Intergalactic Gold Rush by Omiya Games
ATTENTION: WebGL builds are Post-Jam builds, so don't use them for judging! See below for more instructions.
Downloads:
ATTENTION: WebGL builds are Post-Jam builds, so don't use them for judging! The web-hosts below lists out a couple of downloadables. Download the builds that has a version number below 1.0 (e.g. v0.6) for your platform to grab the build created within the Ludum Dare 38 rules (with a few critical bug fixes).
More Post-Jam Web Builds
Description:
It's the Apocalypse! Your world has started crumbling around you and monsters are out to eat you! Try to survive as long as possible while collecting the gold needed to save your planet!
Intergalactic Gold Rush is an arcade-style game of scoring big and surviving as long as possible. How do you do that? Collecting Gold Bricks, of course! Even better: If you collect a Gold Coin, you'll multiply the amount of Gold you receive! How does collecting gold save your planet? Who knows. Does it really matter?
As you move your character around the world, the landscape will begin to crumble around you and monsters will hunt you down. Don't stay still for too long or you risk not only getting eaten, but the land falling out from under you. Fall into the abyss and it's game over!
Thankfully, you have a magic gift for being able to create new land masses around you! Your magic's not unlimited, unfortunately, but it is regenerating. Luckily, there are also heart icons you can pick up in-case you lose any health and an armor icon for temporary invincibility!
So get out there and save the world before it falls apart beneath you!
Controls:
All setup schemes below are supported at the same time.
Setup #1
Keyboard, 2 hands using Arrow Keys
- Arrow Keys to move
- Z to jump
- X to use magic
Setup #2
Keyboard, 1 hand using WASD
- WASD to move
- Space to jump
- E to use magic
Setup #3
Keyboard, 2 hands using WASD & mouse
- WASD to move
- Space to jump
- Left-click the mouse button to use magic
Setup #4
Xbox 360 controller
- Left-stick to move
- A to jump
- B to use magic
Devlog:
Jam build:
- v0.6 - Making the magic controls more reactive. It still requires the player to be standing on land to activate.
- v0.5 - Fixing the player falling forever on lower-power machines. Made the enemy actually spawn properly over time. Hopefully the survival times are sorted correctly now.
- v0.4 - Making the character movement not dependent on frame-rate. Previous problem was actually worse than it sounds: faster frame-rate caused player to go slower!
- v0.3 - Fixing the magic meter from being infinite.
- v0.2 - Fixing crucial bugs: high scores weren't being logged correctly. Previously, you always had to exceed your previous score to get a new high score, even though high scores logs up to 10 entries.
- v0.1 - Initial release
Post-Jam build:
- v1.4 - Fixed credits. Changed the graphics for a few power-ups.
- v1.3 - Added lava biome. Enemies now make noises! Also, new footstep sounds! And new music!
- v1.2 - Making the magic controls more reactive. You can even jump off the ledge and cast it below you.
- v1.1 - Hopefully the survival times are sorted correctly now. Made spotlight that lets you know where the center of the magic is going to be casted more subtle.
- v1.0 - Creating distinct biomes. Adding desert, rocky area, new elevations, and glaciers. Added Bronze and Silver tier items. Bronze, Silver, Gold, and multiplier coin now all recover a little bit of magic.
Hints (Only read if you are stuck!):
- Gold bars and power-ups only generates on new landmasses. So does enemies.
- Don't forget to jump! You can jump over enemies and terrains.
- Standing in water makes your magic meter regenerate faster.
- Standing in a forest makes your magic meter regenerate slower.
- Use mountains to keep enemies from approaching you.
- Collect gold coins first if there are a lot of gold bars around. The multiplier are on a limited timer.
- Blue coins also makes the magic meter regenerate very rapidly. Use that to your advantage!
Ratings
| Overall | 47th | 4.053⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 111th | 3.763⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 97th | 3.795⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 89th | 4⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 243th | 3⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 136th | 3.771⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 42🗨️ |
Graphics are beautiful, and the game mechanic is really fun. It balances the tension of having the world crumble at your feet and the urge to keep exploring very nicely.
I could very easily see this expanded further with some goals beyond surviving (which is already more than enough to keep you invested and replaying to improve your score).
Wonderful job, congrats!
I would suggest you simplify the mana regen thing, and not have different regen speeds on different tiles, I feel thats an unecessary bit of complexity thats not obvious enough.
I'd recommend trying some more obvious stuff instead: either more obvious special tiles that boost mana regen speed (like, big glowing runes or something), or maybe have mana regen faster if you don't move, and slower if you are in mid-air? That way you could end up playing chicken with some incoming monsters if you are hungry for mana and at a dead-end. That might be fun. Although, it might also slow the game down, since that would reward players for moving less... but with the game collapsing around you, I'm not sure that would be an issue!
