Feather Fighter by Ellian 2017-04-25T02:22:30Z
I really dig the art and sound, and I also like how the game is more about protecting the island than just avoiding the enemies.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → cottontshirtz
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | Unseen Queen | extra | ||||||||||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Reference Frame | jam | 3.50 | 3.93 | 3.56 | 3.56 | 3.12 | 3.50 | 3.28 | |||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | Crab Battle | jam | 997 | 3.28 | 3.38 | 3.03 | 3.45 | 3.27 | 3.34 | 4.02 | 3.24 | |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Orthoptera | jam | 646 | 3.60 | 3.41 | 3.85 | 2.81 | 3.91 | 3.65 | 3.96 | ||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Foundations | jam | 1048 | 3.44 | 2.47 | 2.80 | 3.59 | 3.97 | 4.02 | 4.30 | ||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | WoodStone_02 | jam | 1379 | 3.04 | 3.02 | 3.57 | 2.21 | 2.78 | 3.33 | 1.64 | 2.81 | |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | PLANETORUS2 | jam | 2083 | 3.07 | 3.22 | 3.38 | 2.52 | 2.81 | 2.94 | 2.10 | 3.20 | |
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | All But Starlight Here | jam | 904 | 3.05 | 2.69 | 3.52 | 2.80 | 3.72 | 2.77 | 3.50 | ||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | Triskeon | jam | 2.80 | 2.20 | 2.90 | 2.40 | 2.91 | 2.12 | 1.87 | 2.25 | ||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | P L A N E T O R U S | jam | 3.83 | 3.50 | 4.50 | 4.50 | 3.50 | 2.75 | 2.50 | 3.80 |
I really dig the art and sound, and I also like how the game is more about protecting the island than just avoiding the enemies.
Not sure if I'm doing right, but I can't get the game to run...
It looks as though when you die and respawn, you have 0 health? I'm not sure if this is intentional.
How did you handle movement, physics, and control for your game? I did a similar idea (shooter on a torus) and I'd like to compare notes.
@mahalis Cool, that's similar to how I handled it. I'm also planning in doing a write-up on a few aspects of my entry. Did you have to write an integrator for your physics?
@mahalis If you're interested in comparing notes, I've just finished my retrospective. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/planetorus/p-l-a-n-e-t-o-r-u-s-retrospectivve
A E S T H E T I C
But seriously, I really appreciate the work you put into the look of the game. My only bug is that the screen controls work when you're typing in the terminal and entering a command deselects the terminal...
This looks and feels so much better than my first LD, keep up the good work! I like the look of the low-poly world. A way you could maybe smooth out the camera movement is to draw a line between the center of the cube and the snake's head and put the camera along that line some distance out. This would allow the player to look over the edge of the cube as they approach it. Then to avoid the jump when the player moves you can have the camera Lerp between where it was one move ago and it's current position by the amount of time between moves.
My apologies for the mix-up regarding the binaries, the link has been fixed for the standard windows binary.
@robotsoulsgames Thank you for the feedback and entirely agree. I was running out the clock and designing the enemies (mostly the behaviors) was taking more time than I expected. At the moment the enemies are basically kept at a consistent level throughout gameplay. Adding in few more enemies (one that pursues and one that shoots?) as well as adding in a difficulty curve would definitely help.
@huvaakoodia & @harry-jacobs Thank you both for your feedback.
@nonameghost Sorry about that, you have to hit space to spawn the player.
@chronosv2 Thank you for the encouragement. Unfortunately, I didn't aim to use a controller, though I was imagining one when designing the controls. In regards to the clipping, the Unity physics engine didn't like the torus model (specifically, the mesh collider can't use concave models...) so the model is only visual. This can be seen when playing in Nightmare mode, as the only difference is that the torus model is removed.
+1 for Uranus
But seriously, I like the style and feel of the game. I also appreciate how you have multiple methods by which to conquer other planetoids, by building guns onto your planetoid or taking matters into your own hands.
I like the light effect to add some mystery to the game. Though I would think about making some way to slow down the player's firing, as they can currently just flood the space with shot...
I really dig the perspective you have going. I took me a moment to understand what I was seeing and how it related to the game as a whole. (Shai-Hulud-um-dare?)
