LudumData

The Harvester by Bas van den Berg

[raw]
made by Bas van den Berg for Ludum Dare 52 (JAM)

promotion art.png

First time participating. It was quite an experience. I've never made a game before on my own. Never done any graphics myself.

Created from scratch with a new custom C++ code base (except for the sound, which uses irrklang). General graphics code, using vulkan, and some utilities were written before. Custom art. Custom code. Sounds from freely available license free sources.

In this game you harvest souls, but celestial beings will come to protect the people (sometimes). The healthier the person you take the soul from the more likely they'll show up.

Controls: wasd movement, attack space-bar/left mouse, special invincibility ability 'f' or right click. Feel free to enlarge the window, or use alt-enter to switch to (borderless) fullscreen.

There's also a special edit mode with ctrl+e, where you can select terrain/enemies with number keys and place them with alt (enemies), shift (terrain) or ctrl (player) click. Ctrl+s will save, but it will overwrite the current (default) saved world state.

If for some reason the uploaded game here doesn't work I also uploaded it to itch.io here: https://bas-van-den-berg.itch.io/the-harvester

Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/the-harvester-3

Ratings

Overall 769th 2.738⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 730th 2.632⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 769th 2.447⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 626th 3.289⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 705th 2.5⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 484th 2.447⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 543th 2.529⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 768th 2.5⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 24🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

HFSEvans
09. Jan 2023 · 22:50 UTC
Okay, so, at first I thought this was a bit of a spam fest. Just click to swing, but after playing it a few times there's actually way more to combat than I thought. I found myself moving to avoid enemy attacks and it started to feel good, though still really difficult.

I think maybe it needs a clear risk and reward systems. It's higher risk to kill the young farmers, so maybe incentives us to do it more? Or you could make the people randomly spawn so sometime we only have them to kill?

Well done!!!
Undev Games
09. Jan 2023 · 22:56 UTC
For a first game, it was pretty cool!

I liked the sound effects
Hawkin
09. Jan 2023 · 22:59 UTC
That was fun! Great job for your first solo title, especially with a new code base!

I liked that you included an invincibility ability that consumed lives that you harvest -- that's a good balance! I never was quite able to win (harvest all the people), so maybe the game needs a little more balancing. Things like player speed versus enemy speed, damage, and health.
fc85057
09. Jan 2023 · 23:09 UTC
First time participating and using custom C++ code base- this is really impressive! And the pixel art is great, especially for someone who hasn't done graphics before. I also thought using the souls as a resource for the temporary invincibility was a nice mechanic.
I agree with the other comment's points. It is quite difficult, but may very well been intentional :) A risk/reward, incentive, timer, etc. system could really take it to the next level.
🎤 Bas van den Berg
09. Jan 2023 · 23:28 UTC
Thanks for the comments! It wasn't easy to find a good balance. At first it was way too easy, maybe it's a bit too hard now. :D
LDJam user 320211
09. Jan 2023 · 23:29 UTC
Great showing, especially for a first time game! I think the others touched on what I wanted to say, but I do think it was pretty tough when the angels just stuck to you - there wasn't much room to do anything but hope you have enough invulnerability. And some sort of indicator that things were taking damage would help, I wasn't sure if my attacks were doing anything until things disappeared. I like the concept though, and it played really smoothly!
Globul
15. Jan 2023 · 11:35 UTC
Good basis to make a great beat'em all ! Good work and well done for a first game.
BIGJAM
16. Jan 2023 · 13:44 UTC
The game wouldnt open :(
MattWoelk
17. Jan 2023 · 03:01 UTC
Impressive that you made level editing tools with it!
Veelivar
17. Jan 2023 · 04:34 UTC
Congrats on your first entry! Almost got through it all in my first run.

I also had a problem with the angels sticking to me like glue, and in my second run, the RNG decreed that no one should be allowed to die without an angel appearing. Maybe some system to put the gained souls into stats, like speed. The invun is nice, but the cooldown isn't always enough when they're glued to you.

Visuals communicated really clearly what everything was.
🎤 Bas van den Berg
25. Jan 2023 · 13:57 UTC
@veelivar thanks for the feedback. I agree it would be nice to adjusts/invest in stats with souls, but I didn't have time for anything like that unfortunately.
I'm sorry that the angels stuck to you. I had some issues with that during development. I thought it was better now.

I learned a lot, and hope to do better next time :)
🎤 Bas van den Berg
25. Jan 2023 · 14:00 UTC
@bigjam sorry to hear it didn't work for you. I'm guessing it's an issue with my vulkan code. It has not been extensively tested.
RaggedyJam
26. Jan 2023 · 06:38 UTC
Had some trouble trying to hit entities at times and found the celestials a bit annoying but was able to build a strategy of piling them up behind people and use my invincibility to take out several at once so that was nice. Great job on your first Ludum Dare game.
Jonqs
26. Jan 2023 · 08:00 UTC
Cool game ! I feel like i can't escape the celestials since they are running at the same speed or faster than my character. The feeling on harvesting could have been better if the hitbox was on the whole scythe. Anyway so impressed by people making a game on custom engine like that. Congrats !