Pest Control by jnur
Summon crows and rats to help you defeat the demonic presence in a mysterious dungeon!
CONTROLS:
WASD - Movement
Space - Jump
Mouse - "Aim", press to designate summoning spot & release to launch the selected creature towards cursor
Q - Change between crows & rats as the summoned creature
R - Restart the game after death
Remember that you can maximize the game window - no need to play in the tiny embedded view unless you want to!
Known issues:
- Game cursor/aiming target is jittery and the OS cursor sometimes appears. Doesn't seem to be an issue in full screen.
- Collision detection can be a bit wonky, especially when trying to run towards a wall (or when enemies run towards cliffs)
Credits:
Did everything alone during the weekend, my second Ludum Dare
| Link | https://github.com/JereNurminen/LD55 |
| HTML5 (itch.io) | https://jnur.itch.io/pest-control |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/pest-control |
Ratings
| Overall | 734th | 3.44⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 389th | 3.66⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 518th | 3.44⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 392th | 3.92⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 559th | 3.76⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 722th | 2.76⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 848th | 2.565⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 876th | 3.26⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 14🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
I'm conflicted on the "shooting" mechanic. I like it in principle, but because it basically means you get very long range attacks, and the only way to nerf the player is to make them not able to see the enemies. Which in turn means the player is incentivised to shoot off-screen then move in, which I'm not sure is what you intended, and also means the player doesn't get to see what they are dealing with.
Maybe requiring line-of-sight to the cast point or something similar could nerf it a bit, but communicating that to the player would be annoying.
Totally agree with you, the end result ended up being pretty much a basic side scrolling shooter, you just get to decide where you shoot from basically. It's not super apparent, but the summons actually disappear after a while, both to make long range spamming less viable and to make it a bit harder to accidentally kill yourself with rats running around.
I did consider requiring line of sight, perhaps combined with a max distance, but decided against it. Exactly for the reason you mentioned, couldn't think of ways to efficiently and understandably communicate it to the player so I decided to leave it. My "vision" of a more complete version would definitely have that, as not having it would pre-empt a lot of threats and make cheesing encounters even easier. And there's some puzzle potential in limiting summons a tad.
@quadape Oh right, the flying ones always need one hit and the horned enemies need two. Except in the boss fight, there they also need only one - I thought that the fight would be way too chaotic and hard if you had to hit them twice there as well. Felt really intuitive to me, didn't realize it might be confusing - but I guess that's just me being blind to my own ideas :sweat_smile: Thanks for the feedback!
this one goes pretty well with the BGM
https://youtu.be/ckCrkuh9_GQ?t=3283

The shooting mechanic could be better explored by having some environmental puzzles that takes advantage of your aiming position though.
Nice job!
Heya! I immediately shot myself before leaving the first platform. xD
Nice game. I killed the boss by just.. not dropping in the pit. not sure if that was intended or not.
I didn't really see the point in using anything except the bird, the rats just seemed like less good birds. Also the camera (using cinemachine?) felt a bit off to me, maybe the lookahead a bit too aggressive? But then when I actually wanted lookahead (when falling downwards) I didn't have it. That's my only real gripe, otherwise - great job! :tada:
Well done!
https://youtu.be/NJKVSQgn7-E?si=pIClVOYC3hTwkT0Y
Love the idea, love the sounds, It's a bit annoying to so often jump/fall into the unknown.
I like your game and I think that maybe you should embrace the wall collision glitch into a more controllable mechanic if you make sure the player knows what to do. The game is hard without it but it also can add to the fun. A solid entry doing it alone!
I'm surprised by the well crafted game you have here. I love the little details you put into it, such as the animations, the game over screen, the fact that you can aim yourself and do an autokill. It's really fun!
I don't know if someone said that already but if you click and release the attack button without moving the mouse, there are no shots, it just doesn't work, you have to move your mouse in order to release the host, was confusing at first but afterwards. You can have a decent action game with the controls and with the mouse combined, its a lot of fun to spam shot :D
Well done on your entry !