Woofice Chair! by JorgeGameDev

Welcome to _Goodboi Park_! A dog haven so good that it’ll make the best friend of man bark for the park! In fact, it’s so good that it even attracts the wrong audience. I swear, those body-builders really are a pain in the tail.
But the park is not without its defenders. Hoop, Lupe and Carl are up to the challenge! And since Goodboi Park so happens to be next to an office chair disposal, they’re not without mighty chariots!
So pick a pal, get on the chair, and spin faster than a dog can chase its tail! Throw your very buff enemies for a loop!


- Watch the dogs loop! Choose between three brave to defend Goodboi Park!
- Use a variety of weapons to keep the very muscular enemies at bay!
- Defeat your enemies and eat delicious biscuits to increase your score!
- Wave-based combat that will give you the feeling of déjà vu!
- Don’t forget to keep spinning! Stay in the loop and eat biscuits! Don’t worry, dogs don’t get dizzy!


- Move around with WASD, Arrow Keys or the Left-Joystick if you have a gamepad around!
- Press Spacebar or the A button to SPIIIIIN! Be careful though. You can't attack while spinning.


Created, Developed & Presented by :videogame::whale: *Whales and Games* :whale::videogame: - Other Whales and Games Projects - Website - Twitter - Discord Server
Development Team - Programmer - @JorgeGameDev (Twitter) - Programmer - @Kroltan (GitHub) - Graphics Artist - @Moski (Twitter) - Audio Composer - @Robinaite (Twitter)
Special Thanks - Ludum Dare Community







Ratings
| Overall | 88th | 4.15⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 204th | 3.908⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 316th | 3.775⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 510th | 3.873⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 11th | 4.75⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 92th | 4.123⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 29th | 4.31⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 181th | 4⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 53🗳️ | 82🗨️ |
As always, the art and polish here is some top-notch stuff! It simultaneously hilarious and adorable at the same time! I think my personal favorite touch was actually the sound design. Each of the collision sound effects for the weapons was super satisfying and pleasing to the ears, I loved collecting new ones just to hear what they sounded like!
I'm not sure I noticed a difference between the good bois, but I appreciate that the variety of options were there!
As usual, the level of quality y'all are able to push out in a single weekend is impressive. Excellent job!
Really good work guys, Well done !
As always, @moski's art was clean and incredible. There are an impressive number of enemy, background, and player illustrations, and everything is adorable and has a lot of character.
Audio is also on point (I chuckled at the licking noises when you hit an enemy with the lollipop).
Gameplay-wise, I think the concept was pretty neat, and it was very satisfying to batter a bunch of enemies with various bludgeons. I was a bit confused when and why the weapon would actually come out, though --- it seemed like it only did when the player gets hurt, which seems like an odd design choice. I will say that the difficulty seemed a bit easy, but that's up to personal preference.
Great job, guys!
Good job! Nice and juicy graphic. Was fun to loop on the chair! Sound on top)
I like games with animal, and the ones with Dog as main hero, my favorite
As a side note, I did find that the game crashes if you hit ESC while on the main menu.
Really fun and unique gameplay. The slight sliding of the movement both gave the game a bit more challenge, but also gave you the slight rolly feeling of an office chair as well. Collecting the biscuits was surprisingly enticing, probably cuz the art was so well done on them.
Dunno if you guys know this game but most of your enemy cast looks like they belong in https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160330/Fight_of_Animals/ haha.
The combat is interesting because unlike a twin stick shooter, you have to be very careful about your positioning vs the enemy. The addition of environment obstacles and attack-windup mechanism makes it even harder to find the right spot to be in, at least if you're trying not to take a hit.
Always a joy to play your games. It always has an innovative vision behind it and I love playing them.
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@probeprob Thanks for commenting! Indeed, the game takes a round or two to get used to, but afterwards, it can get cathartic even! It's a matter of going with the flow.
@sebastianscaini Thanks, man! A delight to see yours as well! I'm yet to check it out, but the first impressions have been great!
@no-grapes-games and @shortbread That's fair. We genuinely thought that the added interactivity of spamming the spacebar contributed to the experience, but we should consider balancing that aspect. We even thought about an accessibility mode where you only would need to hold the spacebar, but again, time restraints. :bow_tone2: Thanks for the feedback!
@ninnec The weapon appears as long as you're not spamming. We could have been more clear in that aspect. Live and learn!
@coleslaughter It does feel good to be back! And I saw your game posted earlier. I'll get around to give it a shot. As for the dogs, they do have slightly different stats and also have different weapons. We didn't have time to make anything grandiose with differences or character builds, but we at least got to populate the game a bit more. :dog2:
@roikku Sorry for the troubles! There's a delay before being returned to the main menu, but it could have been a bit longer. As for the progression... That's complicated. While it can be attributed partially to running out of time to further tweak and balance, we also wanted to have the joke where every wave was Wave 1 (so it keeps looping and looping). There are different waves, but we do only have 3 enemy types. Gotta do with what we managed to make!
@stracker Honestly, that's kind of our curse. Every other jam we get an idea on our head based on the theme, but then very loosely adhere to it. In this case, you need to keep the dogs looping to survive, and... that's pretty much it when it comes to gameplay. We did add a bunch of jokes though. It's always Wave 1, the dog names are based on related words (Hoop from hoop, Lupe from loop and Carl from curl) and the Park Rules. May not have been as thematic, but I'd say we did well by something that started as a silly joke.
@mrscythe @probeprob @julienlussiez @charlotte-raymond @lectvs @webox @aimainiac Thanks a lot for the kind words! The team as a whole is more than happy that you all enjoyed it! We can only make these kind of projects when we work as a team, so whether gameplay, art, sounds, design or memes pop up, it's likely because we coordinated properly! So thanks again, in behalf of the whole team!
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Phew, that was a lot. But the jam's still young! Let's play more games! :whale:
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@gabriel-dias-oliveira-de-almeida Thank you for checking it out! @Moski's art really shinned this time, and its immediately draws people to the game! :sparkles:
@peace-of-cake-games At one point we were going to have a buffed postman and maybe non-buffed animals too! But unfortunately, we had to cut them due to the time constraints. Here's an early concept for them! Thanks for checking the game out! :smile:

