Hamster Defense by commanderstitch

[raw]
made by commanderstitch for Ludum Dare 51 (COMPO)

haha. Just. haha insane.

I can't believe just how hard it was to make something that was supposed to be simple. I guess adding complexity to the way you add/remove entities via menu or UI makes it harder to manage stuff.

2022-10-02 17<em>54</em>56-Hamster Defense.png

How to play: controls can be updated by clicking esc and manually updating the buttons. movement: W, A, S, D. click the icons in the upper left and place buildings around the world.

hamster wheels generate power. turrets shoot cannons.

You cannot fire. ran out of time for the personal big gun. You will have to avoid the bullets instead and focus on building things.

You win by not dying before the goal timer is hit and the core building is still alive. if you die before the timer hits 5000 you lose. if you die and the core is at 0 you lose. if you are alive somehow you cannot win. ;-)

tips to win if you are struggling: I believe if you start the game again it remembers the amount of unspent 'hamster power'. You might be able to use this to your advantage to win later games if you are struggling.

Your turrets are very weak against the enemies, just let them hit the core while you stay safe.

enjoy.

Ratings

Given 19🗳️ 14🗨️

Feedback

INCD021
03. Oct 2022 · 08:48 UTC
Hi there commander,
I won, I think. [Win.jpg](///raw/5c7/2/z/501d8.jpg) :)
Your game has the expected graphics style and chaotic gameplay (also as expected). :D
It's always a pleasure to play your games. :D Nice work :thumbsup:

Note: Download is very slow (3-4 minutes to download), might be a good idea to host it somewhere else..
🎤 commanderstitch
03. Oct 2022 · 12:12 UTC
@incd021 :'( for download speed. how do i up the rate of download for the server i pay for? I'll have to look into it. Hopefully it doesn't cost a lot of money, for that which I do not have. ;-) Thank you for playing my game. <3 <3 <3
INCD021
03. Oct 2022 · 17:02 UTC
@commanderstitch I have no idea, it depends on the server, the setup, and so on.. But if it's a server you pay for I don't get why it's this slow. Where in the world is the server located, might be that the connections between me and the server is just not that good...
Linus Lindberg
03. Oct 2022 · 18:25 UTC
Well done with your game! It took a while for me to figure out what I was doing but once I did I had fun! And yeah, everything takes so much longer than you think during jams haha.
🎤 commanderstitch
03. Oct 2022 · 20:53 UTC
@incd021, you're not the only one. Guys at work had the same issues. It's only a 21mb file. at 101kb/s transfer rate. I'll contact them tonight and see what's up.
Yngvarr
05. Oct 2022 · 18:11 UTC
I don't get it. At all! But it was fun, especially reading some labels in menus. It's an ambitious project and now I understand where that "aaaaa"s in discord came from. :D

Check out my playthrough, if you'll find it interesting:
https://youtu.be/9OyIT0w19q4
tigerfinch
08. Oct 2022 · 16:04 UTC
Couldn't seem to do anything once the game started unfortunately, arrow keys didn't do anything, neither did clicking (or dragging) on the units in the top left corner. Pressing enter and space in the menus did however work, so input not completely ignored.

Anyway, wanted to comment as the style I love, and the sfx+music are fun. Looks like it would be cool!
Bluesand
08. Oct 2022 · 16:04 UTC
I love the feeling of building ,fun game! I think it might be fun to give the building some more interesting and powerful features! The hamsters are cute! Nice work!
🎤 commanderstitch
08. Oct 2022 · 16:12 UTC
@tigerfinch, wasd for controls. They can be changed in the menus if needed. I don't know what's going on with the download speeds. The hosting company says everything is just fine. Is there an issue with 3rd party connections to the server? :thinking:
Jiri Hysek
08. Oct 2022 · 16:16 UTC
Lol, that was surreal experience (as expected from Commander Stitch) :D I figured out that the thing in the middle lures monsters so I ran away as far as I could. Then I was wondering how could I win it. So I red the description and found out that I need to die first.. so I started looking for the base but I couldn't find it anymore, I was lost :) So I started running into monsters. Man, it took a lot of monsters to hit until my hamster died :D And then I won! Not sure if I'm playing it right, but at least I kept the hamster alive for a pretty long time!
LDJam user 54618
08. Oct 2022 · 16:33 UTC
The buttons to place buildings didn't work so well in fullscreen.
I love the intro sequence! The visuals and sound is nice. Controls are responsive. Gameplay feels very unbalanced, I ended up making tons of hamster power until I had enough to spam cannons as fast as I could click, but I was never sure how much effect the cannons had, and didn't know if my base was surviving once I walked away. I had to place so many buildings it felt more like spamming than strategy once I figured it out. Not sure how, but it would be nice if you made each individual building matter more.
Great work, especially for the compo!
acdimalev
08. Oct 2022 · 20:03 UTC
On Linux, the game doesn't run unless xrandr is installed, which isn't really a problem but the error message doesn't give any hints about it. I don't... think this will be a problem for anybody else, but mentioning because I almost skipped past trying the game out.
khaotom
08. Oct 2022 · 21:02 UTC
I had a lot of fun with this. Everything felt odd and a little glitchy which I really liked. It took several plays to start to understand some of the game. The music is just great, I like the snes era sounding instruments and the arrangement was both playful and unnerving. Something about having to die to win the game also just made me smile.
Tommy
08. Oct 2022 · 21:20 UTC
I loved the intro splashscreen of the game! Other than that, I think you have some pretty solid core mechanics but would have needed to work a bit more on the game balance, as for instance cannons cost way too much for the incredibly small damage they do to enemies (and their very low life). I think that with very little time invested in tweaking a few numbers gameplay could change dramatically. Also I don't really get how the 10 seconds timer fits with all of it. This being said, you did a good amount of work given the time constraints (expecially given the extra difficulty of the Compo).
k-s-raj
09. Oct 2022 · 08:04 UTC
great idea with fun gameplay :)
DzejPi
09. Oct 2022 · 12:50 UTC
Interesting graphics. And you don't see many Java games, so that was very nice to see! Otherwise yeah, as other said, gameplay was a little bit chaotic and I was not sure what I was doing, but that's part of the fun!
glenugie
09. Oct 2022 · 17:34 UTC
I have no idea what I just played, but it was definitely an experience. Some work definitely needed on balance and direction, as I frequently seemed to be in an unwinnable scenario. Overall though, there's some good gameplay here in want of a bit of polish!
Kregap
10. Oct 2022 · 12:32 UTC
Good job doing as much as you managed to do. Good luck next time! ლ(╹◡╹ლ)
rsninjadev
11. Oct 2022 · 06:07 UTC
wacky experience for sure, I feel like the amount of enemies scale to fast sometimes, I think with some more balancing the game would go from good to great. Keep up the great work!
Hacktier
20. Oct 2022 · 21:12 UTC
Nice Work!