Noble Weapon by Meep

[raw]
made by Meep for LD25 (COMPO)
You play as an evil knight, fixated on kidnapping princesses. The objective is to see how many of them you can successfully store in your lair. Numerous heroes are out to stop you, and your only way of fending them off are the noble weapons: the princesses.

Each type of princess has a unique ability that you can use while carrying them. However, taking damage from a hero will cause you to drop the princesses you're currently carrying, so you have to toss them into your lair eventually!

Unfortunately I couldn't get around to making background music for the game, but I'm satisfied with how the art and gameplay turned out.

This is my fourth time entering the Ludum Dare competition. I had trouble coming up with a concrete idea for this theme, jumping back and forth between concepts in my head for the first 26 hours or so. I'm glad I managed to finish it with the time I had left, with sufficient time to polish it. :)

Details on how to play are in-game, but just for redundancy:

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Controls
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- Run left
- Run right
- Jump
- Princess' ability
- Unload princesses into lair entrance

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Additional controls
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M - Toggle muting sound effects
R - Quick restart mid-game


- Meep

Ratings

Coolness 96% 2
Overall 3.39 158
Audio 2.13 460
Fun 3.34 136
Graphics 3.13 288
Humor 2.90 246
Innovation 3.22 199
Mood 2.90 306
Theme 3.73 139

Feedback

HeroesGrave
17. Dec 2012 · 01:01 UTC
I hate the sound effects.
Other than that, it's an okay game.
ddionisio
17. Dec 2012 · 08:01 UTC
I had fun anticipating what each type of weapon I can get. Pretty good game!
madmaw
17. Dec 2012 · 08:03 UTC
Good implementation of a clever concept
Skyshifter
17. Dec 2012 · 08:06 UTC
The ability changing by princess is a nice touch. If only there were more variety of princesses
Razion
17. Dec 2012 · 08:07 UTC
Midly annoying sound effects. Really clever idea to inherit powers from the princesses. :D
64Mega
17. Dec 2012 · 08:27 UTC
An interesting twist on an old idea.
Ditto
17. Dec 2012 · 08:38 UTC
I liked this a lot! Nice sprites!
MvT
17. Dec 2012 · 09:09 UTC
Idea and graphics are impressive, good job.
kulhajs
17. Dec 2012 · 10:42 UTC
Just the controls, not all keyboards has same layout, I have Y and Z flipped so I struggle a lot with it :( great game tho!
LucaPavone
17. Dec 2012 · 10:44 UTC
Impressive all around. Great use of theme and very fun!
kroltan
17. Dec 2012 · 10:52 UTC
I feel the same as ddionisio
Corné Dorrestijn
17. Dec 2012 · 11:01 UTC
great game, liked your idea a lot.
feili
17. Dec 2012 · 11:04 UTC
nice little cratebox-like game! I enjoyed playing this.
Drabiter
17. Dec 2012 · 11:45 UTC
Jumping to pass the pit is quite hard. The rest are good.
ParaPup
17. Dec 2012 · 15:11 UTC
Small but not bad.
Dir3kt
17. Dec 2012 · 16:37 UTC
Hey that's an interesting take!

One little thing, the level is constructed in a way that it's a bit too hard to dodge or kill the heroes. At least for a first level.
Edocentrique
17. Dec 2012 · 16:43 UTC
It's good ! Nice gameplay
sclark39
17. Dec 2012 · 17:15 UTC
Super crate box, but with princesses instead of guns! Neat idea. I liked that the different colored damsels gave different powers, but I wish they could have been combined or increased in power as you collected more. Also would have been cool to have a "bank" to drop them off at (tradeoff between not having a weapon v. cashing out)
robashton
17. Dec 2012 · 17:51 UTC
Haha, I was wondering what the princesses were for and then I found out.

