Dense Revolve by fiaKaiera
:warning: I recommend reading the description for the controls. The game does not have a tutorial.
:information_source: UPDATE: [DEC 6 @ 2am PST] More accessibility patches! Please check the changelog for any changes.
:clock: NOTICE: This entry was made with time constraints.
This game was finished in only 15 hours due to unexpected change of plans. Please consider this if you experience a lack of polish and/or missing sections of the game.
:information_source: The game will not have any tutorials, help guides or instructions due to these constraints. All information is given below.
:warning: Audio might not be properly balanced. Please adjust your audio before proceeding. There will be no music in this entry.
You have a gun. A revolver, in fact. But somehow, there is something wrong with it. You somehow feel weaker depending on the cartridge. Despite this, you take this as a challenge for yourself and attack a nearby vortex randomly going around. Sadly, the vortex knows it all and they will take advantage of it.
Sadly, this game would have more that that but I have to comprimise. Rather, than a level or two, I'll give you guys a boss battle. It could be really hard, really easy or really cheap, depending how much you know how the mechanics works.
:beginner: CONTROLS:
- Movement
- Left & Right Arrow Keys: Move around, wall slide
- Up Key or Space: Jump, wall jump
- Left Shift: Quick Dash, uses your energy
- Revolver
- X or S Key: Shoot, does nothing but click if you run out of ammo
- C or D Key: Reloads your bullets back, also uses your energy
- System
- Esc Key: Returns to main menu, there is no pause function (Out of time to implement)
- R Key: Restart game
:beginner: MECHANICS:
The Goal: Defeat the vortex in 4 hits and survive.
In relevance to the theme, (The more you have, the worse it is) I tried to implement it to the player character itself. Almost every aspect of your character will hinder you depending the amount of bullets you have.
The more bullets you have, the following will happen: - Take more damage against everything - Movement slows down - Heavier gravity - Energy recharge slows down - The vortex will attack more frequently - It's impossible to wall climb with 5 or more bullets - The player will gain passive regeneration as soon as you have no bullets
I encourage you to at least beat the boss once. You will be rewarded for your efforts.
:speech_balloon: QUESTIONS:
- If you have any questions, feel free to ask from my twitter: @fiaKaiera
- Contact immediately if the EXE shows an installer instead of the game straight away.
- You can also contact me or comment if there's bugs found here. I'll fit it as fast as possible.
:ballotboxwith_check: Changelog: * DEC 4 @ 8am PST * HTML5 Port is now available! You can play it in your browser now. * DEC 4 @ 1pm PST * Changed Z/X controls to X/C in order to compensate with QWERTZ keyboards * Adjusted movement speed (you don't move ultra slow or ultra fast now) * Despite this, you still can't slide a wall with 5 or 6 bullets * From x0.1-x2.5 to x0.5-x2 * Adjusted gravity multiplier (x2 to x1.5) * Fixed particles spawning every frame when moving * Minor optimizations * DEC 5 @ 3am PST * Changes: * Changed stage layout for balance * Stopping friction is much more strict * Minimum movement speed is now .5 (.4 before) * Shoot delay is now 3 frames less * Energy recovery influence is now %70 (than %90) * Fixes: * Fixed R being read as an A * Fixed Boss not slightly moving faster per hit * Fixed character continuously hitting against a wall when repeatedly being hit * Now bounces off the other direction instead * Fixed rare bug where character stays stuck on death * Fixed recharge time being inverted (slow on no bullets and fast with full clip) * DEC 6 @ 2am PST * Changes: * Changed menu keys from 1/2/0 to Enter/Esc/P * Alternative keys: S/D can be pressed instead of X/C * Fixes: * Fixed Exit Game showing in the HTML5 port
:bangbang: Note for Windows Users: There will be two versions for Windows: a standalone EXE file, and a * ZIP* file. If your anti-virus detects the *.exe file as a virus, either allow it since it's a false-positive or, get the ZIP version instead.
:bangbang: Note for Linux & Mac Users: As I don't have the proper tools for exporting through Linux and Mac just yet. I recommend using wine to test this.
:bangbang: Note for HTML5 players: As I recall, this only works on Firefox. Either way, make sure you turn off "Search for text when you start typing" as this will screw you over, even for other HTML5 games.
Ratings
| Overall | 405th | 3.259⭐ | 137🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 459th | 3.015⭐ | 138🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 399th | 3⭐ | 138🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 309th | 3.5⭐ | 138🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 150th | 3.816⭐ | 138🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 343th | 2.883⭐ | 135🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 331th | 3.079⭐ | 129🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 62🗨️ |
I think you should be able to shoot upward, it is really difficult to just get on the platforms imo.
Though, the scaling for the slowdown with your ammo seems to be way off to me. It feels like if you have any more than one bullet you can barely move, and if you have one or zero then the controls are too slippery. It feels kind of silly when 5 of your shots basically have to be wasted to comfortably make it up to the boss.
The animations are also very cool, I like the aesthetic of this game (and those splash screens are also pretty dope :D)
The polish, delivery, and concept are solid. It's too bad you had to stop the game, that's shame, it seemed interesting. I enjoyed the difficulty of it.
The movement felt a bit too slippery sometimes as making the jumps unto the platform seemed too difficult, but i could just be misinterpreting the bullet mechanic.
HTML5 worked fine on chrome.
Overall, good work!
and A+ on your page description - it's the most readable detailed I've seen yet.
It is very good designed how do you do the graphics on the beginning of a header?
# Entry:
It got pretty good graphic polish but it is pretty useless to have more than 1 bullet in clip. I think the problem would be solved with a double jump or the ability to aim up. I'd wish there were some Music but all in all the entry is pretty good.
