LudumData

Traveling the Wild West by Cwazywierdo

[raw]
made by Cwazywierdo for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

​You're a lasso-crazy cowboy traveling into town. In your way are many dangers, so you must employ your legendary lassoing skills to get there safely.

Lassoing a cow

Below are the techniques for disarming each obstacle, but I encourage you to try to find them out yourself in-game

Cow - Lasso them upwards to collect them

Rock - Throw them to the left or right to move them out of your way. Be careful not to throw them upwards though!

Bison - Lasso the bison in the opposite direction they are charging. After they're slowed down, lasso them up to collect them

Vulture -Lasso them downwards to throw them into the ground. If the vulture is not above your wagon, you must lasso them upwards again in order to collect them. If they get close enough to land, or you lasso them down while they are above the wagon, they will perch on it and begin taking money. Lasso them in any direction to stop them.

Post deadline fixes: - fixed itch.io's fullscreen button - perched vultures will no longer be obscured behind other bodies

Youtube https://adam-baker.itch.io/traveling-the-wild-west
Youtube https://adam-baker.itch.io/traveling-the-wild-west
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/traveling-the-wild-west

Ratings

Overall 929th 3.41⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Fun 877th 3.282⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 602th 3.513⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Theme 974th 3.462⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 895th 3.45⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Audio 821th 3.095⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Humor 454th 3.176⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1223th 2.973⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Given 39🗳️ 54🗨️

Feedback

guilhermesouza
06. Oct 2020 · 02:18 UTC
amazing entry!! Cool graphics and really fit sounds!! Congratz!
Webox
06. Oct 2020 · 02:34 UTC
hey another cowboys game!! I made a cowboys game too, but robot cowboys haha.. Really nice, well done game! It's a lot of fun. Nice job! Solid entry!
FreddyTurbina
06. Oct 2020 · 02:40 UTC
that was superrr fun!! and the play button that is also a tutorial is such an smart move!
in the bud side I feel that the controls where not responsive (i try the HTML5 version)
Jeffrey Hwang
06. Oct 2020 · 02:41 UTC
It was a cute game. At first I didn't really get how to collect stuff, but ended up learning to drag up, and enjoyed the game very much. Wish the view on the top left wasn't obstructed as much, but otherwise it was a solid and pretty fun game.
MoHDI
06. Oct 2020 · 02:45 UTC
Yee-Haw! Despite making it about a tenth of a mile down the road, I was pretty impressed with my lassoing skills. Lassoing stuff is fun! I think I'd like a zen mode where I could just lasso everything. :)
5Daydreams
06. Oct 2020 · 03:06 UTC
Very fun, I just wish the mouse controls were a bit friendlier - I think that this would be a really cool game to play on mobile!
spacecadet
06. Oct 2020 · 08:37 UTC
Fun game to test your lassoing skills :D I like how easily you can bring variation in a small game just changing how the objects react to the controls. However controlling the lasso felt a inaccurate at least on the web edition. Awesome entry however!
Johnsensei
07. Oct 2020 · 00:17 UTC
I thought giving the player the opportunity to learn the mechanic with the start lever before starting the game was clever, as the controls are a little tricky. What was this made in?

I didn't do very well in the game though. I think the instructions here are clear, I just didn't understand it in gameplay. Maybe there's an opportunity for a tutorial scene?
🎤 Cwazywierdo
07. Oct 2020 · 00:20 UTC
@johnsensei It was made in Unity! I tried making the mechanics as intuitive as possible, but just in case I also put the instructions for each obstacle in the description. Thanks for playing!
Itskdog
07. Oct 2020 · 00:20 UTC
Great job. Liked the cowboy theme and the graphics. It was fun using the lasso.
grenk
07. Oct 2020 · 00:42 UTC
Solid project. Art is great. Before reading description I just thought controls were buggy, but after reading they started feeling pretty good. Just a really nice, self-contained game.

Nice Work!
nardandas
07. Oct 2020 · 05:59 UTC
A fun little game, the mechanics were super intuitive after a little experimentation! I liked that aspect. I found the game itself kind of difficult in a bad way though, it'd present me with 3 bulls and a rock in the middle of the road and I'd instantly find myself dead, with very little I could have done about it, just due to timing.
Flawed
07. Oct 2020 · 06:11 UTC
Fun game to play, but is the level randomly generated? I felt like it became repetitive after a while.
🎤 Cwazywierdo
07. Oct 2020 · 06:25 UTC
@flawed not randomly generated, I just didn't have time to make more assets =(
Dark Prince Zen
07. Oct 2020 · 06:59 UTC
Was a bit difficult to get to hang of the lassoing so maybe a slower build up would have been nice to ease the player in. Overall nice job.
Eugenik
07. Oct 2020 · 11:03 UTC
wow this game is BADASS! love it!!
monninen
07. Oct 2020 · 14:15 UTC
Good take on the theme but controls are a bit clunky
fabula_rasa
07. Oct 2020 · 14:50 UTC
It took a while to get used to but it was fun once I got the hang of it! Graphics get the job done and the music is alright as well.