@dxk2294 We were going to have an accessibility mode that would have you only hold space, but we ran out of time before we could implement it. It's my only regret we didn't implement this jam. :bow: Still glad you had fun!
@raz3ll Glad that you enjoyed it! The weapons were really fun to design, and we even brought some back from previous jam entries of ours! :wink:
@jeremy-ryan Hah! It's been a while indeed, but we couldn't get around during last year. Glad to see you're still around too! I was really happy to see a notification of a new game from you pop-up on Itch and I'm seeing about setting up Parsec to actually have a chance play Spinnerets with the proper multiplayer later tonight/tomorrow.
The weapon comes out when you decelerate (you stop pressing space). Originally we had it so the weapon was out at all times, but it made the game even more non-challenging. Unfortunately, it feels like we didn't get to communicate when the weapon gets stashed/shows up either. It's a shame. :sweat: Still, glad you liked the package again! :muscle:
@mar3k Glad you liked the animations! @moski had a lot of fun coming up with the animations for the enemies. Beyond the doggos, we also wanted to add different chairs, but the first one took so much time to get the perspective down, we just focused more on the dogs and enemies instead!
@valentinefondreamer Saw Loopy multiple-times on the feed and it's already on my list of games to check-out! Glad you liked our dogs! :dog:
@james-dunlap Humor is our key! :ok_hand: Thanks for reporting the issue with the ESC key. It has been happening randomly with the games from our past year, where sometimes they crash on close, and other times they close just fine. :shrug: I'll have to look more into it. Thanks for playing!
@joh Hey! Glad there's been folks that remember us because of @moski's art style! :blush: The enemies were really fun to work on! You can see we had some more cut ones planned on one of the replies above! Looking forward to playing your game soon! :smile:
@eldogg Thank you! I made a truce with @robinaite that he could use FMod for the audio stuff if he pulled off his best work for a jam yet. And goshdang it, the madlad actually did it. :clap: Thanks for checking us out!
@peachtreeoath Pleased to know that the screenshots do the game justice! :thumbs-up: And now that you've sent that game's link, I cannot un-see it. We should try drawing one of the dogs as a buff character some time in the future. :joy:
Glad that our games are still a joy! As we returned to LD, we wanted to make sure we focused more on making the actual gameplay even more juice. I still think we can innovate more, so hopefully we will delight even more in future jams! Thanks for commenting! :sparkles:
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Thank you to everyone that has commented! We're going to continue checking out games across the entire jam, and we're definitely looking into playing most of the ones from the comments here! As always, you can reach us in our [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/whalesandgames) or our [**Discord**](discord.gg/whalesandgames)! Cheers! :whale:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/764573572?t=00h59m13s
Followed with pleasure! :)
Animation was made in photoshop sorry if it was asked already.
Keep up the good work!

