DELIVERATOR: Dual-Wielded Action by Netrunner Nobody

[raw]
made by Netrunner Nobody for Ludum Dare 53 (COMPO)

deliverator_icon.png

Click here to play this game! Ludum Dare's thing for Godot 4 games is currently broken, so the game is only available on the lovely platform of itch.io.

This is a fairly simple mechanics proof of concept about creating dual-wielded weapon gameplay that's both intuitive and satisfying while still feeling distinctly different from that of a singular weapon.

The left and right mouse buttons control the left and right weapons, while the A and D keys rotate the character. There's no movement, reloading, upgrades, or anything like that - this is purely about exploring this one mechanic. I tried adding some of these secondary mechanics during development, but felt that the more I added, the less the game became about the one thing I felt was interesting about it - so I removed a bunch of features.

The game increases in difficulty the longer you remain alive, starting slow and ending in a rapid frenzy of bullets: you might be able to start the game using only a single weapon, but you won't be able to progress far until you master using both. I encourage you to post your time remaining high score in your review!

This game is loosely based on the character Hiro 'The Deliverator' Protagonist from the 1992 Neal Stephenson novel Snow Crash. You're defending a lovely three boxes of pizza delivery from a bunch of hungry, hungry Burbcave cops. My developer art may struggle to indicate this.

Kindly refrain from getting blood on the pizza boxes. Thanks!

Ratings

Overall 354th 2.977⭐ 24đŸ§‘â€âš–ī¸
Fun 313th 2.955⭐ 24đŸ§‘â€âš–ī¸
Innovation 92th 3.727⭐ 24đŸ§‘â€âš–ī¸
Theme 395th 2.455⭐ 24đŸ§‘â€âš–ī¸
Graphics 334th 2.909⭐ 24đŸ§‘â€âš–ī¸
Audio 220th 3.159⭐ 24đŸ§‘â€âš–ī¸
Mood 224th 3.19⭐ 23đŸ§‘â€âš–ī¸
Given 20đŸ—ŗī¸ 23đŸ—¨ī¸

Feedback

KyleTheCoder
01. May 2023 ¡ 02:06 UTC
Really interesting try! I was getting some freezing. Tell me, do you have shaders on your enemies, and are you using the material = material.duplicate() trick on those shader materials? I'm asking because if that's true, and if you're passing true to the duplicate call, it's avoiding the new shader cache. I had a similar issue until I fixed it. I followed you on Itch, would love to see this PoC expanded into something pretty cool.
LDJam user 264390
01. May 2023 ¡ 04:20 UTC
For me it was kind of hard to see the game, it's dark but also has a lot of moving colors, and when you rotate around it made it even harder. Seems like a nice interesting concept, but the visuals made it tough for me at least. Aside from that it is pretty fun, I love the music it's bopping, but it does not loop after about a minute and a half in. And my favorite thing is the little grumble noise everytime you shoot.
🎤 Netrunner Nobody
01. May 2023 ¡ 04:45 UTC
The constantly moving visuals definitely make the game harder, but are a large part of what make the game work, in that it requires slightly more than a reflex of shooting anything that moves for success.

Glad you enjoyed the game!
rjerez192
01. May 2023 ¡ 06:25 UTC
NGL. I kinda like the camera movement and the mood of the game. Maybe the flashing lights in the floor are a bit too much, but bearable. Music is very nice.
candlesan
02. May 2023 ¡ 01:58 UTC
Very unique controls. At first when the game started and it was a complete top-down perspective I thought "well this is awkward" - but when the game started and I could see how my hands were positioned I realized that the camera angle played in perfectly for the type of game that you wanted to make. The rotation, music, flashing squares, and guns feel perfect for a wild setting.
guin36
02. May 2023 ¡ 03:26 UTC
I appreciate the unique take on the delivery theme. The snippet alongside the game story gave me a real hotline miami kind of vibe which was very cool. I think I would have liked faster fire rate and more enemies.

Also the line "Kindly refrain from getting blood on the pizza boxes" goes hard af
ollie_d
02. May 2023 ¡ 21:57 UTC
Solid sountrack! I definitely boppin my head haha. I liked this proof of concept! I tried to rotate as little as possible since I found it was the hardest thing to control, but I like the dual aiming concept. Voice effects were great, and the enemies were giving me huge minecraft Steve vibes lol
paulhocker
03. May 2023 ¡ 02:45 UTC
very interesting idea and once i got the hang of the mechanic it felt good. i was starting to feel like joh n wick. thanks for making the game
Raivk
04. May 2023 ¡ 11:56 UTC
Interesting gameplay idea, deserves to be used in a more fleshed out game! You definitely should explore it further more! It could be really good. It's good as it is, but it could be even better!
yumykon
05. May 2023 ¡ 01:12 UTC
The gameplay concept is very interesting, I didn't take long to adapt to the two guns, and I think the aesthetics in general, with the music and flashing colors, combine very well! I just felt that sometimes the sensitivity to rotate the character is a bit high, and when the character shoots, it rotates a bit to the side, which sometimes made me not have as much precision in the shots as I wanted. In one of the my runs, I was doing well but at around 8 minutes the music stopped playing, and I got sad and ended up losing my flow and I lost at 7:08 (â•Ĩīšâ•Ĩ)

Anyway, congratulations on the work, your game turned out great and I believe you were able to capture and convey the interesting vibe and gameplay with two weapons the way you wanted to! (◕â€ŋ◕)♡
Gmstochetto
05. May 2023 ¡ 02:48 UTC
I admire that you persisted with just one game mechanic, these types of games are the most challenging to make. I really enjoyed what I played, it's extremely difficult and addictive, and I like that you can move with both AD keys and the mouse. It's also interesting that you based the game on a book that's somewhat connected to the theme. I think the player's movement accuracy could be improved a bit, but overall great job! :D
🎤 Netrunner Nobody
05. May 2023 ¡ 05:01 UTC
@yumykon thank you so much!!

the music bug really grinds my gears a lot as well, as i feel like it punishes people who really try to engage with the game and get good at it. i really wish i was allowed to edit my code after the 48 hour mark ,but alas. still, some small part of me - maybe the copey part - does sort of think it's cool that at some point the music shuts off and the massacre your on goes from being cool to creepy and disturbing

the sensitivity is definitely a bit high. i tweaked it back and forth a lot - but when i put it too low i created situations in which the player couldn't rotate fast enough to respond to an enemy, and so ultimately i erred on the side of higher than lower.

that aside, i'm really glad to hear you managed to both understand and enjoy what i tried so hard to convey!!
🎤 Netrunner Nobody
05. May 2023 ¡ 05:03 UTC
@gmstochetto @raivk it's definitely a lot harder to get people to buy into what you're making when it's something both esoteric and with only really one way of approaching it. that's why so many AAA games these days are action-stealth-crafting-puzzle hybrids, with the idea that they're all very familiar and that a player will probably at least enjoy some of what's on that list.

i do think a version that takes longer than 48 hours to write could be a good idea, although i'm skeptical that people will appreciate these kinds of esoteric controls in the long-term
gamescodedogs
18. May 2023 ¡ 08:10 UTC
Nice mood. You made great amount of work as for compo game! 5 for mood and GFX.