Eldritch Engines by CameronPenner
Welcome to H.P. Lovecrafts worst nightmare, having to play... a kart racing game.
To fit the theme, we mashed together Lovecraftian horror, and go kart racing! (and it's a contest of elimination???) We hope you enjoy this ridiculous conglomeration!
Dive deep within Lovecraft's nightmares and be the one to escape his dreams. Pilot that accursed mechanical device of antidiluvian evil (the... the kart) and race your way to victory. However, it is not enough that you should succeed. OTHERS MUST FAIL. Push them off! Collect the necronomicon to cast eldritch invocations unto your foes! You succeed only when all others lay weeping at your feet, cast unto the despairing void!
Controls: - WASD or arrow keys to move - Mouse1 or Space to shoot
How to play: - Destroy all the other karts to win! - Collect necronomicons (the red face books) so you can shoot (if you have green particles, you have a shot you can fire) - Shots fired destroy other karts (or yours if you're not careful!) - Enemies can shoot too! So be careful! - Also, don't fall off the map, lest ye be doomed to the endless torments of the treacherous void.




| Windows | https://cameronpenner.itch.io/eldritch-engines |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/eldritch-engines |
Ratings
| Overall | 436th | 3.577⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 444th | 3.444⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 915th | 2.944⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 682th | 3.481⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 236th | 4.037⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 205th | 3.692⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 367th | 3.273⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 120th | 3.923⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 19🗳️ | 26🗨️ |
I could not reach the aim of racing, though. The car number was stuck at 3 for a long time and when a found a different racer it appered to difficult to push him off the track.
In every other way, it was a great experience!
Thanks for the feedback @sun-parlor-studios! We had a ton of fun working on this, and there's lots more we'd like to do. We're definitely talking about doing a post-jam version.
@vovin, thanks! @pickens-inc did the narration, so props to him for killing it on that. Collisions were a result of manually overriding a lot of the physics to polish things. Unfortunately that ended up meaning that some velocities got overwritten so collisions weren't quite right. I've never written a racing system quite like this before, there's definitely a lot I would do different next time!
@david-hunter Huzzah!
@bhavin thank you so much! Your encouraging words mean a lot to all of us. :)
@meskaline thanks! I was definitely not expecting to do another mood focused game, but when @p0urqu0i mentioned Lovecraftian Kart racing, we couldn't not do it.
@theArtifacts thanks for the honest feedback. We actually do have a laps system being counted internally, but when we turned the game into an elimination game we found out that was not super useful. We thought of giving weapons only at certain checkpoints, or on lap completion, or killing karts that get lapped, but the scope was already really big, and we didn't have time to really solve that issue. I know a lot of people interpreted the theme as 2 game mechanics genres, but I like to think that the themes are more open than that. I'll definitely check out your game yet!
@zaguer Thank you! The volumetric lights are definitely very performance intensive and pretty!
@Emmitt There's definitely a lot more polish we could do, and maybe better explanations of what's even going on. I find a fault of many LD games is that the creators assume the player knows what the rules are. I'll try to find time to explain them better for the next wave of people trying out the game.
@ultrarat I was hoping to get the game to work with controllers yet. Though with unity's input, I would guess it actually does? I didn't get a chance to try it though. The system is made to handle analog input. I'll look into that. Thanks for the feedback!
@dnich013 Thank you! We had a lot of fun with the lighting on this one. And @p0urqu0i killed it with the level design!
@Iluvatar Thank you! I'm also not a fan of racing games, but I always thought that Lovecraftian content had a fascinating charm to it. I like to think that as ridiculous as this combination is, we at least gave it a decent nod. Thanks for playing :)
The mood was maybe a little less-spooky than intended but I like that kind of cheesy horror so you get a double thumbs-up from me hehe. :D
I also like how your own attacks can ricochet back and kill you if you're not careful. I did that once.
One gameplay aspect I'm not sure about is that there doesn't seem to be an incentive to actually race, especially since you have to be *behind* an opponent to shoot at them (I know you changed that for v1.3 but you said not to rate that version :P ) I'll have to try it, but it's probably possible to win the game by doing absolutely nothing, sitting at the start line, and waiting for your opponents to kill each other or fall off the track.
Nice game, though! Good graphics, good gameplay, great atmosphere. Well done!