DANGER! Alien Cow Thieves! by Shredmer

DANGER! Alien Cow Thieves!
Keep your cows alive! Alien cow thieves are invading your farm. Melee the UFOs away to protect your cows and defeat enemies for extra scoring. Compete for a top score on the leaderboards!
Earn combos by hitting consecutive enemies without missing a swing.
NOTE
Leaderboard only functions in http NOT https
Game still runs fine in either http or https


STANDARD CONTROLS
Left - Left Arrow Key
Right - Right Arrow Key
Jump - Up Arrow Key or Space Bar
Melee - Z or X
WASD CONTROLS
Left - A
Right - D
Jump - W or Space Bar
Melee - LMB or Shift
| Youtube | http://andyredmer.com/ldjam46/index.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/udder-defender |
Ratings
| Overall | 406th | 3.862⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 632th | 3.621⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1624th | 3.086⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1346th | 3.603⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 93th | 4.534⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 660th | 3.537⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 503th | 3.5⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1222th | 3.397⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 12🗨️ |

Sadly, I didn't feel that the rest of the game lived up to the level set by the art and audio. The jumping felt too short and unresponsive, I often felt that I jumped, but the character didn't. I had a hard time getting onto the platforms, since they obsctructed moving upwards, and the constant enemy fire did not help since they pushed me around quite a lot.
Since the regular enemies posed no threat other than pushing me around, I just ended up running back and forth between the top platforms, spamming attack and hoping for the best, which proved to be a great tactic.
It was especially great after the game bugged out and stopped spawning UFO's, which made the game endless since I could not die, but could still collect points. I stopped playing at around 7000 points, since there were so many enemies that the audio started cutting out.
Overall, it was artfully amazing, but the gameplay got stale after a while.

This was my game at around 7000 points c:
Gameplay wise there's a lot going on here. Movement feels fairly forgiving but needing to bounce off enemies to hit the second level platforms is an interesting choice that I'm still conflicted on.
Once I realized the only real threat is the saucers, the game felt fairly easy and started to lose interest due to the lack of new mechanics.
Ignoring those little niggles though, the game itself is fun and well polished. The art is charming and overall it's a very impressive entry for a jam.
Fun, chaotic, with some target prioritization strategy elements.
Odd jump mechanics add to the chaos, no time for deliberately picking up coins.
Cows don't obey gravity, possible for player and cows to get stuck to bottom of platforms.
Some level/wave mechanics would be nice. Some sort of positive progress and goals other than score. Maybe an eventual victory condition.
Fun, chaotic, with some target prioritization strategy elements.
Odd jump mechanics add to the chaos, no time for deliberately picking up coins.
Cows don't obey gravity, possible for player and cows to get stuck to bottom of platforms.
Some level/wave mechanics would be nice. Some sort of positive progress and goals other than score. Maybe an eventual victory condition.
The core game play itself is also good, self explainatory and punching alien creates against walls with a glorios explosions always satisfying. The main problem was the controls. They felt really laggy and unresponsive to an extend, that I wasn't able to get much fun out if it. I had problems planning my jumps and I missed almost all of my wall jumps because of that. Since control is one of the most important things in an arcade platformer like this, it really stands out, if something is off. I hope you can still work on the controls and fine tune them so they feel responsive and tight.
-The collision for the melee attack is very small, it doesn't fit the animation, specially there is no attack from the back and it looks like a 360 hit.
-The wall jump was unexpected, I played several runs without noticing it was there wondering how I could reach the platforms, I tried using bullets to do that, but the knockback is (obviously) uncontrollable. It was maybe unnecessary, although it matches really well with the wall enemies.
-Some UFO abduct cows too soon, there should be a larger minimum time so it doesn't feel unfair.
-The melee attack sound is a bit repetitive, specially once there are a lot of enemies (a when I say a lot, it's A LOT, the pace of new enemies is super steep, some wave system as mentioned above could work perfectly with this game), I recommend for this adding some random small pitch shift, this can make a huge difference.
-Because the priority is to clean the board from enemies, the coin mechanics doesn't add more depth to the system, you just end up taking points by accident. Also you are already given points when just killing, so I don't really see the point (no pun intended)
-The combo system worked strangely, I think it stops if both you take a hit or enough time happens, there isn't really a feedback for the latter, and I think it could be juiced up further.
I think that is all that went through my mind while playing. I had a great time and I think you did an excellent job, keep on!