The Paper Dance by TravisChen 2014-12-08T22:25:00
Imaginative, beautiful and fun. An ecstatic demonstration of the most graceful roundhouse kick there is.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → K.Chplr
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Subterranean | compo | 540 | 3.04 | 2.60 | 2.70 | 2.39 | 3.57 | 3.06 | 3.33 | 98 | |
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | The Harrowing | compo | 512 | 3.24 | 3.18 | 3.50 | 2.76 | 2.90 | 3.15 | 72 |
Imaginative, beautiful and fun. An ecstatic demonstration of the most graceful roundhouse kick there is.
There are some good material to work upon in this prototype, keep up the good work.
The transition from the sad intro to the beat them up with super energetic music is kinda funny. :p
I keep getting F but it's a whole lot of fun, good job.
Perfect match for the theme and superb music.
It would be even better if it could be played on smartphones.
Good job on the pixel art and the general mood of the game, everything about the game feels very polished.
Honestly I had a hard time figuring out how to open the chest, but I'm usually no good at this type of game.
Solid gameplay and good difficulty curve.
Using only html might greatly limit you if you want to add special effetcs, etc. in a future version though.
Could use more polished controls (faster character and some kind of input buffering for the jumps), but otherwise it's a good game with a lot of potential.
Very fun but maybe a little too easy, I would have like something more challenging
What a charming little game ! I only wish it was longer.
Nice art and animation, however I have a issue with the sound. I get a continuous click all the way through the game.
Nice gameplay overall but it feels like the character has too much inertia and the cirlces are too many while not providing enough of a respite. My best runs were spent jumping mostly vertically, not chasing the circles around.
Good job on your compo entry, we can see a lot of work went into it and the map switching is a nice feature.
Player movement should probably have been constrained to the screen though. It's possible to dash directly to the boss at the start of the game, though it's not really useful.
Fun game with good (simple) controls ! imho it could be a very good basis for a more polished multiplayer game.
Glad you like it. Indeed in my opinion the game is slightly too difficult (one pattern in particular), it might hurt a lot of people's feelings...
Thanks for the head up about the firefox compatibility issue, it turned out to be an issue with the css of the page containing the game. I had to triple check the compo rules to make sure fixing it was allowed, but the game should now be displayed correctly on Firefox.
PS : As for Touhou, my favorite was Eiyashou ;)
Thanks for the feedbacks, it is really motivating. I'll make sure to take all of these into accounts for the post-jam version of the game.
@Nardom - About the enemy indicator : to be fair this is just a feature I replicated from other games of this particular genre. Imo, the feature could also works in games with multiple units on screen with small or low contrast indicators for the minor enemies and big or high contrast indicators for the stronger enemies.
@tmpxyz, @ianh and @gre - Multiples lives, bombs, smaller hitboxes and progressive difficulty are all valid solutions for the balancing issue, I'll definitely investigate them, but the main problem may be with how random some patterns are. Most of the patterns requires too much moving around and none of them allow 'streaming' (which is one of the things which gives immediate gratification to the player in this kind of game).
@MurderSantaTeam - Yes, pure unforgiving arcade gameplay from hell ! Yes, too much hell in my bullet hell...
@dusho - My personal highscore is 62,000 ;)
@Fnkee - Displaying the highscore in game sounds like a good idea :)
@taviandir - The purpose of the focus mode is to slow down and display the actual hitbox of the player (which is smaller than its sprite). I'll add a note about this feature in the game description.
@victorafael - The hitbox of the player is smaller than its sprite, but all the hitboxes are square, even those of the bullets. Maybe the confusions comes from there, I'll have to test using round hitboxes in the postjam.
@RockhopperGames - Yes, there's definitely something going on with the enemy glueing itself to the sides of the screen at times. The issue is likely with how the enemy movement is limited to the inside the screen.
That's a lot of fun, but indeed there's no incentive to move. I reached 240 kills before I decided to move (only to die a little after). A nice way to make the player move might be to make so the enemies randomly drop some bonuses the player needs to pick up, or something along those lines maybe ?
Solid game overall, the pixel art is top notch !
Just a thought : I think hiding the mouse is not necessarily a good idea. While the light give you the direction of the mouse relative to the character, you can't tell how much you have to move the mouse to turn the light at 180° (for example) since it depends on its distance from the character.
Well done, the gameplay is very polished for a ldjam game imo. The pixel art and animations are also great.
The pixel arts is the highlight of the game, which is fitting for an exploration game. I thought the dirty / blurry effect at the end did not match the art style though. The mood is really good too.
Just to be sure I did not miss anything, is there some hidden puzzle to resolve ? The game somehow reminded me of Fez, probably because of the cryptic symbols in the village.
I had some issues with the controls though, my controller did not work correctly with the game, even after trying to set it in the Unity options window (it's a Logitech F310 used on Mac fyi). The left and right arrow keys of the keyboard did not work in the game for some reason, despite being correctly set in the options.
