LudumData

Gemheart Hunter by Taffaz

[raw]
made by Taffaz for LD 39 (COMPO)

In this game you are controlling a robot on Mars with the job of killing hostile alien nests to retrieve Gemhearts to sell on Earth.

You'll need to kill aliens and nests to gather resources to upgrade the robot and drop charging docks down to keep your power levels high.

Controls

Mouse Click to move robot. Moving the mouse whilst clicked will change directions. 'F' to fire 'D' to drop charger

Tips

Keep an eye on your energy bar because running out is fatal. Upgrades make a huge difference but be careful with move speed as it can be hard to control. There are three tiers of spawner and they all have a chance to drop a Gemheart but the chances for the first 2 tiers is low. At the highest fire rate your energy depletes quickly if you're not in a charging zone.

Hope you enjoy, leave a comment and I'll make sure to play your game too.

Note: The Linux build is the same as the windows and I haven't tested it so it may not even run. Let me know what happens if you try it.

HTML5 (web) http://www.taffaz.com/ludum/ld39/
Windows http://www.taffaz.com/ludum/ld39/GemheartHunter-1.0.jar
Linux http://www.taffaz.com/ludum/ld39/GemheartHunter-1.0.jar
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/gemheart-hunter

Ratings

Overall 549th 2.879⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Fun 446th 2.909⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 363th 3⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Theme 248th 3.656⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 619th 2.125⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Audio 498th 1.906⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Humor 476th 1.692⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 573th 2.214⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 26🗨️

Feedback

pauljs
31. Jul 2017 · 13:43 UTC
Nice tiny game ! Harder than expected ! With better graphism and music, i think this game could be really great ! A lot of potential !
Tero Pulkkinen
31. Jul 2017 · 18:07 UTC
I didn't get far. It seems to slow down to a crawl, and then moving becomes more difficult. Obviously this is in line with the theme, but looks a little frustrating. But anyway, great work to get game finished in time.
🎤 Taffaz
31. Jul 2017 · 18:12 UTC
@pauljs
Thanks for the comment. Completely agree with needing better graphics and music, something all my LD entries suffer from that I should really focus on next time.

@tero-pulkkinen

Do you mean slow down to a crawl gameplay wise or speed? If the latter I think that must be a performance issue I haven't spotted. If you mean gameplay wise then I think the main fix is to upgrade your move speed to max and focus on tier 3 spawners for the gemhearts.
geeitsomelaldy
31. Jul 2017 · 18:21 UTC
Once I got over the weird controls, and the increased difficulty that having to move in order to aim gave, I had fun with this. One thing I would say to anyone playing this is to not go for too many speed upgrades. It got to the point where I was going so fast that I ran straight into a pile of enemies before I could react.
🎤 Taffaz
31. Jul 2017 · 18:37 UTC
@geeitsomelaldy Yeah I think I hinted at the move speed issue in the instructions because I had the same issue but found that without that speed the end game was a bit too slow as things were more spread out. Thanks for playing and commenting.
jahndis
31. Jul 2017 · 18:37 UTC
I really enjoyed this. I wish the gemheart drop rate was a little more frequent, but regardless you did really well with this. While I felt really powerful by getting all of the upgrades, it still felt difficult enough.

Also, it worked just fine on linux :)
Hephyrius
31. Jul 2017 · 19:06 UTC
I enjoyed playing this, felt refreshing. One of my gripes are the controls, I think an alternative shooting button would be better.
Larx
31. Jul 2017 · 19:06 UTC
Quite nice concept with slightly strange controls, but I enjoyed it.
jbasinger
31. Jul 2017 · 19:47 UTC
Strange controls but once I figured out how to upgrade things and got the hang of it, it was really fun! Well done!
FloBar
31. Jul 2017 · 20:03 UTC
The controls are a bit weird and think it needs more sound effects and maybe some music but the concept is there it looks pretty promising.
Sivael
31. Jul 2017 · 20:09 UTC
Quite nice, but annoying if you get drained.
PiotrJ
31. Jul 2017 · 20:16 UTC
Pretty fun game! Not a fan of controls as well, but works well enough. Bonus points for using libgdx!
notime4games
31. Jul 2017 · 20:22 UTC
I really like it!
It's too bad it starts lagging after just a minute and becomes super hard to control, aswell as the collision detection of my bullets stop working properly, causing me to miss a lot of my shots.
Pandakipu
31. Jul 2017 · 22:11 UTC
Nice concept. It was a little difficult to aim at first. Good job.
Jupiter_Hadley
31. Jul 2017 · 22:26 UTC
Interesting game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4BqGc9csNo
loyance
31. Jul 2017 · 22:35 UTC
Gameplay feels kind of slow and sounds are on the low sides, but overall this feels like a good game
It's a good thing you have upgrades. They really do save you sometimes
-FL-
01. Aug 2017 · 00:14 UTC
The concept is awesome, but there some problems on gameplay that obfuscated it. You can get max values really fast and is really hard to move while on max speed. A speed down toggle key may make the game very better! My record was 7 . Other problem is that the game screen is bigger than my display.
Joe Miller
02. Aug 2017 · 01:07 UTC
Fun enough to move around and shoot, kind of wish you could rotate without moving, but I got the hang of the switch-back maneuver to blast chasing enemies. Seems like the play area was waaaay bigger than where all the goodies were, I went off in one direction for awhile but didn't find anything and headed back to the middle where all the action was.
xel
02. Aug 2017 · 06:15 UTC
Fun game. It was cool to work your way around the map while being careful about how often you place recharging stations.
Baby Dino Herd
02. Aug 2017 · 14:49 UTC
Really interesting! Had a very hard time collective very many gemstones, though. I enjoyed the decisions to place additional charging points around the map, making it important to space them out thoughtfully.
SimplePotential
05. Aug 2017 · 22:29 UTC
Neat idea. I found it a bit slow but otherwise was pretty good.
designernap
06. Aug 2017 · 20:02 UTC
Quite a slow burn but I like the radar. Frustrating when an enemy spawns right next to you without time to react BUT a very nice idea. Great stuff.
Belga54
12. Aug 2017 · 13:52 UTC
Nice idea and the concept is great ! I liked the controls and they was so easy to learn not like the others said. But the game would be better if you worked a bit more on the sound effects and added some music (I have an advice for you : in your next LD, use sfxr or visit the bfxr website to make random sound effects like explosions, scoring points, lasers, hit sound effect and all this stuff; for the music download Bosca Ceoil).