Like a Boss by NBumgardner
Our game "Like a Boss" is an action arcade game where you play as a boss whose goal is to defeat as many heroes as possible.
How to Play: Use space bar to begin, or navigate the main menu with up/W or down/S buttons. Once the game starts, use the keyboard keys WASD or arrow keys to move the boss on a hidden 3x3 grid. Aim your attacks with the mouse. Press Z to attack with a claw swipe. Press C to shoot a limited supply of fireballs.
Tips: * The "heroes" will only damage you when they're standing still - as long as they're moving, they can't hurt you. Walking into a pile of stationary heroes will definitely lead to a big pile of damage. * Fireballs always take the same amount of time (about 1 second) to reach their destination and detonate. Putting the mouse near yourself can turn a fireball into a lingering shield against approaching heroes. * Because of the awkward controls, it's probably easiest to focus on either moving or attacking. It's dangerous to run around all willy-nilly, so make sure you've got a clear path before running around!
Credits: "Like a Boss" was created with the Scratch engine in 72 hours with original code, art, and music. The team was made of 7 people.
Feedback Wanted: This Ludum Dare entry has original art, music, and gameplay, we are welcome to all kinds of feedback! Especially related to how fun or balanced "Like a Boss" is to play. You can also check out the open-source code on Scratch at: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/671177670
ZEUS'S NOTE: I've noticed some significant stuttering on the version embedded in itch.io (and on the Scratch page itself, at least for a little while after page load) - I'll try to see if there's a way to improve it, but just going to the Scratch page to play should offer the best performance in the meantime.
Also, if you manage to fight through the wonky controls and get a pretty high score, post up a screenshot!
| Scratch | https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/671177670 |
| HTML5 (performance issues) | https://nbumgardner.itch.io/ludum-dare-50-like-a-boss |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/like-a-boss |
Ratings
| Overall | 1372th | 2.604⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1399th | 2.083⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1343th | 2.375⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1352th | 2.646⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1203th | 2.688⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 926th | 2.263⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1116th | 1.95⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1344th | 2.238⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 10🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
Since you asked for balance, corner camping is a little overpowered. This is partly because the fireball can go as far as you want I think. I do like the rate you get fireballs, but using them to blow up the guys in the opposite corner is strong and the game doesn't punish you much for staying in one spot or give you incentive to move (the earlier mentioned dash is a cool idea). I did have a lot of fun corner camping though haha, never seen a boss cheese a player. Thankfully for them I'm not one of those healing bosses.
PS: fireball sound is so cute.
I definitely agree about the cheesiness of camping. I think that a partial fix might be to make score tied to dropped coins instead of just defeating heroes, or periodically spawn some kind of power-up that would be important the the player - then you've got a reason to strike out from your safe spot.
Another big thing would be making heroes more distinct - some kind of projectile attack could require movement to get out of the way, maybe. It'd also give some needed variety and give us something to build a difficulty curve around that's a bit more interesting than just the rate that the folks spawn in at.
IMO the biggest issue is the grid movement. Allowing free movement WASD + aiming/attacking with the mouse would've been fun IMO - but then it would of course lose some of its unique flavor. :)
Good job!
Scratch wasn't running terribly smoothly during early testing, which feels pretty bad when you're trying to weave around things in a game with free movement. It's kinda compounded by how we already knew we wanted the boss to be a bit big and bulky; if we start with something a bit unwieldily and throw on choppy control on top of it seemed like a surefire way for play to feel really bad.
There are definitely a lot of ways that we could've navigated around it, but I knew Scratch handles direct (teleport-ey) movement without much issue. It was a way to make your control reasonably snappy and mitigating some of the issue of the boss's bulkiness was a nice bonus, since damage / attacks are doled out according to this grid-bound logical positioning instead of the literal size of our boss. In theory, I think it's the sort of mechanic that could become a neat cornerstone of how the game behaves but in practice it's not terribly fleshed out.
In the end controls definitely ended up being messy (I also agree with you, mouse for aim + attack would've been a lot better) and the grid-style movement is definitely pretty odd.
Thanks for taking the time to play and comment! :D
I don't know why sometimes the enemies accumulated in a corner of screen, but this made me gain so many points with the fire ball that i cant complain :) :).
It would be nice if the game had a how to play in the main menu. The first time that I played i just tried to avoid the enemies XD.
Congratulations team!