Meltdown by Sarrixx
A short button mashing game - can you button-mash your way to safety?
This game was made for Ludum Dare #39 with the theme 'running out of power'. The game is pretty straight forward to play, every level there is a set of rooms each with a button. Press the buttons in the rooms that are lit up to pass the level. You start with 30 seconds on the clock, with 15 seconds added for each successful level. The patterns for the buttons are random on each play through. This was our first Ludum Dare & first ever publicly released game - we hope you enjoy it!
Win Conditions: First Level - 6 successful button activations across 3 rooms. Second Level - 8 successful button activations across 4 rooms. Final Level - 10 successful button activations across 4 rooms.
If you are going to vote for us in the audio category, please consider that the only bit of audio that we did not create ourselves during the jam was the music track which was found on the asset store. A link to the asset store page can be found in the game menu.
Tools Used - Unity - Photoshop - GIMP 2 - Maya - Audacity - Google Pixel Voice Recorder
04/08/2017 - An update has been released for the game on itch.io which fixes some bugs and implements some improvements. The Google drive version will remain the same though because that shows what we were able to get done in the 72 hour deadline and that's what peoples votes should be based on. If you are not voting please download and play version 1.1 from itch.io for the best experience.
Ratings
| Overall | 380th | 3.422⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 352th | 3.254⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 451th | 3.016⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 209th | 3.828⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 426th | 3.516⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 198th | 3.525⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 233th | 2.93⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 233th | 3.565⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 75🗳️ | 98🗨️ |
Hope to see more of your work in the future !
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/plasma-arena
Perhaps would be a nice thing to add subtitle to the guy speaking while in the elevator, some people don't play with audio and even for those that do play with audio, sometimes they are not native English speakers and usually reading is easier to understand than listening. Also, Would be good to have the option to skip the tutorial (which seems that you added to the post compo version, nicely done).
The intro reminds me a lot of portal, minus the humor.
The sound effects are nice along with the art. I read you didn't compose the soundtrack youself, it's a good choice for your game still and works well.
In terms of movement it got jerky whenever i walked onto a wall and you could have been more lenient with the hitboxes for the buttons you have to press. Overall it was easy to walk around though.
I was surprised at first when I suddenly had to press buttons again after pressing them once, in an arbitrary order.
That was a bit odd, and there should have been an indicator when the elevator was ready.
A small sound effect or game over screen would have been nice too.
Overall, the atmosphere is great and it looks nice. There is still room for improvement regarding the gameplay.
Then I played the fix.
I really liked that you made it so you could skip the instructions, good patch for sure. You didn't fix any of the wall coliders tho. The walls are not solid in many spots and I kept falling into and through the main cylinder. The buttons work better this way except that you can aim through the door and press the button. The idea of levels is good, but it didn't seem like it has as much instruction or explanation. Why does pressing buttons prevent power from running out The rooms also looked the exact same so it felt like I was just doing the same thing in the same spot and not on a different floor. Good job making something that appears polished, at least at first glance, and works as a completed game, with a small team at that. It's simplicity is truly inspiring!
- I sometimes had trouble pressing the buttons because I wasn't sure where to aim at. Some crosshairs or other indicator would have been nice (I see from the patch notes that you added that in 1.1, which is good).
- The "you're running out of power" voice effects were a nice touch, but got annoying after a while because they kept repeating. I'd suggest having a larger variety of sound effects, or just playing them less frequently.
- It was a little jarring how losing took you back to the menu with nothing in between. Even a small sound effect would have been nice.
- Right now, it sort of feels like beating the third level depends on getting lucky with the RNG: I thought I was pretty fast, but I kept getting buttons that were 2-3 doors away from me.
Overall, great job on making a very polished, engaging game. It is a very simple mechanic (and I do wish there was a little more complexity), but you really managed to make something quite fun out of it!
[Danae streams Ludum Dare 39: Day 3, part 1: Meltdown](https://youtu.be/LN1svjCl2z0?t=1h35m39s)
This was quite fun, thanks to the various voiceover lines. Maybe it was part of the challenge, but it was a little bit frustrating when I hit E but nothing happened (because the crosshair was not lined up with the button well enough). I could see the levels getting more interesting, e.g. more complicated platforming (but more time to do it of course), ladders, jumps, … Or, more complicated controls, i.e. not just hit the button, but hit this sequence of buttons, pull this lever, turn this knob, etc etc à la Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.
Good job!