Dust Bunny Bounty Hunter by jshaffer94247

[raw]
made by jshaffer94247 for LD32 (COMPO)
How can you clean up dust bunnies if you can’t see them?

You’ll need an unconventional weapon to go after these sneaky pests – part paintball gun, part dust buster. It’s open season under the furniture.

I only managed 6 levels in the 48 hours so you should be able to complete it in under 10 minutes. The mobile controls (pink, blue) are a little too close together for small screens (bug #1) so consider larger phones, tablets, or desktop (WASD + mouse). Leave comments!

Tools: Construct2, SnagIt, Paint, Audacity, BoscaCeoil (sounds)
Construct2 capx file is available. Steal code; don't steal art and ideas.

Improvements over my last LD:
* game state (level) can be saved
* option to reload from saved state OR start a new game
* more levels than last time (a whopping 7) and they advance at a better pace
* better art (yes, reviewer, you are correct to shudder. I said "better" not "good." :) )
* ...but there was so much more I wanted to complete!
(Yes, reviewer, you really can't lose. I had big plans for how you would need to be more careful not to vacuum up a marble, for instance, or to "miss" and re-paint the lamp, or to find a dust bunny so big you needed to upgrade or RUN.)

Well, there's next time.

Ratings

Coolness 40% 1667
Overall 2.67 958
Audio 2.57 601
Fun 2.61 883
Graphics 2.13 1025
Humor 3.29 264
Innovation 2.65 852
Mood 3.00 484
Theme 3.17 702

Feedback

crazya02
20. Apr 2015 · 04:40 UTC
The gameplay wasn't interesting enough to be engaging, plus the music was annoying.
jacketsj
20. Apr 2015 · 04:44 UTC
"Better art". It pains me to imagine this is "better". Honestly, the enemies were more creative than the weapon. I liked the movement though, even though I'm not a fan of eight directional shooting. Good sound effects too.
winmac32
20. Apr 2015 · 05:27 UTC
I honestly won by spamming the mouse button and arrow keys. Seems like there's no way to lose.
Matthew Rayfield
20. Apr 2015 · 05:28 UTC
Pretty good! I enjoyed it for a bit!

I like the little comic scene things in between levels. Adds story that is lacking in a lot of LD games.

I wish the controls for keyboard would shoot with a button rather than mouse. That was a little weird.

Cool little game!
hissssssssss
20. Apr 2015 · 10:23 UTC
I liked the idea of disappearing and reappearing enemies.
zatyka
20. Apr 2015 · 18:06 UTC
Aiming with the keyboard and shooting with the mouse is very unusual. I'd suggest either using a keyboard key for shooting, or using the mouse to set the shooting angle. Regardless, once I got the hang of it, I had no problem beating the levels. It was short, definitely missing polish, but enjoyable.
colludium
21. Apr 2015 · 21:46 UTC
I found having the shooting direction limited to up/down/left/right and limited to the player's last travel direction quite hard to get used to. I didn't hear any music (1st comment...?).
ploogle
22. Apr 2015 · 06:50 UTC
I like the idea of a constantly-evolving weapon. I agree with the suggestion of aiming with the mouse, that would have improved the controls a little. It was still very workable and I was able to beat it. Good job. :)
jacketsj
22. Apr 2015 · 19:05 UTC
recomment: Someone told me my comment seemed mean. Sorry if it seemed that way. I guess I focused too much on the negative points. Honestly, the movement in this game was top notch (Good use of velocity and friction), and even though the game used eight direction shooting, which (as I said previously) I am not a fan of, it did it perfectly.
My apologies if this was taken the wrong way.
Kyatric
22. Apr 2015 · 23:16 UTC
The art could use some work, but every one is not a graphic artist. To improve on that I strongly recommend you to practice out of jams to improve on that peculiar point. I know I did and I feel more confident about my "game art" now.

On the mechanic side of things, I really dislike WASD controls. You may not know it but not everybody is using a QWERTY keyboard and having only the WASD scheme is just painful to use on and AZERTY keyboard.

That makes it even more painful in this game where precision is somewhat important.

I also feel there were too much informations/clutter on screen.
Either go for touch controls or for keyboard/mouse control but a "bastardize" version of both is possibly too much and may be confusing.

On the good side, there was a lot of humor in the transition vignettes and an evolving story.
Even your message to "apologize" you did not have more levels was funny which makes it one of your strength and something you'd likely should rely more on in future games.

Congratulations on making this entry in 48 hours and keep making games even outside of game jams for further practice !
BearishMushroom
25. Apr 2015 · 14:05 UTC
I like the concept, and the comic strips were fun.
I just wish the on-screen controls didn't eat so much screen space when on desktop.
🎤 jshaffer94247
10. May 2015 · 18:04 UTC
Thank you all for your comments! It is so easy to get lost in detail during the dev that you lose the big picture -- like having bad controls from the get-go, or focusing on early "training" levels and never getting a hard timed/limited level that is actually a challenge to beat. As for AZERTY, that didn't even occur to me. Big lesson; thank you.
🎤 jshaffer94247
10. May 2015 · 19:27 UTC
FYI you can turn off the on-screen controls when you are using desktop -- go to the "Controls" page.
sorlok
11. May 2015 · 22:46 UTC
Very cool idea! Loved the mechanic; wish there were more levels. Decent story-telling; just right for a fast-paced game.