Incident on Outpost 17 by irwatts

[raw]
made by irwatts for Ludum Dare 54 (JAM)

screen0_small.png

:INCOMING TRANSMISSION:

:globewithmeridians: Sector Command Bulletin SD93304:15

:warning: Sector Warning: Astrophage Activity Detected :warning:

Local patrol dispatched to investigate distress signal from Outpost 17. Communication with patrol has been lost. Astrophage activity detected in the area. Rescue unlikely.

:END TRANSMISSION:

Summary

Incident on Outpost 17 is a twin-stick shooter. How long can you hold out before the floor is eaten out from under you?

  • Defend Outpost 17 from the Astrophage onslaught. Select between the machine gun, shotgun, proximity bomb, and devastating sweep laser.
  • Stop the Astrophages before they eat the outpost. Enemies will eat floor tiles when they come in contact with the outpost.
  • Defend the outpost with your life. Astrophages are only interested in eating the outpost. Your soldier will fall if the floor tiles beneath them are eaten. Game ends when the soldier has fallen.

Controls

Controller (Intended Use) - Left Stick: Move - Right Stick: Aim - Right Trigger: Machine Gun - Right Bumper: Shotgun - Left Trigger: Charge Laser - Left Bumper: Proximity Bomb - Start: Menu/Pause

Software/Tools

  • Unreal Engine 5 (We used Lyra Starter Game as a base)
  • JetBrains Rider
  • SideFX Houdini
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Toon Boom Harmony

screen1<em>small.png screen3</em>small.png

Ratings

Overall 800th 3.318⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 979th 2.85⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 899th 2.921⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 314th 4⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 548th 3.643⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 754th 2.5⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 925th 2.975⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 13🗳️ 22🗨️

Feedback

JOZGames
03. Oct 2023 · 00:00 UTC
Bem criativo
Smoe
03. Oct 2023 · 02:22 UTC
I think the enemy aesthetics and the red smoke they make when you destroy them look really unique for this sort of game, but without sound effects the game feels really empty.
LDJam user 376320
03. Oct 2023 · 02:35 UTC
Good one! Not sure if the game was supposed to have audio, but (except for the menu) it wasn't working for me.
Also, using all weapons at once is crazy hahaha
Winter2277
03. Oct 2023 · 02:42 UTC
Incredible graphics and UI. Your team has outstanding abilities.
Pinky Toast
03. Oct 2023 · 03:47 UTC
I survived 3:09:69 :)
One thing that took me by surprise was the download size, almost 700mb O.o is it just because unreal? It also made me install some C++ redistributables hahhaa
DrLizard
03. Oct 2023 · 07:33 UTC
Hats off to the visuals and the scope of the in-game menu, something a full game would be ashamed of. It was spoiled a little by the discovery that most of the control settings are generic and have no effect in the game, and I probably couldn't set up all the weapons for K&M.
The game itself is straightforward, simple. Somewhat frustrating, as I have used mouse, is the poorly visible cursor and the fact that its distance from the ship affects rotation speed, making it more visible or limiting how far it can be moved would have helped the gameplay in my opinion.

Opening options during the game doesn't pause it
Don Fouts
03. Oct 2023 · 13:24 UTC
The graphics in this are amazing and the UI is very professionally done. Nice take on the theme and overall a great entry, nice work!!
Teashna
03. Oct 2023 · 21:07 UTC
Great game, I'm a bit disappointed that the game was not optimized for MnK but I plugged in my controller and everything was smooth, great UI and take on the theme!
g33zer
04. Oct 2023 · 01:09 UTC
This was a very fun game to play. I got to 5:54:44 on my second play. The menu system seemed quite advanced. Was that a standard plugin for UE? Did it come from another game? It seemed like it had many features for a 3-day effort.

I liked the special effects and the fact that I had unlimited shots. The proximity bomb and shotgun were great fun.

Well done!

