LudumData

Elevator Evil by 8bitDamage

[raw]
made by 8bitDamage for LD25 (COMPO)
You are an evil elevator! Your goal is drop the mans of at the wrong floor so they get stressed out and eventually explode!When the mans realise that they're on the wrong floor they will be damaged by stress. The more stressed out they are, the more damage they take. This is indicated by the number over their head. The further away from the correct floor they are, the more stress they take. If you drop them at the correct floor though, the will be relieved and lose stress.

Made in C# and XNA. Other programs used were Photoshop, Sonar, Audacity, Paint.net and Visual Studio 2010.

This has been my first publicly released game. I hope you enjoy.


SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

PC running Windows XP/Vista/7/8
DirectX 9 GPU that supports at least shader model 2.0

Additional frameworks:
- .NET 4.0:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17851
- XNA 4.0:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20914

Windows http://bit.ly/T8oEvV
Source http://www.art-studio.se/LudumDare/ElevatorEvilSource.zip
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=18957

Ratings

Coolness 89% 2
Overall 3.14 282
Audio 3.22 119
Fun 2.81 383
Graphics 3.30 233
Humor 3.59 65
Innovation 3.95 34
Mood 3.26 134
Theme 4.02 43

Feedback

Gemberkoekje
17. Dec 2012 路 09:37 UTC
I can't run XNA things on my work computer, so this one goes on my ToDo Tonight list.

This does, however, sound like the most original idea I've seen up till now, I'd love to see the execution :)
Faust
17. Dec 2012 路 09:57 UTC
Nice idea, the only problem is I'm somehow lost when playing it.
馃帳 8bitDamage
17. Dec 2012 路 11:12 UTC
I'm planning on making a video explaining the game mechanics a bit more in-depth.
Edocentrique
17. Dec 2012 路 14:54 UTC
It's fun however i don't really understand what i'm doing, but being an evil elevator is cool !
jmaasing
17. Dec 2012 路 21:15 UTC
Sorry, can't rate, I don't have windows.
arhpositive
17. Dec 2012 路 21:27 UTC
It kinda gets complicated on higher levels, but the idea is good, graphics are great, music is nice and the theme fits perfectly. :) Solid entry.
luclabelle
17. Dec 2012 路 22:14 UTC
holy file size batman
Smaxx
17. Dec 2012 路 22:16 UTC
Interesting concept, but I'm not really sure how to determine the wrong floors for people. Also, not sure whether it's my system or the game, but after playing once I'm no longer able to view the instructions page, it just autoconfirms upon start and shows the game.
Devenger
17. Dec 2012 路 22:44 UTC
Sweet idea, but surely there should be a way to see which floor your current occupant wants to go to - without this information, the best strategy is just random reallocation of people around the building...
馃帳 8bitDamage
17. Dec 2012 路 23:00 UTC
The more the damage the mans take at each floor means they are further away from the correct floor. If you knew which floor they wanted to go to then it wouldn't be any challenge at all. :)
cwilloughby
17. Dec 2012 路 23:21 UTC
I like the graphics. I wasn't quite sure where to take them - it felt pretty random. I like the explosions.
tompudding
17. Dec 2012 路 23:22 UTC
This might be the best premise I've ever heard for a game. It is very confusing though, I would like to know which floor people want to go to (after all, real elevators know the floor the users want!), maybe you could add challenge some other way?
Markavian
17. Dec 2012 路 23:34 UTC
I became so stressed I exploded.
JoeCool17
18. Dec 2012 路 00:03 UTC
I like it, but sometimes it wouldn't move the people- or at least not like I thought it would. Maybe more variety and a "line" of people might serve to fix this?
Smaxx
18. Dec 2012 路 00:33 UTC
Random idea: Maybe show a small up/down arrow on the elevator showing the direction the people picked. This gives you a rough idea in the early stages without spoiling the whole challenge.
loren
18. Dec 2012 路 03:46 UTC
haha, so good. Love the stress
Freakill
18. Dec 2012 路 06:20 UTC
Excellent entry, I love this game! I was laughing like hell since the beginning, I don't know why, but being an evil elevator seems really funny hehehehe, maybe that's why I don't use them, surelly there is somebody behinf them making us get nuts waiting or going slow! Lovely game! I loved graphics and music too :) Mechanics are hard though, it is difficult tokeep track to the players, as when they accumulate on the elevator you should see remember how is the pile and which score did each one get in the last floor they have been. Maybe more dressing and puting them one next to the other would had been easier for the player ;)
jujule
18. Dec 2012 路 09:16 UTC
An evil elevator ! That's the best idea I've seen so far.
The game mechanics works really well. Congratualtions for your first LD entry. It's super good.
zenmumbler
19. Dec 2012 路 21:26 UTC
I had no idea where they wanted to go and if I put them on the right floor or not so things just happened randomly. Kind of fun still tho. Fun idea, like reverse Elevator Action
HeXoT
19. Dec 2012 路 21:26 UTC
This isnt too evil, it happens everyday in my university! xD
iandioch
20. Dec 2012 路 21:41 UTC
A really interesting mechanic, but I had no idea what floor any of the people wanted to go to, so I accidentally was a good lift :( Fun game though!
Hume
21. Dec 2012 路 15:27 UTC
Actually, it doesn't seem like you can tell where they want to go based on the stress level. For some guys, a certain amount of stress meant that they wanted an adjacent floor. For others, that same amount of stress meant that the target floor was at the other extreme of the building. I might have that wrong, but it's hard to tell the guys apart. I did much better moving guys to random floors than trying to figure out where they didn't want to go.

