LudumData

Cult Fever by iDesigns

[raw]
made by iDesigns for LD 43 (JAM)

cover-2.jpg

How to play

Do you have G'roov? Test your skills in this rhythm game and help the cultists transcend their unholy flesh.

A for the yellow lane

S for the blue lane

K for the green lane

L for the red lane.

Press Enter (Return on Mac) to pause the game and Shift Enter (Shift Return on Mac) to resume.

cultfever01.jpg

The Ritual

In an insane ritual fest, cultists throw themselves off a cliff for the glory and satisfaction of the ol' mighty G'roov. Through an epic sound, they go out in style doing acrobatic stunts to the rhythm of the maestro's baton. Cultists will emerge from the left of the screen and will run towards the edge of the cliff in search of glory! If you jump too soon, you'll fall flat on your face and if you jump too late your stunt won't be up lord G'roovs unnatural taste.

Points

Points are awarded on how close you press the proper keys on each note. Wicked and Great earn you combo points and help maintain your multiplier. On a Louzy jump you'll still be awarded points, but the multiplier meter will reset and you'll make the illustrious G'roov unsatisfied with your efforts.

Our Team

We area small dev team from Brasil and this is our first Ludum Dare participation. The studio where we all work at, Mito Games, has its roots in educational games, so the thrill to participate in an all out challenge with fellow devs from all over the world was too sweet to pass by.

During this period most of us tackled tasks we usually wouldn't need to think about and it has enriched our team with new abilities and refulled our love for creating games.

It has been three nights of little sleep, but it was all worthwhile. We hope you enjoy our rendition on the theme of Ludum Dare 43 "Sacrifices Must Be Made".

HTML5 (web) http://idesigns.com.br/ludumdare/play
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/cult-fever

Ratings

Overall 160th 3.864⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Fun 171th 3.733⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 555th 3.1⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Theme 161th 4.023⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 50th 4.456⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Humor 37th 4.114⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Mood 199th 3.721⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

Rikun
04. Dec 2018 · 02:15 UTC
Good game, fun animation even sacrifice theme haha
JasAcken
04. Dec 2018 · 03:02 UTC
This was hysterical to play and the look was gorgeous! It was tough, though! I played it a few times and I just ended up smashing keys and hoping for the best. Thanks for a great laugh though!
Diogo Rocha
04. Dec 2018 · 03:15 UTC
Very fun concept, I just wish the visual layout of the game matched the controls better. Otherwise, very good!
🎤 iDesigns
04. Dec 2018 · 03:30 UTC
Thanks guys!The controls do take a little to get used to, we intend on making an easy mode.
legavroche
04. Dec 2018 · 03:42 UTC
Great art design! Song was a bit tough, I think I would've liked to see something a bit easier while I was getting use to the controls. Good job!
martincohen
04. Dec 2018 · 03:49 UTC
Nice take on the theme! Chuckled most of the time :D
JLV
04. Dec 2018 · 03:51 UTC
Great rhythm game ! The first thing that draws you in is the crazy rendition of the Ode to Joy, but the art is awesome, the gameplay is tight, and, as much as the layout of the keys combined with the UI is not perfect, I found the game manageable thanks to the repeating patterns, the generous health bar and the short length of the game.

Pros :
- Awesome artistic direction
- Lots of visual feedback makes for a really readable game
- Once the controls are mastered, we get that precious feeling of playing an instrument
- Well balanced (repetition, permissive health)

Cons :
- Some audio feedback would help (there is no time to manage your health when focusing on the cultists)
- Controls difficult to master at first, partly because of their space layout.

All in all, great work guys ! I had my fair share of fun on your game.
Rafael Lontra
04. Dec 2018 · 04:06 UTC
Guys, thanks a lot for the awesome feedbacks! We plan to keep on developing the game. About the easier tracks, well, I made a little mistake + bad luck at the 45' of the second time.. Unity crashed and killed the whole Normal difficulty song (since we were using it's git like tool, when it got back it downloaded the old version of the file and BOOM 2 days of work LOST), which would be the base for easy and hard. With less than 1 hour to go I lost all the notes!! So we had to make it again and even cut a part of the music off to publish it in time.. So sorry for it being too hard and also not the complete song :( there are still also some slightly out of time notes that I will fix in the next versions!! hope you enjoy playing as much as we enjoyed making it!!
Freixo
04. Dec 2018 · 04:25 UTC
Love the art and the overall concept, a bit too fast for me tho. Thx for playing Goat6 btw
mrspeaker
04. Dec 2018 · 04:28 UTC
Wow, that sucks about losing your work - and losing the easy mode! But I love the whole game, very polished and impressive! I got the hang of the keys after a while - it's funny, I understand why the game goes right-to-left, but having it 90 degrees rotated from the keyboard makes it a challenge. Once you get the hang of it it's fine though (which would have been easier to do with "easy" mode!)

