Grim Tripper by Skleembof
PLAY THE WINDOWS VERSION!
(Web version should work a bit better now)
The best part of this game is the character controller, ~~and the web version is messed up~~
Post Release fixes: - Fixed glitch where orbs would get stuck behind fences - Fixed an issue where movement speed would fluctuate on web version - Uploaded a web version with better performance. Should be playable now - Fixed broken character controller in web version - Fixed (or improved) mouse sensitivity in web version. Some people reported it was way too sensitive and I think this is a bug with Unity. Let me know if its still too sensitive on web - Fixed an issue with the Windows upload where the name of the data folder was different from the .exe which prevented it from launching
You are The Grim Tripper
Basically, you're the Grim Reaper but you ain't got no legs, so you don't have a stable foundation to swing your scythe and rip the souls out of mortals. This means that you can't rip someone's soul out on one swing. You have to really jam your scythe into them and then pull with all your might. Since mortals have legs (and you don't) their body weight is enough to fling you around as they run for their lives, so try to fight back by engaging in a tug of war for their very souls,
Theme
Before I knew what the theme was, I knew I wanted to make something Halloween related. My original idea was that you would fly around as a ghost or something but if you went too far in one direction, you would tip over and ragdoll to the ground. After developing the first test character controller, I realized the tipping over thing would be very boring, so I ditched it and came up with the Luigi's Mansion thing. You're still an unstable ghost-like creature, but your instability only factors in when you hook on to the living
Gameplay
You start off in the graveyard, and you have to fly around the village collecting souls and killing demons to lower the corruption level. You are an ethereal being that can move through solid objects like walls and trees, but the humans and demons are not.
Aim the tip of your scythe towards center mass of the humans to hook onto them and go for a ride. Pull away from the human like you're Luigi sucking up some ghosts
Aim your scythe to kill demons because it's fun. Seriously, experiment with the character controller. Try to pull of some sick drive by 360 demon slicing's.
When you kill a human, they drop their soul orb which slowly follows you. Your goal is to take the orbs to the graveyard to lower the corruption level.
Development
I made everything by myself within 48 hours. Programs used: - Unity - Blender: Rigging and animation, modeling, texturing - Substance Designer: Some of the environment textures like the terrain and buildings - Gimp: Creating some alpha textures and creating packed textures for use with Unity standard shaders - Garage Band: for the very simple looping ambient music - Audacity to trim and edit sound effects I recorded with my phone. There were only 3 sound effects in the game: the whooshing sound when you start up the attack animation, the knife slashing sound when it finishes, and the weird gurgle noise when you kill a demon
Known Issues:
- ~~WebGL version is probably unplayable on most machines, and even if it is playable, the character controller is messed up.~~
- Gamepads don't work properly. I got lazy and hardcoded some KB+M inputs and didn't have time to change it.
- There is no win state. I ran out of time so I wasn't able to finish the end sequence. The graveyard counts orbs but doesn't dispose of them so you can just keep entering with the same orbs to lower the counter. (which does nothing)
- Character has no collisions. This was intended to be a feature, but as a skill that let you pass through walls temporarily. I didn't have time to implement that, so I just skipped collision detection altogether.
- Character movement speed might feel weird or inconsistent at times. Most of development went into experimenting with different techniques to control the character so I ended up with some very sloppy code after day one, and I didn't have time to clean up loose ends. There's definitely some weird stuff going on with the lerps.
| Source Code | https://www.dropbox.com/s/5tpo7al9hmn5ojs/Unstable%20LD49.7z?dl=0 |
| HTML5 | https://skleembof.itch.io/grim-tripper |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/grim-tripper |
Ratings
| Overall | 457th | 3.048⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 479th | 2.744⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 431th | 2.9⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 528th | 2.388⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 182th | 3.683⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 304th | 3⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 137th | 3.207⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 145th | 3.55⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 62🗨️ |
It's kinda weird that Grim Reaper have to kill people. It would make more sense if, for example, if you'd have to protect humans from vengeful dead souls by putting them to rest (bonk and drag to vemetry) before they kill more human, creating more vengeful souls as a result.
And yeah, I know the premise of the game doesn't make much sense. in my original concept, you had to fly around the village and find your target while avoiding demons and other humans. You would be able to turn invisible to avoid detection and fly through walls but I had to scrap this after I spent too much time experimenting with the character controller. So the whole killing humans and getting soul orbs thing was just slapped together in the end so you have something to do
I am happy with the final result of the character controller though. The flying mechanics and animations I think do a good job of making you feel like a grim reaper/ghost thing slithering through a village, looking for prey.
Did you play with a gamepad? Unfortunately I didn't have time to fix the gamepad controls so you'll probably experience a bunch of issues like that
I wish there were more things to do. Good job anyway!
---
Oh, and also I think you should fix your build. There's a folder named "Unstable LD49_Data" but it should match the name of the executable. It throws error until you match the names
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
WebGL mouse control is bad.
I also really like getting dragged around by the flailing humans :D it's fun. I diligently went through the gates until I remembered that I didn't actually have to.
I didn't have problems with the controls for the webgl build, it worked well on my machine.
I would have loved some kind of dash, the grim reaper feels so slow at times :P
Overall great job, I can really feel the effort you put into the game!
I think that killing human could be more challenging if player must counter his running direction, or else victim goes free.
Also running victim screams could make it funyer and more satisfying.
I think that corruption orbs are to slow, and it's a little bit frustrating when it stuck behind fence.
Overall - good job :)
I should also mention mouse sensitivity is going to be drastically different for different machines, and even different people. It did work fine for me, but there's really no way around needing to make it configurable on a per-user basis.
Very nicely done . Good Work :v:
You should have been more clear about controls though, took me a while to figure out right MB followed by left is a way to make a proper swing. Eventually I also figured out how to get people hooked by not swinging at all. Speaking of hooks, it does feel a bit like fishing sim once you have them impaled. Funny that you have to murder entire village to get corruption to zero, but that's humans for ya.
The core cool mechanic feels good, you nailed the sorta tugging feeling, and it is fun as a core concept!
However as you said, you didn’t have enough time, and as such the game is a bit lackluster, mainly in the “point of playing” aspect.
The core mechanic is fun but there’s no real point, as you said there is no win condition [which I had to find out the hard way :p], and there’s no threats either, so it’s more of a sandbox game.
I do think if this game got polished, if there was a sort of “endless-then-upgrade” system, akin to learn to fly 2, I do think this could be somethin’ solid!
As it stands though it is more a proof of concept then a full game, but it’s still fun nonetheless!