The Moth and The Menace by vandriver
Pretty standard metroidvania with some old cryptic hints. hope it's not too confusing! if you die, you keep your powers but i didn't get decent waypoints set up so don't die!
z=attack
x=jump
eventually down blocks
there was to be a dying scorpion at the outset whose tail you use as a weapon. that part didn't get finished in time so you just start with it! i'm sure the rest of the story makes even less sense.
Originally tried to hit up the 48 hours, but overestimated my ability. even with the extra 24, i didn't get to polish up as much as i would have liked, mainly with the tilemaps.
as this is my third or fourth dare i decided to really cram a lot of stuff in here but it was just too much!
z=attack
x=jump
eventually down blocks
there was to be a dying scorpion at the outset whose tail you use as a weapon. that part didn't get finished in time so you just start with it! i'm sure the rest of the story makes even less sense.
Originally tried to hit up the 48 hours, but overestimated my ability. even with the extra 24, i didn't get to polish up as much as i would have liked, mainly with the tilemaps.
as this is my third or fourth dare i decided to really cram a lot of stuff in here but it was just too much!
| Windows | https://sites.google.com/site/ld23mam/mothandmenace.zip |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=4241 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 36% | 809 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.63 | 41 |
| Audio(Jam) | 1.94 | 183 |
| Fun(Jam) | 3.37 | 47 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 4.00 | 51 |
| Humor(Jam) | 3.73 | 18 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 2.63 | 170 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.13 | 77 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.84 | 17 |
The game works perfectly fine through Wine on Linux btw.
Don't let that discourage you, though, the graphics is where it's at.
You should improve audio (feedback while fighting). Very nice graphics.
And you got a little bug with the z-indices: the acid is on top of the health bar.
I know that Z and X are common keys, but here in Germany, the keys Z and Y are switched and changing to US keyboard layout for playing ludum dare games is a bit... frustrating ^^... WASD XC are good ones.
@jeremias: man i feel awful now! i'll not make this mistake again, regarding the key layout.
It takes very obvious inspiration from Megaman, and the metroidvania elements are pretty standard, but it's fun nonetheless. Beating enemies felt like a chore, though; they're not harmful enough to actually harm you, but they're still in the way and it takes too much time to kill them considering how trivial they are. The bosses were a bit too easy; once you figure out how to beat them, it's just a matter of hammering the Z button until you win.
The graphics were amazing. Although the tiles themselves look pretty generic and bland, the characters, the animations, the background and the opening cutscene all look awesome. The face in the background was pretty creepy, and was a very nice touch. It was lacking death animations for the enemies, though.
Theme implementation was one of the two blatantly obvious ways (tiny character in relatively huge world or huge character in relatively tiny world), but the terrarium theme was a nice spin on it.
The game contained almost no audio, and what audio there was, was pretty annoying. I was missing a lot of auditory feedback on many things; you don't hear when you get hurt, you don't hear when you hit an enemy (as opposed to swinging and missing), et cetera. Don't underestimate the importance of sound, it takes away a lot from the game.
Overall, a nice game, but it's pretty clear it's rather unfinished. Practically no sound, enemies just suddenly disappearing when killed, the nonsensical ending, lack of spawn points - many minor flaws that subtly harm the game experience. I'd say scale back a bit and add more polish next time; it's what turns a good game into a great game.
and i'll definitely be scaling way back to add polish. exactly the lesson learned here, thanks for the great review!
The kid in the background was great.