I can't put my finger on it exactly, but something feels a bit unfair when you're getting surrounded by enemies and lose a lot of spinning power.
Other than that, wooow, such an adorable and polished game <3
Edit: Great mood as well (five stars in that category)!
Edit Two: I forgot to comment on the core mechanic. I really liked how you could speed yourself up to stay in the game but you couldn't attack during that time. Having to stop accelerating to attack was a great way to introduce new techniques for the player to fiddle with. Your core mechanic is great and is (appropriately) the centrepiece of the game. It was fun to play with!
It's pretty fun. The mechanic of not being able to attack while revving is kind of interesting, I guess it adds sort of an element of strategy but I feel like if you're going to go that route, it needs a bit of different tuning...maybe something like a "charge up" where your lateral movement slows down a bit while you increase your spin speed (a la Sonic?), and then your spinning momentum would last for a bit longer to compensate. But that's just a random idea, who knows whether it would feel right!
(I am a bit curious to see also whether the game would work well with mouse controls)
The graphics are very cute and I like the uniform aesthetic across all of the UI and game elements. Artistically, I would caution against making everything so brightly saturated (especially the grassy background) as it leads to a lack of visual focus in the game. Luckily, the game is simple enough that I don't think it really affected readability much. Just something to keep in mind.
Having the weapon switches was a great touch, it helped keep things fresh. I wonder if it would be an interesting idea to have different weapons have wildly varying properties, to give more of a "choose the powerup" style game. For example, a short-ranged weapon that does more damage, or a weapon that you can't spin as quickly but has longer range. Things like that.
Great job overall!
PS: I saw that you would doodle something from other games and perhaps mine would be interesting :sweat_smile: :upside_down: My game has a Cocker Spaniel, it would make my day to see a Golden Cocker on top of the chair hahaha
It was a bit unfortunate, then, that much of my struggle was having all the information I considered vital so badly spread apart from the screen, that I had difficulty paying attention to any one thing. Namely, I had a bad time trying to keep my focus on the pup while carefully tracking the spin meter. Flipping my eyesight from the center of the screen to the bottom-right corner and back was not a fun experience, ultimately distracting me from otherwise easy-to-understand mechanics such as how getting attacked prevented the pup from recharging their spin for a short duration. The game often ended with me saying, "what happened?" because I was unable to keep track of the spin meter (which seems to double as health).
I've also found the look-ahead camera placement to be not very useful. Most of the time, I was paying very close attention to where enemies were, and moving away from it. The camera, however, moved towards the direction I was moving, making the enemies following me harder to see. It would have been nice to see the camera position average the enemy and player placement so both can be seen optimally.
https://youtu.be/vvR6P6ZVvL4
the concept ties in perfectly to the theme. keeping your RPM up is a fun gameplay mechanic, the controls are simple but the play can be challenging. i really liked the different whistling sound effects when i mouse over a button.
i liked the background music, but honestly, sometimes one of the sound effects of hitting the critters sounded like a baby crying, which was really disturbing.
it took me a bit of playing to figure out that you automatically attack when you're close to enemies, and that attacking slows down your rpm. i could never figure out if there was any difference between the weapons, or what the point of getting weapons was. are they just visual, or do they actually behave different or deal different damage? i'm also not sure what the treats did. just give more points, or give back some "health" (or momentum)?
some obvious next steps to take would be different enemy behaviors and weapon behaviors, or maybe special moves (like a bomb to clear the screen), (unless you already had that, and i just didn't get far enough) or giving each of the dog characters a different signature move.
thanks for making such a cute and fun game!

Now, let's get into it! :clap:
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@overlook-studios
Thanks! We take our presentation very seriously. Given the jam, a simple yet effective page works to show that we mean business :muscle:
@skyeward
Thanks a lot, and for streaming the game as well! It seems to be down now, but I saw it a while after you commented on it! We always appreciate that people showcase _Ludum Dare_ games! It really brightens the day of a lot of developers!
@future-labs-unlimited
Some bits of gameplay needed to be refined a bit more, but that's how gamejams work. We should have found a better way to communicate some mechanics. As for the spacebar not working, you get stunned when getting hit, preventing you from using the spacebar for a few seconds. But I'll tell the programmers to check on it regardless, just in case.
@flying-dog-fish
Sorry about that spacebar! :sweat_smile: But yeah, it stops working for a few seconds when you’re hit by an enemy. Else, the game would have been way easier! We should have found a better way to give feedback to the player in that regard.
@corbak
Not a problem, thanks! The animations and frames were hand drawn in Clip Studio Paint, but programs like Photoshop and Krita could make them too. The frames were then put into place through Unity’s animations which we tied to the movements of the player! :ok_hand:

