Super Conga Kat by steve 2012-08-27T09:57:00
Doh :( Sounds like the audio is crashing it, I've uploaded and updated version that disables audio if it's missing something.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → steve
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥈 | 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Plasimajita | compo | Fun | 4.39 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Plasimajita | compo | 6 | 4.29 | 4.39 | 4.02 | 3.87 | 4.14 | 3.41 | 3.78 | |||
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Cell Division | compo | 58 | 3.93 | 3.90 | 4.00 | 3.74 | 4.32 | 3.22 | ||||
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | Snake Strike | compo | 299 | 3.33 | 2.68 | 2.87 | 3.14 | 4.51 | 2.74 | 2.05 | 3.81 | 100 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Lethal Reflection | compo | 58 | 3.86 | 4.14 | 2.76 | 2.08 | 4.24 | 3.35 | 2.36 | 3.46 | 100 | |
| 2014 | 29 | Beneath the Surface | Tunnel Defense | compo | 50 | 3.94 | 3.85 | 3.76 | 3.88 | 3.91 | 2.84 | 2.04 | 3.06 | 62 | |
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Gravity Worm | compo | 30 | 4.00 | 3.52 | 4.05 | 4.13 | 4.19 | 2.93 | 1.81 | 3.08 | 100 | |
| 2012 | 24 | Evolution | Super Conga Kat | compo | 79 | 3.62 | 3.97 | 2.55 | 1.26 | 3.48 | 2.19 | 2.88 | 3.07 | 60 |
Doh :( Sounds like the audio is crashing it, I've uploaded and updated version that disables audio if it's missing something.
Also just noticed it was starting XAudio in debug mode, hopefully these fixes should stop the crashing :)
@Spaceoff Thanks for pointing out the glitch with the DX9 version, pixel centres changed between DX9 and DX10, and I got the conversion backwards :)
@moonmagic Which DLL were you missing? If it's one of the DX9, or XAudio DLLs you should be able to get them by installing the latest DX runtime http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=35
Thanks for the kind words all!
The reason I didn't give any rules text was partially to fit to the theme, but also because I was hoping to put enough feedback into the game that they wouldn't be needed!
That said, the tabbing between worms is a little janky which makes it awkward to experiment with the game, so perhaps having two worms in the first level rather than three would have made for a smoother learning curve...
If I get around to making a post-compo version I'll try to address that there :)
@split82 I'm afraid it would be quite a lot of work to port to other platforms as it is right now, I think for my next Ludum Dare I'll try to do a web based one to avoid this problem in the future!
Lovely game.
Nice idea, the sprites remind me of MST3K for some reason! The game seems to error out when trying to travel to the red/green level.
Lovely game, would be awesome on an ipad!
Great fun, nice music too
Great shooter, loved the connections with your previous LD entries, camera could have been a little further out though as mostly I killed stuff off screen by spraying'n'praying ;)
Fun little shooter, being able to shoot+collect the same targets made for some interesting gameplay, good work!
Awesome presentation, art and music :)
The typing minigame was my favourite and I liked the hand drawn style!
Brilliant idea and execution.
Interesting idea, would be cool to see this expanded upon
The rounding error made me question my ability to mental arithmetic, but otherwise the idea of combining a platformer with maths puzzles is a cool one
I didn't initially make the connection between the blocks I touched being the ones which were destroyed, I think you need to teach the player that mechanic a little as I finished the entire game before realising that was the case!
Interesting idea though, and very cute graphics.
Yyeeearrrrrrgghhhhh!
Fun game, got a bit confusing when there was a lot on the screen, could do with some separation between the effects so that player/bullets/enemies stand out a little more, also needs something to draw the players eye to their new location when they die, and some indication that the core is taking damage.
Nice concept, would have liked to have seen a few more checkpoints ;)
I really enjoyed this, especially the last level where I had to think several switches ahead.
I think it could have done with a 1 key buffer though, there were a couple of places I died because I double tapped the key and the second hit didn't register.
This might be because I've been playing a lot of crypt of the necrodancer recently, but I also felt as though the switch should in some way be timed to the beat of the music, the music felt a little disconnected from the game to me because the game has a tick/tock beat, but the music didn't follow it.
