Western Fury by AlpalcaLad

[raw]
made by AlpalcaLad for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

Take the role of a sheriff trying to take back his gun from bandits who took over a train. The catch is you need to make do without your trusty revolver in dispatching any of the foes.

Make use of absurdist physics and gravity to work your way to getting a very important delivery. Screenshot1.png Screenshot2.png Screenshot3.png

Ratings

Overall 406th 3.733⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Fun 224th 3.833⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 227th 3.783⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Theme 951th 3.45⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 544th 3.75⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Humor 245th 3.7⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Mood 391th 3.759⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Given 18🗳️ 47🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 316322
02. May 2023 · 00:09 UTC
Wow, great game. Great cutscene at the start. Really cool game overall.
Samoussa
03. May 2023 · 17:51 UTC
The start screen scene is so beautifully done! I loved the intro to put us in the mood too.
Throwing my enemy around and overall doing wheelie and jumping around was really fun!
Great job!
Merotar
03. May 2023 · 18:08 UTC
Really nice game. It's a nice physics- and alomst puzzle playground. But I would have loved to be able to jump on "space". Maybe it'S just my personal preference.
Team Gaivot
03. May 2023 · 18:11 UTC
Really good game, Im very impressed by the execution, specially on the boss. The slowdown effect when dodging bullets was a very good addition. I think making the jump height variable depending on how long you hold the button, and improving the pick up mechanic, so that held items would always default to the front of the character, or making it so that you can always throw the item where you are aiming, would make the combat and movement feel even better.
Obe Dot
03. May 2023 · 21:39 UTC
graphics are great
Aivaxela
04. May 2023 · 01:40 UTC
awesome game! felt very complete and the boss fight and gameplay in general were very fun!
Firebelley
04. May 2023 · 02:37 UTC
Fun game and neat concept! Had a lot of fun overall. I do think the enemy health was unnecessary, I think the game would have been just fine if you could instant-kill enemies. Great work!
sunnytentacle
04. May 2023 · 07:26 UTC
fun game! controls feel to be a little hard, but it's fun also. and cool graphics & music
Groundwater Studio
04. May 2023 · 17:20 UTC
Right out the gate, title screen sets a phenomenal mood. The music, the colors, the layout. It just slaps. What kinda threw me off though was how different the vibe of the game felt to the title screen. I would have loved to see that awesome sunset color palette and cool crunched western guitar music be present through the rest of the game.

The bullet catching mechanic coupled with the bullet TIME mechanic was sooooo clean. That final boss was easily my favorite part of the game, especially with how quickly the scene reloads if you die. With that said I felt like the box throwing and corpse stacking bits felt less engaging than those mechanics. I understand the sense of empowerment that comes from earning a power up, however I left the final boss going "oh man I wish the earlier parts had just been me catching and throwing bullets too!"

Some exceptionally good elements here though and a very polished/complete final product. I finished the game thinking "I just want more of X, Y, and Z" which has only happened with a few game so far this jam and this is one of them. Awesome job boss!
🎤 AlpalcaLad
04. May 2023 · 17:38 UTC
@groundwater-studio Yeah totally get what you mean. I'd love to flesh out the game more so you have more time to play around with the mechanics but didn't want to introduce everything at once. Also ran out of time to make my own music which was a rip. Maybe something for a post jam version we'll see :P glad you enjoyed anyway
Groundwater Studio
04. May 2023 · 17:51 UTC
@alpalcalad I TOTALLY get it, we ended up with the worst level design imaginable in our entry because we didn't leave ourselves enough time to do a fun layout. The parts you focused on definitely shone through!
Sheepolution
04. May 2023 · 20:52 UTC
That was pretty good! Sometimes the controls were a bit frustrating, like how you can't turn around when holding something to shoot it the other way, but I really like that you have the boss battle. Good job!
DanielB
04. May 2023 · 23:20 UTC
Great stuff! Loved the title screen and the gameplay loop was enjoyable!
ZungryWare
05. May 2023 · 03:40 UTC
Those were some pretty cool mechanics that worked together well! Everything is a throwable physics object, including the bullets! The final boss was definitely the highlight of the game. I think it was a perfect difficulty for everything else up to that point.

I love how even the gun at the end had the wierdo physics everything else had! :D
![physics.png](///raw/01d/a4/z/5b591.png)

Here are my notes:
- I wish I could turn around while holding an object. Maybe this was an intentional limitation, but it made the game feel a bit clunky.
- Throwing a physics object at an enemy sometimes wouldn't do damage if they were to my left.
- I wish enemies would signal their attacks before firing to make it easier to dodge bullets.
- I know the gun isn't really part of the game. But if it were, I would like to be able to hit enemies that are a bit farther down. The bullet usually hits the top of the crate when doing that cover-fire.

If you fix those issues and add more content, I could see this being a good post-LD game!
Mateu
05. May 2023 · 04:54 UTC
Omg this was amazing. I loved it so much! Like genuinely this is the most fun I've had playing a game jam game so far. The cutscenes were on point, the slow motion was great, and the physics were great. There were some things that were a little janky, especially regarding the physics objects and damaging and stuff like that, but I can easily look past that. After a while, even the art started to look really good. All I have to say is you did such a good job on this! It was so much fun to play.
🎤 AlpalcaLad
05. May 2023 · 18:26 UTC
@zungryware Your feedback is rly helpful and I really appreciate the detail. I'll definitely reference it when I get around to making a post jam version. The not flipping an object was going to be a mechanic but as with a lot of my games I have a tendency to implement at least one bad mechanic and that was definitely it lol. First thing to get scrapped in a post jam promise. Thanks so much for playing :P
Prismapunch
05. May 2023 · 20:56 UTC
Great game! Played it all the way to the end. The reveal that you can grab bullets comes early because the scene before you have to catch them they start showing the grabbable darken.

Wish I could get hit more than once, but the "every point is checkpoint" made the game more bearable.

I noticed this resembles Ivy Sly's "everything is grabbable and a projectile" project during the first level, so the twist was a bit more expected!

Great entry.
Almaz
05. May 2023 · 20:58 UTC
Cool use of physics. Really challenging and interesting game. But jumping to W is driving me crazy!!
Ategon
07. May 2023 · 07:19 UTC
Thanks for submitting your game to be played on the stream! If you wanted to watch my reaction again here’s the vod timestamped to your game
https://youtu.be/iOvkquUaMjs?t=17180
vantos3001
07. May 2023 · 13:08 UTC
Nice intro and gameplay!
sinclairstrange
07. May 2023 · 21:50 UTC
Love a LDjam game that as a good intro! Rather polished in that regards, enjoyed the puzzle element alongside the combat, it wasn't just throwing something to get to a goal! Was a little difficult at places due to having to get used to the physics of stuff, but once you got that down, it played extremely well and was great fun! Really good overall! ^-^
JimmyMcGinger
07. May 2023 · 21:52 UTC
Reading these comments, maybe I didn't quite "get it". I certainly wasn't out here grabbing bullets. I enjoyed the vibes though much like another comment says, it would have been cool if they were more like the start screen. The graphics were real neat. I'm unsure if I was just bad and didn't get to the bit where you grab bullets or if I missed a tooltip so most of the game for me, was throwing boxes at people.
🎤 AlpalcaLad
08. May 2023 · 16:45 UTC
@jimmymcginger its a mechanic properly introduced towards the end so you didn't miss a tooltip or anything. In a post jam version I'd like to lean into the vibes from the start screen but time was tight and I didn't really have much time to commit in the end towards atmosphere outside of a few clouds and a blue backdrop. Definitely something I'll be focussing on in a post jam :P