Nuclear Guy by jessekaz

[raw]
made by jessekaz for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

Play as Nuclear Guy, a robot powered by a nuclear reactor as you platform through rooms. The more power you have, the higher Nuclear Guy can jump.

Be careful though, because Nuclear Guy's nuclear reactor was built to work in zero-G, and only produces power when in freefall. When sitting on the ground, power will decrease. Stay stagnant too long and Nuclear Guy will lose power.

The safety limit on Nuclear Guy's reactor is also broken! If left unchecked, the reactor will overload.

Ratings

Overall 1479th 2.625⭐ 14🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1456th 2.542⭐ 14🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1147th 2.917⭐ 14🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1173th 3.042⭐ 14🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1331th 2.542⭐ 14🧑‍⚖️
Given 13🗳️ 0🗨️

Feedback

Whysguy52
05. Oct 2021 · 05:35 UTC
Pretty cool idea but I don't understand when it goes down. sometimes i'd stand still and it would hold and other times it would go down. Is that a glitch or did i miss something?

Also, it's hard to move him forward btw. he jumps high but not far forward making it hard to control every jump.
🎤 jessekaz
06. Oct 2021 · 18:33 UTC
That is in fact a glitch. Should be fixed now.

Good point about jumping forwards, that's something we're aware of and will likely fix soon.
Nick Shooter
08. Oct 2021 · 05:23 UTC
The game was wigging out for me when I downloaded it. A few things:
1. The controls said to use WASD, though I actually moved with the arrow keys.
2. It looks like I can wiggle around with the arrow keys before pressing enter, and when I did press enter the character would fall through the ground and die repeatedly.
3. When I did hit enter immediately and started moving I bounced to the ceiling when I pressed jump, and somehow got sucked into the end of level portal?
4. When the next level started, the console immediately filled with a bunch of error messages.

Dunno if it was something about my build in particular, but I'm running windows 10 in case that's helpful.
mistercheezymoon
08. Oct 2021 · 06:31 UTC
I think you have a proof-of-concept for a pretty fun puzzle platform game here. Collecting uranium bars in order to jump high enough to reach more bars is much more interesting than the keys you'd use in most games like this.

Unfortunately, I can confirm some of the things Nick-shooter said are true. Arrow key controls instead of WASD. While my first playthrough of the game had no real glitches, i managed to trigger the falling through floor glitch on subsequent plays. I attempted to glitch hunt this, and while I didn't manage to get it consistently, I did manage to trigger it while weirdly moving into a slope on level 2. Other than that, I didn't get error messages or manage to hit the exit unintentionally.

There's also no sound. Is this intentional?

But yeah, you could make something pretty good from this.
🎤 jessekaz
08. Oct 2021 · 08:00 UTC
Thanks for the feedback, people! Just a few answers:

1) Thanks @nick-shooter, our controls didn't match our "how-to" image. Bit of an oversight, that will be fixed soon.

2) We're aware of an issue causing invisible levels and console error message spam and are looking into it.

3) There are still a few known bugs in our collision physics, which is probably what's allowing occasional movement through the floor.

4) There is no sound. We made this in our own custom game engine and the engine unfortunately has no audio support yet.
C0nt
09. Oct 2021 · 17:23 UTC
I really liked the mechanic, but the execution wasn't there on the level design front. Good luck on future games.
xpoho
14. Oct 2021 · 03:06 UTC
Интересная механика. Только почему-то в уровнях черный экран показывается. А так - удачи!
LDJam user 265360
14. Oct 2021 · 04:22 UTC
Took a second for me to figure out the controls, but after I got going, I kinda liked the crazy jump physics! The first level was the only one that really felt like a proper level to me, but I'd be interested to see what the idea will look like when it's more fleshed out.
LDJam user 238700
20. Oct 2021 · 05:13 UTC
A bit confusing to start, but once I got the hang of things the concept was super cool! Having to manage your resource to make sure you can exactly land your jumps while making sure you don't explode or run out of power either. Like other said, the levels after the first were glitch and felt incomplete, but I would love to see more of the game fleshed out!