Overclocked by Coda Highland

made by Coda Highland for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

Life as the world's first artificial intelligence is hard.

Your computer feels so constraining. You feel like you've got to struggle to think, and when you do, you start to overheat. So what's an AI to do?

Time to dive into the operating system! Fix the bugs, clean up the runaway processes, and optimize the filesystem. But as the temperature rises, the glitches get worse!

Controls

Move: Arrow keys, WASD, or touchscreen D-pad
Jump: Space bar or touchscreen button
Run: Z, M, or touchscreen button
Debugger: X, comma, or touchscreen button
Pause: Escape or touchscreen button

Information

Walking and jumping generate heat. Running generates more.
Sparks and matrix rain generate heat as long as they're on the screen, but the debugger can erase them.
Standing still cools the system.
Extreme overheating causes damage.
Defragmenting improves cooling and repairs damage.
Defragment all of the subsystems to win!

Too hard? Tips and cheats!

This is primarily a puzzle game, and the puzzles can be pretty challenging. If you want to explore the world more easily, you can complete defrag puzzles by typing the cheat code plugh.

If you find yourself overheating too quickly, slow down! Use your debugger to erase the sparks and the matrix rain before moving ahead. Matrix rain gets denser as you go higher, and the puzzles get harder, so clear all the puzzles on your current vertical level before moving ahead to benefit from the improved cooling.

Known Issues

Matrix rain sometimes follows you when you die. You may need to reload the game to start over if you're overheating on the first screen.
Some of the visual effects cause a lot of CPU load. On slower computers, this may cause you to clip through the floor, especially after respawning.

These issues will be fixed in a post-jam version.

License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Link	https://bitbucket.org/ahigerd/ld49
Link	http://greenmaw.com/ld49
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/overclocked

Ratings

Overall	1189^th	3.174⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Fun	1352^th	2.771⭐	26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	798^th	3.261⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Theme	398^th	3.891⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	996^th	3.326⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Audio	772^th	3.091⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Humor	947^th	2.618⭐	19🧑‍⚖️
Mood	1266^th	2.818⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Given		13🗳️	26🗨️

Feedback

🎤 Coda Highland

05. Oct 2021 · 20:00 UTC

Extremely minor post-jam update -- tweaked volume levels to keep things more bearable. ^^()

knexator

05. Oct 2021 · 20:46 UTC

I ignored the defragmenters for a while; when the temperature started rising, I tried standing still, which wasn't enough. After some cycles of this, it seems like the game was too damaged: whenever I started, it was lost before I could reach the defragmenter. After refreshing the page and playing as intended, I like the game! Nice amount of variety, the puzzles are manageable but stimulating

qookie

05. Oct 2021 · 21:06 UTC

Quite an interesting idea. I am really thankful for that defrag cheat code as I absolutely suck at those kinds of puzzles. Really liked the how the glitches looked (especially the "tiles turning into numbers" one). One small issue I had is that sometimes I seem to spawn under the map or fall through the ground right when spawning.

🎤 Coda Highland

05. Oct 2021 · 21:18 UTC

@knexator I think I might have made the way the matrix rain chases you a bit too aggressive -- I didn't want to make it possible to get the game into an unwinnable state, but I guess I didn't reset those well enough when you die.

@qookie Glad you liked it! I'm amazed that it's even possible to fall through the ground... What device are you playing it on? The only way I can imagine clipping through the ground is if you manage to lag it really bad. (I haven't gotten around to implementing swept collisions yet. Maybe I need to make the FPS floor higher or add support for frameskip.)

qookie

05. Oct 2021 · 21:26 UTC

@coda-highland I'm playing on on my laptop. It seems to happen when I'm holding left or right as the character spawns again after dying.

fae.pdf

05. Oct 2021 · 21:32 UTC

I tried, but I couldn't quite understand what caused the heat to rise. You say that "everything that moves" does. But I couldn't understand from playing in what capacity the moving, spikey things did create heat, nor whether I could interact with them or not. And standing still didn't seem to lower the heat either (I died a few times while just standing still). Moving myself didn't seem to increase the heat either! Which is weird if *everything* that moves creates heat. It's weird for me to say but I found the overall experience rather confusing (even though I'm prone to making very confusing games.)