Anyway, again, this is really good!
Played it on my stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (at 1:59:10)
It was great to be running away from 10s of enemies at a time, frantically searching for mountains to hide behind and water to regenerate.
The menu screens add a ton of polish and professionalism to the game. The controls are very smooth too (in the downloaded version, the web version is a bit laggy in Chrome).
I think you already addressed all of my concerns from the jam version in the post-jam version (balancing issues, mostly).
Thanks for the game, I've added it to my collection on itch!
It has nice graphics and animations - it is clearly readable what the state of the game is about.
There may be tutorial right in the game to show me what to do.
I didn't feel very motivated to play it more and try to make better score.
Nice jam entry anyways :)
You can watch me playing the game here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5x4fRX8yrw
In regards to lava, there are dark platforms you can jump on, that almost always generates rewards. The intent for that biome is that it turns the game into a platformer as a "now for something different" gameplay change. Also, the Jam build doesn't have lava, which makes it a feature that shouldn't be judged for this game jam :P.
Edit: whoops, I forgot to mention that invincibility ability does let you walk on lava just fine! So that's another way of getting easy money.
I'm kind of surprised, I played both - jam and post-jam version and it is suprising, action and fun. I successfully died multiple times in both versions!
What I didn't like - probably the jumping, it was way too easy to fall off (although yes, I am kind of noob!), apart from that the power-up mechanisms work, the critters and funny and yet terrifying :D, and falling into oblivion (e.g. dying) was never that much fun.
Thanks for creating it and congratulations, I had fun playing it - and that counts I guess :).
In regards to ratings, I can take most criticisms, so feel free to be as harsh as you want. In fact, I encourage it, even in livestreams! Ludum Dare's rating system is all about growth, and I really think we all learn the quickest from our own mistakes. So go for that 3 star or even 1 star rating: it's a learning experience for me. I will always prefer honesty over being nice when it comes to feedback. Besides, I often rate other games with 3s and 2s (though like how I rate 5s, I leave 1s for truly exceptional cases), so it would be hypocritical for me to say otherwise.
I'm actually quite glad to see another dev seeing the game past its graphics, and asking the question, "did I find this game's experience compelling?" As you can tell, I'm pretty darn good at making things shiny (that said, art section is removed because it uses pre-made assets so it's not representative of our artistic abilities), but I'm actually more interested in improving my game design skills. If you didn't find it compelling, great! It seems a combination of factors, such as the lack of tutorial and how easy it is to walk off the edge, probably hindered your experience; a fault I 100% admit is an oversight on our part. I wouldn't have learned that with the comment you've posted alone; but the video really helped summarize the problems. Again, thanks a lot for the feedback!
P.S. If you have the time, please let us know what you think about post-jam's game. I admit, there's still no tutorial and it's very easy to fall of the edge. Still, it does attempt to fix a few other problems, such as providing a compelling reason to travel farther from your starting point.
I'm glad you found my feedback useful :) It's new for me to say my subjective opinions, so I was quite unsure saying things that may hurt somebody.
See you next time with new games! :)
Some things could have been communicated better. I didn't get why you had two types of magic that did the same thing, but no life bar, until I found out the squares were supposed to be hearts. It didn't help that clicking the squares also activated your magic. Speaking about communication: I would assume that many players will find it a bit tedious to read a wall of text to understand the game, especially when a bullet list would have transported the same information. There are so many games to take in every LD that this carries an additional weight.
As for pacing, I really like how you will die within seconds if you don't react, so the game starts immediately as you hit Start. On the other end of the spectrum, I didn't really feel that the game became harder over time, although it probably does. Maybe a steeper difficulty curve may keep the skilled players interested for longer.
All in all it's a very polished, beautifully looking and sounding game, great job!
* Oh my, this is fun. It's kind of addicting, and stressful, and just overall amazing. Fantastic job with this.
* The graphic intensity increasing was really cool. I loved that.
* The music was a good fit for this, even though it seems like you didn't make it yourself.
* The terrain types were really good, and added an extra level of strategy.
* Having two scoring systems was a nice touch.
* The physics felt good, and it was really really fun to grab everything.
* I got a score of 6040. I think I got pretty good at the game, but I still didn't beat you, @aeveis!
****Minor Nitpicks:****
* Falling off of the stage always felt like a really cheap way to die. I understood it when everything fell around you, but "gliding" towards the end of the map and falling just felt kind of sad.
****Great job and thanks!****
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKyqjTvBURc