The adventure of Dotty by Erkberg

made by Erkberg for LD 39 (COMPO)

(Warning: Way too long genre description incoming)
The adventure of Dotty is a seriously lighthearted, slightly over the top down bullet hell typing exploration walking simulator.

All platform versions plus source are available on itch.io:
https://erkberg.itch.io/the-adventure-of-dotty

Enjoy! And post your score in the comments. The winner gets a cake which is totally not a lie.

~ Story ~
This story begins in a tiny village. Little Dotty lived a life full of happiness and joy there. Raised only by her mother, she did not have one single care in the whole wide world. But then, one cloudy, rainy and just all around lousy day, people started getting ill. Little Dotty's mother was also affected. And so little Dotty set out to find the cure. Because who else could do it but little Dotty? Rumour has it that the recipe has been split into four fragments and scattered throughout the land. Whoever would do such a thing is beyond me. There is not much time. Little Dotty has to hurry to find all fragments of the recipe and return to the village.
Thankfully she possesses the awesomesauce power of Zenpassana™ meditation!

~ Controls ~
Arrows to move, Ctrl to run (drains power)
While not running, press the key shown to meditate (Zenpassana™ style)
Ctrl / Cmd to advance text, Return to skip entire dialogue

~ Special thanks to ~
My eternal bro Danny for a fabulous jam weekend and for synchronizing Dotty (check out his game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/jet-pengy)
My amazing testers Dani, Dirk and Mör (check out his game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/r2blue2)

~ Tools used ~
Unity, Visual Studio, GIMP, Audacity, FL Studio (VSTs: SQ8L, Model-E, Dexed, Drum Pro, BellsEbuth, Chau Gongs, tp_field)

~ Timelapse ~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9zQdohwTqY

Once again, I had a great time developing this slightly silly game and am very satisfied with the result. I stepped out of my comfort zone a little this time by going for a more experimental mix of game mechanics. The result might be far from perfection, but I hope you enjoy it nontheless. Really looking forward to playing all your creations, have a wonderful day!

Yours sincerely,
~ Erkberg ~

HTML5 (web)	https://erkberg.itch.io/the-adventure-of-dotty
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-adventure-of-dotty

Ratings

Overall	121^th	3.7⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Fun	62^th	3.8⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	73^th	3.8⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Theme	480^th	3.2⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	343^th	3.2⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Audio	33^th	3.95⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Humor	21^th	4⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Mood	134^th	3.45⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Given		22🗳️	16🗨️

Feedback

edmond00

31. Jul 2017 · 12:04 UTC

The idea around meditation is interresting and it is nice to have a progressive difficulty that let the player learn the basis. The controls are not very intuitive but I suppose it is a part of the game. Still, I wonder if it will not be better to remove the run mode that is not very usefull and always decrease energy when you walk instead. In my opinion, the narrative phases was a little too long. Also you need to chose between the humoristic and cute cartoon and the dark music from the eighties.

MatKubik

02. Aug 2017 · 20:05 UTC

I like the fact that meditate recharge your power and that you have to meditate with random keys. It gives a typing-game aspect to your game and it's fun. I had fun on it and the voices make me laugh ;) Great game !

supremefist

02. Aug 2017 · 20:09 UTC

Nice! Had fun while playing it and managed to finish it. The game mechanic used to meditate is new to me! Thanks for showing it to me, very interesting! Good work!

SuperCrunchy

02. Aug 2017 · 22:33 UTC

Simple, innovative and fun. I liked it!

I particularly liked the typing minigame that you could do while trying to move and avoid obstacles. Really put up a challenge to multitask between all of this.
I died 2 times after the third fragment, and none from the fourth to the village.

I would probably rebalance either the damage of the bullets (need to be increased), or the power consumption of the rush (needs to be reduced). Right now rushing is almost useless (except in rare cases to avoid some bullets by a bit).