It took me a while to understand how to direct the train to other stations, and I am still not sure I understand as sometimes the train travels to a station that I do not want it to...
My apologies about the lack of information, it was a long 72 hours. I'll be writing a blog post soon detailing more about the game, its mechanisms and strategies.
In brief, the goal of the puzzle is to clear the board of all colors (including the lines you can draw). When the board is cleared, the appropriate start location will light up with static, once the player moves to this location the puzzle will be painted to the board and will begin to change according to the rules of the rock-paper-scissors cellular automata. At first the player will be restricted to the start position so the puzzle can stabilize, this time will not count against you. An important note is that the game is technically turn based, so it will only progress when you move or hold down the space bar.
Initially the player is white, and can cross onto any color tile, after doing so they will pick up that color. From this point forward, the player can only travel onto a color which is 'downstream' (go with the spirals instead of against). If the player travels 'upstream' or has the 'upstream' color paint over their tile they will take a hit, disabling their ability to draw lines. Total number of hits are reported at the end.
If the player holds down left shift while moving, they leave a white line which disrupts the cellular automata and is the mechanism by which the player can disrupt the stable phenomena (vortices, etc.)
I hope this helps explain the technicolor confusion I've made.
It felt good to take out an enemy and collect a lot of souls in one go. Though I do agree that some indicator that hits were connecting could help some of the ambiguity in combat. I was also sometimes confused by what the thrown scythe was doing if I moved around a lot before it returned.
I mean, that's not too far off.
Travel along the wall to the left towards the two pillars to begin the game proper.
Sorry, I didn't have a lot of time to play test...
You have to look at the star above, it will be between the two pillars about halfway up when you're stuck in place. If you're not using the eye tracking, just put the 'no eye' icon on the star and wait a bit.
@miu Thank you for the review. As stated in the article I have been working on the visual effect for a while but the environment is new.
We're the lights you were having trouble finding the lights on posts or the ones that fall to the ground?
@tygrak Thank you for the review and I'm glad you liked the environment. Just went on a hike a few days before and got inspired.
Can you describe what you mean about the effect bring toned down? How would you like it to be different? I'm still working on the effect so any feedback you can give is welcomed.
@tygrak I can understand what you mean. When using the eye tracking the majority of the 'wigglyness' is in the periphery of your vision and your brain kind of overwrites it when you look to the edge. I will keep experimenting with the effect to see what kind of things I can get.
@nodli That's pretty much right on the money. Check out the [Jump Flood Algorithm](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4263565_Variants_of_Jump_Flooding_Algorithm_for_Computing_Discrete_Voronoi_Diagrams) to see how the Voronoi Tessellation is being calculated. After that you just have to have an 'input texture' that determines which objects become seeds for the Voronoi texture.
VT_Seeds_Texture.png
For this game, the 'input texture' is coming from a camera that's in lock step with the main camera and can only see one layer. The only objects in that layer are unlit white spheres that are raycast out into the environment and get placed at the ray hit-point. Everything past that is a total hack of fragment shaders.
I appreciated the humor of the admin reset puzzle. I had noticed the '7' at the beginning, but didn't even recognize it as a 7 because of my orientation to it!
I have to say the shades themselves make a surprisingly menacing enemy. A couple of times I found myself jumping when the appeared. I also liked the different power-ups, which combined nicely with the unreliable attack mechanism (are you sure you can hit with the throw? is there another cube nearby or will you be defenseless?). Kind of scratched that stealth game itch where you have to plan for the next encounter etc.
It's a good thing the music is calming; as the more rules get added, the more difficult it becomes...
I quite liked the dithering effect the terrain had. I think there is an issue with the character controller or collider as hitting walls causes some strange effects and not landing squarely on a platform causes the character to do a little jig and ignore the jump button...
Thoroughly spooky. Great atmosphere with the fog and SFX. I did run into two bugs, the door one mentioned above and also the door was shut and wouldn't reopen when I went to go back to re-read the newspaper. I didn't try grabbing the key again, so I don't know if that reset.
