Kids These Days by Ithildin

[raw]
made by Ithildin for LD32 (COMPO)
Made it in the nick of time!

The game puts you in the role of a teacher tired of having to cope with proudly ignorant teens and their entitled parents. The goal is to find the last level. Create your own way towards it by insulting them (words harm, remember!) or temporally boring them to paralysis by pronouncing a speech.

The concept was originally completely different, but I ran out of time to develop the story with additional gameplay features and that was a convenient patch.

I've also added localized texts for Spanish and Galician because insults in both languages can be absurdly hilarious. I didn't have the time to do the same with the intro screen, unfortunately.

As a disclaimer, the wall of text in English corresponds to a quote from The Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. I loved the book, but hey, it's dense! I would have liked to add more texts to provide variety (and lulz), but...you know. If anyone's interested, the Spanish wall of text contains fragments of a parliamentary debate between the current PM and the former leader of the opposing party, and I got the text in Galician from some online book shop page.

Insults in all languages contain classic and pop culture references.

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Controls: Gamepad/Keyboard
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Note that the gamepad doesn't work correctly on the WebGL version.

=> Left stick/WASD for movement
=> A button / J key: Insult
=> X button / K key: Speech
=> Left button/Right button: Toggle languages

I haven't added a button to mute the music, perhaps for a post-compo version.

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Known issues:
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-> The game loads a previous level before exiting on the victory condition
-> Doors not apparent: Basically, look for bright coloured rectangles below and to the sides or door-shaped doors at the top.
===============

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Updates:
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* 5m after submission -> I found a crash on the last level when you win the game. It's fixed now.
* 6/11/2016 -> Updated web links.

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall 2.87 826
Fun 2.63 873
Graphics 3.06 546
Humor 3.52 168
Innovation 2.92 670
Mood 2.85 620
Theme 3.53 389

Feedback

Tasteslikefuture
20. Apr 2015 · 19:14 UTC
A little confusing at first, but overall a neat game. The quotes are hilarious. Definitely fits the theme. Great work!
thumbgarden
20. Apr 2015 · 19:14 UTC
great graphics and music. I like the concept, I guess your supposed to defeat the bully with words. Nice game!
divegato
20. Apr 2015 · 19:14 UTC
I was trying to defeat the children at first, oops.
ViliX64
20. Apr 2015 · 19:16 UTC
Works on linux :) (Ubuntu 64bit)
plams
20. Apr 2015 · 19:27 UTC
Nice droning soundtrack, why did you opt out for audio judgment?
Phil Strahl
20. Apr 2015 · 22:13 UTC
Interesting take on the theme. I was having quite a bit of troubles because to insult the kids i really need to be really close and/or the insults don't work fast enough, so no matter what I do, I always take damage :( The cooldown for lecturing is also a bit too long, or its effect too short, in any case I hardy could use it (mostly because I was losing health so fast. I was really looking forward to read the funny texts and pop-cultural references but instead I hardly hat the opportunity to: It all went by too fast and I was struggling to stay alive anyway. The only ones I remember were "You fight like a cow!" and "Who unloaded the dishwasher". Also, the collisions were a bit clunky. But that game has potential, I am sure there are more ways of how "words can inflict damage" instead of just the gaming-equivalent of meleé combat.
Sergi Montaner
21. Apr 2015 · 09:27 UTC
Very original and humoristic!
The sentences fade to fast, cannot read them!

