LudumData

Crushing Depths by Ben ONeal

[raw]
made by Ben ONeal for LD 42 (COMPO)

See how far into the depths you can sink!

Press Left and Right to navigate the winding abyss. Press Space to push back the darkness that forever closes in around you. But if you push it back too far, you'll stop earning points. Refresh the page to restart.

Your score multiplier is determined by how far down you have sunk, and how much of the darkness overlaps your light radius. See if you can beat 100,000 points!

The highest confirmed score so far was 177k. My personal best is 94k.

The entire game is written in vanilla JS without any libraries, rendering direct to canvas. It weighs in at 4.5kb total unminified.

Future enhancements (which I couldn't implement before the deadline):

  • Gameplay
  • Press 'Enter' to start/restart (so it doesn't immediately play on load, and reload isn't required to try again)
  • Display the current score multiplier so strategies become more discoverable
  • Persist scores to an online leaderboard
  • Display current leaderboard rank next to current score
  • Display score needed to reach next leaderboard rank below current score

  • Pickups: hidden in the edges of the encroaching darkness (only revealed and absorbed by your light) which do things like temporarily pause the growth of the darkness or boost the range of your light

  • Graphics

  • Particle effects flowing from the overlap between light/dark into the player to visualise point gain
  • Subtle background cues to convey descent
  • "Pulse"-like effect when pressing Space, to show the pushing back against the darkness

  • Make the darkness appear more "blobby", organic, and nebulous (like metaballs or smoke), so it feels more coherent and sinister (my initial implementation thrashed the frame rate so had to be scrapped, though its still in the source code)

  • Audio

  • Add audio feedback
  • Eery muted ambience when avoiding the darkness
  • Agitated dark ambience when in contact with the darkness

  • Modulate intensity of music inline with visual tension and progression

  • Accessibility

  • Make it responsive to fit any screen
  • Handle touch input
HTML5 (web) https://crushing-depths.now.sh/
Source code https://crushing-depths.now.sh/src.zip
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/crushing-depths

Ratings

Overall 534th 3.095⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 589th 2.762⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 361th 3.19⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 207th 3.857⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 492th 2.929⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 423th 2.816⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 28🗳️ 2🗨️

Feedback

Akaneiro
12. Aug 2018 · 16:26 UTC
Cool!
sdrrv
12. Aug 2018 · 17:58 UTC
Its Simple But Really cool! Kepp up the good work!!
Xyntell
12. Aug 2018 · 18:54 UTC
The idea is soo good! But I was hoping that the gameplay would be a bit more interesting! Decent work :D
Nathan Ridley
12. Aug 2018 · 20:47 UTC
Great work! Simple concept, well executed.
henriksoderberg
13. Aug 2018 · 09:05 UTC
Really cool little game! A restart button would be nice.
chaitae
13. Aug 2018 · 15:58 UTC
Nice color pallet, very eye catching.
Sentmoraap
15. Aug 2018 · 16:49 UTC
Good risk/reward management, and good difficulty management. It's fun.
Ben Penwell
17. Aug 2018 · 07:02 UTC
This game design is great! I could play this game for hours :)
Hannes Rahm
17. Aug 2018 · 07:07 UTC
I liked the visuals. Neat, clean and simple. Very readable.
Didn't get the mechanics without reading the info text.
GG!
Dark Roast Studios
17. Aug 2018 · 07:17 UTC
pretty cool :) I liked how some parts seemd to shoot out from the sides more. SOme nice sounds and a few more variations in hopw the "walls" bhave and this would be very intersting indeed
juxipolo
19. Aug 2018 · 18:55 UTC
Frame rate felt very inconsistent, which makes it difficult to react appropriately when it occasionally sped up. I can't tell it that was intentional, but I suspect it isn't. I don't think my computer is that slow, but maybe the game loop could be made frame rate independent?
🎤 Ben ONeal
20. Aug 2018 · 00:17 UTC
@juxipolo The walls close in around you at a percentage rate per second, which means as they get bigger, they grow faster, and this is by design. The entire game is frame rate independent, with the unfortunate exception of the "pushing back" mechanic, which was an oversight that I've already fixed but can't upload because of the compo rules. For the pushing back, it's currently a percentage per frame, so a slower frame rate will mean you push back less effectively, which actually makes it easier in the beginning.

On my macbook, the performance is around 2.5ms per frame, which is about 400 fps, but it's "capped" at 60fps. I doubt your computer could ever be slow enough to drop under that, unless you're also mining bitcoin. It's likely what you're experiencing is the exponential increase in wall growth as they get bigger.
juxipolo
20. Aug 2018 · 01:58 UTC
@ben-oneal Chrome reports fairly steady 60 fps (well, 50-70 with dev tools enabled), so it doesn't seem to be the framerate. Player movement doesn't feel like 60 fps, though. Like if I hold a direction the movement doesn't feel quite even and sometimes looks a bit choppy, and like maybe there's a tiny bit of input lag?

Maybe the walls growing faster is what's throwing me. I don't know, I can't put my finger on it, something just doesn't feel quite right to me.

Other than the technical issues (that I may be the only one experiencing), the game is simple, but fun :smile:
ohmmus
20. Aug 2018 · 02:49 UTC
I really liked the game mechanics! This was a really soothing game to play while stoned, I think one of my playthroughs was about 5-10 minutes and I only got about 5k, haha! Great job, and I'll be back to try for a better score later!
🎤 Ben ONeal
20. Aug 2018 · 03:36 UTC
@ohmmus Ha! Yeah it's built around a strong risk/reward principle: the easier you make it for yourself the less points you earn. The harder you make it for yourself the more points you earn, exponentially.

The highest scores were achieved by skilfully keeping the walls tightly packed around the light on two/three sides the entire time. It's hard but you can certainly notice a massive difference in point gain from even a few seconds of being tightly surrounded.
Supernapie
20. Aug 2018 · 09:06 UTC
Very well done! The underwater feel was very real with just a few basic shapes and au point colors. The only thing i thought was missing, was a saved highscore. It doesn't need to be global leaderboard. Just local storage would be enough.
wildcard
20. Aug 2018 · 09:27 UTC
Simple idea and good execution, I like how the player is incentivized to play the game with as little space as possible. I think this would make a great mobile game! Well done :D
Predominant
21. Aug 2018 · 10:43 UTC
Can just hold space and float down to get an inifite high score? Or am I doing something wrong?
🎤 Ben ONeal
22. Aug 2018 · 00:37 UTC
@predominant Try it and see! :D

If you aren't touching the darkness, you won't accumulate any score at all. If you hold space constantly and try to stay near the darkness, your score gain will be incredibly low. Over time, the rate of wall growth increases, as does the speed of descent, while your ability to push the darkness back and your rate of movement do not. Within a minute or so, the rate of darkness growth will exceed your ability to push it back at all, and staying near the edges becomes incredibly difficult as they fluctuate faster than you can move. Soon enough, you'll be overwhelmed, having earned almost no points for your troubles.

Strictly speaking, the scoring is implemented as such: `count * difficulty * deltaTime * (level + 1)` Count is the number of darkness circles you're touching. Difficulty is the cumulative radius of each circle minus your radius (which deceases over time, thus increasing score gain). Level starts at 0 and increases by 1 every 5 seconds.

Essentially this means that it's essentially impossible to get a respectable score without making it difficult for yourself, and the highest scores can only be gained by a combination of luck and skilful aggressive play. I'd be surprised if anyone even made it into the tens of thousands by playing it super safe before the game crushed them.