Crates of Hell by dmaerzendorfer

[raw]
made by dmaerzendorfer for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

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Its my first time here, and I decided to go at it solo. Might have been a mistake. I was really struggling with the theme, but in the end I got a little game called Crates of Hell. I actually still have 10h left, but I feel like it (and me) is done enough.

Sadly my WebGL build did not work out, since I used Unities VFX Graph.

Game was made in Unity 6. Everything is done by myself except for the beat. The beat is by Sosh & Mosh from BandLab.

menuScreen.png ingame.png

Controls: - left mouse button: walk - right mouse button: swing hammer

Ratings

Overall 624th 3.289⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 614th 3.105⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 485th 3.167⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Theme 721th 3.026⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 602th 3.289⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 198th 3.472⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 613th 3.278⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 36🗳️ 5🗨️

Feedback

ThisIsSpy
07. Apr 2025 · 16:13 UTC
Pretty fun, although I found it much easier to just push the crates yourself rather than trying to push them with the hammer. Also liked how the sprites moved to the beat of the song
Sayeg
07. Apr 2025 · 16:34 UTC
I liked it! The game has heart in it!!!
Ricesteam
07. Apr 2025 · 16:51 UTC
Love the vibe of this game! After some time, my clicks followed the beat and I was in a mediative state. Wild! Funny comments as well!
Zatrit
08. Apr 2025 · 12:55 UTC
I never realized kicking crates could be so much fun.....
NotExplosive
08. Apr 2025 · 15:01 UTC
The control scheme was very unique!
Paul1379
08. Apr 2025 · 19:48 UTC
kicking the crates is super juicy, especially to the rhythm of the music
Cammin
09. Apr 2025 · 05:36 UTC
Neat little game.
- Appreciate the small file size, for what a unity game can.
- I like the rhythmic feeling. I am curious how you did it without the audio potentially desyncing.
- The juice is very good and helped push myself through the gameplay loop to finish to the end of the game, which I think is the looping of the messages.
- It feels quite repetitive. The hammer is really good to use once it's use is fully understood, and saved me lots of time.
🎤 dmaerzendorfer
09. Apr 2025 · 13:19 UTC
@Cammin I used this tutorial by b3agz for the audio rhythm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIjajeyjRfE

The rhythm thingy is done with pure Unity.
By knowing the BPM of the music and the sample rate of the Unity audio source you can calculate fairly accurately whenever a beat should be.
I think WWise or fmod would give you a beat event out of the box.

Thanks for playing :hugging:
Pythorogus
09. Apr 2025 · 16:23 UTC
Fun game, a bit repetitive, good graphics and juicyyyyy
Doppler Affect
09. Apr 2025 · 16:32 UTC
Fun game! I liked how you synced the pulse of the sprites to the beat. I had more fun smacking the boxes with the hammer, even though pushing them was technically easier. Nice one!
3sSTheJammer
10. Apr 2025 · 08:24 UTC
Really loved art and music. Humor and mood are definitely 5 stars. Yet, gameplay lacks just a little depth imo.
*Also crates spawning right in green zone are rather convenient ;)
🎤 dmaerzendorfer
10. Apr 2025 · 19:11 UTC
@3ssthejammer
yeah, crates in the green zone were actually a bug. But thought it was convenient every now and then and did not fix it^^
thanks for playing :hugging:
Eugenik
14. Apr 2025 · 02:23 UTC
Very nice game! :D.
Ava Skoog
25. Apr 2025 · 21:46 UTC
Oh, my *gosh*, does this game just keep giving you that nagging voice in your head going "just a few more, to see what happens next!". I was *stuck*. This game played me like a fiddle and reached out of the fourth wall to put me in the same purgatory as the little demon.

After I got enough looping messages I was finally able to break free and conclude that there probably isn't anything more to it, and the comments seem to confirm it, so I hope so!

The gameplay itself is a surprising amount of fun despite being so repetitive. Lots of polish and good feedback. Really generous hitboxes and I did wonder whether the crates actually gravitate towards the centre as long as your angle is close enough. Felt really good to get in that final hit and get all the goodness from the visuals as well as the audio. And what a beat!

The ongoing dialogue makes it feel almost like watching a video while doing chores. Addicting in a weird way.

I did have some issue that seemed like bugs. Sometimes crates wouldn't count and I even got a negative count one time. It seemed to stem from crates spawning within the green area at the start. I think maybe you should've avoided that in general since sometimes dialogue would disappear as soon as it started because the entire quota was filled before I even did anything.

Really cool! Hope I didn't miss anything.