Gallego power! xD
Zener
22. Apr 2015 · 18:56 UTC
Very cool and originial idea! It plays well, the graphics are nice and the music fits very well. Special mention for the galician sentences XD!
michael.meadows
22. Apr 2015 · 20:51 UTC
Good game! - a liked the idea of boring or insulting your enemies. Only suggestion would be to add something to make the exits more obvious.
NMcCoy
22. Apr 2015 · 20:54 UTC
The game freezes upon restart for me. Are you setting the timescale to 0 on completion and not resetting it when restarting?
Backlund
22. Apr 2015 · 20:57 UTC
Nice game
jrserjeant
22. Apr 2015 · 20:58 UTC
I didn't really grasp how the mechanics worked. However I liked the character graphics.
Suhvan4ik
23. Apr 2015 · 08:12 UTC
Nice idea and graphics! Controls a bit sluggish tho.
BIZM
23. Apr 2015 · 17:44 UTC
Very original and funny idea! Clever take on the theme! It was hard to dish out damage without receiving damage in the process due to the small radius of effect of your words. Maybe the teacher is very quiet? ;)
MonoS
24. Apr 2015 · 18:19 UTC
The game may be fun if the "combat system" would be a bit better and simpler to use and understand.

Music and art are average, but cool, maybe a "south park"-style would have fitted the game better.
Drauthius
24. Apr 2015 · 21:34 UTC
You win by finding yourself? Like when you figure out you're a bastard being mean to children? Nice game. :)
🎤 Ithildin
24. Apr 2015 · 21:42 UTC
Awesome way to conclude...I wouldn't have thought of that myself :D:D

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I've taken notice of most of the points to improve (some of which were quite obvious, I'm afraid n_nUU).

In addition to the doors not being clearly marked, I agree about the poor feedback of the "combat" mechanics, and it's something that I'd like to fix on a post-compo version if it ever happens and I manage to roll some nice animations and tweak the text effects.
grillaface
24. Apr 2015 · 22:18 UTC
Insulting the kids was fun and the graphics were nice. The movement felt pretty good at first until getting close to the "enemies". All in all though a good creative effort. Nice job!
Pix3M
24. Apr 2015 · 22:30 UTC
Execution I think could very easily be handled to get the point across more effectively. Then again, you did admit that you didn't have time to implement everything you wanted. Eh
badlydrawnrod
25. Apr 2015 · 11:13 UTC
I feel sorry for the teachers at this school. Having said that, most teachers are younger than me, so they don't know what school was REALLY like.

Humorous entry. Enjoyed it.
elpaulo
25. Apr 2015 · 11:27 UTC
One of the gest graphics i saw in the ludum dare 32 enties. Congratulations.
ccglp
25. Apr 2015 · 12:34 UTC
One galician here. See the "Furabolos!" sentence give me a good laugh. Amazing work :)

PD: Ide rañala
Blobo
25. Apr 2015 · 13:17 UTC
great concept! i loved all the teachers insults.
abcdef65g
25. Apr 2015 · 20:55 UTC
The best simulator of being a bad teacher I had ever played! Quite challenging, very fitting for the theme, battles are fun and active, and honestly for me the only issues were the fast effect of the lecturing freeze, and the fact that there was no noticiable way to see how much time I had for the next use. That would have made my experience slightly better, but that doesn't detract from the great concept and cool execution!

Also, the game specially grows when you set your language to Gallic, guys! Your pick for the languages was spot on.
Team MAC
30. Apr 2015 · 09:51 UTC
Nice game. I would have liked to be able to read some of the insults, but they disappeared so fast. Took my a while to find where the doors were, but after that is was good. I mainly just used the insults -- didn't really figure out how to use the speeches.
JenniNexus
05. May 2015 · 01:52 UTC
Cute characters & graphics.. audio is a bit repetitive but I still played a few rounds. :-)
jojocanard
05. May 2015 · 21:08 UTC
The gameplay is not very clear and made it hard to attack without taking some damage. Finally I won by avoiding the ennemies and running to the doors.
Marcos Rodrigues
05. May 2015 · 22:15 UTC
Nice entry! Too bad I can't read fast enough, so I never know what my character is saying :D
SimianLogic
06. May 2015 · 18:36 UTC
Took me a little bit to figure out how to get out of the first room, but the rest of the game teaches a valuable lesson for trolls: NEVER ENGAGE! I had a much easier time avoiding them and running for the doors than spouting curses and literature at them.

Cute concept!