Darkling by jordantanner
Is this reality?
You "wake" to find yourself in an eerie landscape. Strange voices fill the air, and the trees that surround you seem to be made of bones, or of something else not of this world.
Suddenly, your right arm is filled with a fiery pain. Looking down in horror, you realize that your arm is gone, instead replaced by some terrible demonic entity. You can feel its evil power surging through you, burning like hellfire.
Peering off into the distance, you can vaguely make out hordes of ghastly shapes rapidly approaching, while the infernal pain in your arm feels like it's about to explode...
How to Play
- Survive waves of enemies that grow more challenging each time
- You may choose to upgrade between waves at the cost of your MAX LIFE
- Collect GREEN ORBS to gain LIFE
- Collect RED ORBS to gain MAX LIFE
- Collect YELLOW ORBS for a temporary speed boost
- Collect BLUE ORBS to become temporarily invulnerable
Controls (First Person Shooter control scheme)
- WASD - Move
- Mouse - Look / Aim
- Hold LMB - Rapid Fire Explosive Beam (unlimited ammo)
- Click RMB - Launch Grenade Volley (this costs Life)
- CapsLock - Run (L-Shift was causing problems)
- Spacebar - Jump
- Z - Zoom
Hints
- All Orbs have a lifetime of 30 seconds after they drop
- Upgrading between waves is optional, not required
- Enemies shoot projectiles and also deal contact damage, so keep moving and shooting!
Thanks for playing and rating!
Credits:
- Jordan Tanner: Graphics, Programming, Design, Sound
ROBO font by George Edward Purdy
| HTML5 (web) | http://jordantanner.itch.io/ld44 |
| Windows | http://jordantanner.itch.io/ld44 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/darkling |
Ratings
| Given | 18🗳️ | 12🗨️ |
It was fun playing though! just hard to get the max life up ;/ or maybe i am too bad. Good job on the game!
Only a small thing. For future entries I would advise to make at least 1 additional build for Win, Linux or Mac. Usually native builds run much faster on low spec PCs which may add a bit more players.
As for me, I started to feel significatn lags on 5-6 waves.
Anyway, great job and nice entry! :thumbsup:
I had fun playing it
keep it up !
For real I don't know if it was intentional or not but the game gets easier as you complete rounds, not the other way around. Which in a way is great since it makes you feel ultra overpowered and cool but at the same time it gets old after a while.
I discovered I was invincible when I realised that I could grenade a big group of spiders jump to the middle of the explosion, heal up to 100% and repeat.
But the crazy part gets when you unlock no cost grenades. At that point you can just walk through the field feeling like the god of destruction XD
Oh man I had too much fun with this. Congrats!
And oddly enough I also did a game half 2D half 3D. Give it a go if you want and rock on!
@gerardb I'm glad you had fun playing it! I definitely wanted the player to feel powerful and strong, but I do feel that the game needs some difficulty balancing. I appreciate the detailed feedback.
@dk5000p As it stands now, there are infinite waves. I intend to release a difficulty balance patch soon so please check back!
@craftlord Thanks, dude. :)
@the-blue-hatted Sorry for the lag, I'm currently working to optimize that. Also, I'll be releasing a Windows port soon, so hopefully that will run faster on most people's machines.
Once the stream is finished you can find the video here: https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos
If you want to know when it was played you can find your game in the queue here: https://tinyurl.com/y5rdokvp
The high firerate felt great, and the right click ability looked really cool!
I got up to wave 4, at which point there were so many enemies that I saw a big framerate drop. My suggestion would be to add variations of monsters that are stronger, and less monsters overall.
Great job!
Hard to read instruction text. This game needs some optimization. You could go with ECS(if you are programming with unity), but that's a whole new programming method and it's really difficult.
Anyways, good job !!!
The only frustration I had was how it feels like enemies spawn right next to, or behind you. I somehow could only buy the first two upgrades, and sometimes the jump button wouldn't work, and I realized it's often best to stay on the ground for how vulnerable you are in the air--when I started falling in the air, and with no control, I kept hitting constant enemy projectiles.
Thanks to you all for playing and for the detailed feedback, I really appreciate it! It is meant to be a tough game, but I do want to balance it so more people can experience more of the upgrades and get a little further in the game. Any opinions on how to balance this? Maybe just increase the spawn rate of the green and red orbs a tiny bit? Any thoughts on how to make the game SLIGHTLY easier would be appreciated. Thanks again you guys!!
Red ones are too few in my opinion.
But the game does glue you to your keyboard, that's for sure :smile: