Come No Closer by maloki

[raw]
made by maloki for LD26 (COMPO)
You can check out my dev blog for Come No Closer here: http://blog.maloki.net/tagged/ld26

Story
- There are monsters loose in the city. You are running out of supply and without them, you will die. How many days will you last until the monsters get you?

Controls:
- WASD / Arrow keys - Move around (not sure what else I can do to support non-QWERTY keyboards on Love2D D: )
- LShift / RShift - Sprint
- Space / Enter - Turn flashlight on/off just in case you prefer the dark. Using it has no downside.
- Mouse - Move flashlight around. Use this to spot the monsters at a safer distance than blindly bumping into them.

Tips:
- Upgrades come at every four (4) supply that you collect
- You can allocate a maximum of five (5) points per upgrade
- Monsters hit harder as the days go by
- Monster vision gets better every ten (10) days

Theme: Minimalism

- I set myself to create a game that displays the player, the goal, and the relative surroundings. The enemies roam, yet they do not become relevant until the player is being chased by them or stand between them and the goal.
- The graphics are at a somewhat bare minimum. The player and the monsters are simply boxes in the game world.
- The game was inspired by the old-school snake game and the Slenderman games. I simplified the mechanics of the Slenderman game with a level of fairness and made it into something that could be played somewhat infinitely.
- Problem: I tried to do away with an upgrade system, but I found it essential to add some difficulty early on with only a few monsters on-screen. As a compromise, there is a limited amount of upgrades to spend on. After getting all the upgrades, the player is left to progress in skill.

Ratings

Coolness 81% 2
Overall 3.44 293
Audio 3.17 271
Fun 3.24 323
Graphics 3.22 427
Humor 2.05 690
Innovation 3.23 467
Mood 3.57 121
Theme 3.78 321

Feedback

gerol
29. Apr 2013 · 04:51 UTC
5 out of 5! Please vote for this game! :)
Ysty
29. Apr 2013 · 12:04 UTC
Great game. I love the graphics and audio, creates a good atmosphere.
Canobie
29. Apr 2013 · 20:17 UTC
I may have found a winner ;)
belickim
29. Apr 2013 · 20:17 UTC
It is really, really fun to play, well at least it was until I came up with idea of constantly rotating the torch around, effectively transforming it into a radar (:D), then it became a little bit too easy. I would gladly play a more full-featured version with more updates available.
SirJson
29. Apr 2013 · 20:17 UTC
The atmosphere is great!
kochb
29. Apr 2013 · 20:23 UTC
Great for those times when I just need to get away from some random red dot. Putting the story that you have above in the game would have been a good idea.
🎤 maloki
29. Apr 2013 · 20:28 UTC
belickim: You're right, and I found it pretty fun to do (messes a bit with the atmosphere though).

I thought of limiting the rotation rate (with the possibility of it being an upgrade), but I was thinking the effort it took to rotate it & trying to avoid the enemies took some skill, especially in the later days when it's more critical to stay focused and evade the enemies. It's one of the things I'll tweak if I decide to develop the game further. :D

Thanks!
bb_buster
29. Apr 2013 · 20:41 UTC
Oh my god, awesome work. The audio is very simple but adds well to the atmosphere.
Gameplay mechanic is great and the graphics are very fitting. I didn't think I'd end up getting scared of a simple red pixel XD

Great work =)
Morgawr
30. Apr 2013 · 01:20 UTC
I used to live in a cabin made of wood. After playing this game I am now surrounded by bricks.

Those pesky red blocks were surely scary. Great game! Simple and yet efficient.
SomeNetworkGuy
30. Apr 2013 · 06:49 UTC
It didn't really get fun till there were a bunch of monsters to avoid. But nice mood with the sound, music and darkness.

And writing this in Lua is a technical feat itself! Nice work.
Linus Lindberg
30. Apr 2013 · 07:35 UTC
Wow.. I love this game.. perfect for the theme!
artifex
01. May 2013 · 04:43 UTC
Fuckk , I hate to die!!!! The only issue that I found is that the scary screen and the sound of death are frightening :P. Nice work, you people are convincing me of use love2d for the next jam
8BitPimp
01. May 2013 · 10:11 UTC
Nice, I like the concept.
ShellfishGames
01. May 2013 · 14:25 UTC
Very minimalistic indeed, and the game is quite fun for a while which is probably due to the good atmosphere. I got to day 13, but after maybe 5-10 days the game got a little too repetitive to keep me motivated.
Ragzouken
04. May 2013 · 09:38 UTC
Nice game :)
Mark Hildreth
07. May 2013 · 01:05 UTC
Simple, but very nice idea. I liked when I was being chased, and needed to just sprint away in the hopes to be saved by the bell.
V0ID
09. May 2013 · 18:11 UTC
Fits theme very well and being a living radar is kind of cool. Hope you rank high.
shawn42
10. May 2013 · 03:50 UTC
You really nailed a fun mechanic. I like the keyboard / mouse combo. Great mood, I got a little jumpy while playing.. (that's a good thing).

Some creepy music could have really put this over the top; but you got lots of stars from me! Nice work.
vrld
10. May 2013 · 18:32 UTC
I really love the athmosphere your game creates through simple graphics and sound. It really feels like a zombie/survival horror game. Only downside: The mechanic isn't too much fun, at least to me. Still one of the better entries I played so far :)
Seigeengine
15. May 2013 · 04:49 UTC
I like the idea, but I think the game would have benefited from more complexity. As much as minimalism was the theme, that game was so minimalist, I stopped caring very fast. On the good side, the music was great for a minimalist horror.
🎤 maloki
15. May 2013 · 19:06 UTC
I agree with this being a little too minimalist. I honestly had trouble with game design to keep the player motivated, but I couldn't do it without adding more complexity into the game.

One example: At first it didn't have the upgrade system. My problem then was that the player could just stand still and still survive the first day. Forcing the upgrade system decreased the user stats enough to push the player into action.

With more time, I would have added more depth & complexity into the game. Put in the story, possibly some special objectives, etc...

Thanks for the comments!
CiderPunk
19. May 2013 · 10:28 UTC
very nice!
f7f5
19. May 2013 · 11:59 UTC
Very, very good. I loved the atmosphere, and I think the audio contributed a lot to that. The visual were also great.

It took me a bit to get to grips with the control method- I kept expecting the up arrow to move in in whatever direction the torchlight was pointing to :) - but it was a lot of fun.

It could use a bit more variety, but for a 48h effort it's excellent.
ilo
19. May 2013 · 12:06 UTC
Some really good ideas here. Like belickim, I found it a bit easy to constantly rotate the flashlight in the early levels. The best (panic-inducing) moments are when you get chased and run straight into more enemies. :p
alts
19. May 2013 · 19:06 UTC
Cool game. I stumbled upon the radar effect as well. I thought it strange that the supply pickups are never actually needed (at least not after health has been upgraded to a certain point). There are two orthogonal goals, surviving and picking up supplies. If survival is the player's goals, it's really easy to just turn radar on and sit around. I did that up until day 15 or so, and quit. I think making supply pickups a necessity can be done without the upgrade system (which has a cap on each stat anyway). It'd make the game more fun, and more minimal, I think.