LudumData

Surface Dwellers and Pit People by Joseph Miller

[raw]
made by Joseph Miller for LD29 (COMPO)
The pink surface dwellers always walk right, and prefer to exit the screen above the surface. The green pit people always walk left and prefer to exit the screen below the surface. You gain points for manipulating the platforms so that the people exit on their preferred level.

Left/right - Select platform
Up/down - Move selected platform up or down.

The game ends when there are 30 people on the screen. The quicker you help them leave the screen, the longer you can play. See how high of a score you can get!

I got 960 on my last playthrough, it took about 5 minutes.

Made in about 5 or 6 hours with Stencyl. I had a busy weekend :)
Web http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/638309
Source https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw8f7OPZJ51lWC1WdUlTT3RCaVU/edit?usp=sharing
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=18230

Ratings

Coolness 46% 1460
Overall 3.04 702
Fun 2.85 709
Graphics 2.73 833
Innovation 4.12 34
Mood 2.53 952
Theme 2.40 1083

Feedback

Brian Stegmann
28. Apr 2014 · 03:40 UTC
Interesting idea.
moonmagic
28. Apr 2014 · 03:46 UTC
This is cute! I wish it wasn't so easy to score points; after I raised the center bars to make a mountain, I just had to sit back and wait for the people to spawn and I didn't really have to raise or lower the side bars very often.
nesis
28. Apr 2014 · 04:13 UTC
A nice idea, the gameplay gets pretty frantic (and fun!) once the little guys start piling up onto each other and you need to start thinking of how to juggle them across platforms. Good effort for the time you had available to put into it.
DrPrettyPatty
28. Apr 2014 · 04:54 UTC
Awesome! The gameplay is really unique, it's a great game to zone out to.
Franklins Ghost
28. Apr 2014 · 12:29 UTC
Simple but interesting mechanic, could see it working well on a mobile.
MikeyPB
28. Apr 2014 · 12:34 UTC
Neat idea! I found balancing and juggling the guys quite fun, where they had battles fighting each other which I was forced to try to resolve! Pretty innovative mechanic :)
microapple
28. Apr 2014 · 12:41 UTC
Interesting game mechanic. Like others have said, this would probably be cool to play on mobile.
sam101
28. Apr 2014 · 15:48 UTC
Simple concept, but well executed !
DesignerNap
29. Apr 2014 · 18:16 UTC
had fun with this. Nice execution. good work.
ccglp
29. Apr 2014 · 20:51 UTC
Game mechanic is very original, and the difficult have good design, good work!
ThingoStudios
30. Apr 2014 · 23:35 UTC
I found it really fun to try to get the pink people to fall beneath the blocks and crush them. But actually playing the game as it was meant to be played was kind of frustrating. You probably could have made it more clear what you were supposed to be doing in-game, though. Color the arrows green and pink, respectively! Make the screen rumble when the screen is almost filled! As of right now it's really bland. But the core gameplay is simple and (hypothetically at least) fun!
🎤 Joseph Miller
01. May 2014 · 01:59 UTC
@ThingoStudio: If you found a way to enjoy it other than how I intended, I count that as an extra win :)

Good suggestions about goals and gamestate feedback, I think devs (including myself) tend to assume that the goals/game state are obvious since we designed it, but more feedback is always good.
pvwradtke
03. May 2014 · 00:22 UTC
That was fun, loved the mechanics. Seemed obvious at first, but had a hidden depth that I didn't anticipated. Also, being able to make character walk over other was a nice touch. Congratulations.
M4rw4
03. May 2014 · 00:28 UTC
Very nice idea and graphics
poxpoxpox
03. May 2014 · 08:13 UTC
Fun! Nice idea.
mrexcessive
03. May 2014 · 19:30 UTC
Hi. Interesting idea. Shame no sound. Negative points can accumulate surprisingly quickly !
Rick Hoppmann
04. May 2014 · 19:50 UTC
I think the core game mechanic would work better if you could drag the blogs with your mouse. It would feel more intuitive, direct and allow more fast paced gameplay.
It also would be interesting to have a NPC changing directions of NPC he meets on the way. And some visible effect when a creature leaves at the wrong level (explosions! :D).

All in all a great idea, which needs some more variety and an other control scheme.