Through the eye of a needle by MezzUK
My first submission for Ludum Dare and my first mostly completed game... mostly.
The game is a SHMUP set inside a human vein. Similar to the film, the Fantastic Voyage, you control a microscopic ship and have to avoid a number of hazards.
There are two enemy types: - White blood cells who attack you - Platelets who cause you to slow down
There are also blue cubes that will clear the platelets.
Notes for improvement
Gameplay: - The platelets visually were going to stick to your craft - The blue cubes were going to be cuts in the vein that the platelet would break off from your ship to repair, allowing you to speed up
Art: - Need to spend a lot more time in Blender making the assets for the platelets, white blood cells and "cuts"
Music: - I've been learning piano for a little while and played about with the trial version of Reason software for this project for the sfx and the music. I'd like to have invested more time on this.
General: - Time planning: standard issue with projects where you're embracing a lot of new things but now I've got a vague idea of how long various bits will take.
- Testing of game through HTML 5 build needed as there are display issues and quit game bugs etc.
As my first go at building a game and still very much learning C#, Unity and Game Development in general I'm pretty pleased with the results in the time and am looking forward to the next Ludum Dare as I hope I'll be able to create something more complete.
Hope you enjoy :)
Ben
Links
Source: https://github.com/MezzUK/TTIOAN/
Game (standalone): https://github.com/MezzUK/TTIOAN/tree/master/GameBuild
https://itch.io/embed-upload/452917?color=333333
Project Tools
Unity Blender Reason 9 with Alesis VI49 keyboard Coffee Font - NovaMono
Ratings
| Given | 5🗳️ | 8🗨️ |
The music was a cut above most LD music, so if I were you I would be proud of that. Also don't worry so much about graphical quality. This game's biggest deficiency is in gameplay. The abstract shapes are easy to distinguish from each other, which is what matters.
Anyway, congrats on a successful compo! Nice work.
1. Unity defaults to Left-Control as Fire1, however on MacOS pressing this key together with arrow keys is a shortcut to switch screens. In this type of game, you press both keys together a lot, meaning switching screens a lot. That makes playing the game very difficult. Easy fix: bind Fire1 to a different key, especially if you don't have many action keys;
2. Asume limited vertical resolution. I had to change screen resolutions to see the entire game field. It was only then that I could see the timer ("now I know why I'm getting game overs every time!").
Anyways, keep it up & hope to see you next LD!
Telling which flying objects are bonuses from the obstacles/enemies is not intuite, though.
The webgl version trying to go fullscreen each time I click is annoying.
Kudos for your work on harmonizing the sound effects with the music scale, this definitely helps building a mood!
Overall I like it, especially the mood.