Bug Squasher by erikiene
👇
:bug: <---squash it now!
The bugs... they're..... they're running out of SPACE!
Try and keep the pesky bugs from ESCaping by squishing them using your keyboard keys. Be warned - bash your keys hard and fast enough and you will hurt your fingers (and possibly break your real world keyboard). Are you the promised one who will survive all 10 waves and beat the highscore? We invite you to find out...
Post your final score in the comments to see how well you compare to other players!
Highscore: 26910 (by @eduardo-yukio)
The People
- Goda Zalalyte - code / UI
- Andrius Mackevicius - sound effects / voice overs / music (ORO Audio)
- Paulius Cerkauskas - 3D models
- Erikas Kamaitis - code
The Tools
- Unity 2018.2.3
- Visual Studio 2017
- Autodesk 3ds Max
- Adobe Photoshop
- Ableton Live
- Audacity
- Trello
- Mindmeister
- Slack
- Coffee
The Experience
The "Ludum Dare 42 Starts in" timer was at 2 days 23 hours and 35 minutes when our team was first assembled. We had never worked as a unit before. But against all odds we created a game and boy oh boy did we have fun doing it.
The entirety of the game (i.e. all audio, visual & code assets) was created within the time span of the jam.
Creating a (mostly) playable game was a rich experience which helped us kickstart our unit as a team. We plan to finalise this game in the near future by removing the oh-so-many bugs (~~pun unintended~~) and adding that last bit of polish. We then hope to keep this momentum going and apply it to some new, bigger project. One thing is for sure - we will definitely be coming back for a future ludum dare!
The Bugs
While I would love this section to contain a list of unique names given to each of the little critters that participated in our experiment, unfortunately below you will only find a list of known bugs, which can only grow with your help in the comments:
- ~~End game scoring does not display actual values on the webgl build~~ (fixed as of v1.01)
- Top left key not clickable in-game for keyboards where the key is anything other than BackQuote
- ~~Negative points are not given for misses on keys where a bug has been killed... so space out your kills, people! (am I allowed to tag this one "a feature not a bug"?..)~~ (fixed as of v1.03)
- ~~Exception thrown if player get finger-breaker during main menu~~ (fixed as of v1.02)
Change Log
- v1.01 (16/08/2018) - fixed end game stats display to now reflect actual score. Fixed code that prevented the late game theme from playing.
- v1.02 (18/08/2018) - made build handle exceptions + fixed bug which was causing reported exceptions in the first place.
- v1.03 (20/08/2018) - adjusted volumes on audiosources to be more consistent. Fixed bug which prevented negative points from registering on missed clicks (on keys that had bugs killed on them); the bug meant that a high score can be reached more easily, so this fix unfortunately means we had to reset the highscore.
Now click the link below and squash some bugs! And don't forget - your feedback is very much appreciated :heart:
| HTML5 (web) | https://e.itch.io/escape-from-space-geca |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/bug-squasher |
Ratings
| Overall | 375th | 3.583⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 266th | 3.585⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 111th | 3.815⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 743th | 3.323⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 533th | 3.531⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 261th | 3.469⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 83th | 3.836⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 523th | 3.203⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 79🗳️ | 81🗨️ |
good job guys ^^
Score: 28490
Bugs Killed: 293
Bugs Escaped: 2/10.
It also looks like you had fun making it :) Congratulations
I did not think about making a screenshot of my high-score... :x
Cheers!
- The Koala Squad
Overall enjoyable time killer with some challenge. Well done!
BOW TO YOUR NEW KING!!
Score: 28730 :crown:
Bugs Killed: 293
Bugs Escaped: 2/10
@balance686 - sorry about the exception! I now realise I shouldn't have disabled a thing during building.. Will fix asap, thank you for bringing it to our attention and thank you also for the kind comments!
Pros :
- Great concept, and innovative take on the theme
- Addictive score system and bug-free (???) implementation
- Polished graphics and audio give plenty of feedback to the player
- Hilarious voice over
- Balanced difficulty curve
Cons :
- By definition, harder for non-qwerty users
- Restarting a game takes a little too long
All in all, excellent work !
there's a good feel to it.
is the game infinite or it their a certain number of waves ?
While I think it's 100% worth it to use the idea that you had given that its hilarious, it's not really using the theme and the possibilities it offers.
