Howard and the Ants by henk
The ants are hiding something! You and The Company's highly experimental shrink ray technology are about to find out what.
This game has sound and music. You may need to enable autoplay to hear it.
Controls:
- WASD/Arrows => movement
- LMB => punch/break
- RMB => use item
- H => help
- M => open/close map
- number keys => select item
Hints:
- There is an objective! Keep searching. Use the map to see which areas are unexplored
- Throw pebbles to defend yourself against the ants
- Ants don't like the light
- Glow worms can be picked up. New glow worms take time to grow.
- Ants don't kill you or reset the level, they just return you to the surface.
Tool Credits:
- Music made with Ardour, the Calf plugins and an Oxygen 49
- Sounds made with sfxr
- Graphics made with GIMP
- Some assets processed using stb_image.h
- All else in nano
Tested in:
- Firefox and Chrome on Linux with intel integrated GPU
- Firefox and Chrome on Windows with NVidia
Post-Submission Updates
- Hopefully fixed texture bleed issues seen by some players
| Link | https://github.com/ldhenk/ldhenk.github.io/tree/master/ld56 |
| Link | https://ldhenk.github.io/ld56/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/howard-and-the-ants |
Ratings
| Overall | 231th | 3.242⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 227th | 3.152⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 227th | 3.031⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 165th | 3.625⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 269th | 2.879⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 132th | 3.348⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 227th | 2.565⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 225th | 3.081⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 44🗨️ |
I think it could be better not to die with 1st hit. Soundtrack is very nice.
Didn't find golden worms. Was constantly being send back with fast moving ants even in the lights. But I liked the idea a lot and sounds with music were really nice.
Regardless, I've added a little hack to the shader which might fix the problem. Would you be willing to check again and let me know if the texture bleed issues are still there (be sure to clear browser cache)?
Oh I was really hoping to find something at the far left end!
Quick feedback - I did not really like that the mouse was hidden, it was a little difficult to orient myself when I could not see any pointer.
Although if it doesn't happen on your machine, it's tough to fix.
also i loooove that holding down dig matches the beat of the music (or at least i think it does).
You'd think drawing a square grid of tiles would be simple...
Controls felt a bit raw, as mentioned a mouse cursor could help aiming ; as a suggestion I think gamefeel control can be enhanced with some lerp when releasing arrows, or requiring the player to press again jump key to be able to jump. Adding a timer on jumps (as you noticed on mine ;) may allow to control jump height and also that extra button press from player to jump again. Another dirty cheap trick could be adding some lerp on camera movements rather than fixing the player in the center of screen.
Great take on the theme and funny to try different strategies and path along my way throught the ants !
I had some friends reproduce the issue for me, and have uploaded a new version of the game which I believe fixes it. Would either of you be willing to test again and confirm?
The only thing that bothered me were the ants — it would be significantly better if they moved continuously instead of jumping around; it makes them quite unpredictable. And I would perhaps not send the player above after one hit, but maybe after two or three.
Otherwise really good entry, I spent quite a lot of time playing it in order to uncover the whole map. Well done on this engagement part, not many jam games can pull that off!
P.S kudos for making a game without the use of an engine, took a peek at the source code and was intrigued :eyes: