Monsters vs. Aliens by tweedle

[raw]
made by tweedle for LD33 (JAM)
Some dumb aliens have been receiving Earth's broadcasts of classic monster movies for decades...
Believing the monsters portrayed are planet Earth's ultimate champions,
the dummies infiltrated our solar system and are seeking out Earth's champions for ultimate battle!

Gameplay & Controls:
2D Platformer, Sidescroller, Shooter

Left Mouse Click = Shoot
Right Mouse Click= Special Attack
A & D = Move
Space Bar = Jump

By: Josh Watson, Stephen Roper & Taylor Dunn
Follow us on Twitter @ZamboniMacaroni

Tech:
Game Maker
Adobe Illustrator
Ableton Live 9
Spriter Pro
Github
Windows & Mac OS X

Game Updates:
We have a lot of functionality we plan to add in later, stay tuned!

8/25/15:
We've uploaded a bug-fix version! (v1.1)

**special attack meter now reads correctly -- can now fill to 4
**star animations in the title/menu screens now work correctly -- they were supposed to be more sparkly
**restart functionality -- restarts the level, rather than the whole game
**tuned the health mechanic -- it's less hard
**launches fullscreen 1080x1920 -- not windowed

No new features, you still can't crouch or unlock anything - as we didn't get that in over the weekend...

Let us know if you find any other bugs and we'll get'em squashed!
We're working on some ports!

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 3.18 560
Audio(Jam) 3.20 353
Fun(Jam) 2.90 643
Graphics(Jam) 4.15 155
Humor(Jam) 2.90 465
Innovation(Jam) 2.66 804
Mood(Jam) 3.05 569
Theme(Jam) 3.40 570

Feedback

rotpar
25. Aug 2015 · 03:52 UTC
Love the art style.
tobbez
25. Aug 2015 · 04:04 UTC
The unskippable intro is really annoying, especially since you have to sit through it between every play. Art and music are quite good.

Would have been nice with variable height jumps (and to be able to stand on slopes, rather than fall into them).
Aevek
25. Aug 2015 · 04:19 UTC
Loved the art style and music, just let me walk on slopes please?
valid4life
25. Aug 2015 · 04:55 UTC
Loved the art!
Absolutely great style. Huge fan of the enemies breaking into pieces!
AntonyBaasan
25. Aug 2015 · 05:32 UTC
Wow. Super unique art. Love it.
DruhinM
25. Aug 2015 · 06:24 UTC
Love the art
LordKawaii
25. Aug 2015 · 06:33 UTC
I had a hard time getting this game to run, it crashed twice (though it might just be that I'm running Win 10)

Those problems aside I really liked the art and being able to play Universal Monsters was fun!
maguera93
25. Aug 2015 · 06:46 UTC
Awesome art!
Shaw
25. Aug 2015 · 07:12 UTC
Beautiful original art, plays well, could go far with some polish. Nice work.
eric777
25. Aug 2015 · 18:58 UTC
Art = amazing. Audio quite good too.

On my first play I wasn't sure I liked the slow moon-gravity thing, but after I started getting the hang of it, I really liked that aspect. It felt a little like I was in Ender's Game in the arena, floating around and using gravity & inertia while doing things like shooting that are typically 1G. That was cool.

I was not able to complete the first world. I think I need more health pickups! Also, for some reason left-shift didn't crouch for me at all. Not sure why. I think I might have been missing a key control mechanic needed to do better than I did.