That aside, it's truly amazing what you managed to do in three days, the visual style and sounds are spot on.
Simple but effective, good job.
Btw, thanks for the WebGL export, this is nice to see it in practice (and to be able to play the game without switching to another browser). A few slow down here and there but overall it's consistent.
The idea of using minecraft as the level editor is interesting, but yeah the idea of making a MMORPG in a weekend is way too ambitious. Try working on a postjam version if possible, this has potential.
Good game with a great mechanic. I wish it had more challenges and some music !
A minor issue I noticed : With an azerty keyboard, the W key can be used to jump with in most forms (which is nice), except with in the flying form where Z has to be used.
The little intro screen looks great and the gameplay is solid. While nice, the music might be more fitting for a slightly more fast paced game, maybe. Good job working on this.
The game becomes really fun once you master how to fly. With slightly better physics it could be quite addictive.
This is more than my sleep deprived brain can handle (ended up watching the video), but I enjoyed the surrealist visuals.
Great game, definitely a good contender for the fun award :)
FYI, the game doesn't run on Mac OS X 10.9.5, it says that the "app file is damaged and can't be open".
Good game :)
The way Mr.Yeti moves is charming. The sound effects, especially the scream, are also pretty nice.
The running animation is pretty sweet.
Too bad you did not get the time to flesh it out a little more. A few additional mechanics and it could have been so much more.
Good luck on your js13k ;)
Those children are scary. I can't possibly eat them.
Nice game overall ! A night setting would have been fitting
Great platformer. I liked the music and most of the weapons (not the flamethrower)
Enjoyed my two playthrough (managed to kill the halfling in the second one). Good job ! Multiple endings would have been really nice :)
Thanks for your feedback !
The objective is to survive as long as possible (you die once you're hit 4 times). Arrows key are supposed to work too. I'll update the entry description with those bits of information.
Thanks for the feedbacks !
@MrDave: Yes indeed. Large parts of the gameplay, things as crucial as mortality, were crammed in the last two hours of the compo. The "gameover" screen was added something like 10 minutes before the deadline. Hence the lack of polish here and there :(
@increpare: Thanks, I see what's the issue I'll try to fix that in a few.
That bug was hiding another bug and so forth, but the game should now work on Safari. I checked it on Safari 7.1 with WebGL enabled and it worked almost flawlessly (the gameover "screen" took a while to appear).
@DinnerInTheDark: Not sure if that's what you experienced but there's a subtle "autoaim" to help shoot the enemies who are slightly above or below you. This was necessary since you can't actually look up and down. So sometimes the shots don't go exactly in the direction of the crosshair... I'm still not sure this was the right way to go. Maybe I should have removed the crosshair altogether.
Thanks for the feedbacks !
@HThomson: Yes, the health bar was on my todo list just after the game over "screen" but it didn't make it to the deadline.
The sound effects this time around are better than those of my previous games but still far from perfect, I agree. Them being creepy is intentional though :)
@ireal: Off the top of my head : The enemies would be snake or dragon-like figures coiling on themselves. I would use 3D audio for a better sense of space. There would be particles floating around the nest. And -gasp- it would be possible to start a new game without refreshing the page.
Fun but it quickly gets kind of repetitive. The graphics reminds me of GTA2 (which is a good thing) and the memorial at the end is a nice touch.
I felt in love with the graphics as soon as I saw the screenshots. The intro music really helps setting the mood of the game and overall the gameplay is solid, although it is not clear if this is an endless survival game or if there is a way to win.
Looks cute, I could not get it to work on Mac OS X.
The game is enjoyable and the city looks good. Though, I have some pretty big slow downs when killing somebody, it's actually freezing for up to a second (playing the web version on firefox for mac).
Very interesting from a developer standpoint. I would like to read a post mortem of it with some technical insights on emscripten and the type of rendering used in this.
Thank you for the post mortem :)
Congrats on your first LD, you did well ! The graphics are really good, especially the character arts, lovely.
**SPOILER** I did not like the end, I would rather have stayed there with Ollie's new friends :) **SPOILER**
I stumble upon a bug on my first try : when using some resolutions (for exemple 1024x768 windowed), it is not possible to see Theo in the second "act" as he is off-screen. Playing in 1440x900 windowed fixed it, this should probably be added to the game description for other people.
Damn.
It is certainly not fun, but it was really good nonetheless.
Even though english is not your native language and there's a few typo here and there, you did a good job with the story telling. You did not fall into the trap of self-pity and I thank you for that.
Amazing soundtrack, to churn out so many tracks -so many good tracks- in so little times is impressive to me.
The cooldown time after every action is very punishing, maybe a litte too much ? Or it is just me being bad at this game.
Great game ! The way the humans are sent flying and the silly sound effects are fun. I noticed that when you're dead, all the humans start flying slowly upward, not sure if this a bug or intentional but it is funny.
Good game ! The controls felt a bit unresponsive, BUT that's maybe because I had to test it with a trackpad instead of a mouse... I like the 3D-but-retro graphic style.