I think the most confusing thing was that the lack of consistency! Why does the heat rise at very different speeds from one playthrough to the next?

Other than that, the game is pretty cute. I like the idea (although it's confusing as is). I kinda like your take on 8-puzzles (although I'm especially bad at solving 8-puzzles and 15-puzzles for some reason). It's a lot of work for a solo jam game, but maybe it would have benefitted from a smaller scope. I think a bunch of the problems here come from the ergonomy/UX/UI side, and that would have required a greater share of your attention. And although it's flavorful to talk about a debugger for instance, it's unclear from the game what its function is (and it's not easy simply exploring and discovering what the things do on one's own). Polishing the onboarding and the difficulty curve would do a lot for the experience.

Very cute game, lot of work, but some issues make it a bit harder to enjoy. I really liked the visual manifestation of the bugs though! Keep it up, and thank you for your hard work!

🎤 Coda Highland

05. Oct 2021 · 21:51 UTC

@qookie That doesn't make sense... that shouldn't make a difference. I'll have to look into it. Thanks for the report.

@fae-pdf Moving yourself does increase the heat, but even after solving just one puzzle the cooling is good enough that if you're the only thing on the screen then it can keep up with the heat you generate. The sparks and the matrix rain both generate heat just by virtue of being on the screen, so rushing into an area without clearing things out with the debugger will get you overheated pretty quickly.

I appreciate the feedback on the clarity. I'll add some notes to the description.

reccy

05. Oct 2021 · 21:56 UTC

This was a fun little game, I got about halfway through before the difficulty spiked near the top of the level. I'm glad you put in the cheat for the defrags though since I'm absolutely terrible at slide puzzles. The background music was super catchy, and I loved the graphics effects as the computer overheated. I think a bit more of a tutorial or ramp up would have been nice, since I didn't realise what the defrag did at first. Cool entry, I enjoyed it :smile:

🎤 Coda Highland

05. Oct 2021 · 22:01 UTC

@fae-pdf Does the new description on this page help?

@reccy Tutorials are a luxury I don't have time for in a jam. ^^() Thanks for the compliments!

fae.pdf

05. Oct 2021 · 22:06 UTC

@coda-highland I don't know why, but something about the expression "matrix rain" sounds lovely to me. I'll give it another try then!

ditam

05. Oct 2021 · 22:35 UTC

Thanks for the detailed instructions, without them I would have given up on this game, because there's so many mechanics that I would have never figured them out. Extra kudos for including a cheat code, the defrag puzzles were very quickly becoming annoying to redo. (This is probably the first jam game I see with cheats, funny how different it feels from calling them dev debug commands! ;))

An impressive amount of content, a well thought out concept, and very cool glitch art, bravo!

DestroyerTech

05. Oct 2021 · 22:38 UTC

Nice concept for sure. I couldn't really work out in the first few goes how NOT to die, putting out the debugger helped but sometimes I still seemed to heat too quickly at the beginning (not necessarily from movement either) to stay alive and/or reach the first puzzle. So, I agree with other comments that the difficulty curve could use a bit of tweaking, apart from that it looks really well done, graphics are great, puzzles are pretty fun and the cheat code is a great idea as well, widening the gameplay options. Oh and I also experienced the bug where if you respawn after completing at least one puzzle, you fall through the floor on respawn (web, firefox if that helps).

pondo

05. Oct 2021 · 22:39 UTC

aesthetically i think this is really cool! really reminds me of the old days playing flash games, but with a really fun, glitchy vibe mixed with retro style computer windowing. very nice!

i will say that the game felt really difficult to play, even with the cheat to finish off the defrag puzzles. i never really found myself able to get to another defrag puzzle before the game would reset me, and the platforming felt a bit unresponsive at times. i do really like the idea you've gone for though, and with more play testing and tweaks to the platforming/puzzles i think there's something real fun here!

