Precious Animals by despdair | LudumData

Precious Animals by despdair

made by despdair for Ludum Dare 46 (COMPO)

I got into developing hyper-casual games lately. Even though I had planned using some different development systems for each jams, after announcement of theme I decided to develop a hyper-casual game. I wanted to extend it to a casual but that will be on full release I think.

Game is simple, you are trying to protect animals gathered at the center of the screen. There are some alien ships who want to destroy animals. Your goal is preventing aliens as long as possible while not letting animals die from hunger. I am thinking adding some powerups to give some variety to gameplay and maybe a different part to see gathered animals (this is supported in this version to but I did not finished implementation). If you can give me ideas about gameplay that will be very helpfull.

I codded whole game by myself there is only free LeanTween library in addition to my codes. I developed game in Unity. At the start my goal was participating in Jam but whole game finished yesterday so I decided to run for compo. I tried to try out some different tools and styles for graphics and I am aware that neither graphics not musics are good. I don't have a sense of art I think.

Anyway time to make a game for Jam this time. Enjoy Precious Animals and keep them safe as long as possible for me please.

You can check my jam game from https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/survivalgo which is other game I made in LD46

Ek Açıklama 2020-04-20 002636.jpg Ek Açıklama 2020-04-20 002716.jpg

Youtube	https://despdair.itch.io/precious-animals
Youtube	https://despdair.itch.io/precious-animals
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/precious-animals

Ratings

Overall	940^th	2.901⭐	78🧑‍⚖️
Fun	859^th	2.822⭐	78🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	832^th	2.893⭐	77🧑‍⚖️
Theme	774^th	3.355⭐	78🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	917^th	2.717⭐	78🧑‍⚖️
Audio	726^th	2.539⭐	78🧑‍⚖️
Humor	719^th	2.313⭐	74🧑‍⚖️
Mood	916^th	2.596⭐	75🧑‍⚖️
Given		103🗳️	111🗨️

Feedback

20. Apr 2020 · 08:08 UTC

Really intense with flashing/growing text. Crashes my browser after i die though?

20. Apr 2020 · 08:08 UTC

Fun and hard, but crashed when game over. So had to reload browser to play again.

20. Apr 2020 · 08:15 UTC

Funny small game. Really love the music! But it is also really hard. Maybe next time give the player a little more time to react.

20. Apr 2020 · 08:25 UTC

@willoftw @dimling hi one of my friend had encountered with that error too but I could not recreate it to fix. But I will look at it again. @leon-oost thx for feedback I will consider that

20. Apr 2020 · 17:19 UTC

Fun game! I love the music! I always die rather quickly, but that's probably just me;)

20. Apr 2020 · 17:29 UTC

I like it. Great concept. Pretty hard to play and yeah I think unity crashed after I played thru once. Good work for the Compo!

20. Apr 2020 · 17:31 UTC

Nice hypercasual gameplay, but boy is it hard to play haha. I couldn't survive for more than a handful of seconds.

20. Apr 2020 · 17:37 UTC

Really fun game, there are times where I felt stupid for deflecting a projectile back to me after it had already passed the animal. Really challenging, but I like it.

20. Apr 2020 · 17:42 UTC

@technosander @singleshoe @hexiez123 thank you all for playing it and feedback. @joskerdu I could not figure out to how to solve it, I solved it to the some degree but I can't find the real reason sadly

20. Apr 2020 · 17:47 UTC

Wow that was hard! The game was really easy to comprehend withing a second of starting it, which in itself really isn't easy to achieve! Well done!

20. Apr 2020 · 18:00 UTC

The music is bizarre and the game is very difficult. I like the different aspect ratio too - completely unique. So far the only game I've played that is portrait instead of landscape - nice originality!

20. Apr 2020 · 18:11 UTC

@cogcomp thank you that was my goal, nice to see it worked out. @madbookstudios initially, I designed the game for mobile and when I realized most of us will play on html it was too late to change ratio :). Musics were my first attempts and I have really bad sense of music :(

20. Apr 2020 · 18:59 UTC

The music's okay, but the sound effects really hurt my ears. They're very unpleasant popping noises. Would be nice to be able to mute either music or SFX or both at the player's discretion.

Gameplay is fun conceptually, but very hard. Sound effects when they shoot at you would be preferred over sound effects when they die, it would make for a better clue that I need to swivel the shield somewhere else. Also not sure what the floating yellow orbs are - are they also bullets? I've been stopping them with my shield as well.

Since it's a browser game, it should be playable on mobile regardless, so it's okay that it was too late to change ratio. That's why mine was in a similar portrait mode ratio.

Cute game!

20. Apr 2020 · 21:15 UTC

@papabirb thank you so much for detailed review. I am noting these to fix. Also those yellow things are actually feeds that animals should take. I wanted to distract player a bit between missiles and feeds but signs were not clear enough for that I think.

21. Apr 2020 · 01:26 UTC

Has that special something that keeps you restarting instead of quitting. Plays a bit rough, at least on web, but still very addictive - even if some deaths felt unfair wanted to keep going.

