Crece-above-Clouds by Victory Garden

[raw]
made by Victory Garden for LD30 (JAM)
NOTE: To play the Java version, download and run the Start.bat file for Windows, or Start.sh file for Mac and Linux. Make sure you have the latest version of Java, found here: https://www.java.com/en/download/

CONTROLS (infographic at the bottom of the page!):
- Mouse: Navigation
- Left Mouse: Place Turret
- Right Mouse: Boost
- Mouse Wheel: Zoom

OVERVIEW:

Crece-above-Clouds is a sky archipelago connected solely by airship travel. Every seven weeks the skyways fill with locusts. Lucia Highwind, captain of the cargo runner Odysseus, ventures into the swarm on a drunken bet. Supported by her buddy Ryan Pierce's homebrew turrets and dubious radio advice, she must trade and shoot her way to victory.

Trade cargo for fuel, strategically use limited resources, and drop turrets to protect your home in this tale of friendship and revenge!

CONTENT NOTE: Alcohol and gambling addictions, maiming, cursing, abusive language.

UPDOOT: Look above! On your request, Holly's soundtrack is now available to download from Bandcamp :D

VERSION NOTE: Post-compo version coming very soon with story mode! All of the assets and level design were done in 72 hours... it's just a matter of a little scripting ;]


CREDITS:
Vector: Direction, Writing and Theming - http://www.twitter.com/vectoriahugo

Solifuge: Graphics, Game Design, and SFX - http://www.twitter.com/dahold

Fireh9lly: Music and Voice - http://www.twitter.com/fireh9lly

Magma McFry: Programming, Scripting, and Particle Effects

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 3.68 104
Audio(Jam) 3.74 92
Fun(Jam) 3.39 186
Graphics(Jam) 4.29 68
Humor(Jam) 3.00 171
Innovation(Jam) 3.46 168
Mood(Jam) 3.49 182
Theme(Jam) 3.36 295

Feedback

BrainSlugs83
26. Aug 2014 路 03:12 UTC
Was able to drop a few turrets and survive a few minutes -- I liked the game in general but couldn't really figure it out, and the controls were kind of painful...
PixelOaks
26. Aug 2014 路 03:14 UTC
Can you zip the executable? Chrome keeps blocking it, and thinks its a malicious file.
馃帳 Victory Garden
26. Aug 2014 路 03:22 UTC
Everyone seems to be having issues with Chrome reacting poorly to EXEs from this site. Zipping it is a good idea; hope this fixes the issue.
DarkUser
26. Aug 2014 路 03:27 UTC
Its actually quite good and the music is awesome but it doesn't convey what to do at all.
Had no idea what was going on with the collecting of items at the cities. Some could be picked up, some couldnt, etc. Didnt even realize it was a tower defense game until second try after having to read the description.
hamster_mk_4
26. Aug 2014 路 03:38 UTC
Nice take on the trading and tower defense generas. It is one of the best games I have played of this Ludum Dare. I especially like how it is played mouse only. I wish there were a faster way to go through the intro text.
Muush
26. Aug 2014 路 04:34 UTC
Second the zip notion
AortaStudios
26. Aug 2014 路 05:32 UTC
Took me a little while to figure out but I enjoyed what I played! It's also really nice to look at as well! Great job :) Looking forward to seeing the direction the post jam build goes
Muush
26. Aug 2014 路 05:37 UTC
The singing feels a little dissonant, like they're off-pitch. However the gameplay is really fun and I really enjoyed it. Well done.
r0x0r
26. Aug 2014 路 06:15 UTC
nice game! the linux start.sh have a new line between the "ld30.MainLD30", removing it fix starting the game
spotco
26. Aug 2014 路 08:29 UTC
Really impressive art&music (with some nice world building with the dialogue), though gameplay was a little confusing.
Hyoga-3D
26. Aug 2014 路 14:10 UTC
A little dificult to start but once I got it was nice, good art too.
ChronusZ
26. Aug 2014 路 16:55 UTC
Trying to run over the exact collision boxes of the items was very difficult. I think you should make them bigger. Otherwise, pretty fun!
馃帳 Victory Garden
26. Aug 2014 路 17:25 UTC
Hi everyone, thanks so much for your comments and criticism! We're taking them all into account to make the final build the best that it can be. Thank you for playing our game!
GrooveMan
26. Aug 2014 路 20:16 UTC
Oh man, that's a really depressing survival mode! I like that the pilot and mission control banter as you play. The paralax scrolling and gentle movement of the floating islands worked great.

