Esca - Ludum Dare 57 by bakuzen
Hey guys, this is my first solo game jam! I've always approached game dev as an artist, so I wanted to give a shot at doing the game design and programming too. So far, I've only managed to study Python (I started earlier this year!), so I'm currently confining myself to doing game projects in Pygame, for better or worse haha.
So far, I already learned so much about stuff like classes and particle systems, so I'm happy with the result no matter what-- but I hope to get some helpful feedback from you guys too ^^
(update: NEVERMIND THE FINAL SCORE IS COMPLETELY BROKEN OH GOD OH NO FU--)
SUMMARY
You're a little anglerfish bait having the time of its life at the bottom of the ocean.
You only have one objective: go get fish!
CONTROLS
Use the mouse to push yourself around. You can press escape to restart the game.
CREDITS
Game & art were done by me using Python and Pygame
You can find me at: bsky.app/profile/bakuzen.bsky.social
AUDIO TRACK
Big thanks to Cody O'Quinn for the main audio track. Check out their Youtube for more royalty-free music!
youtube.com/watch?v=rJ6594ZCtQU
NOTES
The final game is a ZIP file with an executable called 'Esca.exe'. I didn't manage to get the game working in-browser, sorry for the inconvenience!
(Alternatively, you can download a ZIP with the source files too. You'll need the latest version of Python and Pygame through 'pip install pygame')
Note on AI-usage: All creative aspects of the game are -fully- designed by hand, including art, game design, logic and balancing. ChatGPT was used for problem-solving like errors with collision, especially since I have no prior game programming experience, and the output was edited as much as possible to make it my own (and I'll aim to become self-reliant from here on out!)
| itch.io (ZIP) | https://bakuzen.itch.io/esca-ludum-dare-57-depths |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/esca-ludum-dare-57 |
Ratings
| Overall | 552th | 3.394⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 594th | 3.136⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 603th | 3.015⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 613th | 3.364⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 241th | 4.057⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 403th | 2.879⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 504th | 3.47⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 126🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
I love the gentle vibe and the art direction. I would have liked a little more control; sometimes pushing with the mouse led to unexpected force or direction (might be something with checking mouse movement over just a few frames?), and dark fish can be hard to see against a dark background.
For the final score, I can see that it flashes the real score for just a moment before resetting to zero. Maybe something is getting called early on the end screen rather than when the player hits reset?
was fun. The music was awesome too, though the hype was pretty intense, haha. Keep up the great work!
You really get thrown right into gameplay with no warning, caught me off guard at first. No gameplay bugs to be seen (only the high score one). I managed see I got 102 points before the game ended. Great job, hope you make more in the future :)
Thanks for the feedback, especially the issues with control-- lots of room for improvement there ^^
The visuals are super!
As far as gameplay, this is honestly quite fun! An unconventional way of doing fish collection, feels well tuned and I could get into the grove of sweeping through schools of fish. Very satisfying. Great work on this!
The sound effect for collecting is very nice and satisfying, sounds like bubble wrap! Music is a good choice too. I wish there was a subtle sound effect for when the fish collides with the mouse/wall, but it's not a huge deal without.
All in all, there's not too much criticism to give. It's a small simple game, but obviously the visuals are solid, and what you did build is nicely tuned. Of course as you do more design/programming, you'll be able to increase your scope for more features, variety to the gameplay, as here there's not really a reason to play more than 1-3 rounds. But it's all too easy to spread yourself thin, and instead you made something solid and nice. Good showing of your skill set as well. Great work!
Congrats on doing it all on your own!
As a software developer with 20+ years of experience, I think it's totally fair to use AI to assist in coding. One of the nicer aspect of it is the ability to phrase a question with a piece of code, and get to answer faster then looking up online or reading books, which are still useful tools regardless. I also think your game, while simple, feel really nice to play, and with my experience it's something that can't be achieved by AI alone
Very nice work