itch.io

I got 6 lol.  Not impressive, but liked the splattering of effects when the level closed up.  I was mostly just testing for specific conditions for bugs. I'll put some time into trying to get an actual PR.

That's awesome! I don't know what my high score is, lol.  But now I'm going to keep track and post here. I was also thinking some sort of leaderboard would be fun to implement.

re combining into the fog:

yeah i think that’s a bug. You’re right it does creat a little risk/reward but I’m thinking it could just be removed.

Yes! These are great finds and both need to be addressed, i think . Thanks for posting.

Re: upgrading oranges…

the auto turret / ray gun level reset when dropping a new yellow was intentional, but i don’t like it and play testing at CCS confirmed it sucks. My idea was i wanted to have one color “switch” the orange tile type and one color “upgrade” the tile.  Eg yellow switches between ray gun vs. auto turret, red upgrades each type. I thought that resetting the upgrade level would be a cost that makes the decision to switch more impactful  (ie: “i already paid a few reds to charge up my turret, i could switch to a ray gun which has unlimited ammo, but do i want to go back down to level 1 ray gun?”).  But i think in practice it is frustrating and confusing. 

One solution would be: upgrade level never resets, so if you switch between weapon types you always keep the same level. So if i upgrade my turret to level 5,  i can switch it to a ray gun and then switch it back to a level 5 turret without resetting to level 1.  (Something else that might be a little confusing in the current build is that ray guns don’t do anything better if upgraded, so why waste levels upgrading them? I was thinking they should be upgradeable too in the future (like ability to destroy mountains), and was trying to create a system that allowed that.)

Another solution could be tying the colors directly to a weapon type. Eg: if you add yellow it always swiches it to a turret or upgrades the turret. If you add red, it always switches it to a gun and upgrades the gun.  This would be a little more straight forward, but it would not scale up if there were 3, 4, or 5 different types of orange tiles; it would be locked into a 2-upgrade tech tree. 

Another background issue is that this is all coming out of me trying to find a solution where you choose your weapon type and upgrade it by dropping tiles in the same primary action as the rest of the game (left click, drag, drop). I think that would be elegant if achievable. If not, the upgrading could be done by some totally different mechanic, like: just right-click to open a menu to change weapon type (rather than dropping a particular type of tile).  I could see a system where you drop as many reds and yellows as you want on the tile, it keeps track but doesn’t change type (this tile contains 2 yellow and 3 red), and then you right click to open a menu and select a weapon type based on the cost associated with each weapon (maybe a turret has a base cost of 2 yellow, and consumes reds as ammo).

This is a thread for known bugs in the current build

Thanks for checking it out!  It’s pretty bare bones but it was a fun way to learn Godot.  I enjoyed trying to make a mechanic out of a single button press. I’d still like to do some more to add some complexity and juice.  Could also add some obstacles or something else to interact with other than distance.

this rocks

Thank you so much for taking the time to play it and share your feedback! Your comments are helpful and encouraging.   I had a variety of disparate influences for this game, but it really was all about the theme and trying to build design outward by iterating on a core mechanic (as well as keeping it something simple and achievable).  I liked the idea of exploring outward from a center point that you were tied to,  and I've been wanting to try implementing a grid based system.  I was kind of thinking about what if spaceman spiff's world and Into the Breach gameplay but exploration/adventure.  I started from the idea of getting a resource from each tile and built around that.  As I got going, @broquaint introduced me to Desktop Dungeons so I played a bunch of that and it became a big influence on the movement.   My goal was to create some simple systems that created rock-paper-scissors style decision tradeoffs around whether (and where) you combine resources.  At the core there should be a tradeoff between needing green to advance but needing purple and orange to survive.  I was thinking about chess and the puzzle of creating sightlines to cover your pieces with the ray gun.  I liked the teleport as a counter to the monster moving every space you move.  For movement, I struggled with wanting it to feel snappy and have immediate feedback on every click vs. needing to show the movement from tile to tile across space so the monster could move accordingly without him randomly appearing places... I fussed around with a lot of different directions hoping to discover a good way to create puzzles out of the core mechanics and I like it but felt like I never really got there.  

I will take any and all additional comments/feedback/criticism/ideas you have.  

I haven't played Fjords or any Michael Brough games, but I just googled Michael Brough and I think I'm about to go down a rabbit hole of awesomeness.  Thank you for the connection and recommendation!

like I said in the discord, i'm in love with this one. the perfect combo of chill/gratifying gameplay mechanic and quirkiness that makes you just want to share it with everyone.

so fun! i enjoyed the feeling of the movement. 

• at first it was hard for me to go where i wanted, but i got into the feeling of it and it created some fun tension that i was never quite in control; it added to the feeling of being an out of control taxi racing against time. it certainly heightened the feeling of nerve racking "will i make it in time".  
• I'm curious how you decided what time to assign as the goal for each run.  I found I was always reaching my goal just barely in time, so cheers to the perfect balance however you did it.  
• I did have a moment after about 4 trips where I got a location name and I though "oh i know where that is" which was a fun moment and I know part of your goal for the theme (expanding your knowledge of the map), so you hit that on the head too.
• this is probably on your list of 'to dos', but my suggestion would be some visual cues to help people mentally map the space. it would be cool if there were visual landmarks, or biomes, "neighborhoods" etc. marked so you could start to map it. trees, houses, etc. even just different colors in a gradient across the map would help start to map in my mind. maybe street signs or the names of the streets written on the road.
• As i said in the discord a while back, liked the compass implementation. it gave the right amount of information (general direction) without giving too much information. left room to still get a little bit (just the right amount) of lost while trying to make the target.

I finally made it to the second room! it took me forever, but I've always been bad at spelunky.  but this is great. It really nails the feeling of spelunky, and i really enjoy the movement and weight of the player.  landing a ledge grab feels really good for some reason. I know it's a spelunky love letter, but I also get some celeste vibes in the movement which I really like.  amazing work! 

two in a row! (on mini mode)

nice work. I enjoyed the loop of each turn, looking at the grid to decide where to play and then distributing was a satisfying feeling.  I am not sure I fully understand the strategy and what happens to upgrade my numbers between each turn but i managed to get two wins!

I can't get enough of this. I love it.  relaxing, gratifying, and hilarious.  I think it would be awesome if it had slight variation in color based on which direction you faced so you could do even more patterns, I think that would emulate how they bend the grass to do striping