Doctor Dropper by internetpaulicy

[raw]
made by internetpaulicy for LD32 (COMPO)
Surprise! Pianos are my Unconventional Weapon.

You are a scientist and you cause pianos to drop when you click around. Can you make it to the top of the level and defeat comprehensible evils? Will you play long enough to find all of the hidden secrets?

Will you break the rocks and climb the ladders? Will you choose to drop pianos?


WASD to move, Mouse to aim and left mouse click to start dropping.

UPDATE:

The first rock pile has been nerfed to take 5 hits(down from 10) and all fire dragons now go slightly slower so its easier to run away.

Good luck out there!

Ratings

Coolness 86% 2
Overall 3.80 101
Audio 3.05 365
Fun 3.73 114
Graphics 4.41 24
Humor 4.08 26
Innovation 3.73 160
Mood 3.36 226
Theme 4.41 9

Feedback

sydan
20. Apr 2015 路 02:23 UTC
Hilariously stupid and funny at first. Does slow down a bit as the enemy (dragons?) are quite hard to kill without spamming millions of pianos!! Which is awesome, however the audio layers on top of itself a lot which becomes jarring. Needs more playing to see how far I can get though, definitely has that 'see how far you can get' feel.
馃帳 internetpaulicy
20. Apr 2015 路 02:28 UTC
Thanks! I sampled the piano from Weezers "The sweater song".
SuperPokeunicorn
20. Apr 2015 路 02:32 UTC
This is fantastic. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is the best falling piano weapon I've ever used in a game.
pythong
20. Apr 2015 路 05:14 UTC
hahaha great use of the theme. having a piano was VERY unexpected.
PachowStudios
20. Apr 2015 路 05:19 UTC
I can't move past the ladder! I just get stuck at the top.

Still giving a good rating though because it looks awesome. I love the game over text.
herniewise
20. Apr 2015 路 05:21 UTC
Hahaha, I liked this one a lot!
ErikU
20. Apr 2015 路 05:24 UTC
Really nice art style you've got there. At first I thought the strategy was to spam pianos, but then I realized they were destroying each other, so a nice, metered piano pace was in order. Well done.
Yaroslav Kravtsov
20. Apr 2015 路 05:25 UTC
Nice graphic! Very decent for LD time limits.
Garris
20. Apr 2015 路 21:14 UTC
Loved this game! Use of the theme with pianos as the weapon was really clever, and the character design was really nice! This was a fun game!
Sigrath
20. Apr 2015 路 21:15 UTC
Haha, couldn't stop spamming pianos, hilarious concept!

Reminds me a lot of the old cartoons, only now I'm the one dropping pianos. A dream I never knew I had, come true.
PyroSneak
20. Apr 2015 路 21:16 UTC
I had a lot of fun, graphics were nice, audio was nice, gameplay was fun. good job!
MaesK
20. Apr 2015 路 21:23 UTC
Awesome game, I lost it when I saw the game over letters falling as well :D I would have liked to continue, but I did not know how to past the second ladder :( Those rocks resist a lot.

