ZapDune by diptoman
ZapDune is a resource management platformer/tower defence hybrid, where your aim is to make your ship survive as long as you can. Jump, hook and recharge turrets to keep your ship safe, while making sure power doesn't run out!
The core concepts (explained in-game, this can be ignored) are: - There are 2 kinds of resources in-game: Power and Scrap. - Power is used by turrets. An unpowered turret is dead. You can get power by collecting batteries spawned by the synthesizer at periodic intervals. Keep collecting them to have a larger power bank! - Scrap is used to speed up battery generation from synthesizers, and to revive unpowered turrets. Scrap is left by dead enemies. - Turrets shoot on their own and lose power continuously even if they are not being attacked. You need to recharge them continuously. For turrets, power = health. - Once all turrets are powered down, enemies start attacking the core. The game is over when the core is destroyed.
Controls: - WASD to move. - Aim with mouse and use Left Mouse Button to hook and pull yourself to a point. Press W/S while hooked to a point to release. - Hold Space to recharge turret - Press Space to revive unpowered turret / boost battery generation on synthesizer. - F1 to toggle fullscreen.
General Tips (things you'll realize while playing anyway): - Boost synthesizers often to generate more batteries. - Scrap goes away after a few seconds, make sure to collect as much as possible for boosting / late-game revivals. - Sometimes it might be better to let some turrets die and camp near specific suitable spots.
More Screenies!
Made by Diptoman Mukherjee (programming / design), Pranjal Bisht (art / level design), Rahul Salim Narayanan (art) and Joel Montpetit (SFX) for #ldjam #ld39
Ratings
| Overall | 99th | 3.915⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 70th | 3.915⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 160th | 3.576⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 108th | 4.017⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 54th | 4.475⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 184th | 3.556⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 373th | 2.51⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 392th | 3.278⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 48🗳️ | 53🗨️ |
A small feedback: make ESC pause the game, not restart. Lost my progress by mistake. D:
Gameplay is quite smooth and the mechanics have been implemented nicely. Grappling was probably the most fun part of the game though :3
@porkeh 430 is more than my best, so you're alright. ;) That thing about watching the crystal die slowly has been mentioned to me before, we just didn't have any time to properly balance waves so they don't gang up. Wanted to add something to counter it - like a get-out-of-jail card (destroy all enemies with X scraps) but didn't get time. The initial plan had the player attacking with the hook too if it hit an enemy, dropped that because of time too lol. Thanks for playing!
@mrtroy You need scraps to revive dead crystals. I've uploaded a post-jam version with better instructions and not walls of text lol. A good strategy would be to speed up battery generation using scraps as much as possible so you're never out of charge. Thanks for playing!
@narudgi The camera is basically following the mouse with an accel/decel in a fixed area, if that helps. :)
@will-walters Well you could travel outside the ship with the hook, it's faster. ;) Yeah, maybe not the coolest thing, it's not precision platforming hahah. Thanks for playing!
@carsen-d: I've fixed that audio bug in the post-jam version. :)
Great job on making it feel really good to move around! Aside from my muscle memory telling me to use spacebar to jump, moving around was a joy. The level was well-designed such that I had many places to grapple onto. I do wish there were more areas where it actually makes more sense to just jump without using the grappling hook. I like jumping! I want to do it more! But grappling really is the superior movement tactic by far, even though it's less interesting to me than jumping.
The music was good, but maybe a little too intense for me :sweat_smile:
Great job overall, keep at it everyone! :clap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5k70uKVi9A
The sound was good, Overall liked the gameplay
Hope you take this game one step forward
- i like how the player is reflected to mirror
- sound is good but i felt its not as good as the game is !!
- Its really fun to play and very smooth mechanic
I really liked this overall, great work everyone! :smile:
This felt like a very cleanly designed game, it's got everything you need and nothing you don't. It made it easy to get in the flow of things when the enemies started showing up faster. I had trouble keeping up with the enemies, but never felt like I was actually struggling.
I do think some additional challenge could make the game even better, perhaps a new threat you need to prioritize with the existing enemies?
Anyway, excellent game and great job!
Very well-thought game design! Great music as well!
The hook was kind of buggy sometimes, it sent me flying outside the level. I'd have liked a way to be safe instead of dying when you fall outside the level.
kudos all around!
- Please *opt out* of the Audio category since you used 3rd-party music. From the rules page:
"You’re free to use 3rd party Artwork/Music/Audio assets, or assets you previously created, but we ask that you OPT-OUT of the respected voting categories (Graphics, Audio)."
- Seeing sharp crisp pixel art next to blurry antialiased text makes me sad! Please find a pixel-based font and use it :)
- Grappling everywhere was cool, but...somehow didn't feel "right".? Sorry that this is so vague. Perhaps the weird thing was that jumping felt rather useless because you needed to mostly grapple to get anywhere.
- In general I felt like the map was too large to keep track of what was going on, or rather...perhaps everything needed to be more zoomed out. The art that you have is great at the current size, but I believe the gameplay suffers a bit when most of the enemy attacks end up happening off-screen. It felt like the game boiled down to a problem of just trying to run around across the map a bunch.
But anyways, great job, especially for LD!
Perhaps just hook's physics could be a litlle bit tuned (be more loose I think).
It seems like with base and turrets upgrades system it could something ready for market
One of the best entrys I've played for now, congrats :)
If you wish to continue working on this game, I believe it may need to add new mechanics as the player is only responding to the enemy deeds, and doesn't have much iniative in the action, maybe he could choose to upgrade some of the turrets in certain ways to match certain types of enemies... idk
Lovely art and good audio, maybe a bit loud on everything like most of people have pointed out. Good jod!