You mentioned that their floor would appear above their heads in the instructions. I think people would have gotten a lot more out of this game if that were so.

Regardless, I played this quite a bit and really enjoyed it. I kind of wish I were playing it right now.
caranha
21. Dec 2012 路 15:32 UTC
Very nice idea, and very nice music! This is a cool puzzle game.

The guys exploding because of stress is kinda surreal :-)

I think that the background has a bit of too much contrast with the building and sprites. If you make a post-compo version, you might want to address that, to give your game a more consistent feel.

Also, you should take a look at your texts, some parts are quite hard to understand :-)

Thanks for the game!
馃帳 8bitDamage
21. Dec 2012 路 16:03 UTC
@Hume: No no, the number that appear over their heads are the damage they take from the stress. The more damage they take the further away they are from their target floor.

I wanted to make an in-game tutorial of the game but didn't have the time for it. It would've probably made the mechanics more clearer. I agree that they are hard to understand.

@caranha: Yeah I know... :/ The text are really written in pure haste at the last second. An in-game tutorial would've been prefered.
sclark39
21. Dec 2012 路 16:35 UTC
Long download. Next time maybe you could use a different file format for the sfx.

I wasn't able to tell which floor the guys wanted to go to. I liked the idea, but I wish I could have also given them a thrill by hitting a key to do a fast drop, or letting them out on the same floor, or opening the doors and closing again before they got in. Maybe I was meant to be an evil elevator.
BrothersT
21. Dec 2012 路 17:53 UTC
I REALLY like the premise. So much potential. It's very hard and not particularly rewarding to keep track of all the different levels of stress though, because you can just keep inputting random floors and there's no way to lose, nothing to gain, except a bigger level of the same thing again. Maybe a better way to do it than just making people randomly find out whether a floor is good or not, would be to give visual indicator of what they're thinking, which floor they might want to go to. Also having multiple people in a lift at one time might cause some stress. But you'd have to be careful which people to pick up (not only to pick up two company rivals) but if you have everyone in the lift, whichever floor you stop on would be the right one for someone inside. See what I mean? :) Really nice idea though, kudos.
BrothersT
21. Dec 2012 路 17:55 UTC
Also making the lift take ages to get there could be stressful, but if you wait too long they'll take the stairs and you won't get max stress out of them. I also think it would be great if to pass a level you had to reach a certain level of max stress. Again, really love this idea.
馃帳 8bitDamage
21. Dec 2012 路 19:05 UTC
The big file size is because of the compiled file for the music. And the music file is 3,7MB and for some reason the compiled .xnb content file is 27MB. I've tried several different formats and comressions but the compilation ends up huge. No idea why.
kibertoad
24. Dec 2012 路 18:06 UTC
Concept is very fresh, gameplay is not very engaging, though. Still a nice experiment.
Husky
04. Jan 2013 路 03:25 UTC
Interesting idea!
But I am not sure which floor will cause the more stress.