Quantum Catburetor by jushiip
Quantum Catburetor is a colorful and trippy bullet hell shmup with a procedurally generated world.
The world of Quantum Catburetor is extremely unstable. What you see is the only world that exists - if you go back where you came from - things aren't the same. The world canvas doubles as player health - shrinking down if you idle for too long or get hit by enemies. Refill your world by destroying enemies with a collection of badass guns and rushing for health drops.
Gamepad highly recommended! :video_game:
:noentry: WARNING: DIZZINESS / PHOTOSENSITIVITY / EPILEPSY SEIZURES :noentry:
A very small percentage of individuals may experience epileptic seizures or blackouts when exposed to certain light patterns or flashing lights. Exposure to certain patterns or backgrounds on a television screen or when playing video games may trigger epileptic seizures or blackouts in these individuals. These conditions may trigger previously undetected epileptic symptoms or seizures in persons who have no history of prior seizures or epilepsy. If you, or anyone in your family has an epileptic condition or has had seizures of any kind, consult your physician before playing.
Download
- Windows, Mac and Linux from itch.io: https://jushiip.itch.io/quantum-catburetor recommended
- WebGL https://zhal9k.github.io/quantum-catburetor/ no gamepad support, not optimal experience
Controls
Xbox360 / Xbox One Controller
Left Analog Stick - MOVE
Right Analog Stick - SHOOT
A - SELECT
* Keyboard and Mouse *
WASD / Arrow Keys - MOVE
Mouse Left Click - SHOOT / SELECT
Credits
- https://twitter.com/jushiip Code, Art
- https://twitter.com/ZHAL9k Code, Shader Magic
- https://twitter.com/MrJoshuaMcLean Music
Tools Used
- Unity
- 3ds Max
- LabChirp
Thanks for playing!
Quantum Catburetor ~ Blast the World of Blue @ Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/joshuamclean17/quantum-catburetor-blast-the
Bonus: Designing an interesting health system - Quantum Catburetor Postmortem https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/quantum-catburetor/designing-an-interesting-health-system-quantum-catburetor-postmortem
Ratings
| Overall | 81th | 3.953⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 73th | 3.884⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 76th | 3.86⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 197th | 3.767⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 189th | 4.023⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 114th | 3.756⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 284th | 2.889⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 252th | 3.487⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 38🗳️ | 71🗨️ |
As for the concept it is an amazing idea that your play space gets smaller and smaller but this is where I start disliking this game. As you lose more and more health the game world gets smaller and this is a really cool concept however at the same time the less and less health you have the harder and harder it is to stay alive. If a health item spawns I cant just go get it because I walked a single step away from it and now it has despawned. Need to kill more enemies for more pickups? Too bad you walked a single step away from the enemy and now it has despawned.
Like I said I really like this concept and overall there are several things that could make this concept work better. One of the most interesting ways this concept could be improved in the future would be to change the genre of gameplay from a twin stick shooter to something a little physical. Right now the game encourages you to keep your distance using that distance to give yourself more room to dodge attacks. However the problem of emphasizing keeping your distance is it puts a larger focus on the fact that items despawn. This problem only gets worse when your health is lowered where keeping your distance is not only harder but leaves more of a chance to despawn items and enemies.
If you wanted to leave the genre the same then I might suggest something that at the very least keeps pickups in your little bubble rather than despawning them (like maybe some sort of barrier).
Overall I really really liked this game but I feel it does have some design choices that alone are pretty solid but together need addressing.
> "As you lose more and more health the game world gets smaller and this is a really cool concept however at the same time the less and less health you have the harder and harder it is to stay alive."
Actually this also bothers us - and during the development, we almost considered dropping the idea and just keep the world "big" at all times. In the end we decided to go with it because we wanted to stay with the initial shrinking world idea + health system. We also wanted to try keep it true to the *small world* theme.
I liked the music a lot.
It took me a moment to figure out that I was moving, but I got it. I'll echo the comments above about the STEEP difficulty curve, but I think some people will really like that (I'm more of a casual gamer myself).
Great interpretation of the theme!
The shrinking visibility mechanic is purfect design. It creates thematic mewments of tension and urgency aplenty. The purrty colors and mewsic fit like a mitten on a kitten.
Radical cattitude! More of this kind of thing, pawlease. :cat:
Telling you my best score would be embarrassing. I'll just blame it on my laptop's trackpad...
You all did a great job, congratulations!
But, did you take the time to program custom shaders during the LD or are the deforming blocks some kind of postprocessing? Either way, it looks awesome. The game in general looks very good and plays super fluid.
Although looking at other comments my score of 6000 really isn't anything to brag about.
But does killing enemies really restore health? I thought it didnt and my demise was inevitable.
Getting triple shot was amazing though.
