Awesome idea - I started off wanting to do a math games but I couldn't come up with a second theme to work with it!

"Uh oh... *head explodes*." Just what kind of zombies are they!?

It's not a bad game! The difficulty ramps too quickly in my opinion. Also, there seems to be a bug where the difficulty isn't reset after a game over, resulting in very fast zombies. You need exit the game to fix it.

@kscorp it is suicide and not the zombies who kill the hero.

I have thought about the difficulty ramp and thought it was challenging but not too hard to get a good score of 40 to 60. I wanted one game not to last too long. The idea is to play it several times, improving and beating your high score. By the way, what was your high score, I am curious? :-)

I have not found any such bug, can you tell me how you got this impression, what exactly did you do? Did you die and then restarted from the high score screen?

I can't kill more than 15 or so zombies after the first playthrough, they swarm me too quickly.

I play one game, get a score of ~40 or so, enter my name on the high score screen, press ENTER to play again, and the zombies start very fast! I can't get more than about 10 or so before one gets me.

Great idea. Difficulty seemed about right to me. Would be neat to see more variety math, though. I thought the roman numeral score was a nice touch.

@kscorp Well, that is very weird, I am actually sure that this is impossible because everything is reset when entering the main game. That is why I am asking, could you help me find this out, that would be great!

Can you please re-download the game to make sure you have the final version and then try it again? It would be awesome if we can eliminate a bug like this, that would be game-breaking and I would fix it right away.

Actually the zombie speed is always the same, only the frequency with which they spawn increases over time so they come in ever-denser bursts. What you saw could have been just a random spike.

Thanks for your help :-)

Ending was really dark

I think this works really well, and is a great fit for the theme. The main thing that works is that the maths doesn't get much harder, it seems really simple at the start to solve things like 7/1 and 8*0, but when there are zombies right next to you then you panic and suddenly the same equations are harder to solve. I think that's good design, and I really laughed at how panicked I got the first time time I died!

- bonus points for using Go & for having a Linux build
- loved the math to shoot trick.

@gonutz I figured it out. You're right, the zombies don't get faster (I think I just got really lucky my first few times). BUT, their speed IS affected by framerate. I use a 120Hz monitor, so the game runs twice as fast! If I change it to run at 60Hz, the difficulty is much more reasonable.

@kscorp aaahhh, that is true. I have not considere non-60 Hz monitors in my game library. BUT I will do that and I may have to keep you busy with it when I updated the game. I hope that is OK for you, I don't know anyone else with a 120 Hz monitor ;-)

@kscorp OK so now the updated version of the game should run at the same speed no matter what your refresh rate is set to. Could you help me test this and try it out? That would be awesome :-)

I absolutly don't understand how a calculation can drive the target of a gun, but it have absolutly no importance, because in this game, you kill ZOMBIES, and you do it with MATHS (wich seems pretty more effective than meth). Fun idea, simple concept, and effective gameplay. Well done!

@seconddimension thanks for the great review, that is actually what I thought when thinking about how to handle the difficulty curve. I considered multiple changes, like increasing the max number in the calculations, it is currently 9. But I found it hard enough to do these simple calculations under pressure from the zombies, just like you described :-)

Another thing I considered was changing the assignment when you enter the wrong number but that would have meant an extra penalty after the 500 ms delay.

I appreciate your detailed review, very cool, thanks! :-)

@lereveur thanks! Yeah, you are right, I am lucky that I did not have the time to write a story for the game, it would have been really difficult to explain this math-triggered shotgun, but hey :-)

I will be sure to check out your game later! :-D

@gonutz New version fixed it!

@kscorp cool, thank you very much for helping me! This automatically fixes bugs in my other games as well by fixing the engine, really nice!

I didn't go past score 30, perhaps because I played it too early in the morning. Killing zombies with math does feel satisfying though, you managed to produce a smooth gameplay here, nice work. Calculation difficulty is just right, feels easy at start but as things get tough I may end up failing something as simple as 8/8. A tip, I find the game easier if you use numpad numbers.

@kr4ft3r thanks! Yeah, I prefer using A/D to move and the numpad for shooting as well. 30 is not bad when compared to my friends and family, also people who had not played the game non-stop for 48 hours ;-)

Nice little game! Well done!

@szabe Thank you, I just checked out your game page, that looks awesome! I will be sure to play it on my Linux machine when I get back home. Nice that you have a Linux version!

How dare you make math fun you monster! :grin:

Using the math mechanic + shooter was a nice use of the theme. It was fun to play and the graphics were simple but cool. The animation when dying was quite humourous.