Definitely got some 'godly powers' vibes going on here. Once I got both fireball and blink it got to be the only combo I used
There is an item (?) near the grill that says "Your Jetpack has been filled", what is the control for the jetpack? I assume that is the way to get to the items on the table... I like the way the grass hides the spiders, gives it a real spooky reveal when you come across one.
I like the mechanism, it's very surprising when a large set piece suddenly pops into existence. Some of the models appear to have lighting issues in the web build. I know you said you didn't have a chance to debug the web builds entirely but I thought I'd let you know.
That frog has some personality!
Nice premise and fluid gameplay. It appears you are missing a material for the LineRenderer that visualizes the grappling hook though.
@magali-mingo Yes, you can wrap a rectangle into a torus, so it seemed like a natural thing to do.
@armytag @boxedmeatrevolution @magali-mingo My apologies, I had an early version uploaded. It's still missing scores and the like, but it includes more features...
@werlock Can you explain what you're seeing? The web version was a last-minute addition, so I would be surprised if there are issues...
Cool concept with great execution. It might be nice to have the stage open up to a larger area when the flock gets large enough, but that's definitely a "nice to have". Truly impressing!
How did you get actual footage of me trying to keep my houseplants alive? But seriously, this is a well polished game!
It is what is says on the tin, there are mostly lamps. But seriously, I found the atmosphere to be considerably spooky and I liked those moments when you walk into a new room, bark, and only get a glimpse of the space, they added considerable suspense to the whole thing.
Please tell me that the dog is ok though, seems pretty purgatorial...
I did have quite a hard time getting the chicks to stay at the nest, is that the goal? Eventually I just decided to terrorize the villagers and get onto props I wasn't supposed to.
There were some physics issues, one of the swings was going crazy and the cars were piling up on each other.
I quite like the aesthetic of the game, and the narrative is nice and gloomy. The game did freeze upon death, and I didn't know if there was a keypress to restart...
It's hard to protect the city when watching it get blown up is so satisfying! I did have some trouble flying around, mostly it just took a long time to turn.
Sort of a reverse tower defense? I liked the idea and overall the game was quite polished!
I liked that most of the strategy is focused on the resource management; I didn't want to leave the fire to collect wood, but not doing so is a guaranteed failure!
This is a good looking game! I didn't get that far into it (I'm a bit of a spazz so I always overshoot the orientation), but does the up/down control ever come into play?
Loved the animations and graphics, and it was fun that the projectiles bounced all over the place. Was hoping for a goal or conclusion, but this is a game jam so time is tight
I think I broke it by destroying the concept of happiness itself! (Also, I don't know if this is on purpose, but the moving trolley doesn't successfully reset position, appearing in stranger locations and even traveling backwards at times.)
Love the drifty car handling, made the obstacle course much more fun to navigate!
@jacob-bernard Thanks for the review! And I agree, there is a lot of play-testing and tweaking of mechanics in my future.
@ausstein Thank you for telling me about the bug, I'm in the process of creating a post-jam version with online multiplayer so all mentions of bugs are welcome
Lovely game! Very Amanita Design!
I love the inclusion of music as a mechanic: https://cottontshirtz.itch.io/tentrock
@gaming-night Thanks, admittedly the song parts came late in the jam and are pretty hacky (hardcoded strings of notes and delays, notes are swapped by a coroutine that then waits the delay until the next note)
Awesome game! I like how the obstacles were a clock face, it took me a good couple tries to figure that part out.
If you're doing the pixel effect with a scaled down rendertexture target, turning off anti-aliasing for the camera will avoid pixels with gray tones. On a related note, I would add a script that just watches for screen size changes and recreates the target texture when those change. The game looked pretty funky on a wide screen monitor...
I also don't have another human to play with, and I always know what the other player is thinking! But in all seriousness, this is a cool abstract game! It's always great to see something truly unique out there.
The game we need during quarantine!
Absolutely love it! It did take me a while to understand how the loops affected the stylus and board, but after that it all fit together nicely. The only thing I can think that bothered me was that the angles were in radians, which makes entering specific angles cumbersome.
I like how each loop through the environment is different as a result of the character's state of mind. I was worried the story would turn out much darker, as that is what it felt like it was building up to.
NGL, when I got to the end the punchline really got me!
Intuitive example of 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions'! It's fun to find a promising spot in the input space, then search 'nearby' for better and better trajectories!
