The Loudest Ballerina by whalebot
Your dad gives you specially hand made ballet shoes made of steel. After he requests you wear them at your next dance recital, you overhear your instructor telling the story of a monstrous creature buried beneath the ballet studio.
Now you must perform, making as little noise as possible with your steel shoes, while still attempting to please your father with your performance...
Now you must perform, making as little noise as possible with your steel shoes, while still attempting to please your father with your performance...
Ratings
| Coolness | 69% | 3 |
| Overall | 3.77 | 110 |
| Audio | 3.87 | 46 |
| Fun | 3.63 | 134 |
| Graphics | 3.78 | 202 |
| Humor | 3.90 | 37 |
| Innovation | 4.03 | 58 |
| Mood | 3.45 | 225 |
| Theme | 3.83 | 116 |
I love how much you've been able to convey visually with the chunky pixelated style, too.
(from left to right)
Z X C
jump spin bend
Red Yellow Green
Now go make dad proud! (and don't get eaten...)
(from left to right)
Red: Z (jump)
Yellow: X (spin)
Green: C (bend)
Hard to remember what action to perform in each spotlight though, and the meaning of the UI bars were a little vague.
Overall, great work.
I would have appreciated some options, however. Mostly I was just following the lights. Having some choices to make could have made me feel more engaged and involved. For example, the jump seemed to make the crowd extra happy, but could be made as a high-risk/high-reward option. Or more strongly play the monster against the crowd; that is, placating the monster often works against pleasing the crowd, and vice versa.
Also having some heads up about where the next light would be could help. It felt pointlessly frustrating when the next light was clear across the room and would be gone before I got to it.
Thanks for playing! You actually do have some choices (although they aren't made completely obvious I'll admit).
-Doing any move at any time will win over the crowd (unless it is done in the incorrect spotlight, they really don't like that...). However, doing the move outside of the spotlight makes a ton of noise that will wake up the monster.
-As you realized, the jump wins over the crowd the most, but it also makes the most noise if you don't land in the spotlight. It is also worth the most points. (high risk/reward)
-You *can* placate the monster by simply not moving (making less noise) or doing fewer special moves. However, this tends to make the audience very unhappy (especially your dad, who worked so hard to make those shoes for you...)
-As far as the spotlights go, I realize that this game is not incredibly deep (due to the 48 hour limit). So you'll notice that as the game progresses, it gets harder and harder to get to a spotlight. This was intentional, so you don't get a stupidly awesome high score and then never play again.
I will be implementing online high scores in the future, so that should add more incentive for replay :)
Bravo!
The game was also really well balanced. At times I thought it was quite easy, but then I'd be to far from the spot light and everything (noise+anger) started to build up... until I was able to control everything again. It was fun maintaining this balance. =D
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2014/05/04/my-favorite-ld29-games/
Really good work!! This is excellent.
Also did you really do the music yourself in the 48hrs...?
Just for future reference since your journal doesn't show any previous entries, so I assume you are new to Ludum Dare.
Other than that, really freakin' awesome entry. There really isn't much to say that hasn't already been said. The absurdity of the premise really seals the deal for me. I played with a gamepad and mapped the colored gamepad buttons to the proper spotlight dancemove to make things really easy to remember. Got to about 100k with no end in sight so I just jumped up and down to see what would happen and WHOOOOMMMM I got ate lol
I'm gonna claim your 1000 imaginary internet points, because I got a highscore of 201694.
I noticed that the crowd gets angrier faster, the longer you play. So at that point I was, the crowd was actually getting only slower angrier when doing a pirouette instead of making it happy. The only thing that could really effectively please the crowd were jumps, but sometimes I had 3 red spotlights right after another, and than I had like 20 times only yellow and green spotlights.
And the waiting times between spotlights should get shorter too (or at least some indication for the next spotlight), when the crowd is getting faster angrier. Because else you can't do anything while no spotlight is present (because you have no idea where you should walk and everything makes noise).
But that are just my rants on the difficulty. Overall it's really well done and feels like a complete game.
PS:As SonnyBone pointed out: If you made the music yourself, good job. If you used preexisting music, then it should be a jam entry.
PPS:Also, I think selling those noise reducing spotlights instead of making games would be far more profitable.