Pug Panic by Alex Davies
OH NO! Your pet pug has gotten loose on your spaceship! You're locked in the bridge, though, so you'll have to try and protect it through your archaic, virus-ridden systems monitor. How long can you keep him safe?
This is a purely mouse-based game, so no controls, other than clicking and dragging stuff - track-pad not recommended.
Instructions are accessible in-game through the help button on the menu.
Play Pug Panic
Watch the timelapse of me making it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sinkqyFWZsY
Tools used: - Unity - Pyxel Edit - GIMP - REAPER - Audacity - BFXR - Some custom tools available on my GitHub (developed for personal use only): https://github.com/AlexDavies8/Unity-Plugins
My experience this time around:
I really struggled to come up with an idea past a generic platformer for the first couple hours, but once I settled on it, this is the most inventive I think I've been so far. It was also much quicker through development than my previous submissions, and somehow I never felt pressured for time, even after polishing! It was also nice to work with more familiar programs, and to be able to use a DAW better than Bosca for music (REAPER can be got as a free trial version, but it seemingly never expires).
What I could have done better (ramble):
I would have liked to create a tutorial more integrated with the game-play, rather than just a help screen. I've also found from extensive feedback that the game's difficulty curve is too sharp and unforgiving, so I should have made some minor changes to the difficulty, and also zoomed out the camera on the dog to give you more time to react to his position (I missed this as a potential problem in development because I knew the level layout, so I always knew what to do). I also don't quite like some of the UI. It was meant to look like a hologram at first, but I had to remove transparency because it made everything unreadable, so all the UI ended up a bright blue square.
Ratings
| Overall | 83th | 3.977⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 185th | 3.738⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 43th | 4.145⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 15th | 4.429⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 58th | 4.273⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 59th | 3.951⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 44th | 3.952⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 108th | 3.836⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 43🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
Your graphics are amazing! I loved them. The game is a bit hard I think. But I liked it. Good job!
I also would have loved to make a more interactive tutorial, but ended up only having time for a simple help screen :( .
It's amazingly what you did do it on time. This game contains a lot of small things and has smooth fast gameplay.
There's something super satisfying about having lots of buttons to press to control things around, so definitely enjoyed it.
My main piece of feedback is that it is quite challenging particularly at the beginning.
Previous comments mentioned maybe having a tutorial but I personally think that this game's theme goes will with learning by trial and error, so I'm not too bothered about that. I do like the extra challenge of figuring out how do those panels work... When you actually do, there's that AHA moment that feels great.
What I do think is that the overall experience could benefit from a slower pace at the beginning while allowing the player to understand the mechanics, as you introduce them one by one. Maybe popups could only appear later on, as complexity ramps up, after you've successfully interacted with a few of the basic controls first.
That being said, I know it's 48 hours, and balancing is a tough one to conquer during a jam. Overall, it's a very neat game.
Needless to say, love your aesthetics too!
**Things I liked**
- art is very beautiful
- I love the whole idea about the game, implementation of these windows are very cool
- various mechanics are simple enough, but adding them together keeps game challenging and engaging
- background music and sound effect add another layer to the atmosphere of the game
**Things that could be improved**
- Difficulty of the game could be ramp up after a while, don't get me wrong I like challenging games but maybe keep first 30 seconds more chill until player get used to all mechanics
- actually this game doesn't need that much to be released on mobile, just to polish it more, maybe add more mechanics and difficulty levels
Amazing job in such short time! :smile:
I honestly don't have any critical feedback to give.
Talking about some minor minuses, music is slightly annoying, when you keep listening to it for some period of time. The font choice is also doubtful. It fits stylistically, but looks a bit messy and not that easy to read sometimes.
I did find the initial difficulty to be a little harder than I would have liked, especially the constant popups that would move all of my carefully organized windows around. There was so little margin of error for observing what your dog was doing and what needed to be disabled that by the time I got the popups closed and even found the window I needed to interact with, it was usually too late for him =( Poor pug. Could also just be my slow reaction skill...
All in all, I thought it was great concept, and I had fun playing it. I think it would be a blast if the difficulty were brought down a bit and ramped up later on. Great job!
@jason-woerner Thank you for taking the time to leave in depth feedback. You comment on the small margin for error never occurred to me, but I reckon that you've pin-pointed exactly the reason people find it too hard. Thanks again for the insight; zooming the dog camera out should help the difficulty problem significantly.
Well done 👍
Since it seems pretty random, if you do keep building post-compo, dooing it with a bit more structure, and starting smaller missions first would be cool. BTw, the randomising of the windows each reset was particularly evil. I think several pugs perished while I was organising my windows! :slight_frown:
Well done on your entry, I really enjoyed it and you got yourself a new fan! Well done again!
Otherwise, very solid game. Great simplistic graphics, quality sounds and music that make up the atmosphere, well functioning game mechanics.
Also, this game has lots of potential. For example, it could be enhanced with campaign mode, where you had to lead the pug through levels to safety. Open/close doors, activate fans, maybe even deploy food or a squirrel to lure it etc.
Now about that shattered monitor and broken mouse you owe me..
But seriously, the game is awesome! The art, the music, the idea, the window management, Damsel. I can't believe you did all of this within 2 days. That's crazy! Are you insane? Well, that would explain this game!
Well done! Now let me kill this dog once more.
Great sound design!
Greato Jobu! :smile:
Overall, though really great work :)
Graphics are nice, doggie is cute and I really liked the concept of this game. It is an amazingly impressive achievement for two days of solo work! I don't know you did that but I bow to you, sir!
@fabula-rasa Thanks very much for the feedback. After testing it more after submission, and from everyone else's feedback, I've decided that for the post-jam version (when I get the time to finish it) will most likely either tone down the popups massively, or remove them completely for another mechanic that feels slightly less unfair.