Ghost in the Machine by bmacintosh

Beep and Boop worked uneventfully for years as robot assistants and janitors in Mr. Watts' Convenience Store. But one day, the ghosts got fed up with powering household electronics (and helpful robots) and began reVolting! It's up to Beep and Boop to save the day. Or, actually, to just pretend nothing is wrong and fetch the customers their orders from the (much darker now) store shelves.
A 1- or 2-player co-op puzzle/arcade game made in like 56 hours by:
- Matt Hansen - art
- Alexis Korb - programming
- Brian MacIntosh - programming
- Minnie Wu - level design, additional art
- Justin Britch - sound design
Music by NGXmusical. Neglect the music when rating Audio, it was not created during the jam.
Controls:
BOOP: Boop can pick up water puddles with his vacuum. - WASD [move] - E [interact] - Q [transfer power]
BEEP (single player): Beep can pick up objective items and boxes with her grippers. - IJKL [move] - U [interact] - O [transfer power]
BEEP (two player): - arrowkeys [move] - / [interact] - . [transfer power]
| HTML5 (web) | http://brianmacintosh.com/projects/ld39-b/ |
| Windows | http://brianmacintosh.com/projects/ld39/GhostInTheMachine.zip |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/ghost-in-the-machine |
Ratings
| Overall | 334th | 3.488⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 503th | 3⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 178th | 3.512⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 418th | 3.488⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 348th | 3.721⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 165th | 3.634⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 295th | 2.684⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 288th | 3.463⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 63🗳️ | 38🗨️ |
I think for my personal taste the overall pacing was too slow for me, but that's obviously not going to be true for everyone. I would have preferred to have regular movement instead of tank movement because it was a lot about waiting for the robot to turn. I wanted to zip around the levels more and tank controls make that very hard, especially when I'm doublefisting (I played single player). I also lost a lot of patience when I solved level one but instead of having to move one item to the end zone, I had to go back and forth six times. For a puzzler it was like, well I already solved it and now I have to go through the motions... I would have strongly preferred to move immediately to the next thinking challenge.
But I can also see another way to look at this pacing: the mood is there, you've delivered, so it's okay to languish and have a pace where you spend some time in this evocative space. I also see that the tank controls delivered a real feeling of being a robot.
So the pacing stuff is not necessarily against the game, just the impression of one guy who likes everything to go faster all the time.
Really nice entry here with a lot of quality.
I *really* want to try playing this game with someone, and I might just come back to it again. Good job!
I think I would have preferred a single set of keys for single player with a button (maybe space?) to toggle between the two, since I was rarely able to move both robots at same time without confusing myself.
If you polished this up and sold it, I would pay for it. Great work!
The pacing was slow, as some have mentioned, but think that would've changed with 2 people playing.
Overall nice work - I especially like Beep and Boop, with their distinctive designs and cute walking animations. Nicely done!
Otherwise amazing audio design and really good mood.
I have no idea what any of those tutorial things on the floor meant, either.
It's probably a good idea but I have no clue what's going on.
Perhaps I will try it again later.