@trexxak
Thanks for the kind words too! And sorry it can feel unfair in those regards. With enough time, we could have tested for those situations better. We'll learn for next time!
@jmoocow2003
Yeah, that's a visual glitch that we've encountered in previous games before. While we found out of it very early, we prioritized polishing other aspects of the game, figuring out that one was not vital at the time. We’ll strive to figure it out properly for future jams and projects!
@emperor-eagle
Thanks! It's really flattering to see you calling this market-quality!:blush: One of the things we definitely wanted to have nailed down better was the rate and speed of the enemies, but we were left with little time to tweak that balance. Glad you liked the main mechanic though!
@greytyphoon @diptoman @moritz-jaeger @whomakeworse @garywiss @asfdfdfd
@fadrikalexander @mateusboga @thegreenworm
To all of you, thanks a lot for sharing your opinions with us and lifting our spirits! Sorry if the controllers were not particularly intuitive, but I'm glad it didn't take away from the enjoyment of the game!
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What a wild ride. But there are still a lot of comments to reply to! @jorgegamedev will take care of them! But you're very welcome to [come chat with us at our *Discord* server!](discord.whalesandgames.com) And if you want to see what we're up to next, [feel free to follow us on *Twitter*!](twitter.com/whalesandgames)
Once again, thanks for playing *Woofice Chair!* and let's try our hardest next time! :whale:
Without further ado, let's get into my answers! :point_down:
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@ddrkirbyisq
Glad to see you around again too! :wave: We played a bit with the weapon spinning mechanic, and it was kind of a last-day addition to add a bit more depth to the game. It definitely could have used more work to make it feel even better. :ok_hand: We also received scolding from other artists regarding the saturation of everything, it's definitely something we're looking into improving with our graphics going further! Thanks a lot for your comment, and I hope to see you around for more jams as well!
@meatball
Tweaking the enemy speed and position was something we definitely wanted to do, but unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could give them a proper balance. :bow: Thanks for the compliments though!
@thegamer @criobite
Making games full of character is one of our team's mission statements. :ok_hand: We really want to see if we fuel our team's flash-inspired art style and gameplay inspirations even more! We hope that personality comes across even more in future Ludum Dares! :relaxed:
@omiya-games
Thank you! Glad that you like our team's style! And yes, we're sorry there was a bit of a struggle in the visual spread of the information. :sweat_drops: Unfortunately we didn't have as much time to tweak and iron-out the UI as much as we'd like in this one, which led to those information splits that you've mentioned.
We were trying with some new techniques for the camera. We thought it'd be more useful to have the camera ahead of the player. However, like you said, a different camera setup could have probably been more useful for the player. Thanks for the in-depth feedback! :smile:
@sakura-magika
Glad you liked the character designs. The Behemoth (Alien Hominid, Battleblock Theater, ...) are one of our biggest inspirations, so we're very happy to be compared to them! The blue haired girl on the background is ***Whalechan***! She's one of our mascot characters that we feature in most of our studio-wise artwork! :blush:

The weapons have some slight stat differences, but they're not very noticeable right away. The foamy hand, for example, will deal much more knockback to the enemies, while the bat deals more damage. Treats award you extra points. Some extra explanation could have definitely been in place!
Overall, thank you for the in-depth comment and the suggestions of things we could have done! Here's hoping you like _Whalechan_! :whale:
@yword
Leaderboards would have been lovely! For a future jam game where we have simpler mechanics and more time to spend in polish, I definitely want us to try implementing a leaderboard system we have developed for our studio a while back. Here's looking forward to you being around when we make that game! :thumbsup:
@snowinn @jjoeyay @rafaelgiordanno @esphoros @pee-thief @betovf @ancient-pixel @danielblanco3d
Thank you all of you folks for your compliments and for liking the style of the game. It was really fun to put together, and we're glad to see that people liked our inside-joke taken too far. :blush:
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And that fully finishes _Ludum Dare_ on our side! Here’s hoping that some of you folks are still around to see our replies! Like always, you’re more than welcome to [come chat with us at our *Discord* server!](discord.whalesandgames.com) You can also [follow us on *Twitter*!](twitter.com/whalesandgames) to keep up with our work in other non-ludum-dare games!
**From all of our team and studio, thank you for playing _Woofice Chair!_ Returning to _Ludum Dare_ has been incredibly fun and even if we’re going to be fully occupied with our commercial project this next year, we hope to see you around and to have the chance to participate again! Cheers! :dog:**