yea 1000 colliders worked fine on my gaming computer, but not my work computer. i have now segregated the collision layers so post-jam update will have that perf issue addressed.
thanks for reporting that
Graphics was of fantastic quality, UI design is not clear at all.
The game could use some labeling for ui elements, or at least put them in a tutorial sheet.
The direction of enemy path is not clear. I have mistaken the end as the beginning and had to reset due to very tight room for failure in wave 1.
I can see that the tight income capacity is intentional, for the interesting trade-off for random contractor quality, but it also double as a steep difficulty curve for new players, if they didn't play good enough at the start of the game. It is a very difficult task to balance the early game perfectly, so no pressure for that. (also i m bad at this game)
Upgrades directly reflect on the tower's skin. It is great but i have no idea what "1" and "6" is regarding the dice throw. How much stronger does the tower get, or how much better than the next tier of tower? It is very difficult to catch the info during a short playthrough.
(Just read some more text, and i saw "Accidentally click a lower number, and your lousy space contractor might damage your turret, downgrading it!". So it does not determine the quality, but just success or not! Now i see.)
When i get off work i can spend bit more time and perhaps I will learn more about this game
Edit: Tried a few more rounds to try to get past 5 walls broken.
The power up is quite interesting, making the gameplay more complex than how it looks.
but the way to get there still involves many resets, which is a not-fun way to deal with randomness.
I take back the comment about the dash's physics property.
You do want the player to look after their momentum, and adding to the momentum to break through the random walls is THE gameplay. With that said i still think it is too difficult to master the control of the character.
It almost gave me a Nanaca-Crash vibe, now that i play it more times over. I think it is quite enjoyable.
Highest Score: 269m with 10 walls broken (5 during the power up
A lucky run got me to 250m. Wasn't sure how fast is enough to break walls, but the shoot-to-move mechanic is well-implemented.
Fits more to the "dual purpose" theme from the first jam than the one this year. The level has randomness but i don't see any interesting ways to interact with the randomness other than "being in it". The dice being the player makes me think a bit about the geometry a bit, but most of what it did was to tell me how many bullets (or jumps) are left.
Reading the comments, I originally thought I could shoot the platforms with my gun (but risk going backward instead of forward), so i was surprised to see that it is not the case. The gun is full-on a jetpack.
Theme aside, i think the gun can do a bit more roles, say, it may help collect ammo by shooting crates or something.
Oh also, I observed that whenever i am out of ammo, i would secretly wish my character would slide just a bit further, so tuning the friction to very very low (proly 0 isn't that bad) would be an interesting addition to the game experience. It would also help with planning my next shot by giving a predictable slide path.
Oh yes, i see that shooting the gun applies an impulse to the player. This is very accurate in the physics simulation, however, i think directly setting the velocity would make it a much more gamey experience, since as a player, whenever I click the button, i expect it to go where i point at, but sometimes my character would boost so little, that i cannot save it from a fall. I can also imagine my suggestion to not work, since it may make the game become far too predictable and the player can just "air-dash" everywhere until they get the next bullet stack. Do take this paragraph with a pinch of salt.
Fast paced, nuanced shooter experience.
Shooting makes you run slower, counter this with rolling, which is at a cooldown and cannot control the roll distance.
Different weapons have their trade-offs, but even the pistol has a merit: its slow shooting speed lets you hold the trigger without too much movement speed drawbacks.
Very polished shooter, but has a major drawback that hinders its enjoyment: the screen is too small to see enemies from below, and the charging-exploding enemy is too for a pistol with average aim.
I wanted to enjoy the game longer, but the difficulty curve kept me trying for 3 playthroughs, with play time shorter than what i would have hoped.
At this high pace, i would have liked to have an indicator of where the next dice is (as it minimizes my time with the low roll, and idk, does it double as a level up item?) Perhaps buff the pistol by making the roll lethal when holding the pistol. The power drop is too real to stay in.
Pretty fun little game. Short play time but is indeed relaxing.
I can see that balancing isn't the key here. When a player makes an investment they guarantee a set amount of return, given enough dice rolls.
If you want this game to be more strategic, consider letting the buildings decay when their number is not rolled. (either every miss, or appoint a specific number that will trigger their decay.
With a decay trigger, you may also want to increase their hp to balance it out.
I mean, it's still your choice, coz it's totally fine to not punish the player at all.
After all, we don't just play to be challenged at all times.
It's... so smooth you don't believe it is online, right?
You can try with 2 computers / comp+phone
it is an actual IO game with added effort to hide internet lags (i used extrapolation and interpolation plus client side box2d to predict server state, and have the server dictate the true game state)
i have successfully coded all that server code during the jam. the client side comes from an old project though.