I also hit that bug of being able to cross between tiles during the switch when I should have fallen to my doom, it did have an element of 'saving myself in the nick of time', but overall it felt a bit exploity :)
Foreshadowing the game in the menu design was a clever touch too.
@monsterkillu I figured tethers and portals would be explored in a lot of the games this LD, so I wanted to go for something a little different, by giving the player influence over the intensity of the game and then encouraging the player to play with that link, to control it to their advantage to improve their score they would then perhaps feel "connected to the world". But that is only a weak connection to the theme I know, so I'm not trying to portray it as otherwise :)
@Moist I was surprised how readable the code was in the end, usually it's a horrible mess!
@AndrewAdams I'm afraid I don't have time to port this to other platforms, I always say next Ludum Dare I'll just do a web based game so everyone can play it, then on the day I take ages to think up an idea, worry about the time left and then just go with what I know, as it's faster for me to work with!
@ReddogStone It came together surprisingly quickly, which helped a lot as I was able to progress onto polishing the game early on, I've only done a few LDs now, but I'm definitely getting the impression that nailing your gameplay on the first day is a huge bonus as it gives you the entire rest of the time to polish the hell out of it! If you check out the playable time lapse I posted above you can see how the game shaped up over time.
And thanks to everyone for their kind remarks on the game :)
The grappling mechanic feels fantastic, however the timer and collision switching are unnecessary and just muddy what this game is about. I really think you have a gem here, you just need to remove the cruft and improve the difficulty curve.
Good fun, reminds me of choplifter, although if I were to ever change jobs, I would be a terrible bacon installer ;(
Loved the graphical style
Nicely polished, loved the graphics, frustrating in a very flappy bird way! Surprised to read that you stayed up another 10 hours after you stopped streaming, you sounded well tired when you logged off, that's dedication!
Great character, sweet old school platformer vibe, jump was on Y for me rather than A for some reason, and could have done with a few frames of input buffering on the jump, and would have preferred it without the lives, but loved it nonetheless.
Just noticed it was a compo entry, not a jam, I'm even more impressed now!
Great pixel art and a fun movement mechanic that's tougher to master than it initially appears, good work! I would have liked a quick retry button though for when I mess up! Mwahahaha!
I liked the hand drawn art style, but I felt there needed to be some kind of impact effect when you hit the birds as I wasn't sure when my shots were actually connecting with them, a puff of feathers and knocking the birds back a few feet would have really help sell the hits.
Good work though, I had fun even though all my dogs died ;)
Great game, framerate took a dive when the corpses started to build up though, making even more corses build up!
The real monsters are those people who change their minds about icecream!
Unfortunately the game just presented a black screen to me in both chrome and firefox (with all extensions disabled too), the music played and it seems as though I could control it even with the black screen as the jump sound played when I pressed space, but no graphics.
Looking in the log here's the probably relevant lines to why it's not working for me:
{FreshOpenGL.cpp(114) - isGLExtensionAvailable()} OpenGL extension GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil is unavailable
{FreshOpenGL.cpp(114) - isGLExtensionAvailable()} OpenGL extension GL_OES_packed_depth_stencil is unavailable
{RenderTarget.cpp(193) - create()} FRESH WARNING: RenderTarget'712fkfgeoff' had incomplete frame buffer.
[.WebGLRenderingContext-0x7fadd2ffb3d0]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_FRAMEBUFFER_OPERATION : glClear: framebuffer incomplete (clear)
[.WebGLRenderingContext-0x7fadd2ffb3d0]GL ERROR :GL_INVALID_FRAMEBUFFER_OPERATION : glDrawArrays: framebuffer incomplete (clear)
However, this was running on a macbook, and trying this on a PC it seems to work fine, so I'll play it there :)
This was fun, but it went from too slow to insane in the blink of an eye :)
Brilliant as always, I love that the horde is a little uncontrollable and will run off on their own
Loved the voice over, art and the unexpected ended. Awesome work
Awesome all round, would love to play more! Bonus humour points for one of my tentacles getting stretched all the way around the level ;)
Nice idea, I like the path of destruction the hydra leaves in its wake! I noticed a bug where you can zoom in so much the world inverts and the floor is drawn in black.