JanMatyooStudio

21. Apr 2020 · 11:59 UTC

The more I play the game, the more it gets addicted. Nice game!

21. Apr 2020 · 12:48 UTC

Nice game! It's easy to understand how to play, but hard to master. And very addictive!
Congrats!

21. Apr 2020 · 17:32 UTC

It was enjoyable, but tough. It would be cool if it got progressively harder, or if the different types of missiles had some visual cues.

Powerups would be cool! They could give you a bigger shield or invincibility for a short period of time. Or one that explodes all the enemies on the screen. I could see this game being very addictive on mobile.

22. Apr 2020 · 01:56 UTC

Great work, it's really hard and sometimes I was confused how I died. Nice job though, fun little game

22. Apr 2020 · 08:42 UTC

Too me it was a bit too difficult - but fun concept :thumbsup_tone1: The difficulty could be hugely different depending on which "fleet" you were up against.

Well done otherwise :smile:

:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:

22. Apr 2020 · 08:56 UTC

This game could have really used some intro level gameplay before the onslaught of bullet hell that it is currently. Bullets that reflect and then come right back as a first attack just seems unfair. If there was a slower progression of difficulty then this game could have been a very addictive play.

22. Apr 2020 · 09:01 UTC

@dandala88 I am aware of that, I could not stick a good system for tutorial at the time of jam, maybe because of exhausting. On editor and on mobile, game gives you more break between bullets, but I couldn't figure out why this was not the case for web but I will definitely look at it. Thx for feedback

22. Apr 2020 · 11:22 UTC

The game is great! It seems that you finished two game in LD46?

22. Apr 2020 · 12:40 UTC

@wxzuir yes, I felt like I had plenty of time to make another game after compo game

22. Apr 2020 · 14:28 UTC

Really hard but easy to grasp game. Great experience, thank you! Can't believe you made two games in 78 hours :D

22. Apr 2020 · 17:15 UTC

Well executed, although incredibly difficult. I can't seem to last very long. I think it's because there doesn't seem to be a way to anticipate the attacks. They just come and if the enemy is too close, you don't stand a chance. Nice work.

22. Apr 2020 · 17:24 UTC

The sound effect of enemies taking damage is very grating on the ears. Otherwise, it's a pretty good game.

22. Apr 2020 · 17:25 UTC

Clever twist on an age-old game mechanic! Lots of room to scale up here, so that's exciting!

22. Apr 2020 · 17:33 UTC

@zerohbeat I did not want to make it so obvious so left it to a randomness. There is plenty of time for most attacks but yeah it can be unavoidable time to time. Thx for feedback

22. Apr 2020 · 19:47 UTC

The game is reaaaaaally hard and unfair sometimes (especially when bouncing a missile, and it just keep falling indefinitly) ! xD
Also I would have loved to know what I should protect my "ball" from and what I was allowed to let pass through the shield.

But otherwise, good job for this entry ;)

22. Apr 2020 · 21:27 UTC

@sokette thx for feedback. I could not figure out what keeps bounced missiles to come back, there is no affector pulls them but sometimes physics mess up I think. Meal think was very late addition that I wanted to add a new thing which player needs to consider and take risk but it was not well introduced as you said

23. Apr 2020 · 01:19 UTC

I had fun playing this. I feel like the difficulty ramped up pretty fast but I enjoyed it.

23. Apr 2020 · 08:30 UTC

Really great game but found a bug straight off, when I click retry after dying nad kill an alien,it adds my previous score so like if I died at 9 and kill an alien next run,it gives me 10 score straight off, but a pretty fun game overall

23. Apr 2020 · 08:42 UTC

It doesn't fit on my computer screen :(

23. Apr 2020 · 08:43 UTC

@devesh-sharma oh thx for bug report, much appreciated.

23. Apr 2020 · 08:44 UTC

@echo-team even on full screen mode? I am aware this version is hard for computers, if you want I can provide some version scaled down for your pc.

23. Apr 2020 · 09:10 UTC

@despdair I guess maybe on full-screen, I'm guessing it's 1080 high? Anyways I like the animals, the game was too hard for me though.

23. Apr 2020 · 13:22 UTC

That was really cool game. The only thing was that the resolution was really weird. Thanks for sharing the link with me over [here](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/power-slime-shootout/gimme-the-links-to-your-game)

24. Apr 2020 · 13:26 UTC

damn, double game in ludum dare.. you are a dinosaur :laughing: both of them are cool entry, excellent work :thumbsup:

25. Apr 2020 · 02:19 UTC

Pretty cool game here! I enjoyed it and liked how the enemies would roll up, and start shooting. I found it intuitive, intense, and fun, for an enjoyable experience (especially as more animals came up). I would recommend a bit of a visual polish (graphics are nice, but maybe some lighting effects etc). Overall, well done for one of two games you made in just 72 hours!

25. Apr 2020 · 03:51 UTC

Hard to play. Creative design. You make games really fast.

25. Apr 2020 · 04:36 UTC

Nice game but I think the art doesn't match with the other art. Not coherent? I think that's the word.

25. Apr 2020 · 07:03 UTC

@marbles yes. That was my first time doing an art and I wanted to try out different softwares and techniques for assets.

