Stopping Karen by Fis
Hey everyone,
This is our fifth entry for Ludum Dare 50's "Delay the inevitable" and we're very proud of what we have accomplished, as always! :3 We made a puzzle game where you need to place barriers to delay Karen - your mother - as much as possible to stop her from coming home and ruining the party.
Try to beat the highscore & party hard :D
Best regards @nivbeth, @fis, @flufflymadness & @peacememories
How to play?
Use barriers:
And go shopping:
You can also drag'n'drop across the map - and scroll to zoom in!
Update 2022-04-10: - you can no longer place traps on the destination (destination was moved by 1 field so the highscore still obtainable) - fixed an error placing barriers at a 4-way intersection, ignoring one of the barriers - fixed wrong placing mode upon clicking when no charges are left - added counter for all traps - disabled buttons if charges are used up - fixed X-overflow for scoreboard
Update 2022-04-15: - fixed an freeze bug upon blocking all available paths
Update 2022-04-17 v0.2.0: - added camera controls and speed up mechanic as new version
Ratings
| Overall | 263th | 3.875⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 439th | 3.609⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 413th | 3.578⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 118th | 4.219⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 304th | 4.125⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 538th | 3.422⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 193th | 3.875⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 679th | 3.484⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 14🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
@tano: Thank you for your feedback, I'm sorry you didn't have the full "Karen Experience". We tried to make her as annoying as possible in that short time ;D "Hmmmmpf!"
The tutorial is rather short, because it's a puzzle game – but of course, we will add more info if necessary! Thanks again :)
@pcmaster: Thaaaanks! Great that you enjoyed it so much! :D
As a puzzle game also very good however the main problem for me was that "waiting" was basically the biggest part of it.
Also barriers did not reset for me when restarting a level.
Although it contributes to the chill mood of the game, I'd suggest going for something more nervous like "live resolution". Not having to click on 'Start' for Karen to go, or not being able to place anything before clicking on start. This way people that want this rather chill gamefeel can get it still, by thinking about it before clicking on start, while in the other hand you don't have to. The best of both world, really.
Fun Puzzle game, I had issues setting the barriers and settings the groceries & cat food point (I was on a Mac so I didn't have the "left click", so that may have been it).
Once, I understood the groceries & cat food points it was pretty easy, not hard to get 3 stars. But I see others were able to get really high scores, so they definitely figured out some interesting way to deter the Karen.
I would agree with others that there is a lot of waiting in the game
Love the concept, agree with things other have said, and I would also like it if you couldn't placeobstacles behind the end goal. But I enjoyed it and I like that the placed obstacles remain on retry, so you can tweak your layout. This together with a faster way to execute the obstacle course, as others have sugested, would make trying to get the highest score smoother.
Great work!
When I hit the restart button though none of the buttons would work again. So I had to refresh the game to actually replay a level, but I did just manually try all the levels and I liked it a lot!
Great idea and overall well done!
Well done, that's a pretty solid entry !
Someone above had already found the game-breaking bug but if you place the barrier in a location that would prevent Karen from finding an alternate route, the game would freeze up and require a hard reset.
The art was great, the audio was good and other than the one bug the game was playable and solid. Good work!
@jzucc12 and @amastryukov - do you have a screenshot of the placement when the freeze occurs? I'd like to look into and fix it, placing a barrier in the way shouldn't freeze the game but cause Karen to run over it with an animation.
Update: Fix has been uploaded - thank you for reporting :two_hearts:
I think letting player set grocery and pet hints where he want is too much permissive, that way you just have to set these two just before the party location and the game is a wrap :(
And that's a shame, because all the mechanics with pathfinding works pretty well !
Also, maybe it would be cool to have a way to speed up karen, because, mama, I waited somewhat 286 "minutes" it was reaaaaaally long :smile:
Otherwise, music and arts are really goods too, well done !
The art is very cute and clear, the music is a fun vibe but doesn't really seem to tie in with a Karen running around frustrated.
All in all a very solid entry, if it had more levels I would've played them!
Like the isometric style and neat controls. Well done!
Cute and fun, good job guys!