Mars Under The Surface by zerocreativity1
Find out what happen in an abandoned mining shaft in Mars.
Programming: ZeroCreativity1
Art: Cassie Lakey
Music: Brain Bunker
Writer: Mohamed ElSamahy
Arrows/Wasd move
z = shoot
X = interface
esc =exit log
press and hold L to read back last log.
Doesn't always load for some reason.
Programming: ZeroCreativity1
Art: Cassie Lakey
Music: Brain Bunker
Writer: Mohamed ElSamahy
Arrows/Wasd move
z = shoot
X = interface
esc =exit log
press and hold L to read back last log.
Doesn't always load for some reason.
| Web | http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/638402 |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=17115 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 46% | 1460 |
| Overall(Jam) | 2.38 | 716 |
| Audio(Jam) | 3.08 | 369 |
| Fun(Jam) | 2.15 | 703 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 2.96 | 529 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 1.72 | 760 |
| Mood(Jam) | 2.57 | 616 |
| Theme(Jam) | 2.54 | 631 |
However the gameplay isn't very good. Everything moves boringly slowly. The gravity could be greater. The walking pace of the player could be faster. Even the monsters and the shots of your gun are so slow they don't look very dangerous. The elevators take forever to go up/down.
Level design also isn't very rich. There are some blind jumps where you can't see if you'll fall to your death or land on the next platform you have to go.
It would be nice to have checkpoints in such a large game, but instead you have to start from the beginning if you fall. Otherwise the game isn't too hard, because it's so ridiculously slow. I'd like to complete the game for the story, but without checkpoints it'd be such a pain to do so I must refrain from going beyond the sobbing voice recording.
But I felt that three design decisions held you back, and obviously you might disagree, just my opinion. I hope it's okay if I provide a bit of negative feedback because you *almost* had it:
1. Pace is too slow. Everything should be sped up 4x imo. Player, bullet, enemy.
2. Blind jumps aren't fair. The first thing you taught me player was that it's safe and necessary to do blind jumps. Then you punish harshly for blind jumps, then you make it necessary again. The final moment of playing the game, I had to guess if the correct blind jump was down, or to the right. I guessed wrong and was sent back to the start of the game.
3. No checkpoints is a mistake here, I think. Given the slow pace, and the errors by jumping as players explore, and the way everything is in the same place each time, the from-the-top restart meant most of my experience was repeating already-seen content instead of experiencing new content.
Anyway I don't mean to be harsh, you did a good job putting together a package here. I left critical feedback because you accomplished the hard part of implementing, but the experience fell short because of a few tweaks. Sorry!!