Pied Piper's Payback by Crygos
Premise
The city of Hamelin has been overrun by rats! One day, the desperate townsfolk hire a mysterious piper to rid the streets of the infestation. But when the city refuses to pay for his services, the piper seeks revenge.
In this story, you play the role of the Pied Piper, using your magic music to lure the rats toward the Weser river. But you know how the tale goes and let's just say that the rats are not the only small creatures drawn to your magical tune.
By day, you roam the streets, carrying out your duties as a rat catcher. Rats follow your tune when you are close enough but so do the children of Hamelin. Luckily, there are jesters' carriages passing through town to catch the attention of the children. Your task is to gather as many rats as possible while avoiding children, then lead the rats to the riverbank.
But when night falls and the mayor of Hamelin refuses to honor his agreement, everything changes. From that moment on, the Pied Piper is out for vengeance...
Control
You can use WASD, arrow-keys and mouse (or touch on mobile) as input.
The Tools
Engine: Godot 4.3
Art: Adobe Photoshop
Sound/Music: LMMS, Audacity
The Team
Crazy Code by @crygos & @bumble & @lehmy
Awesome Artwork by @bardicmischief
Scenic Sounds by @kingcookie95
Changelog
- nothing yet and maybe we'll manage to keep it that way :sweat_smile:
| Link | https://crygos.itch.io/pied-pipers-payback |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/pied-pipers-payback |
Ratings
| Overall | 692th | 3.395⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 564th | 3.382⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 283th | 3.618⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 552th | 3.671⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 729th | 3.342⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 515th | 3.176⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 260th | 3.554⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 681th | 3.368⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 43🗳️ | 61🗨️ |
Really high effort entry, great execution!
I feel like there's something off with the movement but I can't really put my finger on it. I think it's a bit too fast and feels kinda weightless. Maybe adding some slight acceleration would make it more lifelike.
Overall a very enjoyable entry. Also, I'm glad to see some great folklore in this jam. :grin:
Cozy little gameplay loop, and I really enjoy the aesthetic of the map, really felt like those old mapped drawings of old towns that where made,
my main point to critique is that the player, the rats and the children and guards where really small, and it was quite hard to see what I was doing - the most important elements to keep track on was in general too small.
This game has a lot of great personality, and is pretty close to being great all-round!
As others have said, a way to make the intro lore go faster would have been great, as I already read the description of the jam page.
Even so, I'd like to mention I REALLY like the idea. Aside from the current silly game, I think a full on development of a similar game, with a more ... sinister tone could do wonders.
Additionally, I really enjoyed the music and general gameplay loop.
A slightly more polished character movement would have been ideal, but it already is more than decent.
Great entry, thoroughly enjoyed it!
Anyway, I recorded myself playing to deliver maximum feedback. Great game!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZUW142HNFQ
The graphics were solid. You could tell where you could go and what was a "barrier".
The visual feedback for drowning something was integrated, but an additional sound would help to have even better feedback.
The guards in the second level are a good idea for ramping up the difficulty. But they need some changes. The guards are really small and they were pretty easy to avoid (I played on medium). You can see it also very good in @100th-Coin gameplay video, which was played on easy mode. On hard mode the guards seem to be more effective in his video.
The end screen was nicely designed with a reference on how well you've played. Great job and greetings from Stuttgart. :)
Nice graphics, and the controls are smooth.
When I could selected the difficulty, I kind of expected the music to change accordingly. :wink: The music was nice, but could use some more flute! I liked how there were more and more squeeky sounds as I gathered more rats behind me.
I like how there are musical notes surrounding the player.
Well done! :smile: :musical_note: