Hudson by Dharby | LudumData

Hudson by Dharby

made by Dharby for Ludum Dare 47 (COMPO)

Play as Hudson in a 1-bit world as enemy bugs assault your HUD. Your player character does not take damage directly, but take care to protect your health bar from attackers, and don't let skill thieves steal your skill upgrades.

Upgrade your abilities by picking up orbs and placing them in the slots in the bottom left.

Controls

ATTACK - Left Click
BOW & ARROW - Right Click
MOVE - W/S/A/D

Objective

Prevent enemies from damaging your health bar
Pick up skill gems and insert them into skill upgrades in the bottom left
Upgrade all 3 skills for a chance to get out
Watch out for "skill thieves" taking your gems out of your upgrades

Tools Used

Unity
Aseprite
ZzSprite
ZzFX
WaveBots

Font used is PixelLocale.

Known Issues

Some players report the game running at a really high speed

Ludum Dare Compo entry created by Dharby.

Youtube	https://github.com/sballew/LD47/
Youtube	https://dharby.itch.io/hudson
Youtube	https://dharby.itch.io/hudson
Youtube	https://dharby.itch.io/hudson
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/hudson

Ratings

Overall	126^th	3.773⭐	77🧑‍⚖️
Fun	107^th	3.796⭐	78🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	75^th	3.914⭐	78🧑‍⚖️
Theme	546^th	2.807⭐	77🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	151^th	3.809⭐	78🧑‍⚖️
Audio	76^th	3.757⭐	76🧑‍⚖️
Mood	155^th	3.548⭐	75🧑‍⚖️
Given		52🗳️	83🗨️

Feedback

Michael Parrish

05. Oct 2020 · 01:13 UTC

I really liked this game. The idea of the UI being in the world and something you can interact with is super charming. It may be a little hard, I would consider bumping down the enemy spawn rate. Good job, though!

05. Oct 2020 · 01:25 UTC

Thanks @michael-parrish ! It was pretty tough to balance the enemy spawns. Sometimes it was way too easy, and sometimes it was way too difficult. I tried to find a decent middle ground and ramp rate, but I agree it's a bit difficult.

I think me playing it so often, I ended up getting better at it, which made me tune the difficulty up higher than needed.

Thanks for the feedback!

05. Oct 2020 · 01:33 UTC

I had a lot of fun with this too. Failed the first time and it seemed impossible, but figured out the upgrades on my second try and beat it, so the difficulty was pretty good for me. It was pretty clever to make them attack the actual health bar.

05. Oct 2020 · 02:02 UTC

Super cool! I figured out the upgrades right before dying in my first run, but successfully escaped my second try. Innovative idea and solid execution. I couldn't find a way to exit without Alt-F4, but otherwise fantastic!

05. Oct 2020 · 02:05 UTC

Thanks @irwatts ! Loved your submission to the compo.

05. Oct 2020 · 07:04 UTC

Just letting you know that the Mac version isn't working for me. It might be something you want to look at if you have time.

05. Oct 2020 · 07:12 UTC

The game looks cool and the idea is really nice. I used the windows build and it ran super fast and I die in 2 seconds. I don't have any time to collect the upgrade orb. I wonder if it is just me or am I just a noob :smile:

05. Oct 2020 · 07:55 UTC

The game is super cool! Really love the idea of protecting your health bar. To me the enemy spawn speed is too fast, which makes the game super hard to start. I accidentally got the key even the game over title shows up hahaha.

05. Oct 2020 · 10:34 UTC

Well done. I like the music and the style of the game. Had to understand that the opponents are really attacking the life bar :D And by destroying the enemy camps it became easier.

05. Oct 2020 · 12:21 UTC

This was really fun and I loved it. Nice music, loved interacting with an element on the HUD as something that "existed" in the world. Good job!

05. Oct 2020 · 12:52 UTC

Having the UI being part of the game world is such a cool idea! I felt like the difficulty curve was pretty steep and the enemies could have benefitted from a little more variety rather than just a swarm, but overall well done for your entry, pretty cool little game!

05. Oct 2020 · 14:40 UTC

Would love to see a WebGL version!

05. Oct 2020 · 14:50 UTC

@kovalok I did have one other report of the game running at a crazy speed. I haven't been able to reproduce that or determine why it's happening on some computers.

@rhoff95 The WebGL build works, but there's no audio. If I can figure out how to fix that, I'd like to upload the WebGL port.

Thanks everybody for trying the game.

05. Oct 2020 · 14:56 UTC

@dharby ah I have had the same problem. Maybe you already have found via googling, but there can be issues if you use Mp3 audio files rather than wav or ogg or something. Might be worth a try to change the format if possible. Good luck!

05. Oct 2020 · 15:06 UTC

@rhoff95 I do use MP3, I'll try out some different formats. Thanks for the lead.

05. Oct 2020 · 15:10 UTC

@dharby no problem! @ me if you get it to work so I can give it a play.

05. Oct 2020 · 16:54 UTC

@rhoff95 Turns out just my music was MP3. Sound effects are WAV and aren't working either. I'll have to keep looking around for why WebGL audio isn't working!

05. Oct 2020 · 17:12 UTC

this was clever and fun! Nice work, I love the challenge of 1 bit art and you really knocked it out of the park.

TheVideoGamester

05. Oct 2020 · 19:05 UTC

The UI being part of the actual game rather than just indicators was novel. Fun infinite wave game. Having to defend the health while also getting the gems into the upgrade slots was a fun little risk reward. Plus one bit is always a win in my book.

05. Oct 2020 · 19:55 UTC

Great Idea with using the UI! Nice job and great work! Like the 1 bit aesthetic really made the jewel stand out when it appeared! Those enemies mount up quick haha

05. Oct 2020 · 21:24 UTC

I liked the game style and upgrade system. I don't know how it fits the theme other than the wave looping, unless I missed something. Overall, nice game!

Milestone Games

05. Oct 2020 · 21:47 UTC

This game looks really interesting, huge fan of the 1-bit style. Sadly it doesn't seem to work on my Mac, I'm getting this popup: ![Screen Shot 2020-10-05 at 23.45.41.png](///raw/09f/82/z/37b9b.png)

I will have access to Windows later this week so will definitely try it then!

05. Oct 2020 · 22:18 UTC

I love the look. At first I didn't quite grasp what to do. The key and door at the end seemed superficial to me, however your upgrade choice system was smart and fun! Very solid entry.

05. Oct 2020 · 22:41 UTC

Thanks everybody for the feedback!

@milestone-games and @nexade , I have uploaded a new zip for the MacOS version. Hopefully it works for you now. It is on itch at https://dharby.itch.io/hudson.

Note that the Mac version has a graphical glitch where the border outside of the game canvas is flashing red. It's pretty weird, but the game seems to run on Mac besides that.

Thanks again all!

05. Oct 2020 · 23:34 UTC

Very innovative! Love the fact that the UI elements are interactable as a game-mechanic!
The 1bit sprites are clean and the information is clear.
Needs more levels!

Apples_mmmmmmmm

05. Oct 2020 · 23:48 UTC

Neat game, cool to see the ui integrated into the gameplay. Nice music and graphics. The sword upgrades pretty fun, the bow upgrade doesn't seem as powerful, but balance isn't something I can expect much of from the compo time frame. The gem thief is amusing. Looks like there is a bug where you simply lose the gem when you press 'f' if you aren't close enough to a gem slot. Would also be nice to have a way to end the program without alt-f4'ing or going through task manager. Side note: It's possible people having speed issues are related to vastly different frame rates if you didn't take into consideration deltaTime for movement etc.

06. Oct 2020 · 00:32 UTC

Clean game, would have really appreciated a webGL version for ease of use. Couple bugs nothing game breaking in my 10 minutes of gameplay. This was my first gamejam so am not too confident myself.

06. Oct 2020 · 00:33 UTC

Thanks @kp-gamedev ! I'd love to get WebGL working. Unfortunately audio doesn't work in the web version so I need to find a fix for that.

06. Oct 2020 · 01:38 UTC

I think that this game is a model of how game jam's projects must be: beautiful in a simple way. no complex models neither a torrent of color, but even so, very beaultiful

contrags! you deserve more than 5 stars

06. Oct 2020 · 01:38 UTC

Thanks @gumemura ! Those are very kind words.

06. Oct 2020 · 09:40 UTC

This game is fun. frustrating, BUT FUN. It was all going so easy and then BAM 100000000 enmies attacking my health bar :) (which by the way is an awesome idea). good job :)

IndivisibleParticles

06. Oct 2020 · 13:11 UTC

I underestimated the difficulty on my first try. The second time I made sure to finally pick up upgrades. The sword slashing is very enjoyable and fun.

06. Oct 2020 · 17:10 UTC

Innovation points for days! Played it on my stream, here's the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/762084586

06. Oct 2020 · 20:06 UTC

@rhoff95 and @kp-gamedev I have just published a WebGL version! Audio now works.

Side-note: Using the latest Unity beta for a game jam is risky... The beta has a bug with WebGL audio! Details here: https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/audio-no-longer-plays-in-build

Thanks all.

06. Oct 2020 · 20:09 UTC

Very fun game ! I like the minimalism of the 1 bit graphics and the background music. The game gets pretty intense quickly, it goes from 1 monster to like a huge amount! Very addictive and fun to play!

06. Oct 2020 · 20:14 UTC

I loved the concept about defending the health bar. The skill upgrades felt quite good, although I kinda missed how I got them, but I guess the mobs dropped them, while I was slashing down hordes of them?
I liked the graphics style as well, retro, in a cool way.
Good job on coming up with this concept, and thank for sharing!

06. Oct 2020 · 20:14 UTC

This is a neat little concept piece! I got quite invested, quite quickly. I like the liberties you look with the theme, and I think that you've made something really effective and fun.

06. Oct 2020 · 20:16 UTC

Nice little game but very very hard.

06. Oct 2020 · 20:17 UTC

Wow, that was awesome! I thought it was impossible at first, but once I got the hang of it, it was addictive.

Have you thought about having different levels of upgrade for each skill? The game has a really nice pace and pushes you to always stay on top of things, and I think it would be fun if the difficulty kept ramping up like that as your abilities became progressively stronger.

06. Oct 2020 · 20:18 UTC

Awesome game! I love the music and the art style and the playstyle as well. Very innovative to have enemies attack your GUI and the GUI being also an intractable object. At first play it was quite hard, but then I got the hang of it! (btw my score was 272)

06. Oct 2020 · 20:21 UTC

Very well balanced and an interesting take on the whole diegetic UI. Perfectly timing the push for the orbs feels pretty satisfying.

06. Oct 2020 · 21:18 UTC

Very good entry! Making UI interactable this way is a unique gameplay :) well done!

06. Oct 2020 · 21:19 UTC

I like the simplicity of the graphics and music. It reminds me to the classic arcades.

06. Oct 2020 · 21:54 UTC

Cool game! Glad I got to hear the audio. In like the idea of hud being the target, but since the enemies only attack your health bar, and the bar goes down normally, it does not seem to add anything to the gameplay. It may actually take away since if the monsters are attacking you there would be more skill required to attack while dodging, but the health bar can only be defended by offence.
Would have liked to see ( and was expecting from description) all the HUD to be attacked, and have each mechanic be destroyed when it was destroyed visually. Also, would have preferred to see HUD damage like it was a structure, like in a Breakout style game where bits are being chipped off.
This was a fun game, and great job.

06. Oct 2020 · 22:09 UTC

@rhoff95 Thanks for the feedback! I completely agree. I originally wanted the health bar crack and 'leak' health, and you'd need to repair it. I couldn't fit that into the 48 hour compo though. :(

There are skill thief bugs that will steal the skill gems from your upgrade slots. That was my attempt at having more of the HUD be interactable.

Hopefully with more time I can implement some of these! Thanks for trying the game and providing thoughtful feedback.

P.S. I really enjoyed your submission as well! I'll put my feedback on it.

06. Oct 2020 · 22:12 UTC

@dharby hope to see some of that added post jam!

06. Oct 2020 · 22:15 UTC

@rhoff95 I'm considering doing a rebuild of the game using Godot. This version was built with Unity. I want to learn Godot and it seems good to do a side-by-side project comparison.

So I'll still be working on this a bit more, maybe I'll take that opportunity to try out some additional mechanics. :)

07. Oct 2020 · 11:26 UTC

This was such a good entry, I loved it! The art and music went very well together and the gameplay was very interesting with the HUD. I did find it quite hard but found that sacrificing a bit of health for the upgrades was worth it just to get the key. Great job on this it was very fun to play!

![Screenshot (14).png](///raw/cc9/43/z/3968b.png)

07. Oct 2020 · 14:05 UTC

I guess there is more stuff in this game then just killing enemies but I didn't get it.
I like the music.

07. Oct 2020 · 17:25 UTC

Thanks @cursedsoldier ! Glad you managed to beat it. I tried to ramp the difficulty so that your first round or two are pretty tough, but as you learn the mechanics a bit, you get closer to beating it. It's all about sacrificing a bit of health on a push to the skill upgrade! Nice work on the win.

@wormius I'm glad you like the music. It was procedurally generated!

07. Oct 2020 · 17:28 UTC

@Dharby Definitely worked out how you planned! :smile: Btw you said its procedural music? That is something I have never seen before, sounds awesome!

07. Oct 2020 · 17:36 UTC

I must admit, I did not quite understand what the hell is going on. Why was my health all over the place? What was I collecting? Was I supposed to do something with the door? Ughh, I need answers. Or tutorial. :D Otherwise, the controls were nicely smooth and the art adorable!

07. Oct 2020 · 18:11 UTC

@tamail Thanks for the feedback! I wish I had more time to put a tutorial in-game, but 48 hours was a bit tight. I did add some information to the game's description on the ldjam page to explain a bit.

In short:

- Defend your health bar and skill bar from enemies attacking it.
- Keep enemies under control and try not to get overwhelmed.
- Collect gems as they drop. Pick them up with F, bring them to your upgrade bar in the bottom left, and press F to place them into an upgrade slot.
- Collect all 3 upgrades for a chance to escape through the door.

Hope it helps!

07. Oct 2020 · 20:47 UTC

Really clever use of the health bar! Great interactive music/sfx too - good stuff!

07. Oct 2020 · 20:48 UTC

Thanks @meatball !

07. Oct 2020 · 20:48 UTC

It's really interesting concept, I like it ! The 1bit style is greatly used and I like the audio too :)
The only downside is... The theme ? Where is it :(

07. Oct 2020 · 20:53 UTC

@wegpast Thank you!

The theme unfortunately didn't show through as I hoped it would, largely due to the time constraints... The closest I got to it was being stuck in a loop of enemy waves spawning, until you can get to the key to escape and break the loop.

But I understand that doesn't come anywhere near the theme level of many other entries. Hopefully my next jam I can nail the theme a bit better!

07. Oct 2020 · 21:03 UTC

I Know I am a bad gamer....but really loved it and my fingers....enemy waves are coming and coming and there is no stopping man....and Then I escaped...and my skills got elevated...Thanks for this cute lil game...

07. Oct 2020 · 21:06 UTC

I'm glad to hear that @jarvisp99 ! Thanks for taking the time to try it.

07. Oct 2020 · 21:52 UTC

Nice game! I wish there was more of an impact when you hit the enemies though, and I think this kind of game would work well with waves so that you have time to actually use the orbs that you get to upgrade your weapons. That's my suggestions anyways.

07. Oct 2020 · 22:52 UTC

Thanks for the suggestions @mateusboga ! Really good ideas.

08. Oct 2020 · 03:07 UTC

Hey I had a blank screen on my browser

![Captura de pantalla 2020-10-08 000613.png](///raw/5d1/3/z/399a7.png)

any ideas what could it be??

Edit: Nvm, it loaded after a while!! Nice game!! Pretty original!! Music is super cool as are graphics, amazing job!!

08. Oct 2020 · 05:23 UTC

Wanted to play

@webox Right I also got a blank screen with shoot pointer and sound

08. Oct 2020 · 14:54 UTC

This one was short and sweet. Only no damage runs count on this xD. Thanks for submitting it! -PomoTheDog

08. Oct 2020 · 20:10 UTC

It was a cute little game. I really liked it. I wish they were some more enemy types but for a game created in 2 days, it's really well done ! Keep up the good work !

08. Oct 2020 · 20:16 UTC

Super neat, I liked it a lot ! A bit hard for me but really enjoyable. I'd like to come back to it later !

09. Oct 2020 · 01:06 UTC

Cool music and a lot of fun, good work!

09. Oct 2020 · 15:25 UTC

Very cool concept! Enjoyed this one a lot. Something that was a little unclear to me at first wast that I had to bring the orb to the slots at the bottom and choose one there. Maybe if there was some pulsing feedback or something to draw the player's attention there once an orb was picked up. Solid work all around!

09. Oct 2020 · 18:50 UTC

I really like the aesthetic of this game, and the concept is pretty original too ! However, an option to quit, or launch the game on windowed mode by default would have been nice (or maybe i didn't see it).

11. Oct 2020 · 01:37 UTC

This was such a fun game! It was pretty challenging but I couldn't stop playing it over and over again. I especially loved how you can interact with the UI. It was really satisfying to hack and slash all the aliens! Great job :)

11. Oct 2020 · 19:30 UTC

Cool game! Love the upgrade effects!
Love how the damage taken is from enemy harming the UI instead of player!

11. Oct 2020 · 20:07 UTC

Super good game!

12. Oct 2020 · 20:31 UTC

Very nice idea the fact that the ennemies attack directly the energy bar and that we have to put the squares directly in the upgrades weapons or the loses lifes. But what a mess with all theses ton of ennemies! Good that they don't give dammage on the character. And very good that we don't have to clic every time but just keep the button pressed to fight them. I don't find the theme in this game, and it's too stressful for me, but there's innovation, for sure. Good entry.

13. Oct 2020 · 13:57 UTC

A fun game, a bit to hard. The concept of the UI being a part of the world is really creative, and makes for some interesting gameplay.

13. Oct 2020 · 23:50 UTC

This game sicc as fuqq

14. Oct 2020 · 01:00 UTC

Excellent game, so much fun!! Huge Minit vibes

18. Oct 2020 · 20:31 UTC

Took me a bit to understand how the upgrades worked and that killing enemy cracks/camps was important to reduce the flow of enemies. I agree a lot with what @matootsy said too.

19. Oct 2020 · 17:35 UTC

The moment I understood the upgrade system, I was able to get through this with relatively little trouble. I'm a huge fan of game loops that trap you with one-shot recovery items that stop you from achieving the goal, so being able to use your orbs to replenish health in emergencies was a nice touch.

I'm not sure I entirely understood how "gem thieves" worked; in gameplay, it gave me the impression that my powers would deplete over time, as I did not see the thief. I would recommend adding a gameplay sound of some kind that indicates this happening.

Good work!

22. Oct 2020 · 04:01 UTC

Very fun! I had to keep playing until I beat it. IMO a great balance of difficulty since it requires you to play it a few times to get the hang of it. Music was great! It took me a little while to figure out what to do with the ability orbs (due to never reading the instructions :laughing:) The only weak point would be the theme now showing through enough.

22. Oct 2020 · 11:19 UTC

That was pretty nice :) Liked the scope and simplicity of your entry. The game play mechanics were rock solid and worked well. I even got some satisfaction out of killing the little enemies even though they lacked any kind of hit feedback or sound effects. That's something that could add a lot to the game's enjoyment on top of what you already have. The art was also pretty nice. Simple but effective.

I had some problems understanding what was going on, how my health worked and what to do with the upgrades. It wasn't all that clear just by playing the game so I read up the description, which made it all the clearer. After that, it was pretty easy and finished in a heartbeat! Including the HUD into game play is always a twist I enjoy :)

Good job!

22. Oct 2020 · 15:01 UTC

Thanks @duke . As a compo entry, I didn't quite have enough time to get to in-game tutorials, but I agree it would have helped along with hit feedback!

25. Oct 2020 · 10:10 UTC

Hey, I couldn't rate your game as it wouldn't run in my browser. I'll try in a different browser later if I have time. Sorry