Controlling the ship felt natural, but it was a bit unclear about the rules of picking up items and laying turrets.
Nisshoku
26. Aug 2014 路 23:28 UTC
managed to survive for awhile tough it took me awhile to figure out what to do exactly. wasn麓t to sure why i could pick certain things up and couldn麓t pick up others. bright colourscheme wich looked nice
RawboSaurX
27. Aug 2014 路 00:00 UTC
The controls are a bit weird, but the overall quality of the game is very good. I like the concept, altough it takes a little while to get used to everything. Artwork looks great, not a huge fan of the text font used here, but it's not a big issue.
homeworld
27. Aug 2014 路 07:03 UTC
Very enjoyable artstyle and cute gameplay, solid solid effort!
Objelisks
27. Aug 2014 路 07:12 UTC
Great game, could have used something to break up the action though, maybe boss enemies or something fancy like that.
AlucardX60
27. Aug 2014 路 07:15 UTC
Really like the art style and the dialogue between the two characters. But I never figured out what I was doing, what items I needed to pick up, why sometimes I could place turrets but not others. Having that control screenshot in the game would've been a big help.
Still, it's a solid game.
damrem
27. Aug 2014 路 08:42 UTC
Seems very interesting, but I did not understand everything...
馃帳 Victory Garden
27. Aug 2014 路 08:43 UTC
Font is an open-source dyslexia-friendly one we found :]

As for, ah, boss enemies............................ :D

Just you wait.
Phaix
27. Aug 2014 路 08:49 UTC
Really nice game! Fun to play.
twintrite
27. Aug 2014 路 09:00 UTC
Ok I survived 4 min 11 seconds. In the beginning I thought I figured it out but then they kept sending too many waves so I decided to kill myself ^^ But I might play it again later. Like the game as a whole :) (@Victory Garden please try to download my game again, it should work now)
alpha_rat
27. Aug 2014 路 13:10 UTC
Great entry, I love the graphics and the music.
It took me a little time to grasp what I was supposed to do without reading the instructions, but then it was really nice to play
vctr_seleucos
27. Aug 2014 路 16:35 UTC
Great game, lovely gameplay and REALLY good idea. Loved it, and really nice graphics! I updated java only for playing it and i don't regret!! Awesome entry!
Snoother
27. Aug 2014 路 23:04 UTC
I was sceptical at first, but it turned out to be really good. The engaging banter that makes it more than just another survival strategy game; the fabulous soundtrack (of which I can't wait to get a copy); the addictiveness of the gameplay.

However, it would be nice if the gameplay had more variety -- maybe more than just turrets to deploy, a greater variety of trading. And I didn't wholly like the graphics. They look very polished, but at the same time they feel too clean and bright to me. I don't know, it just felt like the characters and the game world both have a roughness and the graphics go against that.

Despite that, it's definitely a high scorer in many areas. And the problems mentioned are stuff I don't think you could have done in the time frame. So I find it hard to penalise you for them.

Look forward to seeing the story mode!
dtruby
28. Aug 2014 路 01:26 UTC
This was absolutely beautiful. I loved the graphics, music dialogue, and the mood of the world they created.
I found the actual interface quite confusing. It took a long time to work out goods for sale were on the bottom (to be honest, I think I expected it to be the other way around). It sometimes seemed unclear whether I'd actually traded anything or just picked up a new thing, replacing it. It was also unclear where a town hitbox is - I'm guessing it's on the town itself, not its icons.
The gameplay was mostly solid, but the turning arc of the ship was just large enough that you could fail to hit a town you wanted to trade with, going around in a disappointing circle. Using fuel as currency and health was a very neat decision, I think.
It would have been nice to have a "skip intro" button on a second playthrough, as that's quite a lot of dialogue to have to click through. On that topic, there's a bug when skipping dialogue, clicking multiple times during a transition will apply to the same dialogue, restarting it, instead of skipping the next one.
I was impressed with the vocal harmonies, using assonance and dissonance to give the game an epic quality it would have otherwise lacked.
Overall, very nice game :)

