player.

Super Collide-Em-Up by Draknek 2010-08-24T08:52:00

Sweet and simple! I love the idea of the Earth's population instead of a standard life meter. Good fun, imaginative and humourous. An intelligent use of the physics engine that's incredibly easy to pick up and play. Top stuff!

My one suggestion would be to make the score values more round (like 1000, 5000, 25000 or something), to make it more obvious how well you're doing. At the moment the scores just look like a jumble of digits. Also it would be nice if getting large combos easier. I love games where you can get large combos ;) Perhaps you could make the screen twice as wide, and then you'd have a lot of room for asteroids to appear and lots of space to ping-pong them off each other. Some nice feel-good combo noises wouldn't go amiss either :P

A wonderful little entry! Small but perfectly formed ;)

LD22 — Alone

Omega Men by Alistair Aitcheson 2011-12-19T13:55:00

Thanks for the feedback, pythong :) Thanks for pointing out the mutant on the blue square bug!

The players walking through the stones is because I didn't have time to implement the pathfinding into their walking paths - just the bits that tell them which points they can access. It should be easy enough to fix that for post-competition versions.

I'm really glad you liked the graphics! I wanted to do something very simple that I didn't need to animate much, so making the characters out of bean-shapes without feet seemed to make sense. I find that when making shapes look round it often works to draw the big round oval in a base colour, then do a lighter tone and put a small oval somewhere on there - that gives you an idea of where the light is coming from, so it's really easy to imagine where the shadows are coming from. Hope that helps! I drew them in a really old version of Paint Shop Pro with a graphics tablet.

Omega Men by Alistair Aitcheson 2011-12-22T14:22:00

Glad you like it! :) Thanks for notifying my of that bug. I'll see what I can do about it (shouldn't be too hard to fix!) Yes, zombie noises were a missed opportunity! ^^;

Omega Men by Alistair Aitcheson 2011-12-23T09:35:00

Thanks guys, glad you like it :) Hmmm, I'll see what I can do about that bug - thanks for letting me know!

/follow by 01101101 2011-12-20T17:45:00

Really really liked the artwork and the music. The characters look superb, and the animations are really nice. It's got a fairly brutal darkness to it that I like stylistically.

In terms of fun, it wasn't really my kind of thing. I found myself just clicking on things until something happened, and I felt it took a while for everything to respond, especially given that you have to wait for the woman to walk up to an object before she'll interact with it.

Not my cup of tea in terms of gameplay, but the audio and visuals are a treat :)

Leave me alone by iingemar 2011-12-20T19:40:00

I played it in Safari and it was quite slow - took a couple of refreshes before it was playable for some reason. It's very simple, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I wonder if there's a bit more you could do with it - enemies that move in different ways, perhaps?

Alistair Aitcheson

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Comments by Alistair Aitcheson

LD18 — Enemies as Weapons