Best part, the "3, 2, 1, go" voice. Very convincing!
exper105
04. Dec 2018 · 04:31 UTC
This is very well done!! :laughing:
I love the arts and seeing them leaping happily into the pit. haha..
It was hard for me though, since I'm not used to play rhythmical game. I ended up smashing ASKL all at the same time. LOL.
mmason
04. Dec 2018 · 06:26 UTC
Very nice work! good polish and the controls were responsive, fantastic artwork. For improvements I feel there should be some punishment for hitting launchers without cultists on them
Vasco Borges
04. Dec 2018 · 10:18 UTC
The art is so good!! And I really like the concept of the game :)
HobinHiori
04. Dec 2018 · 19:15 UTC
Really good game, I love it
arzi
04. Dec 2018 · 21:00 UTC
Thanks for reminding me how much I suck at rhyth games :D It was good though!
Cipery
05. Dec 2018 · 08:48 UTC
Wow, great game, you impressed me even before I started the game - with the web presentation, to me, it says that you put effort into this jam. The game gfx - same thing, it's really lovely, well done, it just fits :) The gameplay - at first, I lost horribly, I could focus just one one hand, so I tried it more times and it got better, I even finished it to the end.

You say that you do educational games in your game studio, so maybe this game "educates" (improves) our hand-eye coordination :)

Great job!
Rafael Lontra
05. Dec 2018 · 10:19 UTC
@cipery , thank you so much for your feedback, I did not say but I do am a music teacher even before studying games! haahah unfortunately this game did not have a nice learning curve due to the problems I mentioned above, but surely we will release new versions with a lot more to offer! thanks for the kind review and for taking the time to master the game :)
CalLavicka
05. Dec 2018 · 18:38 UTC
Nice work on this game! It's very polished with the animations, and the whole idea of it is amusing and awesome. The only real issue I have is that the actual game is a little bare-bones with only one song and missing certain features like audio feedback when you get/miss a beat, and no ability to remap to keys to a more comfortable. However, I feel like the graphics and effects really tie it all together. Nicely done!
Luqey
05. Dec 2018 · 18:40 UTC
Add a miss if you press the wrong button, I was able to get a close to perfect score by just pushing all the buttons to the beat. Other than that I love the art, the music was to my liking as it is the season; and the overall concept was very creative, great job!
Chacharl
05. Dec 2018 · 18:43 UTC
This game is sooo much fun, I like the way you turn the "sacrifice" theme, nice work !
Ilseroth
05. Dec 2018 · 18:43 UTC
Honestly it was pretty cool stuff, I just feel like it was off beat. Like, I play a good deal of rhythm games and I felt like rather then pressing the buttons to the music I would press it like, half a beat later, or it would thwap the poor little cultist in the face. That said once I adjusted to going about half a beat slower then the music and focused more on the cultists then the music, I was able to succeed. Thanks for the game :heart:

Edit: To confirm my suspicion, I actually just muted the game and did a playthrough without the noise and tripled my score.
Stamblew
05. Dec 2018 · 18:43 UTC
This game is really good. The controls are not, though. The music time is perfectly synchronized with the character spawn. The theme has been used perfectly.
Antoine Vion
05. Dec 2018 · 18:46 UTC
Super cool and fun game ! Good job every one (But pleeaaaaase think about azerty keyboard haha :p)
Nice job dudes! Very polish (best music tho haha)
ShenDev
05. Dec 2018 · 19:18 UTC
The best score I got after trying for a while! Awesome game I can't say anything bad after the ammount of time I spent on it, I wanted a perfect score hahah. Maybe I'll try again at another moment. The song election was really on point, I love it so much. Good job with this one!

