Metaballs by Rialgar

[raw]
made by Rialgar for LD26 (COMPO)
Your task is to conquer targets with a bunch of metaballs, but you can only decide when to spawn and when to upgrade, your interaction is minimal!

All source is xhtml, javascript and glsl, uncompressed and not obfuscated. (EDIT: except the three.js library)

Best in Chrome, will run also in FF. Should work on any browser that supports webgl.

I admit I changed some little things shortly after the deadline:
added the title line
removed debug output
little FF fix
little AI tweak (one parameter)

There seem to be issues with MacOS, can somebody post screenshots/console logs please? I don't have acces to a Mac.

Ratings

Coolness 51% 3
Overall 3.03 705
Audio 2.62 610
Fun 2.48 997
Graphics 3.13 477
Humor 1.58 1002
Innovation 3.26 444
Mood 2.60 838
Theme 3.35 737

Feedback

Geoege
29. Apr 2013 · 18:04 UTC
Didn't manage to win, but the concept is really interesting.
Sounds and graphics are so peaceful.
zairon
29. Apr 2013 · 18:06 UTC
I like this a lot, it's a good twist on the spawn-style games. The pace of the game is a little slow, though. I guess since the theme is minimalism its hard to add things to do!
Shigor
29. Apr 2013 · 18:06 UTC
Nice, but it tends to be bit boring (but I freely admit that minimalistic simplistic games tend to bore me).
Good job with the metaballs, the visuals are great.
tonic
29. Apr 2013 · 18:13 UTC
Pretty interesting concept! It advances too slowly though, I think. The AI seemed to beat me pretty well on the 1st try, even if I first thought I were winning. :)
PTSnoop
29. Apr 2013 · 18:30 UTC
Wow, I may have just burned through half an hour playing this game. Very gripping - there's much more depth to this game than the minimal rules would suggest!

Just one qualm - since you can only spawn metaballs one at a time, once one player has got several balls in the arena it gets very difficult for the other player to regain the lead. It's pretty easy for one player to monopolise the extra resource drops, and once they've got control of those extra resources they are even more able to maintain their lead over the other player. But having said that, still a great game, and it's given me plenty of things to think about for my own strategy game-making in the future!
cwilloughby
01. May 2013 · 02:24 UTC
Cool concept. Liked the music and the peaceful nature. Would have loved a bit faster pace. Good work.
lmh
01. May 2013 · 02:58 UTC
Excellent! Unfortunately it is rather unstable (whoever gets the early lead often becomes unstoppable), and upgrading "capacity" appears counterproductive (future upgrades take longer, bonus is less valuable, base counts for less, etc.). Also, there appears to be a minor bug: when the page is reloaded the "disabled" status of upgrades is not cleared (Firefox). Finally, it would be nice if upgrading didn't interrupt the flow of the game with two menus--maybe the upgrades could appear as buttons next to your base when available?
daredevildave
01. May 2013 · 08:40 UTC
Nice concept, I got totally swamped by red blobs. But it was fun.
mort96
01. May 2013 · 21:27 UTC
The graphics seem messed up for me... Tested in OS X (10.8) using both safari and chrome, WebGL turned on in Safari.
PsenFilip
03. May 2013 · 15:00 UTC
Music is fine, but the loop is unfortunately so short.
If you get behind, it is hard, if not impossibe, to comeback on top.
I would consider a gameplay rebalancing on there since it is pretty for whoever acted first to snowball into victory.
The concept is good, though.
hypp
05. May 2013 · 06:02 UTC
Works nicely in Chrome on OSX. Gets a bit boring after a while...
Msquirrel
06. May 2013 · 10:00 UTC
I liked the concept and the graphics and the music! couldn't win :S - probably says more about me than the game xD
DST
07. May 2013 · 00:57 UTC
Beautiful game! I envy you your metablobs :D The game mechanic is something I've never seen before, very cool!
mrexcessive
09. May 2013 · 19:41 UTC
Seems pretty impossible to catch up if you get slightly behind. Not sure there's enough random in the outcome of battles.
juaxix
09. May 2013 · 19:45 UTC
The shaders are really gorgeous but the game is hard, you could do some water with these metaballs...ah, I love the "black-sun" effect when the smallest ball enter a big group of enemy metaballs...wow :)
FrederickK
09. May 2013 · 19:49 UTC
nice game
Martin_Monosys
09. May 2013 · 20:03 UTC
Good stuff, much like a minimal RTS game... Only problem is that if you upgrade resistance a little and then always production it is all too easy... and the music tends to get repetitive over time. Otherwise, I enjoyed playing this!!! :)
matthias_zarzecki
10. May 2013 · 18:57 UTC
Balls, eh? reminds me of my own game :P