Lovely art, especially the duck. Had a bug, falling into the pit on the first level doesn't kill you, and you still die if you're midway through the eating animation for the last tadpole when the time runs out. I was confused at first because I didn't realise the game started with a cutscene and was wondering why the frog was jumping when I didn't tell it to :)
Thanks for the kind words everyone!
In terms of the gameplay, I really ran out of time on this one, I had other plans (possibly obvious because of the visual style not really fitting with the kind of game that I ultimately made), so in the last couple of hours of the compo I did a complete 180 on my design and just threw in the gameplay you see as quickly as possible so I'd have something to submit.
I felt that the control method ended up being somewhat interesting in itself and built a playground around it for people to mess about in, which is the explanation behind why the funky spikey things exist :)
The theme connection was originally going to be you playing a monster in a sort of urban encroachment situation, however after my 180 the only call out to monstrousness is the main character being somewhat out of the ordinary and a little monstrous itself :)
Thanks for playing!
@amras0000 I've recompiled the game against an older version of the directx sdk, which might solve your sound problem, if you redownload the zip the new exe is available alongside the old one.
This was fun, and the walk animation made me laugh :) Had an interesting meta game where pushing up and down also scrolled the webpage so I had to keep the game in view while still playing it ;)
I like the art, very moody. Also this happened http://imgur.com/CBMj9ew
Great game with nice graphics, I felt there were a few too many windows so I was never really concerned about being hit, and later on I started to just jump over enemies because they respawned so fast it felt like there was little reason to kill them as they'd be back soon; overall I had fun and it was impressively complete for such a short time!
Fun game! My best was 6200, I improved massively after I realised I didn't have to trek down to the bottom of the screen to grab people! I wanted to use the cows as missile shields ;)
ctrl bad idea when combined with w :)
Wonderful art, loved it, kept pressing ctrl+w by accident and closing the game window though!
Whoops, posted my notes my accident, can't delete them now sorry!
Clever idea! The teleporters definitely added a nice element to the challenge, shame you didn't have time for audio!
Great fun, awesome music, don't know how you made so much in such a short time!
I didn't kill any kittens, but I was still a monster ;(
Lovely art, and the way the game blended into the rest of the webpage was nicely done
Aaiiieea! Loved the audio when a load of people get splattered by the beam :)
Loved it, it froze a couple of times when I was trying to play it though, but restarting eventually solved it
Cute and very atmospheric, great work!
Good sound and art, well presented with a nice mood, shame you didn't have time to take it any further!
Had fun with this one, but as others have mentioned in the later levels it became obvious I could just constantly jump to pass them, however playing properly and alternating between jumping and grappling was great fun. Good work!
@damnscout Thanks for the video clip and bug report, seems like the game isn't respecting vsync while the game is in fullscreen (might be a graphics card setting you're forcing in your driver settings?), either way I'll look into putting some framerate throttling in to catch anyone else who might have this issue!
Thanks for the kind words all!
@GoZz You can't control the cells yourself, they move around randomly to some degree, but mostly in reaction to being attacked by the viruses
@HomineLudens I had some other specialisations planned, but ran out of time as I had to wrap up early due to work in the morning! (Next time I'll take the Monday off!). I agree about the growth indicator, there are actually two different visuals to try and hint to the player they can grow again, but it's still not obvious enough :(
@ryte2byte The mouse control is entirely relative, so there's no actual mouse position as such, but I probably should have gone with a more standard dual stick control setup, rather than messing about with something weird :)
@Flaterectomy Yeah I totally forgot to polish up the build menu!
@Ilseroth I was trying to avoid making a dual stick game! But yeah, I probably should have just bitten the bullet and switched it over :)
@KappaIX I made the shooting a little inaccurate on purpose to encourage turret building, but perhaps I pushed it a little too far!
@Clickmation The generators increase the power of your shots (give you an additional missile for each you build), and increase the reload speed of the turrets.