![score.JPG](///raw/813/e1/z/1f1fb.jpg)
arkinrev
05. Dec 2018 · 19:32 UTC
This was fantastic, and mixing a rhythm game with a cult sacrifice was unexpected. I really liked the G'roov tentacles. Really great work!
Gaming Night
05. Dec 2018 · 20:36 UTC
I have no fu****** skill at this game ! very frustating because I liked it !
Sapphiris
05. Dec 2018 · 21:58 UTC
I love this game! Pretty fun and charismatic! Though I think it already starts too difficult, it should be slower at the start and speed up as the time passes. About the controls, I'd prefer if the keys were the opposite (L for yellow, K for blue, S for green and A for red), maybe it would me more intuitive this way.

Great work!
Howard Duong
05. Dec 2018 · 22:30 UTC
This game is really good! It hard grasp the control at first, but once I got it. The game get really fun and addicting very quick. Great job guy!
daruudaruu
05. Dec 2018 · 23:22 UTC
Ohhhhh maaan, I reaaaally liked the idea behind the game and it is so funny but... I find myself unable to play with ASKL. A piece of advice: I THINK it would be great to have tha actual letters show in the traps. Because even if I KNOW what letters correspond to what colour, I find it very hard to coordinate my fingers.

Also, and this is important: think about colour-blind people. They can't play this game. But if you add the letters...
GerardB
06. Dec 2018 · 00:33 UTC
This game is awesome!!! At first I got demolished but after some games I got used to it and had a blast! Still I would have prefered a bit of a slower pace.

Also the graphics look great (and oh boy I love those tentacles).

Congrats!
Kaish
06. Dec 2018 · 00:48 UTC
Mandaram bem pessoal, ficou bem divertido. Gostei bastante da arte e das animações. Brasil s2
Rafael Lontra
06. Dec 2018 · 14:29 UTC
@ilseroth , thanks so much for the feedback, the track is a BIT out of time yes, we had a last minute problem with the code and lost the track. Also there should be 2 levels of difficulty, but since we lost it all and had to re-do the time coding of the taps, we only published 3/4 of the original NORMAL level song. there should be an easy mode for begginers, and we will soon have the complete game with more control options and probably also mobile!! Thanks you all!!!
Rafael Lontra
06. Dec 2018 · 14:30 UTC
@kaish , muito obrigado pelo feedback!! TMJ!
Rafael Lontra
06. Dec 2018 · 14:31 UTC
@gerardb , haha that's the idea! we could have published with just the easy mode song (I had to choose in the last hour what to do again), but I thought the game would be fun for longer if we published the NORMAL mode. heheh still I had to cut the last 30s of the song to be able to publish in time :( Soon we will have the full version published!! feel free to give more tips!
Dizzy
06. Dec 2018 · 14:46 UTC
Adorei o conceito do jogo criado por vocês, muito criativo e aborda muito bem o tema. Fiquei um pouco confuso no começo até pegar o jeito por estar acostumado de jogos musicais com as notas vindo de cima, e não pela lateral. Belo trabalho para primeira gamejam :D.
theforceluke
06. Dec 2018 · 15:31 UTC
It was fun :) I really liked the animations and the music.
DDRKirbyISQ
21. Dec 2018 · 19:29 UTC
9765! I'm sure I could break 10k if I tried again.

I'd agree with most of the feedback given above. Music synchronization is very very rarely implemented correctly (especially factoring in audio latency) so I'll try not to fault you =too= much for not getting it right in a jam timeframe. I did find myself trying to rely on visuals, as you often have to do when note charts are off-sync.

The control layout was a tad awkward to map visually, but I found it much easier to process when I....tilted my head sideways. I would recommend not spacing out the controls across the keyboard though, please place them adjacent to each other!

Anyways, the game itself is super thematic (reminds me of [Samurai Shaver](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/samurai-shaver)!) and the visuals and music choice are great. Of all the entries I've played I think this one has the most obvious potential to become something really great with some additional post-jam work put into it (if you so desire).

Great job on your first Ludum Dare game!

Thank you also for being a proper LD citizen and opting out of the audio category. High five!
🎤 iDesigns
04. Jan 2019 · 16:22 UTC
@ddrkirbyisq thanks man! I am glad you enjoyed it.