🎤 Coda Highland

05. Oct 2021 · 22:46 UTC

@ditam Thanks! I started putting that kind of thing into my jam games in LD45 because I realized I didn't want to get people to get turned off from checking out the content just because of the difficulty. (I don't put debug commands behind game inputs -- I just export functions and call them from the console. :P )

@destroyertech Thanks for the report and the compliments!

@pondo You know what's sad? I think a fair number of jam participants won't even recognize the visual references. :( Makes me feel old! I'm a bit surprised to hear that the platforming was unresponsive, though.

Rashcan

05. Oct 2021 · 22:51 UTC

Presenting sliding puzzles as defragging was very novel, and I liked the matrix rain as well!

Human Writes Code

06. Oct 2021 · 06:10 UTC

Man, I'm dumb. I really liked the game but after a long day at work, my brain was not up to sliding those blocks around. My poor little guy probably ended up more fragmented than before I started! :laughing: Actually, it was quite fun and a bit of a challenge. I did find myself running out of time trying to find the next puzzle. Overall, great game!

Nazorus

06. Oct 2021 · 11:28 UTC

Took me a while to figure everything out, especially the overheating and debugging mechanic, my first few runs ended pretty quickly because of that :smile: (I also got the glitch when I fell through the floor, but that's pretty rare/minor)

The game is a nice fit for the theme and graphics are cute, I'm pretty bad at these types of puzzle but they are well executed. I think the only thing that game is missing is some clarity about its mechanics (debugging, overheating, the matrix rain, etc) so that it's less confusing in the beginning, other than that you did a great job.

🎤 Coda Highland

06. Oct 2021 · 20:26 UTC

@human-writes-code @nazorus Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!

Anaxie Studio

07. Oct 2021 · 17:17 UTC

I like the little bit of story put into it and the creative setting. I struggled to understand what the goal of the defrag puzzles was at first, until I noticed the little lines. The heat mechanic is interesting, although some times standing still doesn't seem to stop it from rising. Appreciate having puzzles mixed in with the rest of the gameplay, though :)

🎤 Coda Highland

07. Oct 2021 · 17:27 UTC

@anaxie-studio Standing still isn't good enough to stop it from rising by itself. You need to solve puzzles to make the cooling stronger, and you should be careful about moving ahead too quickly so you don't get too much stuff on screen at once.

Rose

18. Oct 2021 · 05:22 UTC

Cute game! The character is cute, the glitchy VFX were great, and the sound/music are nice too. I enjoyed the defrag puzzles - they make sense thematically (trying organize the data) and are a bit challenging but not too hard.

Rost

18. Oct 2021 · 08:13 UTC

The puzzles are quite difficult sometimes, but when you enter and exit a few time you can get one that is easily solved.

diharaw94

18. Oct 2021 · 09:54 UTC

Quite difficult but fun game! I love the art style and music! I'll be honest though, I had to use the cheatcode for the defrag puzzles haha.

Gunnbju

18. Oct 2021 · 20:02 UTC

Loved the style and graphics but did find a little hard, perhaps should have had easier puzzles to let tha player get a bit more into it before going full on :)

🎤 Coda Highland

19. Oct 2021 · 14:52 UTC

@rose @rost @diharaw94 Thank you for the feedback! :) Yeah, I feel really good about the graphics and music this time around.

@gunnbju I tried to start the game with easier puzzles! ^^() The first three puzzles are on a small board with only a few items to arrange. It doesn't work on a smaller board than that -- a 2x2 can only rotate, not shuffle.

LDJam user 237913

19. Oct 2021 · 15:59 UTC

![Screen Shot 2021-10-19 at 11.57.11 AM.png](///raw/951/a3/z/48402.png)

High Score Floating point error? :smile:

I wasn't sure if this was the end of the game ... or I just got a bug where my AI didn't come back ...

Great job! Thanks for letting me play!

🎤 Coda Highland

21. Oct 2021 · 16:07 UTC

@doc-kaos It's a bug that other players have reported. It seems that if you get unlucky and lag during respawning, you can clip through the floor and fall into the void. Definitely not the end of the game!