ALDIS by Kyle Farwell

[raw]
made by Kyle Farwell for Ludum Dare 59 (JAM)

ALDIS is an action-packed thrilling ride that will push your morse coding skills to the limit! Engage in tactical combat by testing your reaction time and mental capacity to blast the invading Entities back to where they came from! Get your mouse wheel, trackpad, or rotary encoder ready as a steady hand and nerves of steel are a must! Battle waves of enemies as they attempt to conquer Earth!

Feeling lonely? No problem, we've got you covered with online multiplayer and leaderboards! In addition to story mode, engage in co-op, versus and survival mode for the ultimate challenge! Thanks for playing and keep your eyes on the skies!

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Ratings

Overall 124th 4⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 353th 3.475⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 189th 3.775⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 154th 4.175⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 601th 3.325⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 353th 3.475⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 136th 3.711⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 378th 3.7⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 15🗳️ 20🗨️

Feedback

Cosecant
Apr 21st · 22:46 UTC
PERFECT GAME!!!
Vela Pulsar
Apr 21st · 22:49 UTC
Great game. Brilliant interpretation of the theme
2Inkling
Apr 22nd · 04:02 UTC
Genuinely an amazing educational game. I've had morse code explained to me before but never been able parse it myself. With this it feels like I could memorize the letters by sight or sound quite quickly!
Maksim Terskov
Apr 22nd · 04:18 UTC
Great interpretation of the theme, and the sound effects are really good.

It’s quite difficult, though, to aim, keep the target in sight, and look up in the table how to produce the letter you need—all at the same time.

PS Special thanks for the audio settings—this is something many games really lack.
T C
Apr 22nd · 04:58 UTC
Wow, nice work! Having the reference in the middle of the screen definitely made this playable for me! I went through the campaign, and really liked the story that went with it, same with the codes you chose for the enemies. I got quite a chuckle. French Fries indeed! My biggest gripe was certain enemies taking paths that my radar could not target. One click of the mouse wheel up was too high, one click down then made it too low. I had to wait for awhile for them to get closer. However, that was it. The rest of the game was good fun. I liked the Airstrike mission a lot. Also really enjoyed the visual display when you send the signal, the light, shadows, stopped movement when the light goes dim, really cool effect! Fun game, good job!
YurisCat
Apr 23rd · 06:19 UTC
I learned some Morse code! Too bad my fingers and brain can't keep up, otherwise I'd be having a blast!
MostLikely
Apr 24th · 04:27 UTC
Great work! This game is super polished from beginning to end. Only issue I had was when I was scanning the bottom of a character and still saw them, but the morse code wasn't registering, so I had to rescan. Wish I was faster at morse code!
adam-gould
Apr 24th · 08:51 UTC
That was really well done. Polished to a fine shine and a wonderful take on the typing game.

If I had one suggestion it would be to add controller support; I feel that the ability to use an analogue stick would work nicely with the aiming.
LDJam user 425464
Apr 24th · 08:53 UTC
Wow that was insanely stressful. Idk what in morse code makes me sweat so much but i was anxious the whole time. Very polished and having the reference sheet at the middle of battlefield is genius choice, made the core loop way more satisfying than usually with morse code games.
🎤 Kyle Farwell
Apr 24th · 16:49 UTC
Thanks for all the feedback! It definitely takes some practice and probably could have used more difficulty tuning :sweat_smile:

@t-c Should have made this clearer, but you can press P to pause and lower the scroll speed to aim more precisely! Takes a bit of fiddling along with the acceleration depending on your mouse :)
zhangzhimu
May 05th · 07:59 UTC
The first time I saw something like this, I thought of using Morse code to create a game.
That's great! However, the difficulty level of the game is actually a bit too high for me. I'll have to spend some time exploring it.
CreeperXD
May 06th · 15:55 UTC
Inputting the code is surprisingly responsive, I never accidentally inputted a dash when I wanted a dot instead.

!> I really like the second last story level, which looks like it is impossible to complete at first, until you realise that one of the entities is (maybe?) a traitor and will destroy its comrades when destroyed itself. Pretty funny twist.
justking144
May 06th · 16:19 UTC
This seriously brought me back to my childhood where i used to play typer shark in computer class (yes, I'm old and that game rocked). Only complaint would be that I sometimes struggled to keep a word going, like I'd do a dot and then it'd disappear before I did a dash, but that might've been on me
Abiral
May 06th · 17:55 UTC
i liked how you had different type of modes at the menu. learned new morse codes too haha, i was a bit slow in it. overall good game.
Antoine Bodin
May 07th · 16:23 UTC
Congrats! very nice idea and very funny game!
The music really creates an interesting setting and the gameplay is really fun.
Who would have thought that having a big morse table in the center of the screen would be so good in a video game?
Gurtek
May 07th · 17:18 UTC
I learned morse code and had a lot of fun ! Maybe there should be an upgrade to expand the width of the 'radar' to facilitate target tracking. Excellent game !