Doesn't change that its the near perfect jam game given it has a great length, fitting audio and music, a unique concept and gameplay idea thats perfect for the given format and a terrible pun in the name.
It's all very cheesy and knows that it is, which made it a great experience.
[highscore.png](///raw/cc8/81/z/1a238.png)
@jlv - I wish it was bug free.. But I am happy you didn't encounter (or notice) any! Thanks for the kind comments, I think you definitely appeased @mackandrius , our audio man. Regarding the cons - adapting the game to more varied keyboards is in the pipeline as is also making it restart properly, not to the beginning of the splash.
@tymus - thank you for playing! there are 10 waves and thanks to your comment I realise we haven't made it clear, so thank you for pointing that ou, i'll try and adjust the description.
@peringo - damn, I wish I knew how to write such well constructed critique/praise in one comment! Regarding the theme - when they announced it on twitter, Mike attached a pic of a cluttered warehouse so it was obvious most games will deal with resource (space) management. We thought it'd be cool to "think outside the box" so interpreted space as the space key.
@eduardo-yukio - I think you had attached an image, but I can't see it anymore.. Any chance you remember your score? I can't add you as the champion without it:/
@joe-sycalik - as with others - thank you for playing and giving feedback. Just out of interest - was it clear to you that the bugs are literally running out of the space key (hence fitting the theme in our opinion)? I'm not justifying our theme interpretation if you think it's not that great, rather I'm trying to understand if maybe we haven't communicated it well.
Easy to understand and pickup but yet very fun to play !
The voiceover is epic on every level ! :smile:
Can I get some thoughts and prayers though ?
I was rushing through the heat of wave 6 and I lost track of my fingers on my keyboard and... I accidently pressed F5 and refreshed to game... :sweat_smile:
The music is catchy and effective !
Overall, nice one guys !
As a non-touchtyper I found this pretty challenging, cool idea overall.
@maksime - daaaaaamn, no idea how that's not something we thought about... Thank you for bringing it to our attention! Not sure if we'll be able to do anything about it, but we'll try. And thank you for the kind feedback :v_tone1:
@drums - thank youu! Rarely do we see comments that say something good about the coding directly, so very heart warming to hear that.
@wahooney - I was about to say you might have discovered some hidden level of which none of the devs are aware :laughing: Thanks for playing! We hope challenging is good in this case.
That was loads of fun. The music on the higher waves really ramped up the tension. Nicely done people. :D
@roman-petrov @furiouswitch - we were hoping the controls/goal would be fairly intuitive, but as evident from your comments - they are not. We will try and add some sort of instructions soon. Thank you for pointing this out! And also for playing the game and taking your time to give us feedback.
@furiouswitch - that is a very interesting suggestion about a prospect of an educational experience. I've noted that down and the team will discuss if there's any way we can make this an educational game/device. thank you for the suggestion!
@cr0w - you might not have expected this when you posted your score, but congratulations, you are the new highscore holder!!! :trophy: The recently released bug fix meant getting a higher score has become harder (as it should have been from the start), so unfortunately for the previous title holder the highscore has been reset (sorry @eduardo-yukio! I invite you to try and reclaim your belt if you're not yet sick of the game :rolling_eyes:), and you, cr0w, are the new heavyweight bugsquishing champion of the woooooorld!
@ratherjolly a big thank you for playing and taking the time to comment. Such comments as "enjoyed smashing bugs" mean so much to us as they let us know we did something right to make the gameplay "feel" somewhat good.
@goudagames - yep.. and I'm personally very sorry for that. We realised that key is different on some keyboards a little too late and I unfortunately didn't find the time to code in a handler for all the possibilities. Fixing this is on top of the priority list, so hopefully we can take care of it soon. I thank you for playing the game, rating and pointing that fault out. You guys help us in improving not only this game, but our general line of thinking and processes.
I played it again, funny and challening as always. Here is the score!!
He's back to reclaim his title and I'm sorry @cr0w, but this guy is on another level by now. That is impressive, man. I haven't reached that score myself, but will make it a mission to do so. I want to see someone beat your score so that you come back and be all like "fools, this isn't even my final form" and get a score that's not even mathematically possible :fire:
@yetman - thank you for playing and the positive feedback! The finger breaker mechanic was added wayyy too late in the development and I'm scared to think how lame the game would be without it.. I'm glad we managed to add it on time.