By the way, I loved the voice-over audio, especially the evil guy voice! :grinning:

guckstift

04. Aug 2017 · 22:24 UTC

Fine game, fella. The voice over is really awesome as already said. It's true! Believe me! And the zenpassana meditation (TM) ... I already use it successfully in my every day life ^v^ Helped me learning to type even more faster. Thanks for that! My gf likes your game too, but she sucked up at the gameplay. The music kinda electro dance music reminded me of a special track from Haken ;)
Also I like the story of your game, as always with a lot of fantasy and humor!
Please never let us stop to jam together! Its always fun

cakemonitor

05. Aug 2017 · 13:13 UTC

Nice work! I scored 22,940 in endless mode. I think it would be interesting if the bullets did more damage while dotty is not meditating but only a small amount when she is, and for meditation to take a little longer - perhaps typing whole words or phrases.

simonhutchinson

07. Aug 2017 · 21:14 UTC

This is deceptively sophisticated in both visuals and gameplay. I was really pleasantly surprised. I really like the world you set up here, and your screenshots don't do justice to your visuals! Perhaps it's because a lot of the polish here is in the movement. Really nice compo entry!

Pandakipu

07. Aug 2017 · 21:31 UTC

MOTHER !!! :'(

Good job, it's was really interresting. I didn't really understand what the letters were about at first :)

Capitals

11. Aug 2017 · 12:03 UTC

This was really interesting to play. I really enjoyed the game, I felt like the game was complete - something rare in Ludum Dare. I enjoyed the meditation mechanic and the difficulty scales appropriatly. If I was to say an area in which this game could improve - it would be, a more varied options for control scheme, I felt a bit uncomfortable using the arrows and control, however thats a minor gripe. Keep it up, I'd like to see more of this. You could possibly add a boss fight at the end - that'll round it off nice :)

HuvaaKoodia

11. Aug 2017 · 15:14 UTC

The absurd, tongue-in-cheek plot and presentation are marvelous. The dialog and voices are very funny too.

The typing meditation mechanic is less to my liking. Having to take my eyes off the screen and look at the keyboard (as my hands were not in their proper typing positions due to having to use the arrow keys for moving) makes dodging bullets nigh on impossible. Not that you need to dodge them all, but that is what I always strive for in any *bullet hell'ish* type of deal.

I would have enjoyed the controls more if it was all typing (quick time events basically) or if it was all bulled dodging. Now that I think about it maybe if the key prompts were only WASD and QEZXC then it would be possible to press them without having to take a peek. You should test that at least.

Good job otherwise.

MAT4DOR

14. Aug 2017 · 21:07 UTC

Love everything about this game! OMG the sound is hilarious. Love how it turns into a endless game at the end!

josehzz

14. Aug 2017 · 21:31 UTC

The voice acting got me, so funny :). I found a bug where if you press 2 arrow key at the same time you can't press a letter key.

mspawa

14. Aug 2017 · 22:29 UTC

I love the voice acting xD it makes me laugh every time Dotty and her (SPOILER ALERT) father talk. (/SPOILER)
I like the fact that at the end you can enter the endless mode. But it is a little hard to look at the screen and the keyboard at the same time, I received a lot of punchs because of this, but I understand that this is the difficult of the game so, nice job!!!

LeReveur

15. Aug 2017 · 00:24 UTC

I was not so positive just judging on the screenshots, but I'm happy I gave it a try! It was fun, and that idea with the narrative sounds is genius! The story is fun too, and it was just enough challenging to be fun without being too easy nor too hard. Oh, and last but not least : the charging method. I would never think about melting a search/move/avoiding game with a "hit the good key" one, that's really unexpected. Well done, and I think I give you the last votes you need to reach the 20 (while writing that, I'm reading exactly 19.875 :D).

FuriousWitch

22. Aug 2017 · 06:06 UTC

Amazing game, Erk! As always you make such a moving story and the music was fantastic. I loved playing it. The voice-over was a great idea and very well done too. Congratulations :)