Floats by Horsed

[raw]
made by Horsed for LD32 (COMPO)
Drag your artefact to the next platform. Avoid the platform's edges and holes in the ground. Fight enemies and use the slow-mo-plane to slow them down.

CONTROLS: Only use your mouse. Arrow keys are broken.

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Floats borrows its visual style from the famous rymdkapsel by Martin Jonasson. It works like what I thought rymdkapsel would be, when I first saw it.

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POST-COMPO EDIT: I fixed the broken camera movement and adjusted the lighting. I also removed the link to the original compo version, as people didn't use the workaround to fix the camera. Please consider that while rating the game. Thanks!


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I hope you like floats.

Made by Martin Knopf (@mknpf)

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Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall 3.43 322
Audio 3.18 295
Fun 3.20 418
Graphics 3.70 206
Humor 2.25 795
Innovation 3.26 440
Mood 3.55 148
Theme 2.68 955

Feedback

jk5000
20. Apr 2015 · 08:18 UTC
Camera movement is very strange. Otherwise a fun game.
Prowler
20. Apr 2015 · 11:28 UTC
L.O.L! The most gamy part of this game is the camera movement!

5 points for mood since I was shouting at my monitor and bashed my keyboard on the table because of this camera :D :D. That was so emotional... it actually was fun ^^. 5 points fun as well for this and because of the gameplay itself. I failed so often because I simply forgot to move my square or I pushed it over the edge.

The "Perma-death" approach is a huge win for the mood and the fun since it tackles my ego ;)

The simplicity of the graphic fits as well as the sounds.

Good job! Keep it up!

Pat
benmcnelly
20. Apr 2015 · 16:15 UTC
Nice! I like your take on it and LOVE the hardmode no save.
Ilseroth
20. Apr 2015 · 18:51 UTC
The camera makes playing this frustrating and awkward. Having your movement tied to the mouse which is forcefully moved with the camera is just simply a bad idea.
PeerPlay
20. Apr 2015 · 18:52 UTC
Apart from the fact that the camera movement is a complete mindfuck, as the keys are all wrong, I really like these kinda games!! very nice! and yes...make savegame...haha :o
Tipyx
20. Apr 2015 · 18:54 UTC
"Floats borrows its visual style from the famous rymdkapsel by Martin Jonasson" Ah, that's what I'm said to myself
However, very pleasant and good job :).
But the fact of restart from the beginning when you failed is a little hardcore :p, just a little :p
HolyBlackCat
20. Apr 2015 · 18:56 UTC
I like the visual style! But checkpoints would be nice.

Also, you should say in the description that people should run the game in the fullscreen mode, because only then camera works as expected.
leafo
21. Apr 2015 · 08:54 UTC
Nice job. Checkpoints would be good. Also windowed mode was almost impossible to control the camera with.
Reccy
21. Apr 2015 · 13:28 UTC
I love the art style, and the game is really fun too, it's really polished! I wish there was a checkpoint system though.
j_peeba
21. Apr 2015 · 13:31 UTC
It's a great game, packed with style but I'm afraid my stamina to complete the game ran out when I realized there's no checkpoints. I would've loved to play it more though.

Oh, and one neat little detail I really liked about the game is the typography. :)
Andrew Adams
21. Apr 2015 · 13:40 UTC
Fun game. Very Rymdkapsel stylized. That camera tho... wow.
rectangular Tim
21. Apr 2015 · 13:51 UTC
The game certainly is visually pleasing. I don't like how the fighting amounts to button mashing. I made it to the tenth level on my first try, but just couldn't click fast enough to beat that enemy, so I got sent back to the very beginning of the game. Very anger inducing, indeed.
celisoft
21. Apr 2015 · 14:06 UTC
Very nice game (I have played with the post-compo Linux version). My friend played the compo version on its iMac and the camera didn't work at all. For the moment, it's one of the best game I played for my LD32 tests.
🎤 Horsed
21. Apr 2015 · 14:11 UTC
@celisoft Thank you :-) Yeah, the camera was totally messed up. I don't know why I forgot about that.
kaa
21. Apr 2015 · 19:24 UTC
Nice style, good mood. Also liked sound. Couldn't solve camera issues...
CowShark
22. Apr 2015 · 03:44 UTC
Played the post-compo Windows version. Really, really dig this game. I didn't get all the way to level 10 thanks to being generally clumsy with my mouse, but I had fun anyway!

