Condemned by JackBad

[raw]
made by JackBad for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

Condemned is my contribution to LD48 where you play as a Knight delving “deeper and deeper” into a claustrophobic & increasingly hostile dungeon, filled with skeletons that want to touch your face. Kill them!

CondemnedScreenshot1.png

Features:

  • Retro graphics & shaders inspired by classic dungeon crawlers.

  • 10 Floors of skeleton punching, sword swinging goodness.

  • A medieval art-style that clashes with more futuristic scenery the deeper you go.

  • A lo-fi synth melody on loop, which I made using 1BitDragon.

CondemnedScreenshot2.png


Update v1.0 Changelog (5/3/21):

  • Tweaked stamina cost, damage, and attack speed of the sword & fists

  • Set the perspective to 3rd person (formerly 1st person)

  • Overhauled lighting to better fit dungeon setting

  • Adjusted depth fog shader to blur the player’s sight past a certain point

  • Added particle effects when either enemies or the player is dealt damage

  • Changed how enemies deal damage (fixes former bug where enemies deal damage to player without attacking)

  • Removed enemy health bars & adjusted skeleton max-health

  • Fixed blocking, player is no longer dealt damage when attacked while blocking (but does lose stamina with each hit)


I’m very curious to hear your thoughts, and already have a slew of changes planned for update v1.5 (expected ~ 5/18/21).


Planned v1.5 Changes:

  • Adjust how enemies are spawned, waiting for the player to be within a certain distance.

  • Add enemy knockback to player attacks.

  • Add one NPC the player can talk with to learn more about the setting.

  • Increase variety of level paths to make dungeon maze-like.

  • Add a brute enemy, with more health and heavier attacks than the skeletons.

  • Develop game’s song further, increasing length to decrease repetitiveness


This was my first LD Jam, and my first Jam working alone. It’s been a blast so far, and I’m excited to see where all of our projects go from here. Cheers!

[Build v0 made in 48h for Ludum Dare 48]

[Build v1.0 released 5/3/21 with various fixes, improvements, & additions]

Ratings

Overall 1741th 2.853⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1644th 2.75⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1693th 2.563⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1429th 3.206⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Audio 1216th 2.5⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1101th 3.353⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Given 6🗳️ 13🗨️

Feedback

maxr00
26. Apr 2021 · 06:49 UTC
I do love me some skeletons! I would say definitely work on feedback so its more obvious when youre taking or dealing damage, like using particle effects and making sure the same sound doesnt repeat too often too fast, and probably giving some knockback to your punches, then I think this could be a really fun skeleton-puncher game :)
bmacintosh
27. Apr 2021 · 23:06 UTC
Interesting low-res art style; I dig it. The combat felt pretty good, though I think it would be improved by having the enemies only damage you using their attack animations rather than when you touch them. Damage on touch feels weird in a game like this, and it made it so that I would often take damage due to my character lunging into the enemy during his attack animation. I was unclear if there was a reason to choose fists over the sword and just went with the sword because it made it slightly less likely I would take damage during my attack.
Full Wash And Set
28. Apr 2021 · 05:32 UTC
Really like the idea of just rushing through dungeons and mowing down bone boys real quickly. Also like the low-res visual style. Only feedback I can give are three things: 1.) It was difficult to know when my weapon was colliding with the enemies and I often took damage from being too close to them. 2.) I think the stamina should be completely taken out, make it fast and difficult. Think Hotline Miami but 1st person and with dungeons and skeletons instead of clubs and russians. The thrill of just sprinting and descending further into darker dungeons would be a thrilling experience. 3.) At least in the few times that I played, all of the enemies were huddled around the entrance to the next room. Made it difficult to enter without taking some damage. Overall a very promising game and I'm looking forward to any updates. You have a flexible enough build that anything can be created with.
🎤 JackBad
29. Apr 2021 · 01:52 UTC
@maxr00 Thanks for the feedback! For sure, tightening the feedback loop for combat is top on my priority list when it comes to revisions I hope to make. I'm also planning on pulling the camera back some to make it 3rd-person-perspective, so that should also help register actions.

@bmacintosh Thanks for the feedback! I completely agree. Spent far too long working out some enemy pack-hunting AI that I neglected the actual damage-dealing aspect a little too much. Should be more fair in the next patch, sometime this next weekend. Also, using your fists deals slightly less damage, but consumes significantly less stamina. [EDIT: Just verified that this is not the case in the current version. Oop!] The floors didn't really encourage using anything other than the sword, but I imagine developing further to create scenarios where the player may want to punch enemies instead of using the sword to conserve stamina for running away (or using a dodge, which didn't make the first cut).

@full-wash-and-set Thanks for the feedback! That's definitely part of the mood I'm going for. I liked seeing the whole horde of skele-bois crowding around you towards the bottom floors, and want to leverage the thrill of mowing them down in future updates. I may add a beefier, deadlier enemy to contrast the weaker skeletons & manipulate the flow. To your specific pts: 1) For sure, valid point. There are, basically, just collision boxes on each enemies hand that, if the player collides with/touches them, they are dealt damage. Admittedly not the best setup for an action game trying to keep the player pushing forward, and something that will be amended in the next patch. 2) I'll have to make some other revisions that polish gameplay before I decide if taking stamina out is the right move, since (see above) there were originally plans to flesh out the punching & add a dodge. But it would definitely feed into the rushing-thru-the-dungeon vibe it currently has going for it. 3) Yeah, enemies were all spawned towards the back of their respective rooms, but their AI is set to have them walk towards the player. So, by the time the player reaches the door, the skeletons are already at the front. My way around this will be to only allow the skeletons to chase the player if they are within a certain distance in their line of sight.
TwistedHawk
30. Apr 2021 · 00:14 UTC
Nice idea for the game. I found it a little hard to progress the levels, and feedback wasn't always clear at times on hits. The models look great though, and the controls were fluid!
Neo Mottel
30. Apr 2021 · 02:26 UTC
First of all: I love the visuals of this game! It all meshes together very well!
Second: The player hit sound effect is hilarious and reminds me of the old days of minecraft, so thank you for the laugh.
My main issues with the game is that, as the person above me has said, that there isn't much of an indicator as to when you hit an enemy.
I really like the ambition this game had, and what you had executed on, you did pretty solidly! Hope you polish this up!
Brainloaf Studio
30. Apr 2021 · 02:29 UTC
Nice game! I like the low-res aesthetic, and it's fun to mow the skeletons down. However, I wasn't able to make it very far for a few reasons. I think it's mostly up to stamina and hit range - I was rarely ever able to attack due to the large stamina requirements, and even when I did attack it felt like my hits only landed maybe half the time. The only surefire way I found to land a hit was to get super close to the enemies, which caused me to take damage in turn. This is also a personal preference, but the amount of head bob kinda made my head hurt unfortunately. I think this has potential though, and I had fun with the content I was able to make it to - nice job!
Studio Gomp
30. Apr 2021 · 03:13 UTC
I wish the music was a bit more interesting. You had a cool concept going though!
SmelJey
04. May 2021 · 07:35 UTC
Nice game. Music and visuals are great. 3rd person camera is quite shaky and it's not so comfortable to play (I'd prefer 1st person). It seems like skeletons are not eager to hit me (I saw them doing this only few times and one time he just missed). Also, you can spam attack and it will waste whole your stamina bar (and I'm quite not sure if hero actually attacks during this spam). It doesn't seem to work as intended

Anyway, good job! The game is cool, and I enjoyed playing.
macaroni.dev
18. May 2021 · 15:40 UTC
This game has amazing graphics & artstyle .. but I can't rate it for graphics!