KATABASIS by JLV
Greetings executor.
In times immemorial, so distant in the past that it actually looks like the future thanks to time dilation, happened a legend well forgotten by most mortals.
Two corporations, equal in their nobility, greed and market capitalization were fighting each other.
As you know, businesses do business stuff and these two businesses decided that, after all, fighting over market monopoly was worth it. Business-wise, it was appropriate business.
This is how the human elite of Nariade Corp (the good guys) decided to launch an attack on a dangerous Minotech Robotics facility (the bad guys, because they are in green).
Journeying through this facility, the Nariade Corp assault group had a nifty strategy: wandering deeper and deeper in order to kill the head of the evil firm, headquartered in Tartarus, with NO air conditioner.
Will they be able to stand-up against countless machines? Are these androids brainwashed by a sort of cult, that maybe follow a religious leader? And how will the shareholders react to these shocking news?
After decades of research, our team excavated this tale and is offering you below a representation of the true fable of the century.
A story of life and death. Of humans and robots. Of crunchiness versus crispness.
But most importantly, this journey embodies the epicness of a time where TikTok didn't exist.
Welcome to the alpha version of Tartarus, executor. You truly deserve your VIP place in hell.
In bullet hell.
How to play:
WASD or arrows to move. The build currently supports the first two of the three dimensions that are part of our world. Press Space to kick some ass.
How to win:
Post a comment to brag about your best score and feel superior compared to the other humans venturing into Katabasis. What are you waiting for? Get to work already!
If you encounter performance issues with the WebGL build, do not hesitate to switch to the desktop exe.
| Link | https://jlv_.gitlab.io/ld48_live/ |
| Desktop (Better Performance) | https://jlv.itch.io/katabasis |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/katabasis-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 1581th | 3.07⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1383th | 3.024⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1816th | 2.345⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1845th | 2.44⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1570th | 2.907⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 1033th | 3⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1209th | 2.303⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1357th | 3.155⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 61🗨️ |
(I finished with a score of 1213, is that any good ? :p )
As a minor criticism of the art, I would suggest more consistent line width; and maybe a bigger width for the character for instance, maybe at least the outline. Otherwise the chara design is cool, the main character reminded me of Rei in Evangelion.
The backgrounds were also nice and low-contrast, and the character collision was good.
The boss spawned a static dot apparently full of projectiles after death, which my character proceeded to fly through during the transition-out "cutscene" and died.
I thought the music and the backgrounds were really well done. Having a story unfold through the collected items was nice, and got me invested in the game. Overall it felt a bit on the easy side. Normally I'm pretty bad at this type of game, but I don't think I ever dropped below 3/4 health. Still, I had fun playing and piecing together the story!
Bullet patterns were a bit of a mixed bag. The little guys were probably the worst since you had to actively bait them, where most of the other patterns could be dodged.
Last boss had some rough patterns. Hitbox was also ambiguous.
That said, the health bar solves basically all of these complaints, since taking a hit isn't lethal like most shmups. Though I found it a bit easy as a result. For the boss's last pattern I just face tanked all the shots since it was more efficient than trying to dodge.
Overall package seems solid. No major bugs, mostly just found myself wanting more enemies/levels/etc, which is always a good sign that you've got a solid idea.
Nice work!
I thought the graphics were cool and the things that need to be hi-res were hi-res and it was made more effective b things tht were more pixelated.
I love games like this so that was relly exciting and I'll be honest until after I beat the final boss I didn't realize that the game lore was comin g in the form of the inventory. I even tried using an item! But once I did realize that the story was in the inventory I thought that that was a really cool way to tell the story!
The music and fx were a lot of fun! I hd to turn my speakers up rather high to hear it so maybe slightly louder mixing? But the music itself was great! The voice part in the boss level maybe you could consider adding the slightest slightest bit of reverb for a sense of space that would be in stark contrast to the rest of the music in the game and then really kinda add to the eeriness of having to almost face that final boss!
Great entry and nice work!! Loved it
Hello guys, thank you for your interest in our game ! I have added a Desktop Build ; not sure it will alleviate all the performance issues, but it might help.
inescapable on the last fight but it was very fun ! Maybe green is not the best color, in my opinion and it's very subjective, I would have prefer red, pink or orange but it was fine with green too. Great game !
The sound volume is incredibly low though, makes it hard to really appreciate the sound design :/
Nice work overall, good luck for the future developments!
Also, maybe thats only a problem with my computer, but i think the amount of balls were to much for my pc to handle, and some of them didn't make damage as they hit me, and sometimes it lagged and the frame rate dropped completely, but I like the visual background effect. It is subtle, but it must have been difficult to make. I wish you'd deal more with the theme, especially gameplay wise.
But this game really reminded me of these classic top down shooters and I had a blast playing it!
Overall nice gmae for 72 hours
From the cons: the movement felt slow, I would like more speed. During the battle with the boss, I had a glitch in the moments of explosive attacks. Thank you =)