Honestly, the right-click-drag camera controls didn't bother me at all and felt rather natural, but that may be because I am accustomed to working in 3D modeling/animation software, where middle-mouse or right-mouse buttons are typical for camera movement. Ah well!

The visuals, sound design and gameplay work very well off each other. The game really feels like a cohesive unit! Well done!
marccspro
22. Apr 2015 · 10:14 UTC
The camera control's where pretty difficult but it was fun ! The game it self is awesome so good job ;)
asobi tech
22. Apr 2015 · 10:24 UTC
Clean visuals.
Nice concept, quite fun to play.
Simon
22. Apr 2015 · 10:40 UTC
This is really cool, it plays well and the mood is perfect. I like the strangeness of the creatures :)
raisedmedia
22. Apr 2015 · 11:32 UTC
Like the game, could not get far due to the camera control issues.
Tselmek
22. Apr 2015 · 11:37 UTC
Very nice concept yet 2 big issues with the game: first, the very uneasy and clunky camera movement between the different levels, second, getting back at the first level after a death (often because of the camera) is a bit frustrating.

Other than that, the minimalistic art style and sounds are very nice and it plays a lot on the atmosphere. Maybe a room-by-room system of levels would have worked greatly. Hope to see more of it!
🎤 Horsed
22. Apr 2015 · 11:48 UTC
@raisedmedia, @Tselmek Thanks you! Maybe you want to give the post-compo version a try, as I fixed the camera.
rgehan
22. Apr 2015 · 12:00 UTC
Really nice. I love your minimalistic design. The perspective is great, especially the text on the sides of the levels.

I made it to the last level, and it was quite enjoyable.

There's just a thing: What is happening with the camera ? :p I've been dezooming and moving with weird keys on the keyboard to make it work.
🎤 Horsed
22. Apr 2015 · 12:06 UTC
@rgehan Thank you, glad you enjoyed it :-) Yeah, the camera is totally messed up. I fixed it in the post-compo version so you can drag the camera using the RMB.
retrophantom
22. Apr 2015 · 16:20 UTC
interesting and fun.
kristof
22. Apr 2015 · 17:17 UTC
Very lovely art style! And the gameplay is very innovative. Good idea! Having to start from the beginning when failing a level was a bit hard though. I didn't make it through :(
But with some minor improvements, this could be a really fun game!
GagaPete
22. Apr 2015 · 19:28 UTC
Good looking game. The camera movement still feels strange for a desktop game, it is more what I would expect of a mobile game.
For a compo entry it is really impressive.
UannaFF
23. Apr 2015 · 01:24 UTC
Camera was strange for me too :/ but i liked the simple and clean graphics, and I had fun fighting the camera
ianburnette
23. Apr 2015 · 02:54 UTC
holy heck that gets hard. I actually liked it a bit more than rymdkapsel.
Demy
23. Apr 2015 · 09:53 UTC
The style is awesome and levels are interesting. Great game.
Tuism
23. Apr 2015 · 10:09 UTC
Erm...

Nowhere in the game does it say anything about how to use the camera. It could and should have been automated. Right clicking is not something people usually use for camera movement in a "puzzle" game.

It's pretty. That's definitely a plus.

The gameplay is really quite lacking, though. "Operation" style drag and avoid isn't interesting, maybe with touch, but not with a mouse. Click on enemies to do damage? The mechanics are very desperate and doesn't make sense together. The way you call things doesn't make sense either. "artefacts" and "sockets"... none of them look like that and doesn't need to be called weird names to make it even more difficult to understand.

