Crash Thunderstud Returns by JavaSaurus

A game... so epic ... it raised the dead !
UPDATE
Due to your kind feedback and the fact that people were playing this game with such passion it actually physically hurt their wrists... I have decided to make a post jam version that is more enjoyable in a certain way :
- Loops have a duration and don't instantly expire when releasing the mouse button
- There are now shop icons that allow you to choose what to buy at any given time
- There are exploding barrels for zombie control
Intro

Crash Thunderstud, Zombie-Slayer extraordinaire is back for more ! Stranded on top of his beloved muscle car, armed with nothing but manly quotes and a machine gun forged by the gods of war, The Zany Zombie Slayer takes a last stand. No time for sobbing, no time for sorrow... It's time to kick zombie butt and drink milk, and you've just finished your milk !

Circle the zombies to take aim and fire away. How long can you AND your car survive?

Credits and Tools
In game music by https://www.bensound.com/. Title theme music was created by customizing a neural net to generate rock music (JukeBox). I edited the resulting file to make it sound nicer and looping. All other audio was generated from samples I recorded using Audacity, including the zombie sounds, voice lines (lowered pitch in unity to .85) and gunshots(shaking a cookie in a box as a starting point if you must know :D ).
- Audacity
- Pyxel Edit
- Unity / C#
- VS2019
Theme
The theme is incorporated on many levels ! * You literally have to make sure zombies are stuck in a loop to damage them * You are stuck in an enclosed area, which is a loop * You're playing a game that is in an endless loop, yes... you are stuck in it ! * I did all of this by myself in 48h, I am as loopy as they come...
Ratings
| Overall | 75th | 3.897⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 59th | 3.918⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 101th | 3.801⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 219th | 3.801⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 124th | 3.875⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 68th | 3.78⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 26th | 3.985⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 95th | 3.722⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 61🗳️ | 96🗨️ |

