Roadkill junction by BadPiggy

The zombie apocalypse has hit the world, but you still need to go do your job as a traffic conductor
Controls and how-to-play explained in the game. Press R at any time to restart
I made everything except for the music and audio. Both are from Pixabay. Link to the music on the game page
| Link | https://badpiggy.itch.io/roadkill-junction |
| Link | https://badpiggy.itch.io/roadkill-junction |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/roadkill-junction |
Ratings
| Overall | 138th | 3.986⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 17th | 4.25⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 75th | 3.987⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 65th | 4.355⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 381th | 3.824⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 95th | 3.892⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 415th | 3.649⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 12🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
Unfortunately my brain can't handle the controls at all (I want to jump with space!). Also genuine question, why would someone use ZQSD to move?
The only thing I didn't really like was the choice of the score as a record indicator. Would like to see, for example, my result in the duration of the race in order to know about my record.
At the first (and for like first ten tries), holding J and tapping in the direction felt kinda weird, almost like if I expected it to work the opposite way, but I got used to it eventually. Though I think I would also like a combination of direction + J, so that I can run towards the traffic and also signal it that they can go.
All in all, super fun. Few tiny things — if the car signals that it's gonna go through the intersection and you give signal to it, it will turn lights back to "waiting" color, and I had one car just blowing the intersection without waiting, but I don't really blame them, I would be stressed too in this situation.
And a car blowing past when the lights were orange was also intentional. They get too angry if you make them wait for too long lol.
This particular flavor of rock music brought me right back to my beloved PS1 and that feeling is amplified with 2D sprites in a 3D world, giving that pop-up book/diorama look I adore.
There's a much appreciated jump feature which is handy for dodging oncoming cars and escaping mosh pits. Thanks to having a shadow under the character, judging where you're going to land is pretty easy. I believe I encountered a bug in the tutorial, there's some invisible barrier in the crosswalk I can just kinda jump over. Nothing super broken, just something I noted in my time directing traffic into the horde.
Roadkill Junction is here for a good time, flipping around and makin' road pizza is def up there.
A couple things I noticed during play
- I kept inverting the controls in my head, clicking the direction I wanted the cars to go instead of the direction the cars come from. This could just be a me issue.
- Once I got past the early game, I no longer needed to tell the cars to go. There were so many cars and so many zombies there wasn't any risk of not having enough life orbs to pick up. Unsure if the descent into chaos as the traffic conductor no longer conducts traffic during the zombie apocalypse was intentional or incidental, but either way felt thematically appropriate.
Really great job! Had a lot of fun!
I really feel like the direction I press for traffic should be where the car goes not be pointing towards the car I want to move.
I dig the color pallet and the flip animation!
this is by best time

The graphics work perfectly for the feel, the sfx add to the hilarity.
Also - having the 'working tutorial' be text on the ground that disappears once the player demonstrates reading it - brilliant.
Super cute and fun! Great work
Only feedback - holding J and tapping a direction works. I would also like holding a direction and tapping J. In fact, I think I would like that better.
Cheers, piggy.
Overall great work on this - got introduced to your games via protomous from the bigmode jam, and its nice to see that you consistently deliver high quality!
I goofed around a bit after the recording and realized you can just... leave the arena by jumping over the walls. Obviously your health depleting over time prevents this from being a viable strategy, but you can certainly go somewhere unintended before the game starts.
After successfully directing a dozen or so drivers to into other drivers, you can't help but wonder if the zombies attacking you were just people you killed moments ago. I'm giving you the **Undead End** award.

And here's the recorded gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDyZlm6Dzp8
Anyway, I thought it was really fun and unique concept and always appreciate your style! :thumbsup:


... and finally I won for real 😅
I know I complained about the car orientation stuff on stream, but by the end of it I wasn't having any issue with it at all. Not sure what that says about me, but my opinions might have changed on the matter. :sweat_smile:
Great job on this one! I had a lot of fun with it.
Flow-wise, playing this game felt like playing an FPS with "invert Y axis" turned on. I just could not rewire my brain that "when I want the car to go down, I should press up." Or, I could when things were peaceful but when I moved into flow state I would bounce back out because my fingers decided to press down to instruct the car to move down. No sweat, that's my fault, git gud.
Graphics were great, and clear, and a great actionstorm rose from intersection of fast-paced elements, trying to juggle influence/control of the players, the cars, the zombies, and the need to avoid each while also getting the lifepips. The impatience of the cars and the way they'd activate on their own without waiting really put the cherry on top and forced me into chaos. Though you didn't create audio, they're well-chosen and fit. Really nice work all around!