Event Links: [ MiniLD 50 | Warmup Weekend | Real World Gatherings | Ludum Deals | Wallpaper ]
Welcome to Kraken. This is my first web-based Atari 2600 homage game, partially inspired by the Atari 2600 landfill dig held the weekend of Ludum Dare 29.
You are a deep sea explorer searching for treasure. As your craft descends into the murky depths large kraken will approach your ship. Fire your harpoons to kill them before they get close enough to attack your underwater vehicle.
Press left or right to use your claw to capture treasure. Avoid hitting anchors which will damage your craft.
Your deep sea adventure awaits!
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 54% |
| #894 | Theme | 2.83 |
| #936 | Humor | 1.89 |
| #1172 | Mood | 2.00 |
| #1178 | Fun | 2.10 |
| #1194 | Overall | 2.35 |
| #1234 | Graphics | 1.76 |
| #1237 | Innovation | 1.83 |
Comments
Controls felt fine, liked the call back to the days where you could only fire a single bullet. The squids didn't feel like they were actually getting close to me - would have loved for them to get much bigger, move towards the ship, become a brighter shade of red - something like that.
Fun game, I love old style games like this! The only thing I would really suggest is making the player have some sort of center point or something to assist in aiming. Fun entry!
This is definitely mechanically similar to 80s arcade and Atari games. I think that, overall, you've achieved your goal which is easily the most important part of Ludum Dare.
Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily make the game very much fun.
Paddle motion could use some acceleration, both to give motion more weight and to allow finer control over small motions.
The slow projectile speed coupled with the 1-bullet allowance makes missing excruciating--and while this encourages deliberate/efficient player action, deliberacy works best with more cerebral games than simple action ones.
There didn't appear to be much variety in treasure velocity on a moment-to-moment basis (maybe it was increasing steadily over time?). If treasure fell at varying speeds, it would make the player's decision making more dynamic, since the priority of actions they can take would shift. As it is, the slow treasure speed means they can be pretty safely ignored until the last moment.
So, congratulations on creating a pretty authentic-feeling Atari game, but I think it needs a few tweaks to be a fun game.
Nice job! Crazy that Atari dumped all those cartridges!
I would echo that would have been nice if the squid changed colour coming towards you, to to emphasise the fact that they are (it took me a while to realise that). I thought it was also a bit easy so I think changing the speed/direction of the anchors and treasure would have been a nice addition. I enjoyed playing it!
I used to play Seawolf on Atari as a kid. This really brought me back. Well done.
Cool use of the theme. It wasn't clear when I died sometimes, other than the score reset. A few sounds and some updated graphics would make this a pretty fun game I think. :)
If the krakens were more angular, and the anchors had fatter pixels, this would easily pass for a poor-quality crash-of-'83 Atari 2600 era video game. Really needs sound effects though, feels incomplete without them.
It looks like an Atari 2600 game, good consistency with the design! It's simple, but fun to play.
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I've not played any Atari 2600 games, so I can't compare, but it looks authentic! Nice job.