tl;dr: chrome blocked your zip
- Qualia
Chikun Dev Team
28. Aug 2014 路 06:07 UTC
Great idea. - Flurkin
NicePenguins
28. Aug 2014 路 10:06 UTC
Nice game, I liked the graphics and the atmosphere :). However, it's kinda repetitive and the gameplay deserve to be more complex. I'm waiting for a campaign mode to see something like that ;)
blurryroots
29. Aug 2014 路 03:55 UTC
The menu music is just awesome. Interesting concept. Nice visuals and sound effects.
Rage Paint
29. Aug 2014 路 04:09 UTC
I love the graphics for this game, so cute and simple.
TehSkull
29. Aug 2014 路 04:12 UTC
5/5 Audio man. Good friggen job.

Flesh out the gameplay a bit and I will love this to death.
KigurumiDevs
29. Aug 2014 路 11:07 UTC
Confusing in the beginning but the idea is well executed and I love the music and graphics :)
Sunflower
30. Aug 2014 路 16:17 UTC
One of the greatest entries out there, once I've actually got to learn the control. Also, I could tell "it has potential" about many games (since there are few ideas that don't), here I can see it's a great starting point. Too bad I actually got tired after slaying nearly 4000 locusts.

Looking forward to having story mode of that, since Survival modes are rather... uh, depressing. No matter how long you try to fend off, no matter how many times people are surprised at seeing you again (great thing with that dialogue, by the way), I still know I'll ultimately fail. I'd rather play through something that will end on a brighter note.

(also, fun thing: I haven't found the instructions in game, the only reason I actually could play it that long is because I saw the instructions in screenshots)
Traumendes_Madchen
30. Aug 2014 路 17:28 UTC
It was pleasant to play Crece above Clouds. I didn't know what I had to do and was kinda lost at first, but it was fun. An option to lower the music's volume would have been welcome though ='). I'm not a fan of the weird sound effect used during dialogue but, well.
local minimum
31. Aug 2014 路 09:04 UTC
It was a bit hard to know what I could pick up to gain fuel and when I was able to place turrets. For the latter it would have been nice with some indicator showing when I had one ready. If I could pick up all stuff from the buildings, then the collisions need to be a bit more forgiving.

Other than that, it was a nice defense game with good graphics and music.
ConflictiveLabs
01. Sep 2014 路 04:15 UTC
Beautiful game! great graphics and music. The game feels pretty solid and it's fun! Dialogue keeps the action interesting despite the lack of variety in gameplay.

The only problem for me were the controls. I would have preferred keyboard over mouse, or at least more responsive mouse movement.

It's still one of my favorite games so far. You all did a great job!

PS: As other dev reported Chrome insists your game is a malicious file
DSalles
01. Sep 2014 路 06:24 UTC
Smooth and professional!
bluesky
01. Sep 2014 路 08:14 UTC
This is actually very entertaining, well done.
mechabit
04. Sep 2014 路 22:26 UTC
nice art style and UI design
DrCicero
04. Sep 2014 路 22:44 UTC
Looks like a very good game, but i cant see the dialogs, because my screen is too small. I cant play it, Sorry... :(

Then i tried it, nevertheless :)
I was suprised that you can trade good even if they are not demanded. Maybe that was in the dialog?
5:49
Lythom
06. Sep 2014 路 16:37 UTC
Hi there, here's some feedback about your game.

What I liked :
- Fun and innovative gameplay. I like trading games but with some action around it just get epic =)
- Global realization : fully playble, not that bad art, nice audio.
- The will to give some background to the game

What imo could be improved :
- Background comprehension. I had to read several times the dialogs and game description to fully understand what the world is but mostly who the characters are. Can be written a better, for the campaign post-version please take some advices from writers =)
- The "alsmost empty fuel" sound alert is way too loud and get annoying very fast. Got it for a loooong time before losing.
- Art colors and textures. Graphics are not horrible to look at, but they can be even better with some better colors choice (ie. less saturation), and with a some textures instead of flat fill. Studing lightings and how to get more depth is a good start.

Overall, the game I had the most fun playing at at the moment, nice one ! Thanks for the game =)