LudumData

</3 by kirby_freak

[raw]
made by kirby_freak for LD26 (JAM)
A game about bullying. You're a high schooler trying to win the love of the most popular girl in school by picking on those weaker than you to try and build your reputation. Become more popular to be able to pick on more kids until you're able to talk to your crush. Of course, others will pick on you and decrease your popularity.

Explanation (SPOILERS FOR THE STORY PROCEED WITH CAUTION):
We decided to take the theme of "Minimalism" differently, and make our game about bullying. Why? Because when you bully others, you minimize their worth to themselves and others. We represented this by making all those less popular than you shadows. Everyone's sprite's complexity (square vs circle) depends on how popular they are, which also follows the theme of minimalism... Kinda... Anyways, in the end, you don't end up with the either the popular girl or the girl you initially rejected, because you've become a bully, something repulsive to them. Anyways, hope you had fun with the game, and that it wasn't too pretentious. :P This was our first Ludum Dare game.

NOTE: My brother and I have never really been bullied, we just thought it'd be interesting to make a game about being the bully and why it doesn't pay.

kirby_freak

Credits for the Granny Engine, the platforming physics engine used to make the game, go to Matt Thorson. I modded said engine to make it top down.

Credits for the awesome art goes to my brother yoshi_freak

Edit: New version uploaded to fix the bug that let you win the game right away. Oops.

Windows http://www.mediafire.com/?f6z1zq90kfng10b
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20662

Ratings

Coolness 28% 1744
Overall(Jam) 2.72 434
Fun(Jam) 2.50 414
Graphics(Jam) 2.53 449
Innovation(Jam) 3.16 218
Mood(Jam) 2.56 393
Theme(Jam) 3.61 155

Feedback

Purplescape
30. Apr 2013 路 17:35 UTC
I really liked your take on the theme. I found it difficult to gain popularity.
馃帳 kirby_freak
02. May 2013 路 04:44 UTC
Thanks for the feedback! To be honest, it was supposed to be hard in the beginning so that the ending felt more... wild? But I may have overdone it, I didn't have that much time for balancing (birthday dinner with the family got in the way :P ). Thanks for playing!
Jyrkface
02. May 2013 路 05:18 UTC
I was surprised by how much I got into this, honestly. I think the steep difficulty at the beginning actually helped the game: it was kinda scary trying to hunt out the first few victims, but extremely gratifying seeing more and more of your former tormentors fleeing in tears. Is this a game or a psychological diagnostic?
ddionisio
02. May 2013 路 05:19 UTC
Interesting take on the theme, so you're basically the giver of minimalism =P I like the title, that caught my attention! =)

I played for a while and I wasn't quite sure if I'm doing something wrong. I may have ran out of guys to bully.

Anyways I enjoyed playing, the intro was good! They have intense expressions!
dapierce
02. May 2013 路 05:34 UTC
It's a great concept, I was unclear at my status at first but when I played more carefully avoiding everyone, I began to realize how to progress. Nice bit of game mechanics at work there and it serves the story well.
Topaz
02. May 2013 路 10:14 UTC
Very nice. Innovation was one of its strong points in my opinion, and the fact that it was an original style of gameplay.
馃帳 kirby_freak
02. May 2013 路 18:45 UTC
I'm glad you guys like it :). ddionisio, more guys should have randomly spawned outside your view, even if you haven't attacked anyone yet, to keep the chance that there's always someone lower than you high... It seems to have worked when I played, but I may have screwed something up :P If you want to try to beat it, my suggestion would be to load it up again and if you ever run out of people, just wander around until you find more. Thanks for playing though! And feel free to encourage others to play :P Would anyone be interested in a multiplayer version?
馃帳 kirby_freak
02. May 2013 路 18:46 UTC
Also, gonna edit the info to make this clear, my 13 year old brother did the art, not me, mine would have been horrible :P
donan
03. May 2013 路 22:08 UTC
Like the concept. Its really original :D
ZYXer
04. May 2013 路 02:04 UTC
I'm not sure I approve of the moral message of this game ;)

Really like the idea. But I wasn't able to bully any kids except the grey ones, what am I doing wrong?
matter123
04. May 2013 路 02:04 UTC
fun but hard
oh and it works under wine (v 1.5)
馃帳 kirby_freak
04. May 2013 路 14:46 UTC
ZYXer, to be clear, I'm not supporting bullying in any form, that's why the bully doesn't get either girl in the end. :p and that's what you're supposed to do! The gray people are the ones you bully, signifying they're weaker than you. As you bully more, more people become gray. The point of silhouetting them was to kinda be a metaphor for when people bully they kind of Dont think of people as a person. Kind of an obscure metaphor to be honest. :). Thanks for playing though, I hope you enjoyed it!
EatenAlive3
08. May 2013 路 20:06 UTC
It really could have benefited from audio!

I spent the first half of my playthrough believing that colliding with people with higher popularity than you didn't make you less popular.. so needless to say I spent a while playing the game xD

A tutorial or some in-game helper text would have been nice.
Spiridios
09. May 2013 路 05:12 UTC
Could you perhaps put up a link that is not an installer? It gets messy having to remember to uninstall hundreds of LD games.
馃帳 kirby_freak
10. May 2013 路 21:21 UTC
Not sure if I can... :/ I use GameMaker to program and then just hit compile into app, but maybe there's a way to make it standalone... I'll look into it :)
BarrensZeppelin
11. May 2013 路 20:16 UTC
Don't spoil the whole story in the description next time. (;

Good job otherwise, I liked the concept! ~
馃帳 kirby_freak
12. May 2013 路 20:05 UTC
Oh, sorry >.<. I put that there so if someone doesn't get the story they could read it here.
馃帳 kirby_freak
13. May 2013 路 15:20 UTC
Added a SPOILERS warning in the description