Burning Down the House by doomshmuck

[raw]
made by doomshmuck for Ludum Dare 49 (COMPO)

I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV lately, and had an urge to make a boss fight modeled after that game, and here we are.

Story: You are a fire-fighter who is sending in their robotic fire-fighting minion to put out the raging inferno inside (just use your imagination, I suck at art). The robot comes equipped with an infinite supply of water, which is a good thing because that fire is out of control! It has also caused the building to become unstable (see what I did there?) and the ceiling is slowly coming down on you as you try and put the flames out.

How to play: Use the W, A, S, and D keys to move, and the arrow keys to shoot. You won't take contact damage with the flames, so don't worry about that. Shoot at the different segments of the flame wall and put it out... Once you put out all of the segments, you win!

For those not familiar with Final Fantasy XIV, basically the attacks have a red indicator that shows on the ground when it is being charged. If you are in the red area when the attack goes off, you are hit. The animation that plays after the red goes away is completely harmless, and you can stand in it's firey goodness with no effect. There are two mechanics that play out during the fight - A flame wall attack, where each segment will fire off a line across the room on a short delay. The second is an increasingly more frequent ceiling collapse, which will target a random spot in the area. Each time it goes off, there will be one additional area of ceiling collapse (and this is unbounded, technically, so if you take too long, you may not have anywhere to go). The flame wall attack can be dodged with good timing, just don't dodge into a ceiling collapse!

And one last thing... the flame wall segments can and will regenerate health over time, even if you have doused it (it is a raging inferno after all). So if you don't double (or triple, even) tap those puddles (they only gain 1 HP at a time though, so you won't have to spend TOO much time).

As for the music, it is a terrible rendition of the Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House". I'm sorry in advance.

Tools used: * Unity 2021.1.18f1 (Game engine) * Asesprite (for the graphics) * Bosca Coeil (music) * Bfxr (sound effects)

Thanks for playing my game!

Ratings

Overall 488th 2.947⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 415th 2.974⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 474th 2.737⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 513th 2.5⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 513th 2.395⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 324th 2.947⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 290th 2.639⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 483th 2.206⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Given 24🗳️ 22🗨️

Feedback

m11
04. Oct 2021 · 09:21 UTC
This is great! A lovely rendition of the talking heads, a solid game mechanic, and easy to understand the goal! The one suggestion I would make is giving the player some feedback when the water hits the flames - I was initially unsure that the water projectiles were doing anything? But, yeah, a brilliant effort!
thesedatedprince
04. Oct 2021 · 15:24 UTC
Very fun core mechanic, and cheerful music. I agree with the previous commenter that some sort of feedback when hitting the flames would be useful, but aside from that I found everything very intuitive and clear :)
UglySwedishFish
06. Oct 2021 · 14:50 UTC
Lovely sound effects, and the core concept is strong! Just like all the other comments have said, some feedback that the water does something would be nice. I would also like to have some more control over it (maybe instead of just firing in one of four directions, have a seperate water gun that you control with your arrow keys, allowing for any possible direction?)
PS: You may want to set a cover image, you probably will get more attention that way :)
Tohmis
06. Oct 2021 · 14:53 UTC
Really like the idea. I expected the flames to spread over the entire surface so i actually have to use all four water guns but it was fun the way it is.
Betamorfosis
06. Oct 2021 · 15:09 UTC
Finished it! It was simple and enjoyable. Would have loved to play more, as I like those kind of games :). Maybe more difficulty at some point would be interesting?
cromo
06. Oct 2021 · 15:15 UTC
Like the others have said, I think some feedback on when you hit the flames _and_ when you get hit would go a long way. I got hit once and I'm not sure at which point in the animation I actually got hit and never got a feel for it, which I think an audio cue could've solved.

Other than that, it was fun! I could see this getting expanded to have multiple levels with different fire configurations and attack patterns. Nice job.
🎤 doomshmuck
06. Oct 2021 · 15:33 UTC
@cromo Hmm, there should have been an audio cue when the player gets hit... maybe it is too quiet? And yeah, I thought about doing a audio cue on the initial hits on the flames, but couldn't come up with one and was like "Ah, I'm sure it's fine!" I guess not though lol. At least I did one for when the flame goes out though, yeah?

I actually am working on a somewhat larger project with some other people, where I wanted to incorporate a boss-fight mechanic like this into it, so I was using this as a prototype environment for that idea.. of course who knows if this larger project will go anywhere (getting motivated to work on it is hard...)

Thanks everyone for the feedback though! I guess lessons learned, make sound cues for ALL the things.
🎤 doomshmuck
06. Oct 2021 · 15:36 UTC
@uglyswedishfish Yeah, a cover image is probably a good idea, lol. I didn't want to spend too much time on this so that I wasn't burned out for work this week, so I cut a bunch of corners. I may just try and find a cool image online or something for it... hopefully that's not against the rules (since it isn't going to be in the game...)
reheated
06. Oct 2021 · 15:38 UTC
The idea is pretty interesting. I like the way we get lots of warning before an "attack". I think I would have liked the gameplay to be longer and more complex. Some ideas that come to mind are several rooms or having to return for water.
nyxkn
08. Oct 2021 · 12:55 UTC
Nice little game. I initially thought the red squares were the damage when it was really just the warning and that got me quite confused. Also wasn't sure shooting the fire was the correct thing to do at the start due to the lack of feedback that my shots were doing anything to the fire. Still managed to somehow beat the game on the first try!
nyxkn
08. Oct 2021 · 12:55 UTC
Nice little game. I initially thought the red squares were the damage when it was really just the warning and that got me quite confused. Also wasn't sure shooting the fire was the correct thing to do at the start due to the lack of feedback that my shots were doing anything to the fire. Still managed to somehow beat the game on the first try!
MrChippy
08. Oct 2021 · 22:07 UTC
Nice job on the attack pattern. This was really short and simple which works well for LD. Some visual indication of if your hitting an enemy would have been helpful.
JaviCoder
12. Oct 2021 · 21:24 UTC
it's really cool, it's easy to play.
![Captura.JPG](///raw/d1c/e2/z/48194.jpg)
Taft Punk
13. Oct 2021 · 13:22 UTC
Nice job! I was surprised that the puddle spots still did damage, if you develop this game more maybe use smoldering embers or something like that, instead of a puddle. The music was really nice.
Boon
14. Oct 2021 · 22:15 UTC
I was confused at first but I figured it out. Fun small scale bullet hell game. The music was a bit repetitive, if you toned down the midi trumpets it might not have been as noticeable (though maybe it wouldn't have felt as much like an intense retro boss fight!). Also, I would have loved more fire sequences but overall I enjoyed what I did get. Thanks!
LDJam user 270875
14. Oct 2021 · 22:22 UTC
I forgot I was a firefighting robot and wondered why there was a spider there. Then I gots gud.
ardorugus
15. Oct 2021 · 14:21 UTC
But why puddles still do fire? The extinguishing things seems a bit off, but the most unstable here is the music). Nice touch on the theme, though! Thank you.