LudumData

Moo Problems 2021 by owl and jackalope

[raw]
made by owl and jackalope for Ludum Dare 46 (JAM)

You need to the keep the dream alive. It's the far off distant year of 2021. Despite our best efforts, we were able to beat the coronavirus. In the time of peace, you've decided that you'd like to settle down in a remote mountain village and enjoy the company of nature and animals.

Alas, it didn't take long. The bank has come to collect on the loan and to make matters worse the MEAT EATING ROBOTS used to stop the coronavirus in 2020 have returned to feast on your cows!

day_2.gif

Controls: Movement -- WASD Jumping -- Space (Double jump is possible. Hold down the space bar for higher jumps) Switch Tools -- Scroll Wheel Throw Items -- Left Mouse Button Use Items -- Left Mouse Button Pickup -- E (you are able to stack a single pickup. If you are holding cheese you can pickup as much cheese as you want)

BONUS: YOU CAN PICK UP COWS AND ITEMS (MILK, CHEESE, BUTTER) at the same time. So you can move your cow with you as you cash stuff in.

butter.out.20200420-221924.gif

Background and Platforms -- Kenney Assets

Youtube https://bitbucket.org/AnonyBob/ludumdare46/src
Youtube https://owlandjackalope.itch.io/moo-problems-2021
Youtube https://owlandjackalope.itch.io/moo-problems-2021-post-ludum-dare
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/moo-problems-2021

Ratings

Overall 1178th 3.519⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 566th 3.654⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 580th 3.615⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1442th 3.558⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 326th 3.712⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1169th 3.423⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 22🗳️ 27🗨️

Feedback

Daniel Conway
20. Apr 2020 · 22:57 UTC
Great entry! I really enjoyed it. Had fun managing the different resources and combining platforming elements with a management style game was really fun!
santiago lafosse
23. Apr 2020 · 01:11 UTC
muy entretenido
ProForce
23. Apr 2020 · 01:16 UTC
Really good game! Took a while to get the strats down but I think I did pretty good! Love all the aspects of the game, keep it up!
Vollfeiw
23. Apr 2020 · 01:16 UTC
Had really good fun playing this, great job
aaranos
23. Apr 2020 · 01:27 UTC
The music is a little intense, it's a neat game that could probably do with a bit of balancing. The fact that every action costs money meanwhile you have things killing your cows that you have to feed and milk to throw into a machine or truck, is a lot going on at once.
Lukas Mayer
23. Apr 2020 · 01:28 UTC
The game is really fun, a lot of mechanics and you can play around with a lot of things. Great entry!
Amazura
23. Apr 2020 · 01:37 UTC
:cow: great concept, cool music, well polished what else you want? you can pick up you cow.. damn :laughing: really worth my time..
Firebelley
23. Apr 2020 · 02:00 UTC
Really cool game! Definitely had fun with this one. My only major critique is I felt that the music didn't really fit, but otherwise I enjoyed it! Definitely consider developing this more.
Walkalope
23. Apr 2020 · 14:30 UTC
Hi! I played your game on-stream. Well-polished and good-looking game! The pacing of it seemed just the right amount of frantic. I loved that I could pick up the cows.

I think I did not use the platforms above me very much - but I liked the possibility of "verticality." I would suggest putting a high-value cheese machine up there... give the player a reason to risk jumping up there from time to time.

And I hope you add some juicy sound effects for the post-dare!

Nicely done!
Haoro
23. Apr 2020 · 14:59 UTC
Really nice game ! The song was a little too epic for the gameplay, I liked the banjo one so maybe a faster tempo banjo one would be great x)
Anyway, good work !!
WiredOverload
24. Apr 2020 · 00:34 UTC
I really liked this game as it felt pretty complete and with enough depth to make replays interesting and the later game feel different then the early game. I also appreciated the fact that you could throw the milk and cheese off screen which introduced a more skill-based element of trying to estimate the trajectories to buildings you can't see. My one issue with the game was just how expensive the tools felt to use as one wave of enemies could force you to use a whole cheese production cycle, especially early before you get an efficient rhythm going or are just learning the game. Overall though this really felt complete and polished and I really appreciated the small details such as the hamburgers and the freedom to pick up anything or use any object to at least delay approaching robots. Great job!
🎤 owl and jackalope
24. Apr 2020 · 04:08 UTC
@wiredoverload thank you for the feedback! As others have said the difficulty curve was definitely too steep for the initial play through. I think adjusting the starting money to give you an early advantage as well as ticking the tool cost or bot spawn rate down (especially initial waves) would go a long way. Some more subtle things that I did that weren't messaged well were that higher platforms actually took less seeds to replenish than the lower platforms. Giving you incentive to use the vertical aspect of the level other than the natural protection from the cheap path finding that the bots use. And also that you can carry multiple items to throw into the truck so the best strategies for me often involved just letting my cheese/butter stack up to cash in all at once (maybe allowing tool switching in this case would have made that more apparent).
Shredmer
24. Apr 2020 · 21:37 UTC
Great entry! Well built game and plays well. The controls and movement felt very polished. I had to play your game after you commented as a fellow cow protector!
sndr
25. Apr 2020 · 13:34 UTC
I really liked playing this. It feels like a very complete game, with interesting mechanics that added quite a lot of depth to the experience. It played very well, it was easy to understand and felt polished.
Khud0
25. Apr 2020 · 13:48 UTC
Music doesn't fit the game well, but I love the pacing! The game gives you a sense of urgency and it is pretty hard. :)
Erkberg
26. Apr 2020 · 12:08 UTC
Pretty fun game, but damn, it's almost too hectic for me :D
The game keeps you on your feet all the time and that's great on one hand, but on the other hand it really is too hard in its current state, I could keep it up for just a few minutes. Is there an ending to the game if you survive long enough? Anyway, the mechanics are quite varied and work well, it just needs a bit of balancing and maybe another way to fend off the attackers, like self-firing turrets or something along those lines.
Good job overall!
🎤 owl and jackalope
26. Apr 2020 · 18:29 UTC
@erkberg totally agree! I didn't get really any time to balance and unfortunately that makes it pretty difficult. And yes, there is a point where the bots stop coming and you win the game. I've done it with three of my four cows, but I've also spent a lot of time playing it now! I'm making some adjustments for a post jam version that should hopefully make things easier. Thanks for playing!
mambojambo
29. Apr 2020 · 18:52 UTC
The in game music is epic! You get really excited when you hear that jam :D the game itself is nice! Maybe it's just me, but that music and the fair amount of mechanics / controls made it hard to learn, it took a couple of tries. Communicating controls / mechanics is hard though, especially in a jam. Overall, great entry, you should be proud!
Alchemic
07. May 2020 · 01:39 UTC
This is probably one of the most complete feeling games I've seen so far, very nice! It's hard to get a good grasp on when you should be focusing on cheese, grass, or enemies, but once you find a rhythm it's very satisfying! The coloring on the grass is a bit too low contrast, it was hard for me to tell what state the grass is in at a glance.

I tried the post-jam version and really liked the changes that were made. I managed to beat it, but it was pretty tough! I really liked how the cheese factories were moved to be separated vertically instead of horizontally, it really made moving the cows around feel a lot more meaningful.