Not sure if it is on purpose, but after a few levels the screen goes mostly black, but the rotating shadow is still visible.
Unfortunately I think the WebGL build is broken, all I'm getting is a black screen... If you get a fix uploaded I'd love to check it out!
A very well constructed click puzzle game. The highlight is definitely the visual style. That 2D/3D effect is very well done, interesting and maybe a little seasickness inducing. The puzzles themselves were just the right amount of hard. The sound effects were well chosen to go with the visuals. A simple soundtrack would have been nice but as it stands, this is a good time.
The difficulty curve inside of a level is quite strange, at first you it's very difficult, but by the end you can't make a mistake if you tried...
I had a difficult time understanding how the costs were calculated. The other colors have obvious effects, but I'm not sure of the purpose of the green cards...
Very much liked the water effect, and I also liked how all of the information in the game is diegetic!
I absolutely love this game! While the graphics and audio really set the mood, it's the feeling that you need to keep going that makes the game. There's no going back, and there's no stopping.
Solid horror game, definitely more than I can handle. Controls are smooth, that delay when interacting with objects is an effective way to increase the tense atmosphere. Atmosphere itself is pretty dang creepy and the sounds contribute to that as well. Very very well done. I played this too late at night.
I was surprised that running out of health was a game over, it felt like that should just bump you back to the surface. After another try I realized that the point of the game was to escape the mine once the earthquakes start. Escaping was quite difficult, as the character has momentum that is a little difficult to control, maybe consider having their velocity zero out when they start going the other way?
Absolutely love the art though, it's wonderfully cute!
I like that you can only go down on each step, it makes you consider what moves to make and plan for future runs (aim for gold you missed, etc.). I didn't see much of a speed up on gold gain, that made the middle part of the game slow down some...
(Also, that ending!)
I like the song choice and stark art style, which together create a strong atmosphere! Something I can suggest is to add a 'noise floor' to the audio (not sure what the correct term is); basically, if you add in some constant noise (white or pink), you won't notice the start/end of the noise surrounding the narration audio. If you can explain it as wind or waves or something that's even better!
Cute. An interesting take on the theme. Directions were a little confusing at first. How is the money gained? It just seemed to accumulate over time... Overall, a nice game
I like the idea of a pachinko adventure game! It reminds me of that pinball adventure game, Yoku's Island Express
A very inspired take on the theme. Goofy and good for a laugh. It was a little buggy for me, sometimes it didn't register a complete headline. Overall, a fun, if simple, game.
@hiisileiri Yeah, the ending screen fell off the back end of development. I only realized at the end that we failed to include the dialogue that alludes to the theme...
@leuthil Admittedly yeah, there were going to be obstacles/effects that would make things more difficult, but 72 hours and all that...
This is one tough game! Beyond the control aspects that are the expected difficulty of the game, there doesn't seem to be any indication of where to go. Also, while the wiggly eyes are an awesome touch, they affect the physics of the potato itself. Consider reducing the mass of the pupils down to 0 to reduce their effect on the rest of the physics.
A stealth game with modifiable environment, interesting!
I quite like the idea! It's fun to run around and put out fires (metaphorically)! I do wish the generated pieces would fit together better, often a piece would spawn in and it wasn't possible to get into it...
Loved the pixel art and style in general! Wish it was a little more lenient about running off edges, at present it just keep moving when you get to an edge.
This is a fun and well realized game! I did find that later levels to be less puzzle-like, as I could generally just brute force the solution by jumping about...
Controls quite well, and the animation matching the movement is superb! Some simple SFX could help the immersion quite a lot!
None of my machines worked as expected, which is to be expected!
Something I've messed around with when using physically controlled characters is to separate colliders and visualization into separate objects and then have the viz objects move/rotate in the render loop according to the rigidbody's velocity/angular velocity and the time since the last physics loop. It's not perfect, but it goes a fair way to removing the visual stutter of the two loops being out of sync!
Cute art style and relaxing atmosphere, though the combination of the music and misty was a bit odd. I didn't realize that you were supposed to knock the chained lights to get past them, and as a result I got a bit stuck on the mustache level. The placement of the pickup led to me realizing it though, so A+ level design!