* @connorses, @theloneplant, @funnboi, @mark-kennedy -
I know how it feels exactly being useless on having 4 or more bullets. I wish I could fix if it were interpreted as a bug, really. I actually missed on using a function that would fix all of those issues and would make game progress bit more faster as well. Whoops.
* @nexusbreaker, @Anonymous -
That actually passed through my mind while I was repeatedly playtesting the game. Would make the boss fight too easy in this case. So I left it out purposefully. It's actually more of a regret cause I forget I could just do a tanky boss than a 4-hit one.
* @mark-kennedy - Thanks! I did try to make my entry really readable this time so I don't want to make other suffer with the wall of text.
* @nexusbreaker - I think you mistook the screenshot for the header graphics. Anyway, it's a picture. They say you should put screenshots on the top. How I made it though? It's actually the in-game font I created for the game.
# Mechanics:
header
* @gastricsparrow - I'm still kinda hesitant on updating the movement but it seems that it's starting to look like a problem for a lot, so I think I will be tweaking it then along with the accessibility issue there.
I would also add key config but I think that's against the rules.
The boss giving you cheap kills was actually side-effect of the damage system. It does cheap kill you if you get hit by touching either the boss or getting hit to the spikes, which you can escape from with wall climbing or facing the other direction.
Loved the aesthetic and am interested how the non-boss levels would play out with 6 bullets (I cheesed it with only 1 each time I went to hit)
Love the visual style!
But apart of all that, I think without the theme it would have been an awesome, fun and very polished game.
I played it in Chrome, it works well.
I lost so many promising rounds due to my muscle memory saying that R is reload. Not really the game's fault, more mine. Finally managed to beat it when I concentrated real hard to keep my fingers on the X/C keys only and stopped doing so many quick restarts if something went wrong.
Simple but solid art style. Worked very well! Nice particle effects too. The sound effects got kinda annoying pretty fast. And there was so few of them that it made it even worse.
Actually, now as I was writing this I decided to take a look at the description which I pretty much just glanced over at the start. So at first I had no idea that it was the bullets that were slowing me down etc and you didn't start with a full clip. Tried again knowing that and it was a lot easier. Using pretty much the same strategy as earlier... I got up, shot down two enemies, went down to reload, shot away few rounds off the clip and tada, I was back at the starting maneuverability. The rest was easy pickings.
All in all, good job!
Suddenly it became playable! :slight_smile:
It's challenging; I wonder if this can be improved if you remove everything except the core challenge:
What would happen if you removed the spiky platforms on the side and the dropoffs directly below them.
(So that the only deaths possible would be the big sawblade and the starts.)
The art and details (eyes bobbing up/down when jumping, etc.) are quite nice.
Seems that minimalism is a powerful tool, given that you'd had only very limited time.
The font can make it hard to get that you'd need to press _R_, not _A_ to reset.
(P.S. I could play it just fine in Chrome... maybe I switched those options around another time?)
It looks good, it feels good. The simple monochromatic style is great. The movement feels solid, the attacks too.
But the mechanic... It took some figuring out, but once you do, I feel that it's really flawed. I've seen a bunch of people use the "more of X = slower movement" trope in this jam, and I think that not every game can be Dark Souls. It's too easy to slide into a bad outcome where the optimal play is to just dump excess and run in - in a system where the excess means something, it works, but when the excess doesn't really mean anything, it just encourages you to reload, shoot blanks into the air, and jump up and unload one shot. Duck down, rinse, repeat.
There's no incentive to not play like that, which just means the best play is also the most boring one. There's a lack of risk/reward.
Oh and the movement is a bit slidey, it's impossible to turn around a bit on the edge of a platform without falling down. And turning around is important here because that's your shooting direction.
Other than that, everything is super solid, the only thing I couldn't find was player health or boss health.
I didn't understand the reload rule before I read comment of @connorses. I have thought I slow down because reloading takes energy, and feel confused how can I beat the boss without energy to jump:joy:
* @edmond00 - You can actually shoot the boss with 4 bullets. Gravity is also the one responsible with the jumps and it's possible to climb up with 4 bullets.
* @11tomi12 - It was worse in the earlier versions you move really fast with no bullets and the stage is more against you back then.
* @saintheiser - What's troubling you with the controls? Maybe I can help. The layout allows for people with QWERTZ keyboards to play and is pretty much the actual default layout of most plaformers, too.
It's quite polish, nice graphics and animations ^^
Good entry, especially for 15h.
I love the art style and retro sound effects, they worked really well together. Great work!
Game was kind a hard for me I didn't menage to kill first boss :(
Gostei muito das escolhas estéticas! Parabéns pelo jogo.
Check out my game if you would like!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected
I was immediately attracted to the aesthetic style of the game
The "prepare" sound bite is a nice touch.
Cons:
I am kind of confused as to what was going on.
I know I can jump, shoot, move and reload but the gimmick seems to be that reloading makes you "weaker" or "stronger" which I guess translates to better movement/higher jumps? Sometimes I can wall jump other times I cannot.
Comments:
I dig alot of what you have here, but as a player I had a really hard time with it. Mainly it just needs a way of either tutorializing the player OR UI that is more intuitive so that people aren't confused.
The controls are a bit rough. Maybe consider movement on WASD, jump on space, and shoot and reload on the mouse.
That said I found this game was very solid. It would be interesting to have some context as to why were are doing battle with an interdimensional rift. Other than that the controls are solid, I didn't feel like I was sliding around or having trouble getting the wall jumping to work. The graphics are simple yet on point to communicate whats going on around you. The only thing really missing is more sounds and some music, but I understand that when time is a constraint its often better to just nail the important bits. Which you did.
Great work! and thanks again for your shoutout about my video in the blog feed, I really appreciate it!
https://youtu.be/DYoYvCeQ9XE
shoot again.