LudumData

Time, Commander? by Jesús González

[raw]
made by Jesús González for Ludum Dare 50 (JAM)

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I recommend you to just go play the game before reading any of this. If you get stuck or don't understand the controls, come back to read.

Command your tank and defeat every enemy to clear the levels.

The game was made almost completely from scratch, and I was planning to submit it to the Compo but missed the deadline.

Features

  • Command a tank.
  • Go back and forth in time to get the best outcome. Delay your victory to ensure it.
  • The time travelling can even be used to roll-back bugged enemies, as they sometimes can clip though walls.
  • Four action-packed levels.
  • Clean graphics.
  • A fully-functional main menu.
  • A lot of fun.

Missing or incomplete

  • I wanted to compose my own music and sound effects, but I just didn't had enough time.
  • UI sounds are not implemented.
  • Scene transitions.
  • Animation smoothing.
  • More levels.
  • More enemy types.
  • I'll replace the downloaded assets (textures, sounds, music) with my own and keep building over this. I think an expanded version of this game would work pretty well as a casual mobile game.

Development tools and stuff to note

  • Unity with Zenject and UniTask as the main framework.
  • I built a deterministic simulator for the levels so that I could achieve the time travelling. This was an amazing learning experience that I will try to use to develop strategy games in the future.
  • Probuilder for the level geometry.
  • All of the graphic design, UI and some textures were made with Inkscape, and GIMP as an auxiliary tool.
  • Blender for the single 3D model: the tank.

Additional credits

  • Kenney Future fonts by Kenney - www.kenney.nl
  • Rock wall vector and Bark vector created by 0melapics - www.freepik.com
  • Suvaco do Cristo by Kevin MacLeod - incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4449-suvaco-do-cristo
  • Seven March by Kevin MacLeod - incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4338-seven-march
  • March of the Spoons by Kevin MacLeod - incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4021-march-of-the-spoons
  • Bumbly March by Kevin MacLeod - incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3463-bumbly-march

Music license: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Link https://jesusgonzalez.itch.io/time-commander
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/time-commander

Ratings

Overall 628th 3.571⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Fun 519th 3.542⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 264th 3.729⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1205th 3.069⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 963th 3.3⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Humor 945th 2.516⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Mood 972th 3.221⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Given 46🗳️ 37🗨️

Feedback

sprngr
05. Apr 2022 · 03:22 UTC
I like your approach of the theme by letting you rewind and delay your own demise.
🎤 Jesús González
05. Apr 2022 · 05:02 UTC
@sprngr You can also say that you are delaying your own victory in this case.
Proxy-Games
05. Apr 2022 · 07:42 UTC
I like the interesting control scheme forcing the player to think and plan ahead of every confrontation, and the inclusion of the rewind mechanic allows for experimentation, as well as fitting the theme pretty well. Overall, the gameplay has a surprising amount of depth to it, and I enjoyed it a lot. Graphics and audio aren't anything special, but they are functional and help serve the gameplay.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with it. Nice job!
LDJam user 279546
05. Apr 2022 · 18:18 UTC
The time rewind is really cool! I also like how you independently control the tank and its cannon.
Lvl99Chicken
05. Apr 2022 · 18:56 UTC
The time mechanic is great. Like the music too. Unique take on tank controls as well. Enjoyed this game!
Alexthehuman2
05. Apr 2022 · 18:58 UTC
Loving the theme, the lack of UI sound and transition didn't affect any of the gameplay and I had lots of fun playing it - One thing you could definitely do is to add a UI or some kind of text to showcase how you can control the time because I didn't use that time option on the top left until like second or third stage. But other than that, great game!
Lerc
05. Apr 2022 · 20:46 UTC
This game confirms that I only get worse when replaying levels. Nice concept. Hard to think about moving and turning, but I think that might be a good thing
Ismael Rodriguez
05. Apr 2022 · 23:03 UTC
It takes a little while to figure out and get used to the controls, but it gets pretty engaging when it clicks. The time control mechanic was great! Good use of sound, Visuals look good, but it looks like I could drive through some objects and I'm not sure if it was intended or not. Overall good job!
Koolruz
05. Apr 2022 · 23:31 UTC
The time rewind mechanic is a genius way to make a slower, more methodical game - On my first death, I was really not looking forward to replaying the entire level, but when I got to just rewind time, it was so easy to say, "Okay, well, I'll take one more try at this!" It also made each level feel like a little puzzle to solve. Great job!

In terms of constructive critique, I did have a little bit of trouble figuring out the aiming controls at first - I eventually got a handle on them, but the fact that I had to click in order to aim made it feel like I would aim towards what I clicked on, rather than towards my mouse cursor. This made a difference when I was driving past a tank and trying to aim at it - My first instinct would be to click on the tank, but because I was moving that angle quickly became incorrect.

I also think I ran into a bug - On level 3, this tank just popped out of the wall and killed me before I could react

![tank-in-the-wall.gif](///raw/dec/c2/z/4cea8.gif)

That aside, I still really liked the novelty of this game, and how smartly you approached building a slower-paced, tactical experience. Great job!