Good audio, great art. Awesome one liners!
I think my favorite part was the drawing with the mouse to shoot the zombies mechanic though, it was much more engaging than just pointing and clicking to shoot, and it also let me do stuff like circle a group of zombies to shoot at them all. Really cool.
Great Job!
*Edit* Seems Github was complaining about the lib folder being too large. I remade the repo with only my assets, I hope thats ok ! If not let me know :id:
I think the only issue I had with it is that it wasn't obvious to me when the damage multipliers would appear, and sometimes they seemed to disappear before I had a chance to click on them. Allowing the player to purchase upgrades whenever they want would have made more sense to me (although I appreciate that could make it harder to balance the difficulty).
Sounds are nice, a little cringe :P
@magnusfurcifer Great score ! I'm glad you like it. I had to chose between audio and extra enemies/artwork and I decided to go for the audio to make it more engaging and humorous ! Cheers for playing !
@thebooksnail The controls DO work on mobile ! It's actually a nice suprise that they do, now I have one of my games in my pocket to show off when people ask me about my hobbies ! ^-^ I've actually started to prefer the mobile version, maybe it's more suited. I'll investigate that post jam !
@phlip45 Thanks for playing ! Yes... There were actually plans to have the power ups appear as objects to circle instead... in fact this is all ready in the backend, but in the end I went for a simple button. Poor design choice maybe but I didn't want to change it in a compo submission !
@queenkrissu Thank you for playing it ! I haven't seen too many other games out there where loops are drawn in order to damage enemies so I'm hoping that's a good "theme" score in the works for me. I'm quite proud of the idea ! Thank you for playing and the nice feedback !
@blobo Hey Blobo, thanks for playing. I did check the github and I uploaded the assets in the meantime. For some reason Github is complaining when I tried to push the entire code base because of files in the lib folder that are too big, I'm sorry. Very nice you managed to play it on mobile ! I do have the feeling that's better suited :)
@schraf Maybe I should add a bit more detail on how to properly do it. Basically the line acts like a proper loop, meaning that the inside of the line is the thing that detects enemies. So if you move right past a zombie, it'll register as a single hit for them, but if you properly circle them (tiny circles) it'll continuously fire at them. Keeping the circles small is key ! Thank you for playing !
@warrrkus MSPaint as a shooter... Now that's a compliment if I ever received one ! :D I'm very glad you liked it. Thank yyou for playing !
@julienlussiez Thank you for playing ! I'm very glad the mechanics are received as interesting, it gives me hope for innovation and theme categories :) I'd also want to add more content post jam, but I wanted to spend the little extra time I had left (I think it was 10.45pm with the deadline at midnight for me) to implement the voice lines. Design choices in game jams are annoying but it is what it is. I'm glad I managed to give you some enjoyment out of it !
@arthurds I hate you ;) (jokes, go check out arthurds at [https://www.twitch.tv/pomothedog](twitch.tv/pomothedog!)
@ninnec Thank you ! I tried to make it a little bit more light hearted and fun. Glad you enjoyed it and thank you for playing !
@forgeronstudio Crash Thunderstud NEVER disappoints ! Thanks for playing :)
@stefan-b Thank you so much and thank you for playing the game !
@jesus-gonzalez Thank you for the kind words. I am glad you liked the game ! Hoping for a good theme score :)
@citdev-chris Thank you for playing ! I didn't really want to make it just a simple idle/incremental game, allthough that was the original idea. I added the bonus system to make the game last just a little bit longer, I mean most people only play a LD entry for 4-5 minutes I'd say? So giving the player a little bit more power to last seemed a nice idea. Thank you !
@pennycook I agree with the power-ups disappearing too soon. It was designed like that though, as you said, this was a quick and dirty way to balance difficulty a bit better... Should the player get full freedom, the game would be endless with fence repair power ups. Well I suppose I could have made every purchase more expensive and I might change that in the future ! Good call ! Thank you for playing :)
@m7rk Hey there ! Thank you for playing the game ! I'm sorry the fence damage wasn't clear... I did have a system with health bars at some point during development, but I decided to remove it because it was obstructing the game too much. Just a design choice, but I appreciate the feedback
@spawncampgames I would never ship it empty pixels :p Thanks a billion for playing it !
@josephdevelops Thanks for playing it on stream, in spite of your clear fatigue. Don't forget to rest up, people? This man is a legend with his marathon ld streams. Go check him out at [twitch.tv/josephdevelops](https://www.twitch.tv/josephdevelops)
@pink-shard-games Thank you for the kind feedback ! I'm glad you liked it !
@dakke Thank you for playing ! I really tried to get a decent audio rating in this LD, I'm very happy you appreciate it.
Phew ! I shouldn't let comments build up that much, but I really wanted to give each and every one of you lovely people a personal reply ! :) Thank you for playing and GAME(JAM) ON !
I had a lot of fun playing your game. It is simple, but does the job right. It is also playable on a touchscreen, which is good thing. I prefer the game with the mouse. I liked the one liners and the design. Like @pennycook mentioned it would be nice allowing the player to purchase upgrades whenever they want. For example killing 100 Zombies would get you a bomb.
I also liked the feedback of the breaking fences. I knew when they are about to get destroyed.
Overall I had a good time with this game. Thanks again for your nice stream. Greetings from Grabby ;)
haha! I love it. Even if its painful in the end, the idea is clever, well executed, and the sounds, the kill anims are so rad it feels good.
Great one here!
@eldogg be sure to get double chocolate chip and at least 2 weeks over their expiry date haha :p
@neragoth I'm sorry for the pain !!!! It hurts less on mobile or using a stylus... I never considered the pain :( Thanks for playing ! :)
In conclusion, you finished a real impressive piece of software here. I can only sit here in awe and and think how this can be possible. Keep it up!
Thanks for submitting your game!
@duke There indeed is no real ending, that was unfortunately out of scope here. I made the last hour all about voice lines, no more room for other stuff ! :) Glad you enjoyed it !
@honest-dan Thank you for the kind words! There actually were barrels and explosives on the menu, but I pushed them to the backlog to give priority to the voice lines, as I am hoping they'll give me a better score in 2 categories (audio and humor)
@week-of-the-agents Glad you like Crash Thunderstud !
@justcamh Thank you for playing it on stream, it was very enjoyable seeing someone play my game. Most welcome and feel free to submit yours on my stream !
@hanna-knop Thank you for the kind words !
@tricky-fat-cat Thank you, excited you liked it !
@cogcomp Thank you for the feedback :D I might have to rebuild the concept into a full blown mobile game after all ... Hmmmmm !
Congrats for this entry ^^
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767474154?t=2h18m48s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
@blue-pin-studio Thanks for playing ! The screen shake for the shooting is actually related to how long Crash is shooting. I suppose it's less relevant now and that's something left-over from an earlier concept during development. I'll try to tone it down in the post jam maybe :) Thanks for the feedback ! And indeed, the "reload" mechanism was intended to prevent the player from endlessly circling, it was actually an attempt to reduce stress on wrist movements. But this is all resolved in the post-jam ! Lovely !
@kaldrin Thank you for the feedback ! What exactly do you mean with "lack juice", I'm interested to implement this in the post-jam :) The zombie sounds were a really really really last minute kind of thing, I think I had about 1hour left to do the voice lines properly. Thank you so much !
@elysiagriffin Heeeey Elysia, queen of the LD rating streams ! Thank you for playing it, as always, it was fun seeing you play my game :)
@rangoiv Hey there ! Thank you for letting me know, I'll try to tackle this in the post jam.;. That is actually a nice catch ! :)
(But maybe you already know it and are just confused by my comment)
But it's just me being nitpicky, it's just a detail ^^
@ursagames Thanks SO much for playing and the review ! :) Hope you've enjoyed it !
@kaldrin I'll keep that in mind for post jam updates :D I'll try to come up with something "juicy" to make it more satisfying :) For the jam purposes, I had to roll with a simple line renderer for time's sake :D
Being a compo game, it is very polished and packaged. Visually is very nice and the music fits the game pretty well. Sounds effect are really satisfying and, considering also the speaker voice, makes the game humorous.
The idea for the game is interesting, but I think that it should have had more depth. I'll try to explain. You have to circle the zombies to hit them, but that's more or less about it, it's not so different from plain aim and click. If the circle thing had more impact I would have liked it more, while now it just seems a weird and annoying way to aim and stay on theme. Sure the circle slow down zombies but I don't think it's enough to justify it (usually slow down happens in aim and click too tbh).
I'm trying to think at a solution but can't come up with one, maybe the circle should create a little fence that trap the zombies, dunno.
It's also not so clear what to do at the beginning even though you can learn it just by playing.
Fence health was also a bit hard to judge, I guess its health is split for every part of it, but I'm not sure and I'm not sure when it is about to break so which side I should protect more.
Shops are also a bit weird/rushed, you improved it in the post jam version but also made it harder maybe (no more fence repair or maybe it costs a lot more).
Post jam though, with added zombies, is more interesting, nice to know that you worked on it more than (or then?!) just bug fixing.
Don't take me too harshly, the game is overall well done and as already said polished, and for a compo entry it's even more and I take it into account. My biggest issues is not about the realization itself but more about the core circle mechanic as a concept itself.
@toccio94 I appreciate the feedback, it's very valuable and all is true. But as you said, this is a compo game and jams are THE occasion to experiment with new mechanics and features :) So in a sense I am glad to be rewarded with positive feedback that the looping mechanic is "interesting" at least! Thank you so much for playing !