I am not sure if it's endless or is there some kind of end-game you can get to? I try and try but the Bison herd is always the death of me :laughing:

![Screenshot_9.jpg](///raw/732/a2/z/3973b.jpg)
Duke
07. Oct 2020 · 17:07 UTC
The game mechanics of this one are rather simple but actually pretty hard to master. My muscle memory somehow didn't allow me to play this properly :D The art is pretty basic and could be heavily improved by having uniformly sized pixels for all assets. It really looks pretty jumbled when you scale pixel art of different sizes together. The music was pretty annoying to be honest and I had to mute my browser tab to play. Some kind of health bar would've been nice. It seemed that my cart stopped after only having barely made contact with two bisons :( there were too many on the screen to really do anything about it in time. Seems like RNG got me good.

Seeing that this was made by you alone, it's still impressive! But could use some more work in almost all departments like I stated above. Keep it up!
Fryer
08. Oct 2020 · 08:43 UTC
This idea is great, I'd love if the difficulty curve wasn't so steep though. I gave it a few tries and couldn't get more than 167 coins. The bison seemed to come in groups, which made them almost impossible to deal with, especially when there were rocks on the road and vultures circling above at the same time so early on in the game.

The art style is nice and coherent. The only thing I'd add there would be shadows. Some funny sound effects would definitely help bring everything together and make the experience awesome!

There was a lot of dead space on the bottom of the screen. I think if you shifted the camera forward a bit it would make it easier to deal with rocks before you're attacked by all things from all directions.
Gilad Bar Ilan
08. Oct 2020 · 14:32 UTC
Great Game! Well Done!!!!
Kaabiikaze
09. Oct 2020 · 03:37 UTC
This is really charming! Although I hate to say it, but I did have a little hard time even trying to start the game when I first launched the game. After that, I was able to consistently grab ricks, but never the bulls? As such, I unfortunately didn't get too far into the game, but that could just be my bad gaming skills ahah! Granted, I was playing the web browser version, so idk if that has to do with the control issues I was running into.

Nevertheless, I liked your idea, it was pretty unique from what I've seen. Good work!
honey
09. Oct 2020 · 11:47 UTC
Lots of people here seem to have been confused by the lasso mechanic and so was I. I know that you put the techniques in description, but I think we're a bit past the "game manual" era :) As my experience goes, I first succesfully lassoed the rocks, so I just expected that everything gets thrown in the direction you move the mouse into after relasing, but that didn't work much. So then I had to rtfm :) I feel this a bit shame, cause that didn't make me feel very clever for figuring out myself what to do, and also I don't think that I would've ever guessed that the right direction to the carriage is up (not even mentioning the bisons). I sort of expected that the direction would be towards the carriage. But once I've been told what to do, I got a hang of it and it worked pretty well, though it was a bit difficult for me (got to about 150 gold).

Still nice entry, very clever take on the theme!
Arad HamidSamiee
10. Oct 2020 · 15:51 UTC
The lasso mechanic was fun, It took me a while to learn how to use it tho. The game is pretty hard
Rossmoff
12. Oct 2020 · 09:51 UTC
Fun little game! Quite hard to get the controls right. The first 5 tries you dont get vry far :D
tweedle
19. Oct 2020 · 04:18 UTC
difficult starting out but very clever mechanic with the lasso 🐄
Sharks
22. Oct 2020 · 20:49 UTC
Really polished, although I wish there was a little more feedback on what direction your lasso was going to go rather than just you lasso something and move the mouse in that direction and it just happens sort of thing, death screen is painfully slow and killed my enjoyment of the game cause I didn't want to keep trying when having to wait for such a long death screen, the art was really good though I especially liked the way the cows were thrown up into the air! The way the rocks leave a little mark after you've lassod them! Very visually pleasing, good job!
Sharks
22. Oct 2020 · 20:50 UTC
Art was on eye candy level to me I might add! I know that's just my opinion but I still think it's worth saying!
Papaver
25. Oct 2020 · 21:17 UTC
Nice game with interesting lasso mechanics!
Some of the lasso mechanics I understood immediately, but for the bisons and vultures I needed to have a look at the description. I think this game would work better with a touch screen. I tried on my phone, but the game doesn't fit nicely in my screen (so I quickly died... ), but the lasso mechanics work! And indeed it feels better for me, as I am not so fast with my mouse.

Once I got 200+ points, but I always end up dying in the bison group. I wish I could see a bit further ahead, by moving the carriage more down in the screen.

Cool game, well done!