Call Hector, Organ Collector by TheLastSlowpoke
Join him in his hectic trolley problem!
Short arcade game with higher difficulties for you to master and eerie atmosphere for you to ponder.
|who? |what? | |---------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------| |Adaś |main art | |adasium |programming/vfx/additional art/brainstorm/Hector VA | |Emilia |brainstorm/cheerleading | |Leo |additional art | |Lotka :dog: |cheerleading | |Marszal |additional playtesting | |mertanian |programming/vfx/brainstorm | |TheLastSlowpoke |programming/vfx/brainstorm/PM <3 | |tyminix |music/sfx/vfx/brainstorm | |Wallted |programming/vfx/brainstorm | |Zuzuua |additional art/brainstorm/cheerleading/GoW playthrough Ω |
Controls
- A/D + mouse
Audio
- soundtrack and VA made from scratch
- sfx made with samples from royalty free stock
Bug fixes
- vfx/fixed splatter visual cues behaving incorrectly in the web browser build, misleading the player
func dev_thoughts(TheLastSlowpoke, Wallted):
We went overboard with the team size this time. The core of the team was big enough, and we had an amazing support crew with us too. We prepared very well, gathered up in one flat for the whole jam, almost all of us took the day off from work on Monday :sweat_smile:. It was the first time jamming, and first gamedev experience for all but two, three of us.
We almost overshoot the scope, the last build went online not even ten minutes till deadline, and the last hours were insane. However, we knew we could do it, and it just so happened that we didn't have time to question it, so we delivered. But we needed some additional help. A few sprites here and there were offloaded to some of our friends that we took by surprise at Sunday and Monday, and they truly saved us.
We all learned a lot in this few days. It was sooo challenging to work in a team this big. We're crazy proud of ourselves and each other, of what we did this amazing - hectic - weekend, even though we had to left some things unpolished. We're looking forward to the next jam, but for now, a few months of well earned rest.
| Link | https://thelastslowpoke.itch.io/call-hector-organ-collector |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/call-hector-organ-collector |
Ratings
| Overall | 258th | 3.677⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 166th | 3.729⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 200th | 3.583⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 115th | 4.146⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 380th | 3.698⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 222th | 3.583⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 128th | 3.74⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 292th | 3.719⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 70🗳️ | 95🗨️ |
I was a bit disappointed there's no real endgame, but that's totally understandable. My own game doesn't have one either-it's a classic jam time crunch! 😄
I really loved the atmosphere and visual style. The music complements it perfectly.
Excellent work!
Work on the difficulty balance and you've got a star here, I think!
(As an aside: Hector's eyes make me think of Bangboo from Zenless Zone Zero. Imagine one of *those* little guys riding a mower down the street, running down passersby! XD)
Glad you liked it!
Yeah, we wrongfully left the difficulty balance for the last minute and in the chaos it was hard to get out of the "I'm not taking into account that I'm a dev *enough*" pitfall. That being said, the brain difficulty is exactly where we wanted it to be. What is not polished is that we failed to convey through the game that the organs are in fact difficulty levels, not consecutive stages. We think of them as "tutorial, normal, hard, stupid hard", and in the game it seems like it could be "stage 1 -> stage 2 -> stage 3 -> stage 4", so the lungs feel not satisfying enough to beat.
The brain is not luck based though (unless you have a veeery bad luck, but I won't go into details). Slowing down by waggling is a very good strategy, and it makes me very happy that you came up with it! But the brain has, as you said, too few matching *donors* for this to work. The heavily optimized strategy for the brain is to go as fast as you can and capitalize on the starting blood. That alone will not get you to the end, so you have to get some donors on the way, but without sacrificing speed to much. So you should only scan the donors that you can feasibly get and that you will scan before you get there - aim high, ignore donors that are too close or ones that have other donors in the way, be biased towards scanning many donors with one scan.
If you want some behind-the-scenes numbers from the top of my head, here you go. Gunning as fast as you can without taking any donors will get you to around 60-70% of the level. You need like 6 donors to get to the end. There are at least 12 donors of 0 blood type (it is not completely random), and the slower you go, the more there can be.
We, playing it after the jam, found out that with good luck you can even get away with one wrong donor. The very few times that we didn't manage we could relate to not being skillful enough that run. It is fair, just unreasonably difficult to not be a bonus level in such a short game. And nothing in the game suggests that it in fact is.
PS. Hahah, I don't know what ZZZ is, but Bangboos definitely have a similar gaze. I hope we haven't destroyed your perception of them forever ^^
That said, for my own game, I used a "stacked deck" approach to randomness (filling up an array with possible results, then "dealing" them at random) to ensure that generated dungeons will always have certain necessary features - e.g. 3/4 of potential junctions will always branch, and 3/4 of generated dead ends will have items (and the first "item" that spawns will always be the switch that opens up the gate to the treasure room). You may need to spend some time searching every nook and cranny, but you will *always* find what you need (assuming the traps don't get you first! ;) )
You could definitely make "hard mode" a little more fair with a similar method - X number of O patients guaranteed, with a varied but largely consistent gap between them.
(I'll confess, playing the game Unfair Flips has made me a *bit* paranoid about *purely* random chance in games! XD)
Guess what, we did exactly this ^^ We have batches of 20 donors, and for every batch, 6 donors has the 0 blood type. And you literally can't die from jar emptying out before you get through the first batch. It is not pure random, it's a gambler's fallacy world for guaranteed consistency, just as yours.
We could have added a separate quest for each organ, but the mechanic of collecting specific blood is interesting
By the way, this time we also made the game with new team members (albeit a smaller team than yours). We also encountered some difficulties and managed to fix the game near the end of the competition. Congratulations to your team on finishing, and good luck at the next jams!
I'd love to hear more about your experience with that! Any pitfalls you found of working with 2 - 3 vs the billion you did now :P
but the game yes :D The game I love it. It was fun to play, difficult at times but great to get into. nice job! :D
Hahah, thanks for playing!
Yeah, there were so many people eager to join! The core of the team was like 6 people, but in the credits we included everyone that was happy to help with some stuff, and there were plenty of those too. Before the event my brain was fried trying to visualize what is going to happen, but somehow everything slid into place naturally. Everyone took the challenge seriously, we just shifted into the highest gear for the whole event, and we were in constant dialogue. I'm so proud of how friendly the atmosphere was! We made a lot of organizational mistakes, but we were apparently flexible enough. And I have to mention some insane merge conflicts that we fought this weekend ^^ Compared to the last time, when we did "a pair of programmers + an artist" kinda setup, it was completely different, soooo calm compared to this weekend's insanity.
I've done some solo jams too, before anyone got interested. The experience of working in a team is very different, I'd say it's a breeze of fresh air after a few of solos. Maybe sometime you'll find a team as well. Sorry but I won't share, I treasure them too much :smile:
Really great game visually and atmospherically (also in sense of humor)! Impeccable graphic art. The difficulty is indeed a bit high (I only cleared the level for AB blood type).
But the graphics were really nice and fits to the dark mood.
Good work and keep on going!
Anyway, the game looks great, has a nice atmosphere and moving down people felt satisfying, especially the screaming. The difficulty was just about right on the hardest level once I figured out the magic light blood test.
I only had to retry the brain once, which was ok.
There are some really nice things regarding the art-style, but more coherence would have improve the perception of the art direction a lot. I believe more coherent art throughout shines more that very good art next to medium art.
The only thing I really miss was a proper ending :D
It reminds me of the C64 game Speed Racer, where you could get points by running over people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CVeWU5KTzU