Drill It!: Demolition Co. by Julian Spillane

[raw]
made by Julian Spillane for LD23 (COMPO)
Drill It!: Demolition Co.
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[NOTE: The game has been updated to make use of mouse controls]
Created by Julian Spillane (aka Komi Games) for Ludum Dare 23

"As a representative of Drill It!: Demolition Company I regret to inform you that your planet is scheduled for demolition. A trained technician will be sent to your stratosphere to ensure the destruction occurs in a safe and timely manner. We apologize for the inconvenience."

You control a planetary demolition vehicle that is tasked with demolishing planets to make way for an inter-galactic bypass. Use your drill to bore weak points while fending off pesky inhabitants with your space-laser and timed charges.

Your vehicle is well-armoured but your drill requires extreme stability. Any jostles or impacts will cause a temporary system malfunction.

Good luck, and happy drilling!

CONTROLS
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Left / Right arrows: move counter-clockwise / clockwise
Mouse: aim gun
Z / Left Click: fire space-laser
X / Right Click: drop timed charge (max 4 at once)
C: hold when over a weak-point to begin drilling

Tools Used:
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Unity 3.5 (Indie License)
ex2D Library
GraphicsGale
BFXR (http://www.bfxr.net/)
AutoTracker ( (c) Ben Russell)

Fonts Used (all royalty free for commercial use)
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Mecha Bold
G.B. Boot

Ratings

Coolness 87% 2
Overall 3.42 175
Audio 3.30 114
Fun 3.04 308
Graphics 4.08 51
Humor 3.58 40
Innovation 3.25 286
Mood 3.08 213
Theme 3.71 102

Feedback

kylerhoades
23. Apr 2012 路 05:49 UTC
Fun game! Love the expressions on the planet's faces.
SidetrackGames
23. Apr 2012 路 08:12 UTC
Very hard in terms of controls, but quite funny!
馃帳 Julian Spillane
23. Apr 2012 路 13:37 UTC
Thanks guys! Yeah, I wish I'd had more time to tighten the controls. I'd gotten so used to them and didn't end up play-testing the game until way too close to the deadline. Something to fix up post-LD!
unicornpooping
23. Apr 2012 路 16:57 UTC
Controls take getting used to, but when you do it's fun. Great graphics/music/sound. Controls well. Very funny. Overall great game!
TheSheep
23. Apr 2012 路 16:58 UTC
Aww, unity. Shame it doesn't work on my computer :(
hulahulahest
23. Apr 2012 路 17:00 UTC
Cute graphics, although the mixed resolutions weren't really to my tastes. Controls a bit slow. Not sure what the charge was for, since it didn't seem to contribute to blowing up the planet, and it was too slow to hit any enemies.
chinchang
23. Apr 2012 路 17:17 UTC
nice game...i liked the level of engagement which the gme demands. also the graphics were cool but controls become quite frustrating after sometime.
deepnight
23. Apr 2012 路 17:27 UTC
The game is very very solid, especially the art!
Love the planet designs :)

Anyway, the controls are really too hard to get used to.

Good overall job!
Pierrec
23. Apr 2012 路 17:28 UTC
The controls are very hard! But the graphics and animations are great, so that's OK ^^
馃帳 Julian Spillane
23. Apr 2012 路 17:38 UTC
Hm, based on this feedback I might just add in a targeting reticule and have the gun auto-rotate to face the mouse pointer. I'll post an updated version tonight with mouse controls. :)
royvanrijn
23. Apr 2012 路 18:10 UTC
Pretty hard game, but fun!
orgarus
23. Apr 2012 路 19:32 UTC
Howdy!
As I said two days ago ABSOLUTELY AWESOME GRAPHICS. Yes as you can deduce I love the art of this game.
The (also retro) music is fantastic and contributes to the atmosphear of the game. Thumbs up!
In the other hand is a little bit hard to master this game, and the pool balls are actually pains in the ass >:( , but I keep it to try again later (I still have about one thousand and hundred games to test and mark :P).

Congratulations! Excellent work!
Milo
23. Apr 2012 路 21:15 UTC
This game has a very distinct style in its assets, which I like a lot. The premise is humorous. As others have said, the controls are kind of a pain - I would have enjoyed the game much more if I felt competent trying to get my turret to go in the right direction, but that didn't happen.
馃帳 Julian Spillane
24. Apr 2012 路 01:27 UTC
So I've updated the game and uploaded a new version that includes mouse controls. The gun is now oriented based on the mouse cursor position and fired using the left and right mouse buttons.
DaveDobson
24. Apr 2012 路 07:09 UTC
Really neat concept, and the look is simple but stylish. I found the controls hard to operate, even with the mouse shooting update. I couldn't figure out how the dropped charges were useful - either I was drilling, and stuff was bonking me, or I was orbiting slowly, and the charges went off too fast to take out the 8-balls. But it was fun and engaging - a neat entry.
chambers
24. Apr 2012 路 09:21 UTC
At first I found the controls confusing, but once I got the hang of them, I found the game really fun. Words can't describe how funny the game and your description text are.

Also, graphics and music were great.