Nicely done!!!
nihilaleph
26. Aug 2015 · 00:42 UTC
Great artwork and audio! Couldn't get past the first level though... I can't dodge the bullets effectively >.< I'll try again later!
m3_on
26. Aug 2015 · 02:32 UTC
The are style is fantastic! It reminds me of day of the dead stuff and I found myself getting pretty addicted to the game. As I kept climbing up the level, seeing all the different types of bad guys...very cool and impressive all that you guys got done!
tGiant
26. Aug 2015 · 05:30 UTC
It is an okay game. Lots of bugs with the collision detection of the player. Also the gravity of the player feels too slow.
CrazyMinnowStudio
26. Aug 2015 · 06:02 UTC
Great looking and fun. Pretty hard.
Cerberus
26. Aug 2015 · 06:10 UTC
the graphics were good, great style, the controls were hard and a bit stiff. the gameplay felt kind of slow. nice work overall
Wefiends
26. Aug 2015 · 06:32 UTC
Really tried to get into this one because of the lovely art, but it was too hard to even get past the first level. Something about the weight on the jump, and the unpredictability of the bullets made it a bit more frustrating than enjoyable for what the game asked of the player. Love being able to pick characters and would've loved to see more of the levels. Good job overall, I think everything could be fixed with a few number adjustments.
adsilcott
26. Aug 2015 · 15:27 UTC
Loved the art style. Pretty fun platformer.
block97
26. Aug 2015 · 15:32 UTC
Art and music are very nice. I really disliked how floaty and imprecise the jumping felt a times though.
Drunkteam
26. Aug 2015 · 15:36 UTC
when i tried this, my screen just when bluck for like, five minutes. I had to restart the computer. What am I doing wrong?
The art looks amazing, bt
zenmumbler
26. Aug 2015 · 15:44 UTC
The art is really nice and consistent. The game needs some more work wrt difficulty and controls.
NoWandStudios
26. Aug 2015 · 15:51 UTC
Art and music ared good!
BeardoGames
26. Aug 2015 · 16:04 UTC
Haha, hey fellow Dracula includers, I really enjoyed the gameplay and the refreshingly unique graphic style you used. I look forward to seeing any updates too. Nice work!
Mike Mezhenin
26. Aug 2015 · 16:17 UTC
Alien design is super-cool, but the game was too hard for my taste.
yokcos700
26. Aug 2015 · 16:38 UTC
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
Looks and sound fantastic, except for the jump sound which is rather too echoey. The gameplay, however, isn't great. As many people here are saying, slope collision doesn't exactly work. I'd say, however, that the game is too hard in a bad way. A lot of enemies kill you before you can react and the player is too large and too slow to reliably dodge. Jumping is incredibly slow, so you're super vulnerable in midair. The enemy variety, however, is great. Not necessarily fair enemies, but the fact that there's so many types of enemies in such a short level is great.

I reached the first (only?) boss and partway into the fight, this happened:
for object obj_boss_1_body:

Unable to find any instance for object index '9' name 'obj_test_body'
at gml_Object_obj_boss_1_body_Step_0
Sunflower
26. Aug 2015 · 18:29 UTC
The plot kinda sounds like the premise of "Pixels: The Movie". ^^"

The yay:
- art style
- audio

The nay:
- gameplay feels too slow and inert, making it way harder than it should be
- unpredictable bullets don't help, either
- crouch and pause are "locked" for whatever reason
- title screen stays for too long and cannot be skipped

Overall, it could really, really use some polish and balancing. As it is now, I've managed to reach the first boss after a few attempts, but couldn't complete the map.
🎤 tweedle
26. Aug 2015 · 21:31 UTC
Wow, thank you all so much for the feedback (both positive and negative)! It has been incredibly helpful, and we plan on making some major changes to our game design based on these comments. So keep 'em coming!

@ yokcos700: Thanks for reporting that bug! We'll be sure to squash it.

@Sunflower: Good call out on the unpredictable bullets. Going forward we are going to give bullets a timed shot interval instead of a random number generator. Crouch and Pause are locked because we didn't have time to implement them into the game. We thought it would be funny to just show them as "locked."

@BeardoGames: Dracula is best!

@Wefiends: Thanks for the feedback! We plan on spending a lot of time on difficulty and balancing.

@tGiant: Good point. Collision detection was something we struggled with. We'll be sure to work on it!

It means the world to us that you took time to play our little game. Thank you!
jordinuco
27. Aug 2015 · 14:08 UTC
Graphics are very good! A little buggy, but it´s very replayable, or so I think... good job
HeyZeus
27. Aug 2015 · 21:09 UTC
Awesome, love the art style.
RoboNebula
28. Aug 2015 · 19:03 UTC
The Art Style is awesome
HotBoxGames
28. Aug 2015 · 19:22 UTC
While this game looked pretty interesting I couldn't get it to run! I waited for several minutes after booting up the game and I was stuck on a white screen, it's a shame because this looked quite promising!
veoviscool12
28. Aug 2015 · 19:31 UTC
I really loved the art style, fantastic all around. Slopes had me a bit confused, I'd say just implement walking up slopes. The double jump was fine, but your platforms require the player to use every last inch of jump height (At least with Dracula), leaving very little room for error and making it more frustrating than it has to be. Also make the intro skippable. Other than that, great fun! :)
DerekRumpler
31. Aug 2015 · 21:00 UTC
I love the art style, although I'll admit it was awkward for me to play on a laptop with a touch pad. The game crashed in the more polished version when I got to the end of the first hallway and was shot by one of the aliens. I'd think it would be neat if I could use the mouse to aim because I had a few cheap hits from the enemy on account of the slow jumping. I definitely see a lot of potential from this and would love to play more if a final version is released.
kaitokidi
08. Sep 2015 · 10:40 UTC
Nice, but too difficult
Jupiter_Hadley
12. Sep 2015 · 13:47 UTC
Beautiful graphics! I included it in part 26 of my Ludum Dare 33 Compilation video series, if you would like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/3UFkqjoD81E
jsmars
14. Sep 2015 · 23:50 UTC
Really nice menus and style, but I thought movement was a bit too slow