Great graphics and piano falling mechanics. Keep it up!
馃帳 internetpaulicy
20. Apr 2015 路 21:32 UTC
The rocks take 10 hits. There are some other enemies to face that are cool. Thanks for playing :)
ChrisGaudino
20. Apr 2015 路 23:25 UTC
Hilarious, lovely art and good sound.
highlyinteractive
21. Apr 2015 路 00:26 UTC
Really fun!
Red_Fan games
21. Apr 2015 路 00:26 UTC
linux build doesnt work
馃帳 internetpaulicy
21. Apr 2015 路 00:28 UTC
Thanks Red_Fan games, I will take a look at that.
cowboycolor
21. Apr 2015 路 01:59 UTC
Oh my yes. Love the walk animation, the game over dropping, the voxels, the PIANOS
The movement noise is a little abrasive, but other than that wow I loved it <333
bossmojoman
21. Apr 2015 路 02:01 UTC
I love the doctor! Great job man! the dragons are a little hard to kill though
mandolin
21. Apr 2015 路 02:03 UTC
Very cool use of voxels. Would love for you to expand upon it
fixedgerald
21. Apr 2015 路 02:04 UTC
Great Idea and very innovative. I love the way the pianos fall and smash into the ground. However the first enemies take way too many hits to die, especially considering they are being crushed with pianos. The sound really grinds on my ears quickly too. The walking sound is too squeaky and the piano falling sound, while very humorous, gets old quick.
馃帳 internetpaulicy
21. Apr 2015 路 02:12 UTC
But I really like the grating discordantness of the piano sounds. I guess I can tone it down.
DKoding
21. Apr 2015 路 15:54 UTC
Like the physics and the graphical style
Matsuki
21. Apr 2015 路 16:03 UTC
Although the enemies are a bit tough to kill, the game was a lot of fun, good job!
BlindSkyStudios
21. Apr 2015 路 17:02 UTC
Fun! proper mayhem :)
BabaJaga
21. Apr 2015 路 17:13 UTC
Looks awesome, please nerf the rocks ;-)
馃帳 internetpaulicy
21. Apr 2015 路 17:35 UTC
I think I will just remove the rocks #DustinBrowderTearTheseRocksDown
leo_p_mahon
21. Apr 2015 路 17:48 UTC
This was really fun :) I love the way the pianos fall apart and I really like your art style. It takes a bit to get used to a good piano dropping rate but I like that design feature because it means spamming pianos doesn't really work.
馃帳 internetpaulicy
21. Apr 2015 路 20:40 UTC
Thanks leo_p_mahon. Its such a wierd thing. I thought about adding a cool down to prevent this issue but I wanted to be as responsive as possible. I didn't want to get into unity layers so I just did the easiest thing which was to let players sort it out.
iSamurai
22. Apr 2015 路 02:07 UTC
Nice game! The dropping mechanics is great, especially it works with the audio. Dropping time brings the the prediction of the enemy's movement which adds to the strategy. Nice!
rjhelms
22. Apr 2015 路 02:36 UTC
Really like the concept, and the pianos falling apart is hilarious.

Aiming them was a little tricky, but I guess that makes sense - pianos aren't known as precision weapons.
yuigoto
23. Apr 2015 路 11:25 UTC
I laughed so hard playing this...this is fun! :D

The voxel graphics, the pianos breaking, the sounds, that game over screen...they fit too well, it's so good and adorable! :)
cgmorton
23. Apr 2015 路 15:58 UTC
I wish the drop indicator was more accurate. The most progression I made (up some 5 ladders) came to an end when I tried to kill the dragon at the top and all the pianos fell short and hit me instead.
sP0CkEr2
24. Apr 2015 路 05:25 UTC
this was a fabulous game - great idea for the theme - awesome!
dylanwolf
25. Apr 2015 路 13:21 UTC
Good use of the theme and great graphics. The exploration/strategy required provides a challenge--I think my only problem was it felt tough to get pianos to connect with enemies.
rburema
26. Apr 2015 路 11:00 UTC
thoughts:
- Nice graphics! As an aside: does Unity have this shader pre-installed, or did you cook up something yourself? (Asking for .. errr, a friend...)
- Dropping piano's is far more satisfying than it has any right to be... I blame the awesome sound effect. *BLOING*
- I understand that it wouldn't have been all that challenging if the protagonist was faster, but it now feels as if the good Dr. might benefit from a daily fitness regime :-p
- Nitpick: It seems there is no way to exit the game (Win-build) from within the game itself.
GAFBlizzard
27. Apr 2015 路 00:41 UTC
I want to play this, but right now the web version is giving a download error. :( I'll check back later and try to play and rate if the dropbox content comes back up.
馃帳 internetpaulicy
27. Apr 2015 路 02:03 UTC
It looks like I might have exceeded my dropbox account limits :S
馃帳 internetpaulicy
27. Apr 2015 路 02:15 UTC
I think this is a daily limit. I'll check this in the am.
馃帳 internetpaulicy
27. Apr 2015 路 03:34 UTC
Ok that was silly its now fixed
GAFBlizzard
27. Apr 2015 路 16:24 UTC
I played it once the dropbox thing was fixed.