The only problem was, I found the bomb completely useless.
AdventureIslands
24. Apr 2012 路 20:38 UTC
The gameplay is quite simple, I really liked the music and game boy like graphics. I thought the gameplay was just bit repeative, bombs were useless and survival is just about how fast you can click to shoot.
aaronsnoswell
25. Apr 2012 路 12:16 UTC
This game is hard! I feel positively evil hurting those poor planets :P Music is pretty slick, too. Good work!
free_napalm
25. Apr 2012 路 14:39 UTC
I like it. Game Boy style graphics and music are well made, and killing these planets was nearly as horrible as killin Whispy Woods in Kirby :D
I would have added a manic tune for digging only. Cool game though.
FrederickK
25. Apr 2012 路 16:15 UTC
Best concept!
馃帳 Julian Spillane
25. Apr 2012 路 19:12 UTC
Thanks guys, I really appreciate all of your comments. I'm going to do a whole lot of rebalancing in hopes of making the difficulty level ramp better, add some strategy and make the bomb more useful.
mildmojo
28. Apr 2012 路 04:39 UTC
Tough to play with a trackpad (as with any mouse aim games), but I like the tension between drilling and distractions.
AD-Edge
28. Apr 2012 路 08:44 UTC
Controls could use more polish, and the pace was a bit slow, but damn Im a sucker for those gameboy style graphics and overall this is one of the best games Ive played yet.
It was a fun game, and I liked the variations in enemy, along with the planets and their expressions. Something cool would have been if the planets looked sadder and sadder (or more and more distraught), as you successfully drilled each bit. Managed to get to the end, last level was a good challenge (had 2 seconds left)
And yeh I barely even used the bomb, perhaps add some fixed ground enemies which pop up and shoot you occasionally and are a bit of a pest, meaning you have to fly round to bomb them.
Nice work though!
gritfish
29. Apr 2012 路 06:07 UTC
The facial expressions are great. Nice chiptuney music. Bonus points for gameboy intro :D
JaJ
29. Apr 2012 路 08:38 UTC
Liked the faces as well. I didn't get very far because of how the keys were mapped, but I can see this being very fun.
Christina Antoinette Neofotistou
29. Apr 2012 路 18:55 UTC
It was very hard for me because of the controls. But the art is absolutely amazing, and completely on-theme! Thank you for this!
Hegemege
30. Apr 2012 路 19:33 UTC
Awesome planet design, loved the last one especially :D

Hmm, it was rather easy though, because the player had no "health" and the time limit was a bit too much IMO, not really a challenge to beat it

Props for the use of so few colors and the polished feel of the game. Only thing that bugged me was how the game somehow grabbed all the controls on kongregate, had to click taskbar to refresh page etc.

Good work!
Nick Cash
01. May 2012 路 04:26 UTC
Broke my Win8 setup pretty hard, but I suspect that is a Unity problem. Will try on Windows 7!
馃帳 Julian Spillane
01. May 2012 路 14:07 UTC
@Nick Weeeeird. I built the game running the Windows 8 Developer Preview. Maybe Unity broke somewhere between the Developer and Consumer previews? Sorry for the trouble.
Hazard
01. May 2012 路 17:18 UTC
The art style is amazing! Cute planets. But the controls are a bit painful. Arrow keys and mouse and the C-key? Where's my third hand? :p
mimshwright
01. May 2012 路 18:23 UTC
Great graphics and style but the controls are terrible.
Orni
01. May 2012 路 19:27 UTC
love it - graphically it's very lovely, the gameboy color palette is just awesome.
ratboy2713
01. May 2012 路 20:36 UTC
Very funny, though those balls are hard to hit from the other side of the planet, giving you a very small amount of time to get rid of them.
KevinWorkman
02. May 2012 路 02:08 UTC
Little slow and difficult to maneuver and kill the bad guys, but it's a great start and a fun game nonetheless. With some polish, this could be a great standalone game.
spooks
04. May 2012 路 23:51 UTC
Really great graphics and a great entry. I agree with the others that the controls can be a bit hard, but it's a great game none the less!
Tom 7
05. May 2012 路 20:20 UTC
Great graphics! The controls were weird because I definitely need the C key, so the arrows (which are more natural for me) are obviously out. It's a little weird that while I'm drilling there's almost nothing to do but shoot down the narrow corridors where monsters might attack me. The bombs are pretty useless for this, and it's the most vulnerable time. Maybe some weapons that can arc around the planet more?
dr_soda
06. May 2012 路 05:16 UTC
Nice GameBoy-esque feel to this one. I have to say I too felt bad about blowing up all those planets.

Everything I could say about the control scheme has already been mentioned, so I'll just leave by saying it was a neat little game!
jim3wg
06. May 2012 路 11:19 UTC
Love the GameBoy art style !
azurenimbus
09. May 2012 路 23:17 UTC
Awesome graphics, interesting and engaging mechanics! Nice one.

Would just suggest making the machine move sideways a bit faster.
Sestren
11. May 2012 路 21:22 UTC
The Game Boy graphical style is very nice. Some death animations to the enemies would have really added to the polish, but otherwise a nice game!
Lotsa
13. May 2012 路 20:57 UTC
Really nice game, shame I suck at multitasking with a mouse and keyboard...took a little bit of time to get in the swing of it.