I did find one bug. The timer on my first play had 3:38:78. I'm not sure how that happened. But it's a minor thing.
don.shinski
04. Oct 2023 · 02:51 UTC
nice job, The latest build did not work for me but reverting to the first build fixed the controller issues. Basically I could not turn the ship more than 2-3 directions with the updated build. I like the take on the theme with the platform getting smaller and smaller :thumbsup: :beers:
LDJam user 378294
04. Oct 2023 · 03:05 UTC
There are many settings in the game, and it's hard to imagine GameJam being able to create them. The artistic effects and gameplay are both very interesting. Unfortunately, I didn't understand how to rotate my spaceship, so I had to shoot in front.
LDJam user 320773
04. Oct 2023 · 07:52 UTC
very solid little proof of concept, had a bit of fun but didn't really need to play the extra runs.
Appreciate the clean assets and deep settings menu but suspect some more gameplay, like an upgrade shop for different guns to experiment with would further things along great.

The Camera is a bit too close up resulting in the starting island almost immediately doomed a good 3rd of is as you simply cannot see the threats approaching from all sides.
🎤 irwatts
04. Oct 2023 · 16:27 UTC
@jozgames Thank you!

@smoe @willianfhs Thanks! Unfortunately we ran out of time and couldn't get to audio for this one. Next jam!

@winter2277 Thank you!

@pinky-toast Nice job! Since we started with Lyra Starter Game, file size started pretty large and we didn't get a chance to reduce it.

@drlizard Thank you for the detailed feedback! We started with Epic's Lyra Starter Game template, so we inherited a pretty robust settings UI. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to flesh out the control options to the level we wanted.

@don-fouts Thank you!

@teashna Thank you for playing! We just added a new version 1.2 that gets mouse support working better.

@g33zer I think that's the high score so far! The menu system is something we inherited from the Lyra Starter Game template from Epic. That would indeed be quite the effort to accomplish over a weekend!

@don-shinski Thank you! We just added a new latest, 1.2, that fixes the turning issue you experienced.

@chengnan17 Thanks for playing! We couldn't get mouse support implemented fully in time for the jam edition, but our post-jam version has it working!

@steamhat Thank you for the feedback! Camera distance tuning is something we'll look at for future updates to the game. We wanted visibility to be a bit limited but it might be too much.
cdunham
05. Oct 2023 · 03:28 UTC
I tried to play it but my controller never worked no matter what I did and keyboard doesn't let you rotate the ship around. Please let me know if either of those gets fixed so I can try it out!
BinayaS
05. Oct 2023 · 22:10 UTC
Everything artistic wise looks and plays great. I think even just crappy free sounds would have made it a lot more fun due to the audio feed back we get from things happening on screen. Also I'm not sure if you intended on letting the player fire everything at once. Looks great for a jam game!
ffffchai
09. Oct 2023 · 04:33 UTC
Very subtle design , fits the theme very well. The art style is simple but has a great atmosphere. Nice work!
R2D48
09. Oct 2023 · 04:44 UTC
Tips you can use sfxr and beepbox to make audio part in a hurry
caeonosphere
13. Oct 2023 · 19:49 UTC
![ss.png](///raw/8d0/41/z/603e5.png)

This was as good as I could do. The enemies were spawning faster than my rate of fire at that point, so not sure anyone could do much better. There was some strange bunching up on the left side that I maybe could have taken better advantage of?
3mpty
15. Oct 2023 · 03:00 UTC
![exploit.png](///raw/4a1/a/z/60496.png) found a minor exploit.

That asside interesting attempt at a twin stick shooter, some unusual but fresh visual style to this one, weird choice to have enemies be clouds but it kinda works and it's neat.

Lack of mouse aim was a bit of a pain, had to go dig up my controller to play, the control scheme is kinda wonky and optimal play is to hold the shoulder buttons and triggers down permanently which is pretty uncomfortable to say the least.

The overall concept is interesting, losing floor tiles as enemies approach is a cool idea, but the enemies are so easy it never really came into fruition for me, I just slaughtered wave after wave, and since they don't target me in any way there's not much need for moving around. Eventually I quit because I was bored not because I lost :(

Some good ideas both design and visual wise, but really needs more polish and iteration to turn it into a proper game, very half baked sadly.

P.S wheres the JUICE!? sound and screenshake and hit feedback! Juice is like oxygen to a twinstick shooter!

Great job smashing out a game in a weekend and submitting! Congrats!