25. Apr 2020 · 08:26 UTC

It's hard ! The time to react to a shot is really short, made me sweat :smile: !

Sandra Martinez

25. Apr 2020 · 14:32 UTC

The game crashes after I restart it like 5 or 6 times. I died pretty quickly, tho

25. Apr 2020 · 14:46 UTC

@sandra-martinez yeah, I could not found a way to solve it though it seems I need to recreate project since error comes from standard packages. Thx for trying, it is hard to stay alive long :smile:

25. Apr 2020 · 22:18 UTC

Nice game, good job.
I was breaking a record when the game crash ;D

25. Apr 2020 · 22:38 UTC

@pandakipu :( thx for playing it, you can count you broke your record :smile:

25. Apr 2020 · 22:43 UTC

The bullets coming back and back to the player after deflecting them felt terrible. Also some telegraphing on when the enemies are about to shoot would be nice. Other than that, nice job!

25. Apr 2020 · 23:31 UTC

Good use of the theme, but insanely difficult.

25. Apr 2020 · 23:58 UTC

@suchista thx. That bounce bug is handled by rigidbody which results in to keeping velocity the same sometimes, I will probably write my own bounce script to make it stable. I am planning to add very short disclaimer before shoot which will decrease over playtime and experience. But I don't want to make it to obvious so that player sits quietly until enemy fire.

26. Apr 2020 · 03:17 UTC

sometime webpage crashes

26. Apr 2020 · 03:21 UTC

Had a crash when clicking quickly after game over.

I really like the idea of the game and had fun with it. The concept is fun and trying for reflections is fun too. That said the web version could use a different resolution and maybe pull the difficulty back a tad?

26. Apr 2020 · 07:28 UTC

@hoyr yeah, intended difficulty curve was smoother but I forgot to adjust it before release

26. Apr 2020 · 08:53 UTC

Fun and cool concept - and a game that is about saving animals deserve respect. My feedback is if you added a background would help immersion and mood further (and balance difficulty a bit more). But since it is very gameplay focused, it is worth it, this is what matters in a jam game.

26. Apr 2020 · 08:59 UTC

ouch that was really hard to play. I tried to play it on my phone if that was easier (the screen ratio seems to be for phones) but unforunatly it didn't scale well but the inputs worked.

the music added a nice crazyness to the game :) but after hearing it for 10 minutes on repeat I think I need to clean my ears (or brain) now :)

26. Apr 2020 · 09:19 UTC

@splitpainter thx for playing. I will consider to adding some background but I could not quite found a setup this action goes on, it will probably a spacey background. @smiley sorry for your ears. I just enabled it to mobile but screen ratio is not perfect fit for it, I'm glad that inputs worked on mobile

26. Apr 2020 · 09:33 UTC

A really fun game! The gameplay(the shield mechanic) is similar to my own entry, i guess great minds think alike :wink:

26. Apr 2020 · 09:36 UTC

@generictoast hahaha I will look at your one too then

26. Apr 2020 · 10:21 UTC

I've had the same idea when brainstorming lol.

26. Apr 2020 · 10:28 UTC

@rahmkota3 haha I had the same idea with your game too but it seemed to much burden for me

26. Apr 2020 · 11:20 UTC

SUPER difficult for me haha! But fun and innovative game concept. Well done!

26. Apr 2020 · 13:00 UTC

Seemed a bit difficult at the beginning for a hyper casual game. I wish I had more control, maybe a limited resource I could use at the last second to protect the animals if I missed a bullet. Cute art!

26. Apr 2020 · 13:06 UTC

@scott-steffes I can think some very short magnet affect or slow time system but there is only one input in mobile which makes this kind of little things impossible I think. But I will look into that

26. Apr 2020 · 19:31 UTC

Hey! played your game here's some feedback
https://youtu.be/ejsMgcyObLY

27. Apr 2020 · 02:27 UTC

Very challenging! I loved the visuals, I was able to collect two animals for a couple seconds on my best run! I did not run into any bugs, and I gave it several attempts. I like the space theme.

29. Apr 2020 · 04:43 UTC

Nice little game! I wish I had more control over where the rockets were going after they deflected - would be cool if they followed the mouse a little or something. Also, did you really do TWO games for LD?!

29. Apr 2020 · 10:08 UTC

@frenchie yes, page has link to that game too if you want to check it out. After compo, I wanted make something else. I am considering little deflect direction, I relied on unity physics on compo but it let me down. Thx for playing

02. May 2020 · 19:08 UTC

A decent concept, but has a few issues. The barrier seems to not move perfectly in some instances/gets stuck. It would also be nice if bullets bounced back in the direction that the barrier is pointing toward so you could aim at the enemies. Things also get a bit weird with multiple animals joining together and I am not sure this is necessary, or could use some work before it could be an ok mechanic

09. May 2020 · 20:42 UTC

Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615952171?t=5h03m23s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin

10. May 2020 · 22:37 UTC

Thanks for bringing your game for us to check out on stream. If you'd like to watch the video again, the highlight is at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/617290861