Also the generation depending on the canvas size, which in turn is depending on the health left is awesome design.
cheers~
Isak’s highscore: 9000
Isak played on keyboard and instantly yelled “The controls feel amazing” when he started playing. The aesthetics of this game is really nice and we like the idea to have the fog of war be the health.
Have an awesome day!
*(We'll be back again on Sunday when the judging starts)*
// Rasmus & Isak ([LiquidBrain](https://ldjam.com/users/liquidbrain/))
The movement is smooth and the perks bring extra fun.
Congratulation to such an successful Ludum Dare entry!
And I LOVE the cat! :smile:
Purrrfect character
Still really nice and the cat being a cat adds so much to the game just because it's a cat cat cat cat adowogtewgno :smiley_cat:
@huvaakoodia, @samurai-spark & @joyfired MEOW!
@m-1 Oh no, too bad you didn't play with a controller!! I can imagine it's very difficult on using a track pad.
@elzach, @zhal was responsible of creating our custom shaders. There are no post-processing effects used in the game! Killing enemies does restore health - but it's a very small amount compared to picking up a health pack. Killing a single enemy doesn't affect that much, but after you pick up a good weapon which can quickly blast through groups of enemies, you can increase the health more quickly.
@joyfired, @querk (concerning graphics) Yup, you can see some weird shit happening with the graphics, especially in the upper part of the view frustum. Our world is kinda warped, like a bowl (see the gifs here: https://t.co/YKf0bLFVK9) and the camera angle is slightly tilted. It's something that can be improved I guess but we left as it is for the build.
I thought I had experienced a crash but I think what happened was - I died, I wanted to restart but I was pressing down on the controller and I chose Quit instead.
The controls are so responsive and fluid, the art style is very charming, the audio is great.
I think this entry is going to be one I keep coming back to even after the jam! :)
(high score was 13400 :p)
Would love if you have the chance to provide feedback on my game:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/sling-ship-search-for-a-small-world
Cheers!
@slimabob, @elykyevrah, @quoclon, thank you for the kind words! :)
@amnonlevi Nope, not a bug! The world will be only generated if you move (meaning enemies will also *only* spawn if you move) If you don't move, you will eventually die because the world keeps getting smaller.
I loved the shrinking playfield and the amount of enemies on which you had to keep an eye and avoid as well as shoot.
The game felt very engaging and fun to play. I really enjoyed it a lot. The controls were nice and smooth and I had no problems figuring out what to do and how to do it, and that's always a good thing imho.
The sound effects were nice and fitting as well, overall a great and fun game.
My game: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B13g3FsdXQ4MUGp5anQzb20zams?usp=sharing
## Juice and feel.
A great game overall. It has that juice and feel everyone is talking about. And it's most important. You, guys, really know what to do.
## Music and Art
I like the music and the art style. All these wiggles and shrinkes and colors are great.
## Humor
...Though I loathe the cat topic pushed all over the internet. :(
### Tiny little humble piece of advice.
About shrinking. Just limit it at some point. It will still be hard to play, but at least you'll be able can. And after that one hit causes death. That's all. And the game will be great.
## Sum Up.
I really wish you continue this after the jam up to the Steam. This game worth it. Just get rid of that cat! :)))
You really nailed the cat controls. They're very responsive with just the right amount of momentum. The music is beautiful, worthy of a full game.
I'm a huge fan of the level-as-health mechanic! Don't compromise it! The death spiral is real, but its quick, and the few times you can claw your way back up give you a real sense of accomplishment. Once I started treating this as a 1-2 hit shmup with the possibility of tanking more hits my scores went way up. I do think, though, that the world should extend a bit further outside your view. The lack of object permanence is a great mechanic and adds a lot of unique strategy to the game, but I'd like to be able to juke and not have a wall spawn directly behind me on my way back, or constantly see powerups move a hair out of sight and disappear forever. Maybe increasing the persistence region like another 1/4 screen or so might fix a lot of that. I wouldn't increase it too much, though, as the strategy of purposefully manipulating the terrain through movement adds a lot of depth to gameplay.
A couple minor bugs: sometimes enemies spawn inside single tile blocks. Sometimes powerups appear to disappear in the middle of the screen. There's some slight mismatch occasionally between your actual score and the high score.
Don't let the above critiques fool you though, I love this game. It's super fun, super original, and my favorite LD game to date. Thanks so much for making it!
:star: Starshot Master Race :grin:
I noteced you had trouble running my game and I uploaded a fix, be sure to download the 64 bit version and possibly use compatibility mode for windows 7. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/ids-journey
Feedback: Like others, I wasn't a huge fan of the canvas decrease mechanic. But actually the thing that bothered me more is that I couldn't tell the "good" stuff from the "bad" stuff while playing. I couldn't tell what the upgrades were until I accidentally ran into one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpLa_G-bsto
Exceptional game!