Dubious Arcade by ocwal

Dubious Arcade
A new game - EVERY 10 seconds!
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Description:
You're on the clock! Try to beat ten random 10-second games in a row!
Challenge yourself to win all games in a row, or compete with up to 3 friends to see who can get the most wins out of ten amazing 10-second games!
GLHF!!

Controls:
The game supports keyboard and up to two gamepads!

The Team:

Game Development:
This game was developed by a team of nine enthusiasts (and two doggies).
All of the aspects of the game where developed within 72 hours of Ludum Dare 51, from idea to final build, and everything but balance, polish and bug-fixing was finished during the first 48 hours.
All assets in the game where made by the team.
We had an amazingly fun time doing this! <3
Making of:
For more info on the development of this game, find us on Itch:
Dubious Potions on itch.io
And see our documented progress here:
Dubious Potions Twitter
Dubious Potions Instagram


Looking for more games to play?
Check out this amazing RTS entry made by our Dubious Potion compadre Milestone Games for the Compo this round: Battle of Nephthys :rocket:
| Play it on Itch.io! | https://ocwal.itch.io/dubious-arcade |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/dubious-arcade |
Ratings
| Overall | 205th | 3.886⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 126th | 3.977⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 170th | 3.841⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 112th | 4.205⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 214th | 4.159⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 203th | 3.81⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 72th | 4.071⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 359th | 3.69⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 23🗨️ |

And always remember, "Boop the snoot!" (Favorite level!)
I do think that the range in difficulty of the games is pretty high. Some of them are extremely easy, such as the sandwich game and the otter game (although the otter one is of course best on the very first playthrough, and I imagine, shines even more when in a group of players). Then one game, "rescue the diamond," is so hard that I have been unable to beat it. I started escaping to the title menu and repeatedly starting a new game just to get a couple more attempts at it, and I still haven't managed to win. :sweat_smile:
But, I really do like the sheer variation in the games. Some highlights: the train one feels really good to play. The jester one plays and sounds good. The dab one is quite funny. One thing I especially like is the variety in aesthetic styles between the games... some being cartoonier, some being pixel art, and some being more photorealistic kinds of art.
I do think that the random game selection could perhaps be improved. Several times I would get many duplicate games that I had already won -- I think in those cases it would be more fun to either get a duplicate of a game I had lost (or, in multiplayer, that nobody had won), or to get an entirely new game. Perhaps duplicate games could be rejected if they had already been won? (Or, at least for the easier games... one run I got three sandwich games, which were all very easy. One run I did win the needle game but then it came up again and I lost that time... so maybe duplicate games make more sense when the game chosen is one of the harder ones.)
On a technical note I feel like the audio balance is a bit off. The first time I played I couldn't really hear any music, but some of the sound effects came through quite clearly. Then I realized if I turned up the volume I could hear the music reasonably well... but then some sound effects were way too loud (such as the dab sound and the boop sound).
But besides that, everything feels polished and I had a good time doing a couple runs. I managed to get a high score of 9 points. :smile:
Loved the look of everything, especially loved the little guy in the "don't get crushed" game. :D
Good job everyone~
overall, really good team work!
Managed to win 8/10 games
If you get the diamond, and then die afterwards, it still counts as a fail. Dont know if this is a bug or not. But it does say get the diamond, not get the diamond and live.
Pin failed for me despite getting a pin through the hole and poking the skull.
Boop the Snoot can sometimes be near impossible or actually impossible, and isn't entirely clear if smaller, more zoomed out snoots count or not.
The Avoid the asteroid one can sometimes give legitimately impossible or near-impossible patterns.
Screen is also a bit small for some of the minigames.
The only minigame I couldn't beat at all was the diamond and the pin one.
Would be fun to try multiplayer though.
I thought this entry had such a wonderful aesthetic, everything was really unusual (warioware-esque I suppose you could say?) and I wish, since I was playing single player, there was the option to allow me to see the screen a little bit bigger, I found myself leaning in really close to get a clearer look at the doll that needed to be pinned (seriously that looked great, like really impressive stuff especially for a jam). I really like that you totally grasped that like...two seconds of confusion and panic when the microgame first starts and you're like "oh god, what do I? What button presses what??"
Honestly very sad this hasn't gotten as much attention as I feel it deserves. Really charming and a solid idea and you clearly understood the weird vibes that make games like Warioware so memerable in the first place