I cleared the red blocks in 30 seconds, which I thought was good, then I saw the comments about people doing it in 17! I liked the rotation mechanic and the ambient sounds, but the game could do with some sound and particle effects for when you break blocks. Nice work though
Nicely polished game! I would have liked to have seen an input buffer as the delay in movement kept eating my key presses, and I would have liked to have seen some strategy in the combat as it felt a little too simple for my taste. But good work overall, well done!
Great work! Good all around, my only two comments are that it wasn't clear why I died at the end (I wasn't low on health, so perhaps there was something on the planet I had to protect?); and occasionally I saw my planet shake, but it wasn't obvious which particular enemy was responsible for that.
Awesome idea, really enjoyed this. I'd have liked to have seen the individual mechanics brought together into larger puzzles to solve, especially in regards to toying with the players desire to use the echo location all the time, and I think there were a few too many empty rooms to traverse, but for two days work this is great!
Fun game! I'd have liked to have seen a longer spawn in animation as every time I died it was due to running into something that just spawned, also the game over screen needs to eat key presses for a second or so as I kept missing my score because I was hammering fire still thinking I was alive! Nicely polished though and great artwork, well done!
Definite SNES/metroid vibe to this game, nice work! I'd have liked to have seen some more sound fx on shooting and destroying enemies, and the game didn't appear to be complete-able (given all the extra UI around the play area I'm guessing you planned for upgrades and such but ran out of time?), but overall it was well put together and I had fun playing it!
Lovely artwork and a great concept!
Lovely art, and in combination with the sound design makes this game feel very calming to play. I would have liked to have seen more interactivity (for example, giving the planets a gravitation pull), but overall the simple mechanics fit with the mood the art+sound was creating.
The artwork was great, loved the steampunk-esque setting too, as you mention I'd have liked to have been able to build more airships, and it would have been nice to have some way of setting an automatic build order, as constantly clicking to generate resources was a bit tiresome; good work overall though!
Nice work, the flying perspective, number of insects and 3rd person model all really added to the character of the game. I think the player is a little too powerful, I mostly created workers to collect the food and just focused on shooting down all the incoming enemies myself- and as an ant I've no idea which direction north/east/west is ;) Some flying enemies which also shot back at the player would have helped distract my focus from the battle and increased the utility of the soldiers for me.
Really nicely polished, good tutorialisation that was a pleasure to play through, great art, music and the addition of the shield and launch mechanics really complimented the simple design and made it interesting to play. Well done!
Interesting idea, shame as you said you didn't record the history, would have been really nice to see a time lapse of how it all changed at the end of the competition! I would have liked it if the blocks didn't erase the messages when pushed over them, would have been fun to hide things underneath them for others to find :)
Some interesting ideas in here! I'd have liked to have seen it expanded further, perhaps combining your existing puzzle elements with a bit of backtracking so the player is presented with something to solve, rather than a straight path to the exit, good work though!
Interesting idea for a puzzle, although my carefully planned layout didn't really fair any better than my randomly put everything everywhere layout! A visualisation of the building interactions as you're placing them would be helpful. Nice work!
Those worms are terrifying when you see five of them coming at you from the distance! Nice work! I would have liked a stronger brake as it was hard to stop on top of a human (fortunately driving over the humans at high speed didn't kill them or I'd definitely have done worse than I did!)
Nice game, loved the art style. I would have liked to have seen the right stick rotation to speed up represented on the players character somehow, and the effectiveness of the rotate increased as my right hand was hurting by the end of it!
The cascading increase in your effectiveness as the game progresses as you turn other cells into factories was great- gave a real sense of a spreading infection!
Great artwork and sets a wonderful mood!
I ran into a couple of issues however, the camera was slowly shifting more and more to the left of the player until I couldn't see her anymore; after restarting I got further but the camera shift was still happening. I found you could teleport objects from one world to the next by holding E and A (perhaps intentional?) but when dropping them they disappeared, or moved into odd places.
Nice idea regardless, good work on this entry!
