Tiny Car by Baturinsky
This game is an experiment with the drastic and dynamic change of the scale. In the process of the game you will be reduced to one millionth of your original size - and then grow back, on the several occasions.
In this game, "Tiny Creature" is an anomaly that makes everything around it - including you -
the smaller the closer you are to it
.
You control (with WASD/Arrows and Space for handbrake) a car that can function even in such tinified state, and your task is to collect such creatures as fast as possible.
TIP: Area around the anomalies can be easily located by the tiny object around it (like around the one that is initially marked).
WARNING: Around the anomalies, car can be hard to handle, especially, as you move TO the anomaly, as the car retains the inertion of speed that it had when it was bigger. Also, there are secondary anomalies around the main one, which harms the vision and handling.
The program itself is tiny as well - just 5kb zip file.
I have used the slightly modified xem's tiny 2d physics library - about 1kb zipped, handles radical scale change quite well. https://github.com/xem/mini2Dphysics
| Link | https://github.com/baturinsky/tiny-car |
| Link | https://tiny-car.netlify.app |
| Link | https://tiny-car.netlify.app/tiny-car.zip |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-car |
Ratings
| Overall | 148th | 3.574⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 147th | 3.426⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 16th | 4.296⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 68th | 4.019⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 207th | 3.296⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 259th | 2.271⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 231th | 3.06⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 20🗨️ |
Good job!
Thanks for playing! Yes, controls are a bit of "on the ice". I have concentrated on making it more consistent regardless of the scale, and neglected a bit to tune it in the "normal" scale.
If you had difficulties finding other anomalies - they ca be found by the distinct pattern of obstacles around them.
I did however found myself wandering around, more distinctive symbols to mark the locations would have helped.
Overall great job!
I think when you're backing up, left and right should be reversed so that your car behaves more like a real car. This was my only frustration with the controls.
(no, seriously, the car turns too quickly and when we approach a tiny creature, even if we brake as hard as possible, we have to hit a wall due to how fast we're going)
The idea is great tho, approaching anomalies and discovering more map feels good!
Adding our current size to the UX would be nice: either something like `1.0x -> 0.9x -> 0.1x...` or something like `2m -> 1m -> 50cm -> 1mm...`. That way, we easily know how far from the _normal space_ we are.
pretty surprising when you consider the scaling mechanic. It would have been nice to
have a climax to all the build-up of having stuff shake like that. Like an explosion
or something.
Also, I'm really curious, how did you implement the scaling mechanic? Is the car actually shrinking?
I really enjoyed this, would love to see it quickly polished up and put on Steam!