![Capture.PNG](///raw/dec/c2/z/4ceba.png)
Itskdog
05. Apr 2022 · 23:46 UTC
Some interesting mechanisms. The rewind was a nice feature. I think the movement of the tank could be faster and some kind of radar. The enemies were able to hit me off-screen. It might not be a problem if the tank could move faster.
NeitherNathan
06. Apr 2022 · 04:33 UTC
I really like the mechanics and like even more how some of them have emergent mechanics bound to them, i wish the game was a little faster tho but anyways i dig it!! could make into an mobile game!!
Cakestorm
06. Apr 2022 · 09:17 UTC
Nice game! I loved the mechanic of rewinding time, it made things much more interesting than they would've been without it, and it was an interesting way of using the theme as well. I liked the puzzle aspect of the game too; it was a lot more methodical and strategic than I first thought, which was great to see. The artstyle also worked well, it was all very readable and the shading was particularly pleasant to look at. Well done!
b3b0
06. Apr 2022 · 19:26 UTC
A bit slow-paced, but the mechanics make this very fun. The model work is awesome! Keep up the good work!
recursor
06. Apr 2022 · 21:39 UTC
While I did not like the controls, I thought the game itself was quite fun and well-done. I was a bit disappointed when it was over. The time rewind mechanic was a nice touch as it added to the fun.
caudatecoder
06. Apr 2022 · 22:01 UTC
Really fun game to play! I absolutely enjoyed the core mechanic of moving the tank and the gun separately, kind of giving it a simulator feeling, while being fun enough. The difficulty progression is done very well too!

The only thing I can complain about is the enemies that are attacking you from beyond the level, which is kind of infuriating. But I managed to beat the in the end, so all's good! Great work!

Thanks for coming to my stream! Here's a recording in case you'd like to refer to it https://youtu.be/aJkdjOKW03M
gdesecrate
06. Apr 2022 · 23:50 UTC
Coudn't run web version on ThinkPad X220.
bucketh3ad
07. Apr 2022 · 05:26 UTC
I thought it was a cool choice to have the tank stop in place and turn when issuing a new move. Needing to account for that and trying to strafe rather than moving as often as possible or going directly at enemies head on made combat pretty interesting. Between that and the time rewind, a little refinement would have you with a really fun core mechanic. If you're interested in other challenging isometric tank games, Brigador might be a good source of inspiration, as I saw a lot of that game in this prototype. Good work!
🎤 Jesús González
07. Apr 2022 · 11:31 UTC
@bucketh3ad Thanks for the suggestion! I've just started to expand upon this jam game to hopefully release a full version and having references will be very useful. I'll check it out right away.
jitspoe
08. Apr 2022 · 02:05 UTC
Interesting mechanic -- like having an undo history in a video game. Would be exceptionally difficult without it!
marcmagus
08. Apr 2022 · 15:42 UTC
Thanks for bringing your game by my stream for feedback! If you’d like to revisit the play and commentary you can view the highlight at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1448957661

Really interesting mechanic. Mouse-command-based tank-style controls sure are different. Accurate controlling was very challenging.
Skvader_418
08. Apr 2022 · 18:14 UTC
Wowow, pretty damn advanced for a ludum dare game

Feels alot like the tank game on wii and some other tank based flash games
The time mechanics is really really well done
The fact that you can speed it up is really helpfull and thank god that was considered
The final level is the most fun by far
Had a small issue on the third one where i was confused where to go until the enemy tank went out of bounds
Overall, really fun and advanced game
Fedora
11. Apr 2022 · 21:38 UTC
Pretty cool. I played for a few minutes wondering what the game had to do with the theme, and then I died and saw the rewind mechanic. I think it's a great idea, and I feel like it could lead to a really strategic game if you implement more mechanics that play well with it. The graphics are also really appropriate, making it clear to distinguish everything.

Now, the parts that I didn't like / feel like could be improved upon:

- The game feels too slow. Having the tank stop completely for a few seconds to change course feels bad. Same thing with aiming.
- I don't know exactly where I'm aiming. Some sort of visual indication of the path that a bullet would take if I shoot would be nice.
- The hitboxes of the enemies are too small. This is a bit of nitpicking, but there were several times where my bulled visually touched an enemy tank, but the hit didn't register.
uboretsky
21. Apr 2022 · 16:44 UTC
Oh, cool mechanic!
TheCrittersCove
21. Apr 2022 · 17:42 UTC
The time mechanic works surprisingly well. I do wish the tanks and shots would move faster. Even sped up it felt slow to me. Or did I maybe not use it right? Otherwise though the game works well. Really nice game jam entry!
alpharock6
21. Apr 2022 · 18:03 UTC
Very interesting controls setup! I'm glad there was speed adjustment on the side as well, agreed with others that it felt a bit slow when I first started. Super cool idea with a lot of potential, great entry!