The sound really added to this, great atmosphere! I found a controls a little fiddly, having to tap the jetpack button all the time, and the fx around the laser kept playing even if the laser was out of juice. The lower part of the world added a great sense of mystery to what you were doing, but was a little bit of a red herring as I kept going down there to poke at it, before getting back to my gem collection duties and seeing the final reveal. Good work.
A simple game, but well put together with some good presentation. Some stronger call outs on collecting the 'wrong' colour would have helped, as would some graphical FX on the bars when they gain/lose progress. The shape spawning also would have benefited from taking into account the players movement, as I found the easiest way to proceed was to just constantly move in one direction and collect the colours as they drifted by- alternatively, some level boundaries would also have helped as that would force the player to turn around and deal with the horde of enemies behind them. Awesome work for your first game!
I liked the multicoloured starfield, very retro :) Great work for a first attempt!
:ballot_box_with_check: Humanity Punished
Good work, nice punchy tune and cute graphics! I would have liked to have seen some more particle fx, especially on the blink to help lead the eye, and to help indicate when one of your baby zillas die. Nice work for your first jam!
Awesome work! I stopped playing after 15 minutes as I felt like the game was starting to repeat itself and I wasn't sure it had any more to offer (if it did I'm sad I stopped as I would have liked to have seen some closure to the little story you created here), but what I did play of it I thought was all round wonderful, well done!
Great destruction FX, fun little game, good work! I found it was possible to play with the mouse button permanently held down- as the monster's bounce sometimes has enough height for him to immediately crash into a planet again and basically drill into it; also some times the monster would spin in a tight aimless circle in space while holding down the button.
I enjoyed this, nice idea for an infinite runner- had a wario ware feel to it! The collision seems to be a little sticky as I got caught on walls on a couple of my runs. Good work!
Loved the graphical style, looked awesome! The tutorial was a little too much of a wall of text for me, I ended up skipping through it and then not really understanding how to play! (My own fault I know...) I would have liked to have seen some tutorialisation in the game, and I think you could have made it auto-land on planets when you're near them rather than having to press E; additionally some kind of graphical fx to indicate you're invulnerable while landed on a planet would have helped too. Great entry overall, well done!
I liked the movement in the wave state, it was fun struggling to control this crazy wavey moving thing! I think you need some way of seeing/sensing the other world though, as switching back and forth between the worlds was completely blind and could easily leave you inside an obstacle. Nice work!
Cool idea! I liked the simple graphics, but it could have done with some audio. Having to navigate a slowly eroding planet was fun, although I eventually found you could just hold right and fire and were pretty much indestructible! Great work for your first time doing LD!
An elegant and simple design, I like it! I also got to the forth level before getting stuck! :)
Nice work! I would have like to have seen a jump in the game to give you more defensive options other than just moving left/right, and a moment of hit stun on the enemies would have made it feel more satisfying to shoot them. The music was great, and the strong glows over the city helped set a good mood! :)
Loved the artwork and gameplay, great work! I think some enemies which shoot randomly (rather than at you) would have spiced things up a little, and maybe a mechanic to earn back shields somehow?
This happens to me every time I go shopping too!
The art is lovely, but the game was a little too hard for me to get very far- I never managed to get off of day 1, the two times I got to the end of the road I got destroyed by the crowd of people following me! (Perhaps that's intentional?) Regardless of my skill fail, the game is funny and the presentation is slick, nice work!
This is a great idea. I particularly liked the moments where the text inform you of something around you, then you had to actual move/turn to inspect those things, it would interesting to see this aspect expanded on. I think the music detracted a little from the experience, I think some ambient noise themed to the room you're supposed to be in would be great and some sounds made to represent the actions you're performing in the game (e.g. sound of a drawer being unlocked). Nice entry though, with great potential!
This was really good, music was great, and having to jump to the beat really added something to the game. I did find myself waiting on the platforms during the calmer parts of the music, which probably wasn't the right way to play! ;)
Having some FX when you nail the beat perfectly would have been nice (although maybe there was and I was just too bad to see it!), and I thought the music cut out a little abruptly when you died.
Thanks for all the kind words everyone, wish I'd been able to devote a little more time to the game over the compo weekend to flesh it out a little more.
