LudumData

Dauntless Run by Ninjascribble

[raw]
made by Ninjascribble for LD 39 (JAM)

Dauntless Run

⇸ Play it now! (WebGL) ⇷

https://github.com/ninjascribble/LudumDare39

The Story

The H.M.S. Hrothgar has been destroyed by a fleet of enemy invaders. You are the only survivor, but your weapons systems are down and your fuel tanks are running low.

There might be just enough energy crystals floating in the debris to get you home, but can you break through the enemy's lines?

Good luck, soldier. We're counting on you!

The Tools

Cover Image

Tips

  • Tap the Left and Right arrow keys to move around.
  • Use the Up arrow key to deploy energy reserves. You only have three, so use them wisely!
  • The hit boxes are small enought that you can just sneak through enemies in formation.

The Process

Honestly, we went into this Ludum Dare with an idea of what kind of game we wanted to build before the themes were even announced. The classic top-down shmup has always been one of my favorite genres -- the sense of speed and the immediacy of each movement you make combine to put me into a relaxed little zen-like state where I can lose hours at a time.

Of course with only a weekend to build something from scratch, there weren't hours to lose! Graphics came first on Friday night, and we were done with the basic gameplay by the end of the first day. Day two saw the addition of enemies, some tweaks to the game speed, and all of the non-gameplay scenes.

Yes, you can win. I've done it exactly once, and it's damn hard to make it happen. If you do manage to win, you'll be rewarded with a short story screen and the chance to play again, although... the gameplay might be broken as of the current build so it's best just to reload your browser instead. Heh...

This was the first entry we've made using Unity 2D. I've been avoiding it because stepping out of code and relying on the IDE tends to make me nervous. And yeah, we did have some trouble using the collaboration tools (lost work at the end of day 1, no fun), but in the end it did speed up development and make a few things (like supporting fullscreen) a lot easier.

This was also the first time I've had the chance to use Chiptone, which makes building game sounds a breeze. Props to Tom and Adam Vian at SFBGames!

HTML5 (web) https://ninjascribble.github.io/LudumDare39/
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/dauntless-run

Ratings

Overall 733th 2.871⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Fun 619th 2.839⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 667th 2.613⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Theme 341th 3.613⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 437th 3.484⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Audio 500th 2.613⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Mood 656th 2.724⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 34🗨️

Feedback

EveVal
01. Aug 2017 · 02:22 UTC
Really impressed with that respawn! Dropping you right back into an infinitely scrolling scene feels great. Controls felt a little floaty (maybe gradually slow down left/right velocity if not receiving input?) but that may be a personal preference. Great job!
bombjack
01. Aug 2017 · 19:58 UTC
very nice game. I liked the graphics and the gameplay a lot
Vovin
01. Aug 2017 · 20:00 UTC
The game feels really fluid and fast paced. The fast respawning makes for a nice >>just one more go<< gameplay loop. Nice game.
TheMadStrauss
01. Aug 2017 · 20:03 UTC
It's pretty demanding. Picking fuel is at the same time the way to survive and the way to put your ship in danger. I think that it could help if you can refill with another item the energy reserves.
And my personal record is 377 km left!
Improx Games
01. Aug 2017 · 20:04 UTC
I love the art, but honestly the controls feel really frustrating. The sideways movement feels floaty, and somehow I never manage to get a boost when I want to use one. The game fits the theme really well.
unit684
01. Aug 2017 · 20:04 UTC
I love this game! It's a nice unique take on the classic shoot-em-up with some great graphics and sound effects.

I agreee that the controls feel a bit floaty but I think they add to the difficulty without feeling unfair or anything. My only real gripe is that some of the enemies seemed impossible to avoid if they spawn right in front of you as you get a boost. Could be my poor reaction time but I think a very short period of invincibility (maybe only to newly spawned enemies?) might be worth looking at.

Well done, one of my favourites so far :)
dankar
01. Aug 2017 · 20:06 UTC
Cool game! Really like the graphics. It felt to be based a lot on luck. You don't really have any time to evade crashing into an enemy after you spot it. The hit boxes for the power-ups were way to small and you missed them quite a lot. But I still found it fun and addictive! :) Good job!
pnkthrepwood
01. Aug 2017 · 20:09 UTC
Fun graphics! Easy to pick, but really hard to finish.
Sometimes you need to forcefully take a powerup and you can't evade the next ones, so you are left with no reaction time to evade the enemy ships.
nokusu
02. Aug 2017 · 10:00 UTC
Fun little game !

**Positive things :**

- Dig the graphics, the ships really look great !
- Same goes for the sound effects
- The controls were solid

**Negative things :**

- The powerups were a bit hard to get, maybe increasing their hitbox a bit would help so that you don't loos the benefits of the ship's small hitbox ?