It's a hilarious and clever idea, and the graphics are really cute. Unfortunately it has some major problems that kind of ruin the experience:

1. The walking speed is super slow.

2. The walking sound effect is super annoying, and cannot be muted.

3. One of the greatest gaming evils of all, infinitely respawning enemies. :( I even had a dragon respawn almost instantly, which is very frustrating when it takes even 5 piano hits to kill a dragon, and presumably several misses along the way, and the player only has 4 health.

4. It may be possible to randomly get damaged while sitting on a ladder if there's debris nearby. Possibly also by falling debris.

5. The game revolves around climbing up, but there is no way to zoom or change the camera position to see what's above you.

6. The previous two issues combine to be bad because dragons above you will block a ladder, so you're almost forced to rain debris on yourself due to the piano falling apart after it lands, and you can't see much further up to aim higher.

7. Pianos spammed gets really noisy. This is a tough gaming problem in general though, so it's not reasonable to expect this solved in 48 hours. :P Some things you could consider would be limiting the max volume, the max number of sound effects, scaling the volume up to some max as more get dropped, etc.


Even if nothing else changed, if movement speed were doubled (without the squeaks), and enemies didn't respawn, I think this could be a hilarious and fun game.
馃帳 internetpaulicy
30. Apr 2015 路 14:27 UTC
Thanks GAFBlizzard!

My goal was to make a complete level and play with ideas to keep people in a fight so that they couldn't just walk through the level.

1) I wanted the walking speed to be slow so you had to use the pianos to slow down your enemies by using them as obstacles. I had planned for a power up to give you a temp speed boost that enemies could drop etc but ran out of time.

2) It is annoying. I would add a toggle but the point is that its sort of ridiculous and I didn't expect people to play longer than 5 10 minutes. There are a lot of other games so I tend to not make something that people could play much longer than that. I just like fronting a silly concept thats playable

3)They actually are finite respawns designed to put pressure on you while you break the rocks. I think each spawner spawns 3 total.

4)Pianos can hurt you. I left that in and yeah its hard to not get hit by your own pianos sometimes.

5)I took some time to make a simple camera zoom while you are on ladders. But yeah I could give the character a peek kind of like you see in some mario games like super mario 3d on the 3ds.

6)Yeah I knew about that. Its a super silly game. I would of course change all of this if I planned to take it beyond the compo.

7)I created and added the sound 30 minutes before the end of the compo. I didn't have time to tweak these things. I was just happy that I got the sound in at all :) Yeh its pretty annoying.

Thanks for the care and attention you gave to my cart. I'll be by to play yours soon, prolly this weekend :D
GAFBlizzard
02. May 2015 路 06:24 UTC
Thanks for the kind responses to my comments! I know how last-minute sound goes -- I was quite unhappy with my entry and didn't have any sound and music at all, so it certainly wasn't as good as yours! I just wanted to provide detailed feedback. Good luck if you continue your game more!
ButtonMasherBros
05. May 2015 路 15:54 UTC
Pssst! You are featured in todays Ludum Dare to Believe! Check it out! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJctTJ2Ext4
MrShoestore
06. May 2015 路 21:17 UTC
ok, so i like the look, and I think its a funny idea, but the audio is harsh. the volume on the pacman walk sfx is too high, and with only one audio clip when the pianos crash, it quickly becomes annoying to keep dropping them. I do like the style, and the effect of the piano destroying is great, but another pass on the audio would be wonders. And I do find that it takes quite a bit of time to kill an enemy.
馃帳 internetpaulicy
08. May 2015 路 13:42 UTC
Whoa! thanks ButtonMasherBros! Thanks for playing my game.
lanza
08. May 2015 路 18:31 UTC
heh, both of us had the same idea for an unconventional weapon. It's fun to see how the same idea has been carried out in different ways. Anyways, very nice game and graphics. Good job!
crazya02
11. May 2015 路 13:03 UTC
Love how silly this game is! The game over screen was especially funny.
TeamCalcium
11. May 2015 路 14:58 UTC
Really fun game. I liked the unconventional weapon and the visuals. What turned me off a little bit was the slow pace and the pretty annoying and loud walking sound.
elliottd
11. May 2015 路 18:15 UTC
I felt the only thing this was lacking was a consistency in the targeting. it was easy to drop a piano on yourself when you were climbing up a ladder. I think the ray should recognize that it was over an enemy but still penetrate to the floor behind it