I like the variety, I counted I think 5 kinds of princess I could use to slay my enemies!
Mythalore
17. Dec 2012 · 17:52 UTC
A very simple, kind of repetitive, super crate box with nice art.
KhaoTom
17. Dec 2012 · 19:07 UTC
Special abilities when carrying princesses is a really cool idea. Nice!
bwdevel
17. Dec 2012 · 20:06 UTC
This is a great adaptation of Super Crate Box. Great job.
JFlegle
18. Dec 2012 · 04:47 UTC
I love the art and game play, my only problem is the keys are too close for my hand, I would like the jump to be the up arrow.
adnzzzzZ
18. Dec 2012 · 07:18 UTC
This was a REALLY good game for me. Like, I'm not even joking. I'm a sucker for games with lots of different abilities and yours was really nicely executed. I'd love to see a version (if you choose to do so) with more abilities, better graphics/sound and enemies. Good job!
xandy
18. Dec 2012 · 19:21 UTC
super crate princess ftw ;)
amassingham
19. Dec 2012 · 01:07 UTC
Nice. Though its very similar to Super Crate Box.
Joncom
19. Dec 2012 · 04:31 UTC
This is very solid work. I especially loved using the flamethrower ability. The controls felt very good, and I enjoyed the graphics and sounds too. Good job!
Rex Peppers
19. Dec 2012 · 04:37 UTC
Great job, would love to see more levels with different layouts...
Scott McBee
19. Dec 2012 · 05:23 UTC
I enjoyed the art, though playing at 300x300 made it very hard, if I were you I'd make 600x600 the default. Also, I didn't get any bonuses from "depositing" more than one princess at a time, which didn't really make up for the risk involved.
tim_u
19. Dec 2012 · 08:15 UTC
I liked the powers being tied to the princesses. AS has been said, it'd be nice to see other levels and it was extremely hard to dodge the heroes due to the level design. I liked the tornado the most, I actually found myself avoiding some of the princesses (blue mostly) at times so I could keep my current ability.
bigbadwofl
19. Dec 2012 · 08:21 UTC
I like the princess abilities. More sound and music would have made this much better. Still, well done.
Jiddo
19. Dec 2012 · 11:23 UTC
Really fun game! Although I wish there was some sort of higher score reward for cashing in several princesses at once to make a combo worthwhile. Also, the ratio of number of princesses:warriors spawned becomes too small after a while, the bulk of the score comes from the early parts of the game and staying alive when it becomes hard doesn't give that much reward. Maybe killed enemies could give small amounts of score points as well to compensate for this. But overall it was a really solid entry!
Starspell
19. Dec 2012 · 11:45 UTC
I love the concept of this game and I think it's pretty well executed.

I don't like the audio, it was pretty harsh on the ears. However the graphics are nice.

It's a shame you didn't have time to extend the idea further as I think it could have been turned into something amazing.

For the gameplay the only problem with what you have is the lingering powers (like the tornado) killing princesses.

Not bad overall though.
🎤 Meep
19. Dec 2012 · 13:01 UTC
Thanks for the comments so far, everyone. I really appreciate it and currently plan to further develop this post-LD; possibly porting it to Flash.

Summarizing some key feedback that I'm considering:
- More maps/layouts
- More princesses
- More enemy variety
- A more refined difficulty curve and balancing
- Some bonus/multiplier for depositing multiple princesses at once
- A method of rewarding those scoring points in the later, higher-difficulty times
- Better audio and graphics (More on audio)
har_g
19. Dec 2012 · 13:25 UTC
could be fine with a greater size of screen (even with big sized pixel)
Christina Antoinette Neofotistou
20. Dec 2012 · 07:51 UTC
absolutely fantastic. this gets full marks from me, in everything apart from audio.
It has this Ice King (from Adventure Time) feel to it
cwilloughby
20. Dec 2012 · 08:47 UTC
Cool. Don't like the sounds on the menu - specially back. Really like the mechanic of inheriting power from princess, wish I could toggle between them. Controls were confusing - but I adapted. Art was great. Overall, good work!
shaneshanekavanagh
20. Dec 2012 · 12:49 UTC
It's such a high level of completion, you really planned the scope, and it shows. Good work!
recursive frog
03. Jan 2013 · 06:19 UTC
I very much enjoyed the presentation here, and the mechanic was nice as well. It's hard to come up with many areas for improvement, but if I had to pick one it's that I feel the pit trap detracts from the game a bit.
deathray
04. Jan 2013 · 08:23 UTC
Very solid game! I like the graphics and the gameplay is very interesting.