@schsam Funnily enough it does use a sonic rings mechanic! I just limited it to only a few coins to act as a buffer for players who are early in the game- the reason I capped it was because later in the game it made hitting things a little too trivial to recover from, but in hindsight perhaps a different penalty for that would have been better...
@iak I never actually intend players to fill up the screen with stuff! The {U} was supposed to be a game ender- it massively increases the enemy spawn rate (and slightly improves all of your own turrets too), I was hoping for people to go out in a blaze of glory at the end after they put {U} down... Sadly I miss balanced it and you don't really notice much difference :)
@notgreat I was intentionally trying to making things a little cryptic as that's one of the staples of idle clickers- you don't always know why stuff is good for you until you've made a few- but the {X} did need a better visual to help clue players in on what was happening, I think if it had drawn some particles between the {X} and the hive it was affecting that probably would have made it a little more obvious...
@piscythe Yeah, I should have added a sensitivity slider, didn't think about it until after the compo though :(
@steve-sparkes Haha, the {U}s were supposed to be that game ending turret! Sadly I erred on the side of caution and didn't make it aggressive enough...
I enjoyed this, fun take on sokoban. I probably squished more bugs than was strictly necessary though :)
I think I cheesed my way through a few puzzling using undo rather than solving them properly, and I found the interaction of undo+moving straight after a little awkward. I think I'd also like to have seen a longer turn timer as the bugs reacted a little to fast for me at times.
Awesome interpretation of the theme, perfectly delivered. You're going to put this into a real Tamagotchi and donate it to a second hand store right? ;)
Oh the finger cramp :(
I discovered you could use CTRL to fire while experimenting on my second attempt, and turning auto-zoom on made a big difference- I think it would be worth pushing the user towards those input options as they make it much easier to play.
The music was great, and an impressive number of tracks for the time!
I would have liked to have seen the notes on the board match up with the notes/beats in the song in some way (seemed like the notes on the board might be completely unrelated to the song? as I noticed they kept coming after one of the songs ended and the level stayed on for 20 seconds in silence)
Also a few moments of rest in between note sequences would have helped, the constant onslaught gave me no time to let go of the mouse and stretch my hand!
I'd also have liked to have seen the song go glitchy if you miss notes and some kind of gameover if you play completely terribly like me :)
But cool idea overall, feels like it would make an interesting VR game!
Very well polished and nice clean art style, I had fun playing this.
I would have liked to have a 'next block coming' indicator, and maybe feed the blocks to the player as a shuffled list rather than randomly picking each as I got in a situation where I had three square blocks in a row which was basically death :)
I think it would be interesting if each "wave" of blocks that comes at you allowed you to rinse them in some way for points- e.g. rather than just placing a single block down to get through the barrier, what could I do to build up that wave, or play more skilfully to get more points out of it?
I struggled to understand the player physics initially, and while it would go against the 1-bit aesthetic of the game I think a few fx would go a long way into helping people understand what's going on, for example, shifting the player down by a pixel when jumping upwards and up by a pixel when falling down to give the impression of movement, and having some kind of particle fx once you've landed.
As someone above said, using a colour gradient on the background would also help players locate themselves as they're moving around in Y space, and lingering on deaths for a little longer to let players see what the mistake was that they made which killed them would help too.
Interesting idea though, would be fun to see how far you can push it with normal platformer mechanics before it starts to melt peoples brains :)
Nice work, I enjoyed this!
As someone else mentioned it gets a little tedious after you've lost some units, I think you could solve this by not front loading all the enemies- the most threatening part of the level is at the start, (or slightly after once you've got some asteroid chunks moving about), but post that point it's just mopping up. If the game spawned a few saucers or other enemies during this period it would keep you on your toes.
I thought the big list of controls at the start of the game was a little daunting, the actual controls are pretty simple (as once you've selected your units it's just a case of right clicking to make them move around and attack), but presenting the player with that list right at the start might put people off.
The start of level 2 is brutal, by the time I've selected all my units and commanded them to attack the saucer had killed most of them!
I liked the graphical style and presentation, a few particle fx would be nice.