Well, that left me with no time with the game logic so it is what it is.
Thanks for trying and rating tho
thanks for recognising the hard work on it
Its front end is scrapped from a ggj project 2 years ago.
The backend is from scratch, on top of my 5 years experience with socket.io code (this would be about the 5th rewrite as well)
But some of the time was spent upgrading that old code to work in new js environment
Thanks for trying out! the feedback form is updated with dual language:
https://forms.gle/5RQpYfg4SrC15qEf6
Yea I have planned this game to be a touch-screen game, but the fat finger blocking the screen makes me settle for the mouse. It is best on PC with a mouse right now.
As for precision levels, yes by the power of level design i can easily do that as optional challenges.
Very fun RTS resource management game.
Just a little note on controls: As a long-tested RTS control, it is better to use the right click too.
Old C&C uses right click to cancel selection.
Modern RTS games only use left click to select, right click to issue orders.
and for the game pacing, you can add some bonus score if the player is doing really well, so that they can skip early game and progress in the game faster if it is the 2nd or 3rd time they play
feature request:
as a player,
i want to know the level id of the current level
so that i can refer to it when discussing about it.
Really great as a game. I am really "lost" and then i "found" the solution. (although you can say the same thing to practically every puzzles lolz)
Puzzle elements very simple but provides lots of potential as elements for puzzles.
also i don't quite get what "fuel" is, how it got replenished, and how the shop suddenly jumps from below.
i suspect the shop to be reached once i accumulate enough xp to the next level, and i suspect i refuel when i reach the shop.
adding some more ui to hint this would be great, eg: showing shop instead of LVLUP on the xp bar would help create the association.
you can also use more text prompts if the gb hardware is so limited.
or maybe change "CONTINUE" with "REFUEL AND GO" can help communicate it better
Did you... update your game? Looks super polished. Congratulations!
https://andreas-grutter.itch.io/explody-car
Guess what? your game has inspired my GMTK jam 2020 Game!
(I d rather not put my links here but you can find it easily)
Um… so the car getting into space can be one of the side quest, to make it seem intentional...
btw the programming reason is that i try to make it easy to flip the car back by adding an upward thrust while smashing buttons. apparently if all 4 players smash buttons together, you get enough thrust to send it to space.
Anyways, glad to see you guys let the back seat be the drivers
Game Over with 2:11 left, cleared 7 rooms.
Not bad, a very solid dungeon game.
I can see a lot of systems went into this game, including player and enemy's health systems, stun, invincibility timers, and very solid graphics and such.
One improvement is that sometimes i cannot attack while some other times i can.
I think you have disabled attacking when player is damaged? I don't mind it, but it would be nice to have communicated it better, for example, by hiding the weapon when being hit, and only show the weapon when the player is allowed to attack.
The difficulty curve is also ok. There are enough health pickups to feel challenging. The weapon swing is fair to play, with enough penalty if swung aimlessly, but wide enough to actually hit things.
Very nice diversity of enemies. Each are very distinguishable.
Overall, very nice game with a little bit of "The Binding of Isaac" vibe. Keep on.
Nice and tight levels.
Starting from the wall jump, the timer is extremely tight.
(Spoilers ahead: discussing the levels)
After a few fails, i noticed that Jerry-on-fire actually continuously run forward!I then relied on this fact to not have to worry about controlling wall-kick direction,
and focused on wall-kick timing.
(Dunno if this was intended and if it was, it was genius.)
For the last level, you placed an extremely tight trap at the landing zone of the wall jump. Again i had a hard time lining up my jumps. And then i decided to surrender, not "i am done" surrender, but surrender my thinking to the level design...
And then...
I succeeded.
(Spoilers? ahead)
(Spoilers to the final level ahead)
(Spoilers to the final level ahead)
The level was designed so that every time it was an immediate full jump and Jerry bumps into the ceiling and magically land on the tight landing spot.
That left me speechless for quite some time, but i managed to type this out for you.
Thanks. I spent so much time tuning for the sense of control (in this theme about being out of control) since my ultimate goal is to make a party game that appeals to a wide audience base.
Thank you for recognising my efforts and reassuring me about my choices and that it is an accessible game for how difficult it can become.
I especially coded a flip-over system to flip it back when the inevitable flip happens. I have even put it in higher priority than making more objectives, just to give players a meaningful way to "wriggle" and recover from errors.
Also players are allowed to just use 2 wheels so that it is much slower and give them time to react.
Of course the intended way to play is to go full throttle!