I let some of my friends try the game and even though they hate math they really enjoyed this game. Very well done! :smiley:

Like the game its kind of addicting. The music isnt bad and fits really well. The ending is really dark but I like it! You definitely made a great game here and i cant wait to see what next games you will make!!!
the game is hard though and I initially didnt even notice the math problems :smile:
If youd like to please try my game too: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/trophy-defense

AntiVir blocks your game :(

Math and zombies! It seems we have had kind of the same idea for this LD41 :)
We did not treat it the same way though, but it is interesting to see what each of us has done with it!

You can test my game here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/education-to-survive

I liked your game, because math and zombies, and also the music and graphics.
Good job!

@xoidberg pretty much every anti virus software seems to block it. They block everything they do not know. It is fine though, the executables that the links point to are the same as what I built. Nobody has hacked my github account :-)

Nice idea!
Had an issue with avast though as it wouldn't let me play your game and detected it as malware. Anyways, idea is cool and probably the only issue I had was the zombies coming out too fast so my record just ended up being like 12 or something xP

If you've got the time check my game out, I still need a couple of ratings to get to the 20 mark

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/nanashi

I had the same problem with avast as @jsd. It was a really fun game!! My high score was 33. Thank you for making this game!

This is awesome


The graphics can frighten first, but the game's in fact really fun. Nice ! :)

This is really addicting, highest I've gotten so far is 27. I was really surprised by that death animation. Great work on this!

Good game. My record is 55

Good thing I caught you after you fixed the bug with 120hz monitors :) It's pretty fun, I also think the difficulty ramps up a bit too quickly (44 is my high score) but other than that I think it's great!
(And I'm sure with enough time to memorise each of the possible equations, I could probably beat you, but I have other games to rate, sorry)

My Virus scan(avast) blocks the game! :(

@gamedevbynight Avast does that some times :-)

You can trust my game, I have checked it, it is the same thing that I built so nobody hacked my Github account. I had reports of Avast blocking my game but you can add an exception for it.

You can also build it yourself, take a look at the source code link, the readme gives you the instructions, I made sure that you only have to do the minimal amount of work which is 1. install the Go programming language and 2. run the commands in my readme from your command line.

Nice little game. I am so bad at fast calculating. My record so far 39. The graphics are great and the music is perfect for this little zombie shooter. The combination of math and shooter is a perfect mix of 2 incompatible genres. Great work.
See your stuff in the next jam! :)

Short and sweet! Feels like a game I would have played on coolmath.com back in elementary school and loved. It's short and sweet but simple, maybe more mechanics (if you had time) would make it even better.

Sadly, I can't get it to run :(

@philstrahl Anti-virus software does not like my game but you can trust it, other people have had the same problem. I checked that the .exe is right, nobody hacked my Github account so you can add an exception to your anti virus.

I tried trusting it in any way possible, but Windows Defender just won't let me launch the exe file and even deletes it right after downloading it. :/

@philstrahl Wow, that is new to me, I guess you are using Windows 10?

@gonutz I do. Win 10 Pro x64. I should wear a button that reads "I'm using Windows 10. Ask me about random BSoDs!" ;)

@philstrahl Seriously? Blue screens are back? Well, never change a running system. That is why I stay with my Windows version, new Windows means new bugs and seemingly they last a lot longer in Windows 10 than they did in any other Windows before it, so I am going to stay on Windows 7 and 8.1 a while...

Anyway, if you are dedicated enough, you still have the option of building my game yourself, anti virus software will usually recognize that programs are built on your machine and allow them I think. I put the instructions in the Source link's readme, right on the front page and made it as simple as possible, it is one download of 100 MB (the Go programming language) and then just running the build script. So, if you would like to give it a try, I would find that very cool! :-)

I just tried downloading Go, and Git, and setting all the variables and running the build script but it's still not working for me, as it's been 15 years since I last tried to compile something from the command line and even back then I recall how painful that was. So I'm sorry, but I don't think I can play your game.

Still, I featured what I got in the video below, but it comes down to reading the description and trying to run the .exe ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUjvukr54GQ

@philstrahl Oh that's a pity! But thanks for the effort, really cool that you even tried compiling it yourself :-)

As I said, I have had people report problems with anti virus software before. Lately we had [a discussion here](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/no-brain-jogging/deployment-considerations) where I was saying that I use Linux or a Windows XP virtual machine for testing games and that the easiest way for other people to play your game is in the browser. Since I have created all my game libraries that I use for my LD games myself I have been thinking about adding an "export target" to my "engine" that generates a web game. The more complaints I had from anti virus, the clearer it was that I will probably create something that lets people play my game in the browser for the next LD.

Cool videos, nice keynote as well, see you next time around! :-)

Windows Defender has found a virus in your game. I won't take the risk of launching it, sorry :(