Overall it was really cool, too bad it didn't have any music though, regardless it was fun to play, well done ! :)
alxm
02. Aug 2017 · 18:05 UTC
Fun game with nice graphics and sfx! Felt like *Vertical Shmup* meets *Helicopter Game* :-) Managed to get some powerup chains going that propelled me right through the middle of an enemy wave, precision flying right there! The fast pace and short length of each play is quite addicting.
JSMCAG
02. Aug 2017 · 19:09 UTC
Really impressive! The graphics, in particular, are very well done, some really cool pixel art there!
The game also has a really nice sense of speed when picking up fuel, making everything around you whoosh by (adding to the difficulty of the game)

I really only have three nitpicks: 1. the controls are a bit floaty, which is both a good and a bad thing - in this case, it needs a little fine tuning; 2. the fuel is surprisingly hard to get, probably because in the attempt to make hitboxes small, you also made them hard to get; and 3. no music is a bit disappointing.

Overall, I'm impressed with your work, it is a really solid entry! Good job!
Badly Drawn Rod
02. Aug 2017 · 20:13 UTC
Well, this definitely had a touch of the one-more-go about it. I particularly liked how you made it very easy to restart rather than dumping me back to a title screen, so of course I kept trying again and again. I like it.
Johngun
02. Aug 2017 · 22:15 UTC
Not bad. Even if you had an idea going in, you did a good job embracing the theme.
Ajayajayaj
03. Aug 2017 · 00:21 UTC
Nice game! I really like how when you die, the game keeps going in the background, and when you retry, you spawn back in. I wish the sound effects weren't as loud though.
Pixel Game Wizard
03. Aug 2017 · 00:40 UTC
This is a fun game. I didn't find the controls too bad overall. It's very difficult to get far, sometimes I think that there isn't enough warning for oncoming ships. Anyway, good job. :-)
wesley werner
03. Aug 2017 · 04:58 UTC
Your ship's inertia makes it feel "slidey" and hard to navigate with precision, great entry overall!
Shaolin Dave
03. Aug 2017 · 05:20 UTC
Pretty difficult (sometimes impossible, in fact. I think three times in a row I spawned INSIDE of enemies, causing me to insta-die). If the random locations were polished a little, and sprites were smaller on screen, it'd really help improve the experience.

Graphics were good, the gameplay mechanic was interesting.
SVR_Audio
03. Aug 2017 · 14:20 UTC
This game is hard, REALLY hard, but I think that is what makes this game unique, it is a challenge stay alive, the art is good so as is the sfx, it's a good game =)
Rombus
03. Aug 2017 · 22:26 UTC
Nice game man! I like the core idea of it, like you can port this to mobile and it'd be great!

The graphics looks awesome too

Congrats on the entry!
piscythe
04. Aug 2017 · 04:22 UTC
This game is certainly appealing. The sound effects are well done, the art style is cohesive, and overall it feels pretty good. Mechanically, I have some questions. I had problems with powerups spawning on the sides, out of my reach, and even more problems with how easy it is to boost right into enemies. Even when you're not boosting, it's hard to avoid slamming right into one of the formations of 3, though it feels pretty awesome to slip through such a formation. I made it to 223km from the finish on one run, and I suspect that had more to do with luck than skilled flying. The three power boosts were essential to stay in the game, as I would often crash with a boost bearing down on me. However, I felt that I should be able to boost closer to death than was actually the case. Regardless, I had quite a bit of fun playing this. Good work!
CMLSC
04. Aug 2017 · 06:50 UTC
Nice game! I recommend trying to keep everything on the same scale. If you're using a specific resolution for the ships, make every pixel the size of those pixels and multiply the size of the display to whatever size you'd like. Using different resolutions can be a bit tacky sometimes. Your graphics still look good though! The game could've used a bit more content as it was already using a fairly common genre. Good work though! :smile:
a333
04. Aug 2017 · 21:08 UTC
Very good and catchy game. Cool graphics and fun gameplay - nice twist on shmups there. Evading hostiles became a little luck-based on high speeds though.
Ace17
04. Aug 2017 · 21:17 UTC
Fun arcade game! The pixelated ships and the fonts are nice, I also like the low-fi explosion sound ; the item pick-up sound, on the other hand, quickly became annoying.
Too bad you can't fire missiles :-)
simonhutchinson
04. Aug 2017 · 22:40 UTC
Cool game! I really wanted some old-school-type music here, but I really liked your SFX. The gameplay feels pretty nice, and I think this is definitely in line with the theme. Nice work for 72 hours!
BLK Dragon
08. Aug 2017 · 11:57 UTC
Fun idea, nice visuals!
One nitpick -- ship movement has way too much of inertia, avoiding enemies feels kinda random test of luck.
quadtree
14. Aug 2017 · 06:49 UTC
Good graphics, and I found the concept where your level of energy was essentially represented by your vertical position on the screen to be interesting. If there's one complaint I'd make, it's that enemies often appear and crash into you before you get a chance to react, especially if you're moving very fast.