Is it a puzzle game? Action game? Avoid-em-up? I don't know, I can't tell.
Damdoshi
23. Apr 2015 · 10:23 UTC
I found this great. It is really a nice concept and pretty enjoyable.
Xanjos
23. Apr 2015 · 12:35 UTC
Lack of save points was a bit annoying but other than that, I really liked the concept plus I think it would definitely work as a mobile game. Also I don't know if it's me but on both web and desktop builds, I couldn't see my key and artefact properly i.e. it didn't look like how it was in the screenshots (it could be a graphics card problem since I was playing this on my Surface Pro but I'll try and run this on my regular desktop and let you know if it occurs on there as well).
Xanjos
23. Apr 2015 · 14:11 UTC
Ok I've tried it on my desktop and it worked perfectly fine so it's definitely a problem with machines running Intel HD Graphics
deadbodyoutline
23. Apr 2015 · 14:53 UTC
I had some issues moving the camera too, but the game is fun. On my Mac is was a little slow, but on my windows machine it runs well!
Anikki
23. Apr 2015 · 17:43 UTC
In most games I just give up annoyed. This however made me curse loudly and try again. It seems so simple, yet takes a a lot of discipline to play well, which in turn made me try again. So in my book that makes it a great game.
🎤 Horsed
23. Apr 2015 · 19:27 UTC
@Tuism: Thanks for you feedback! I have to admit, I didn't expect this hole camera thing to be a problem for a lot of the nice people testing floats. I thought moving the camera using the mouse would be sort of natural for any mouse user. You either move the curser towards the edges of the screen or you drag the map around using the middle mouse button or the RMB, like in a RTS. I decided for to implement the latter. The feedback so far proved me wrong about this assumption :-) I will have to try something different here. About the gameplay: For me it's all about the drag'n'drop. I wanted to make a game where you'd have to drag things, maybe combine and order stuff. When I saw this game in my mind, I also wanted it to have some kind of action elemts. So I thought I'd put in some drag'n'drop puzzles and maybe mix those with "action" elements, like fighting enemies. Whether the game offers a good mix of puzzles and action is up to the player. Personally though, I think that both can be improved a lot.

@Xanjos: Thank you for testing a second time! I really appreciate your help. I guess I will have to take a look at my code's performance.

@all other testers until now: Thank you for playing floats and giving me feedback :-)
rnlf
24. Apr 2015 · 19:49 UTC
Looks very nice and plays pretty smooth. Could use a checkpoint after each room, very frustrating not to beat the first big enemy and then having to start all over. That's why I quit in this level. But I made the same mistake (to few checkpoints) so who am I to complain :-)

Besides that it's a great game!
Chris M
25. Apr 2015 · 07:59 UTC
Love the concept of making a game from what you thought of a screenshots of another game- this would be a fun basis for a jam.

Wish there could have been a smart camera system here, as often I found the camera controls cumbersome and got in the way of my next daring manoeuvre. The design works well with the graphical style though, and the way you've integrated the tutorial and links is a wonderful touch.
Zeriver
26. Apr 2015 · 15:25 UTC
Nice gameplay i although it would be better to move "cubes" with keyboard instead of dragging them with mouse. I enjoyed the mood (because of minimalistic, pretty graphics and fitting audio). Really solid game in overall.

About the camera, it might be not intuitive for all people to use right click to move camera, some instructions would be nice.
Novodantis
28. Apr 2015 · 01:00 UTC
Really nice concept; pretty inventive style of play and well polished. Didn't have any issue with the camera control. The complete restart was harsh, but then... um, I'm guilty of that one too.

Btw, I uploaded a webplayer version of Sling, you may have more luck with it than the download? (its a longshot, but I'm not sure what the problem was caused by)
surpent
07. May 2015 · 05:10 UTC
Good dungeon.
Nice art, I feel the potential.
smokecastles
10. May 2015 · 22:17 UTC
I love the visuals, very stylish! I also like that it looks like a relaxing game at first and then once faces the increasing difficulty + no check points! +1 for this too!