MI mostly ended up just babysitting one pipe, as trying to maintain all of the pipes didn't seem like a good strategy. I figured there would be some downside, but there wasn't one. What about just an end of level score? Graphics were good!
I like the idea of the power-ups, but I wish I could remove the destroyed cubes from my pack, as they end up taking up a lot of space.
Classic concept with a strong retro aesthetic!
Dig the vibe and concept! Overall it felt like a puzzle game, which wasn't immediately obvious from the aesthetic. Is the music procedural?
Very Cyriak, It was a little difficult control, but I'm pretty sure that was the point!
Amazing graphics and audio! Incredibly polished! It took me a moment to figure out that it's WASD+Space to move stuff. I do like that you can choose which piece you want, it adds some choice to the formula!
I like the core loop of grabbing debris and dropping it into the atmosphere! I did find the movement to be a bit difficult to control, making the directions local to a point was led me to flying in the wrong direction often.
Good humor and great pixel art! Only thing I can comment on is that the 'zzzhow!' SFX is a bit loud
NGL, I didn't understand which particles could recombine and why some wouldn't. Also, the difficulty curve is kind of backwards, when things get out of hand it gets more difficult. The graphics are nice and clean and the game is juicy as all hell!
It reminds me of the minecraft game sploof, knocking blocks out from under your opponents! I left the game on the title screen for a moment and I got a game over screen, maybe try spawning in the player after the title screen is completed?
@joemid Oh yeah, the game is basically inspired by that painting and the "crab crab food scared crab frightened crab" video.
Sorry to hear about the crash...
@unitedfailures yeah, there's a killplane below the ocean.
@acearcher I'm sorry to hear about the performance issues! I've heard that WebGL builds sometimes don't work well in Chrome, perhaps a different browser or using the windows build world help?
Either way, thank you for trying it out!
Fellow crab game solidarity!
Very cozy game! Lost it a 'lustacean'!
Some tutorialization could help, at first I though I was the character moving around and it also took me a bit to realize I could scroll/zoom the map.
I like the idea of directing folks about the map, but maybe start with a small level and start unblocking things as time goes on?
Love how well the 3D environment works with the art style!
I'm surprised the WebGL build runs faster, it's usually the other way around in my experience...
Love the aesthetic!
How did you do the collisions working on the trail renderer?
Had some trouble with the slopes eating jump inputs, some coyote time or a wall jump could help.
Love the mechanism and the progression through the concepts!
Real gross!
I like the idea of a TD game where you move the towers around! I wish the second enemy type was a "heavy" instead of fast though, they would always catch me off-guard.
Had a lot of trouble getting the cursor to be captured, not sure what caused it to work when it finally did...
Love the idea!
I did find it difficult to tell what the incoming units were, especially when it wasn't fullscreen. Also, I think the placement/rotation of the units could use some work; it was difficult to tell where the units would be placed when starting a click-drag event...
Oh sh-t, here we go again...
Love the art-style and humor!
This one was tough! The first time through I got cocky and eventually got hit twice by one of the later enemies, the one with the 3g3r pattern. Awesome art style and great music!
Really wish that enemies killed in the zone count towards the sacrifice, otherwise the weapons are a liability.
@henrik-ganard Sorry about that, didn't realize that the itch link wasn't showing. Added it to the description.
Awesome entry!
Moving and shooting feels great here, they're combined in a way that makes them easy to use but still requires you to think and act fast!
My brain is too smooth to be on a timer...
Challenging game! I found it difficult to understand the controls initially, but once I got the hang of it I felt pretty comfortable flying around. Love the trailrenderers!
I wish real gardening was this easy... Got into a good rhythm and was able to harvest almost 70 eggplants!
Fun little puzzle game! I like the variety of mechanics you've created!
I noticed how the jump SFX happens each time that space is pressed, regardless if any LARK jumps. I've found it useful to think about effects as responses to game events, so instead of playing the sound when the button is pressed, have the LARK do the jump itself, then if they succeeded, play the effect.
Hope you've had a good time and welcome to game dev!
Nice calming atmosphere!
I do wish there was some feedback when you're close to losing though, as initially I didn't realize I had to keep the score below 1000...