LabEscape! by Copito
Intro
You created an amazing invention in your lab, but some soldiers have come to contain it... use your unstable powers to escape!
Sadly I ran out of time for audio. This was created with an engine I wrote last weekend. Everything in C++ all assets made in blender and photoshop
- WSAD - move around.
- Right Mouse - hold to look around.
- Left click - attack
When in human form moving cancels your attack
Transforming heals you and makes you invicible
Build your instability meter to randomly transform when it's above 80% (poorly implemented you'll probably just end up transforming very predictably when you kill 2 soldiers)
Walkthrough
This game intends for you to manage your instability bar (The big brown bar at the bottom of the screen) so that you transform at appropriate times. Transforming instantly heals you to full and makes you invulnerable as well as allowing you to 1 shot enemies much more quickly than you can kill them in human form.
https://youtu.be/MwdiTlRWjvU
If you're finding the game hard try killing the guard at the start then quickly sneaking into the first room and killing another before your mutation bar drains (Even if you take a hit or 2). That should allow you to transform and kill the other guards including 1 in the corridor, with full hit points and half mutation bar after transforming back charge towards the room full of guards and use your mostly charged mutation bar to transform again, this should let you clear that room. After this the rest of the game should be fairly straight forwards following the same pattern.
- you cannot move while attacking in human form.
- In monster form you do not take damage
- it takes 2 kills to guarantee a transformation
Notes
- I had some fun implementing PVS culling for this game
- All materials use MatCaps which I mostly drew by hand in photoshop, some were from renderings in blender
- I never want to animate another thing
Known Bugs
- not really a bug but I had intended to have an indicator of some kind to show you which enemy you were targeting
- it is possible for an enemy to open the final door and trigger winning the game... it doesn't happen very much though
- there's currently a bug which causes the game to fail to start on some GPUs I'll update the game with a fixed version when I've found the issue
Change Log
- 05/10/2021 - attempted to fix AMD issue (not succeeded in fixing it yet)
- 06/10/2021 - another attempt to fix the above by distributing shader source instead of SPIR-V
Post Jam Version Changes
07/10/2021
- fixed an exploit that allowed you to transform too easily
- implemented alt-enter for full screen
- mouse defaults to locked mode pressing escape frees up the pointer
- fixed flipped run animation on the player character and lump (Feels much much better, I mean it's still rubbish but it's better than it was!)
Ratings
| Overall | 1177th | 3.182⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1173th | 3⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 791th | 3.266⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1023th | 3.234⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 877th | 3.469⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 691th | 3⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 919th | 3.25⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 39🗨️ |
@sploky i agree about the right mouse it's that way because originally I wanted more of an MMO like UI then forgot to change it. I might do a post jam which makes the camera move regardless of if you have the mouse pressed. Did you manage to work out how to use your transformation ok? The game is hard if you try to just make it through in human form but it shouldn't be too bad if you juggle back and forth between human and monster forms.
I feel you on the animation. It's still a little rough, but hey, animation is tough. Your pink blob is gorgeous though. I wish there was a little more direction given towards your objective; I was just wandering around and trying to stay alive until I stumbled across the exit. The main thing that would make this easier to play is if the game captured the mouse cursor and just moving the mouse aimed the camera.
It's very impressive for a weekend of work, especially by a single person!
(I also found a free-cam mode by pressing K.)
The game ran fine on my little AMD GPU! I do agree with some other people, the game was pretty punishing. Someway to regenerate health would have been nice.
Another thing that makes it feel unfair is that there's not much feedback, I was confused multiple times when I died because I couldn't remember getting hit and thought I still had full health. Some sort of screen flash could help rectify this issue, or a noise but I know you ran out of time for sound, so did I!
Personally I didn't really mind the holding right click part!
Either way I quite liked it! It fit the theme well and was very innovated. ++ 1 for the custom engine ;)
Thanks very much for the extra info i'll have a think about how i could have made that more clear (other than i guess a tutorial or something)
The animations are pretty bad but also kind of hilarious. They give the game a real B-movie vibe which I think fits the game well
I do think the gameplay needs work because its way too hard and unfair. The post jam version is better, but still too difficult. I think you need to add that visual indicator that shows who's about to shoot you. Also, it might be better if you just had less enemies overall since it's really hard to keep track of all of them moving around. Maybe if the visual indicator included like a red laser pointing at you character, it would be easier to dodge bullets.
I also think that you should focus the game around the monster. You should be able to stay in monster form longer the more people you kill/eat. You could spawn more enemies the longer you are in monster form which significantly increases the risk of dying if you fall back to human form. This would force the player to find a balance between sneaking around as a human, or drawing attention to themselves as a monster. If you add sections that require the human from to proceed, like walking through a small door or crawling through a vent, then you can create a whole other gameplay system where the player has to find a safe place to turn back into a human.
- Enemies have no telegraphing on the attacks.
- The attack is very weird, I honestly thought it was a melee attack for a while, and then I just had a hard time judging the distance of the attack.
- Transforming feels a bit weird, I'm still not sure if its when the bar is full or if it needs to get past the 80% thing and you/the enemies do something.
- Audio would also help, but seeing as this is your own engine I can understand if you haven't implemented that yet.
Beyond all of that, the game was actually pretty solid. It might just be me, but I genuinely had a lot of fun running around and murdering everything. Visuals were also very good. Good job!
Transforming was intentionally random to try to meet the "unstable" theme (various things trigger it, being shot at, taking damage, killing enemies). I'm not sure that was a good thing but that was the motivation.
Thanks for playing it I'm glad you had fun!
Also I liked your shader for the slime effect~