August 24th-27th 2012 :: Theme: Evolution
This is my first Ludum Dare Entry and my first foray into Game Development beyond lurking in Game Dev forums and reading blog posts.
I used AS3 with Flashpunk doing the grunt work (cheers Chevy!).
It's a very simple concept: You, as a badly drawn dinosaur, must evade the meteors that are hurtling towards earth using your lightning quick reflexes. At the end of each round of meteors, you are given the choice of 3 possible upgrades which change how the character plays slightly giving you and advantage through speed, size, or health.
I'm overall pretty pleased with it, I would have liked to have done something deeper and with a more interesting concept behind it but I was drawing blanks on the theme (and, as previously mentioned, I haven't really done this before).
Downloads and Links
Ratings
#154 | Humor | 2.85 |
#308 | Audio | 2.58 |
#345 | Theme | 2.96 |
#367 | Fun | 2.80 |
#453 | Graphics | 2.67 |
#512 | Overall | 2.72 |
#562 | Mood | 2.25 |
#582 | Coolness | 48% |
#678 | Innovation | 2.04 |
Comments
Great job on your first game! Congratulations! I think the game is well put together and has some potential. It would be nice if in addition to avoiding the falling rocks the player had to occasionally collect special items or something similar. At first I thought the cat faces were just for that but now I believe they just hurt you :-) I should also point out that after a few levels the "Speed up" option disappeared. Overall fun game, I would just look into ways to expand and deepen the gameplay.
Personally, the dinosaurs run animation is hilarious. I'm also guessing you know this, but there isn't actually a 'lose' scenario. And also, do kittens hurt you or heal you?
I got my girlfriend to play test it and she said the buttons disappearing looked like a glitch - maybe I shouldn't of ignored her... They do disappear after a while when you max out that evolution otherwise you could be 1px wide or be travelling the whole width of the stage in a single frame. I needed to explain the evolution a lot better I think.
The lose scenario is just when you run out of health, I had some problems with figuring out the balance of how difficult it should be so it's probably fairly easy.
And the kittens hurt you because they are evil (and because I remembered the kitten challenge just before I submitted :P)
I have a few suggestions:
- Health shouldn't be able to become negative without a game over! You need to use <= on line 35 of HealthDisplay.as!
- It looks like each asteroid has its own particle emitter, it would work better if there was a single world-wide particle emitter because the smoke trails wouldn't vanish so abruptly.
- Your hitbox seems to be too big during gameplay, which tends to make the game feel unfair.
Thanks RandomM00
- I didn't realise negative health was happening, should've done <= regardless really, it was pretty careless of me
- Cool thanks, I actually didn't think of that and the abrupt disappearance of trails was bugging me (as was some of them being off centre) but I ran out of time before I could look into it. Will add them to the world next time.
- I couldn't figure out Pixel level collision within Flashpunk because I didn't know how to access the BitmapData of an Entity. It bugged me too which is why I ended up giving the dinosaur a large square head so it filled the hitbox :P
Thanks for the detailed feedback
Fun game! Also: Kitten discovered! It made me a little sad, though, because it reminded me that I forgot to put a kitten in my game :( Ah well. Good job!
Tried-and-tested game genre with a gimmick - nicely done!
Art is pretty terrible, especially the background, though particles look nice and dinosaur running has a nice paper-cut-out style to it.
It was pretty clear what you were meant to do and how you were meantto do it, but I felt maybe there should be a little more content.
Nice! Solid game, although It could use a little more variety. Your death trigger seems to be broken though, as I was able to keep playing even though I had gone into negative health!
Found it surprising fun for a very simple game; good first attempt. I saw a few issues, bit I think they have all been covered.
On a side note, when I first opened the page I did a double take on the screenshot; I thought the dinosaur was urinating!
Loved that it's the first game where shrinking is good :D very fun
Your visual style makes me smile. The game looks fun and charming. Pretty good gameplay too, just a bit onesided only having the rocks falling constantly.
simple but fun. some how i broke it and my health became negative thus i could not die and no longer had to evade rocks. I it was the ultimate evolution, the hidden choice.
Got 170 points! Loved the look of it. The particle trails don't follow the meteors super well and the framerate seemed to get really choppy after a bit, but still, good effort.
Charming! Like it very much :) I have absolutely nothing negative to say and I'm very impressed that it's your first attempt at making a game. Conrols get stuck occasionally and I haven't ever used flashpunk so I'm not sure whether that's a coding bug or a bug in flashpunk itself or just caused by the performance of the laptop I'm using! Do not listen to anyone with anything negative to say about the art. Your art has a clear sense of style, it is consistent and, as I've already said, charming.
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Was a bit bored with the game up to the point I realised you evolve after a bit. Fun game dynamic and well executed.