QUADRATORUM by Blue Pin Studio


Plot
Battle your way through hoards of enemies squares in order to delay the inevitable. Your own demise. Don't be afraid to take a little bit of damage, you're a circle after all!
Features
- Three Rounds of Increasing Difficulty
- Upgrades
- Sound Synchronized Battle & Environment
- An ending cutscene!
| Role | Team Member | |--------------------|--------------------------| | Programming | Viktor (Blue Pin Studio) | | Music & SFX | Bahska | | Art | Viktor (Blue Pin Studio) |
Best gameplay is when the music volume is cranked up. There have been some inconsistent effects when music volume is very low. Good luck! I highly recommend the shield ;)
Ratings
| Overall | 512th | 3.658⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 678th | 3.395⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 832th | 3.171⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1014th | 3.365⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 563th | 3.816⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 58th | 4.197⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 473th | 3.689⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 53🗨️ |
My main complaint is that the enemies were spawning really close to me. I somehow managed to survive a first wave, but wasn't able to get to an upgrade.
Great job overall!
Other than the issues with not being able to defend myself, the gameplay and controls worked fine and were functional, so I don't think I can bash it too hard.
Overall, it's a very nice and stylish game!
Loved the music and how the game was completely synchronised with it.
Almost died a few times (I think) but managed to complete the levels juuuust before my health ran out, so I'd call it perfectly balanced.
And such an emotional ending! At least... emotional for a circle.
Also: The game is marked as unfinished right now, so I can't rate. Is there any reason for this?
@henrik-ganard The player character has a lot of health, you're meant to withstand a lot of enemy damage. :) Just lots of death and destruction! Thanks for playing :)
I would say that I expected to die faster. It takes quite some hits before dying. Great job!
I didn't mind the spawning system too much since you have enough health to get past it, but I think the game would be better off if you had an ability bound to left-click that cools down after use-- something like a piercing gun, or a radial knockback on enemies.
The web browser version didn't work for me at all sadly, some kind of bug was happening where enemies would never trigger (or a single enemy would) and the music fell out of sync after some time.
It's a shame you couldn't get the upload issue worked out, but you might be able to talk to Mike directly about getting that worked out if you made Jam submission time and that bug stopped you from participating.
PSA to Linux players: Make sure both chrome_crashpad_handler and QUADATORUM have execute permission, then start up ./QUADATORUM from the terminal. :)
@dae-udain Thanks for the kind words! There actually is a health indicator, the circle in the middle of your character shrinks according to your remaining health. The health pool is very generous in order for more people to reach the end :)
@devzhrssh Thanks a lot! Yeah we only had time for three enemy types. Lots of room for improvement :D
Animations and shooting on the music beat was great too, it set a great mood.
I think each round is a bit too long as it is (you wait a long time before the first upgrade) and enemies can sometimes spawn very close to you, but otherwise this was a fun arcade game!
I'm sure the game can be a lot of fun if it all works out but for me it was strange.
I'm not normally a fan of rhythm games since they try to get you to stick to the beat, but having the bass dictate your shots being fired was a pleasant spin on that that I very much enjoyed.
Also the song was sick as hell, if nothing else, you should consider listing it on Spotify or something!
I couldn't help but be inspired by the gameplay especially once I saw the upgrades. Since you're lucky to have a music artist on the team, it would be really neat if a full version tied different weapons to different music instruments/tracks. So if you pick up missiles, now missiles are firing to the bass or something.
But I digress. For the gameplay I mostly did a gigantic circle strafe. I'm sorta glad the HP bar was forgiving, I definitely ran into a lot of enemies when they spawned right next to me lol. I thought it was really neat that the arena size shrunk and it became VERY apparently once you were near the end of the game.
The ending was a very nice touch honestly. It plays right into the shrinking arena by making you feel like you're screwed but having someone drop down to save you. It worked better emotionally than I expected.
A very cool concept that shows what a beat sync'd game can do. I could see this going further with more work, great job!
@joshh Thanks a lot, im glad you noticed. This game is full of tiny things that will likely go unnoticed by most players.
@peachtreeoath Wow thanks! I really enjoyed your game and i thought it was super well made, so it means a lot coming from such a good designer.
@szkocka Thanks! It was my first time doing art for a game, wanted to keep it fairly minimalistic
@emaigualmc2-art All very good feedback! Thanks :D By the way, the game is entirely synced to music, the enemy spawn rate and your fire rate. You cannot shoot with the mouse buttons. Maybe you had your music volume too low causing rate issues. Afterall, its based on overall audio levels :P I wish i could've made a system to compensate for low system sound, but didnt have enough time
Without any indicator of remaining health, I had a hard time figuring out whether I was ever in any danger or whether there was actually a difference between shooting vs ramming the enemies (I assume there is). Interesting, the game psychologically felt a bit boring when the arena was too large (free to just move in big circles), and it felt restricting when the arena was too small (nothing really happens, and there's only a few spots for enemies to warp in). There was a sweet spot in the middle when the gameplay felt just right.
One last note, your default html5 canvas size is huge! Please note that a significant portion of the population is running at 1366x768 or 1280x720 desktop resolutions ([reference](https://gs.statcounter.com/screen-resolution-stats/desktop/worldwide)) and your canvas size of 1440x810 will not fit on their screens. (I'm running at 1280x1024, for reference)
Some my thoughts:
- No way see how many HP I have(actually I'm not sure if HP exists at all, I passed game in first attempt)
- Enemies sometimes spawn too close
- When I was get first upgrade and wasted too much time choosing what is better damage or shield the game like: "You get nothing! Good day, Sir!" :laughing:
Thank you for this game!
+ The inevitability made me laugh. I forgot what was told to me in the beginning then freaked out "Oh no the square!"
+ The graphics are very nice
+ Music with bullets - Very nice.
- The background could be a few shades dimmer so the circling rectangles don't distract too much from piloting the circle but overall is not too bad.
I am a huge fan of Geometry Wars and I would always try to time my bullets to the music. The fact that you linked it for me plus had music changes depending on what wave is happening really did it for me.
Great job
There were some things, that seemed unfair for me as a player (such as squares-enemies) that appeared right in front of me and, probably, their hitboxes, because in combo it made evading and shooting much harder. But other than that, really good job!