Attack of the Questionable Snowmen by nine baobabs

[raw]
made by nine baobabs for LD31 (COMPO)
Simple game about knocking hats off snowmen.

Mostly an excuse to practice some win platform stuff, feedback very welcome though. My first game in C / C++.

Long-winded afterthoughts here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/2014/12/08/immediate-afterthoughts/


Update 1:

To be fair you might want to rate based on the deadline release, even though not much has changed. I'd much rather hear your thoughts on the latest version than get any rating at all though!

Let me know your impressions: what did you like, what didn't you like, what was confusing or frustrating, when did you stop playing and what did you feel like then? Etc! Having playtesters is beautiful. You're gorgeous people, gorgeous.

Any ideas for simple changes that would make a big difference? (Maybe tips or tricks I could use next time around!?)

Ratings

Coolness 40% 1695
Overall 2.76 975
Fun 2.71 890
Graphics 2.84 706
Humor 3.15 198
Innovation 2.67 866
Mood 2.57 866
Theme 3.71 404

Feedback

devshawn
09. Dec 2014 路 04:04 UTC
Pretty fun. A lot like my game even :)
AndresGames
09. Dec 2014 路 04:10 UTC
Liked the game, seemed kind of hard. So many snowmen and it takes so much to take them down. Maybe make it take less hits? Good job though
馃帳 nine baobabs
09. Dec 2014 路 04:42 UTC
Thanks for your thoughts! ^^

A tip for killing snowmen, aim for the hat. Though, it will still take a few hits to knock it off their head.

Unfortunately, there is no winning, just surviving longer, to no ends. ;)
Fonserbc
09. Dec 2014 路 05:13 UTC
Wow directly on windows.h! Not even SDL, SFML or similar! Not even classes!1! :P

But it works perfectly! Absolutely nothing to say!
cyrixd
09. Dec 2014 路 22:13 UTC
Controls pretty well, fun to move around and kite the snowmen. Wish it was took less shots to knock their hats off.
Hammers
09. Dec 2014 路 22:16 UTC
Liking the way the drop down as you take each part out, and how you can try to aim for the hat to go for them in one but end up missing and knocking back a lower part setting you back again.
Meral
09. Dec 2014 路 22:42 UTC
This has nice little details built into it. Like the snowman "dancing" when you die (?) and that they will leap for you once they get closer.

I think this is the first time I had to run away from snowmen. Do the freeze you to death and then party all night long? What has this poor fella done to deserve this? :P

At first I though there are just too many coming on too fast, but the spawn rate drops after a certain amount was reached. If you aim for the hat you can take them out quite nicely. It still takes one or two hits too many, I'd say.

With some nifty sound I think I could play this for some time...
馃帳 nine baobabs
10. Dec 2014 路 01:22 UTC
Haha, thanks Meral. Since you asked, the full story is the snowpeople high council of snowperson land convened and officially declared you (the player) friend to all snowpeople everywhere. They sent a welcome committee, but something got lost in the human-snowperson communication and this game is what ensues. (They were initially supposed to wrap you in a bear hug when getting too close, but jumping was easier ^-^).

Thanks for the feedback all, much appreciated!
Cake&Code
10. Dec 2014 路 15:51 UTC
THEY JUST KEEP COMING! Haha, very cool. The controls were easy to pick up and it was pretty satisfying to fight so many enemies at a time, if not challenging.

Also couldn't agree more with Fonserbc, doing this game in pure windows apis? Nice. :)
Xanjos
10. Dec 2014 路 17:43 UTC
The bullets definitely needs some more power because it's pretty hard to actually knock the hats off the snowmen and the lack of sound sort of ruins it but it's a very solid entry.
馃帳 nine baobabs
11. Dec 2014 路 01:26 UTC
Discovered a bug with the snowball power, it was framerate dependent! So the faster your computer, the less effect your snowballs had -_-.

I tweaked the difficulty a little:
-hat is now one-hit kill (unless it's askew towards you)
-first snowman always spawns to the right
-should now take two direct hits to knock off a snowman piece (unless unfavorably askewed)
SuperDisk
11. Dec 2014 路 02:16 UTC
Pretty cool, simplistic as it is. You can sort of cheat the system by just being near the top and shooting the hat straight on.
Johnro
11. Dec 2014 路 03:48 UTC
*BOOM!* Hatshot.

This game was a lot of fun! I liked the "Magical Frosty the Snowman" hat mechanic, and I have to say, it was a terrifying moment when I realized that a snowman's head, without the body, will still come after you.
I liked the graphics for the most part, but I do have one gripe: the bullet's shadow, for the first few moments of the game, looked like a second bullet. I kept trying to shoot the hat with that instead of the real bullet.
Also, the game slowed down a bit once there were thirty or so dead snowmen on screen, but that's a fairly minor problem.
All in all, really solid, fun game!
DomNomNom
11. Dec 2014 路 03:50 UTC
Sound would've improved it a lot.

After figuring out the strategy for killing the hats the game became quite easy.
In the v1 version, I stopped after 116 kills since it didn't seem to get any harder.

Well done for making it run in that small of a .exe
馃帳 nine baobabs
11. Dec 2014 路 23:07 UTC
Thank you for the comments, very appreciated!!
srakowski
11. Dec 2014 路 23:24 UTC
Wow that is hard! I like how the snowman's head will continue on after it's body has been taken out. That was a nice effect. I like the style of the graphics. There were very few times that hitting the snowman's hat 2 times actually killed him. I think some audio would have been nice to have, maybe some quick sounds from sfxr. I think it really would add to the game :). Well done for learning C at the same time.

Also thank you for the kind words on my game. I am sure there are others out there like and better than mine. I think I am going to flesh out the idea a bit and try to turn it into a full game.

I also really like the title you put on the window, well done!
Warboys
13. Dec 2014 路 10:34 UTC
Simple but fun. I found it a little easy I suppose, as you could herd the snowmen together and endlessly run around them. As it takes so long to kill them, I found myself just suiciding because I got a little tired of kiting
Teejay5
16. Dec 2014 路 15:37 UTC
Neat, and very addictive! The game really lives up to its name, as the intentions of the hatted snowmen were quite ambiguous.