Maniac PengMaku!! by spotco

[raw]
made by spotco for LD29 (COMPO)
Maniac PengMaku!

Made in 48 hours for the Ludum Dare 29 Compo by SPOTCO

Update: Added mouse controls due to popular demand!

http://www.spotcos.com
http://www.twitter.com/spotco

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall 3.63 176
Audio 3.16 304
Fun 3.83 64
Graphics 3.59 302
Humor 3.25 165
Innovation 3.04 577
Mood 3.28 315
Theme 3.40 432

Feedback

trueyomic
28. Apr 2014 路 03:56 UTC
Pretty fun game. The only beef I have with it is that it is too hard to control. I got far into the child penguin stage before I died and gave up. It would have been 10x better with WASD + mouse controls.
馃帳 spotco
28. Apr 2014 路 05:15 UTC
Thanks! I'll probably add that if I work on it some more (kinda want to add a "challenge" mode, and I'll put it up on FGL).
Reinkout
28. Apr 2014 路 07:51 UTC
Great graphics! The controls are a bit tough. Other than that, i liked it :)
Spierek
28. Apr 2014 路 07:52 UTC
Neat, though steering and firing at the same time is hard. One thing that bugged me is that drop rate for 1UPs is too high - during a single round I could easily get like 5 lives before dying.
DustyStylus
28. Apr 2014 路 07:54 UTC
Agreed with trueyomic, a beautiful game though! Alas, my reaction times don't get any faster as I get older. An 'old farts' mode would be welcome. :D
Mihael Medan
28. Apr 2014 路 07:57 UTC
It's really fun, I like it!
halfmage
28. Apr 2014 路 07:57 UTC
Well done! I really enjoyed it to play this game
SkyWolf
28. Apr 2014 路 08:05 UTC
Penguins that shoot whatever that is, you sir, win the internet :P
monaarc
28. Apr 2014 路 10:51 UTC
I'm a JellyFish Killer !!! Cool game, the controls are juste a bit hard
Nnoel
29. Apr 2014 路 00:11 UTC
Really fun game. Like others have said, the movement is difficult to master. Needs a focus button.
Pinktreeleaf
29. Apr 2014 路 06:19 UTC
Loving this game. can't say it's too complex, but the turning feels right, the graphics have a minor realism to it; i guess its the shading. The audio is fitting.
馃帳 spotco
29. Apr 2014 路 10:25 UTC
Thanks! The audio turned out surprisingly well for being 100% autotracker.py (which I discovered 2 hours before the deadline...)
Jonochrome
29. Apr 2014 路 10:52 UTC
Free-range bullet hell starring a penguin. I don't even. I like how the gameplay feels even though I don't have the skills to play this game well.
popogames
29. Apr 2014 路 11:07 UTC
Nice game. Took some time to master the controls, but the game play is really nice. The music doesn't fit the theme though.
tomvert
29. Apr 2014 路 11:22 UTC
Nice simple game, I loved giving all the fish.
Blokatt
29. Apr 2014 路 13:28 UTC
I loved everything about this one.
Well done!
Pinktreeleaf
29. Apr 2014 路 14:53 UTC
Your profile is Gogo from Final Fantasy 6. Awesome!
bvanschooten
29. Apr 2014 路 17:51 UTC
One of the best games I've played yet! I would have liked to see more colour in the enemies, and pressing 'z' 120 times when giving the fish seems a little pointless. But other than that, great fun!
stvr
29. Apr 2014 路 18:27 UTC
Aww! Penguins are rad. Very simple, but I did like that there was a low punishment for failure, with a "game over" only resulting in a level restart and no serious penalty before that.
NoorStudios
29. Apr 2014 路 20:20 UTC
I have a soft spot for penguin games =) This was a lot of fun, good job!
Vandash
29. Apr 2014 路 22:31 UTC
Nice game. If you lose all your fish when you die, then you've got a nice risk/reward mechanic, what with being able to go up at any time. Good job!
namuol
29. Apr 2014 路 23:47 UTC
Played to completion! Being a penguin is hard. Great job!
savethejets1
30. Apr 2014 路 04:00 UTC
Fun Simple game!
01010111
30. Apr 2014 路 05:07 UTC
penguin bullet hell? this is awesome :D love the way you can return to the title screen.
Daniel X. Moore
30. Apr 2014 路 06:38 UTC
Crazy and fast paced! I got a little bored of just spinnig in circles and shooting though.
jrap
30. Apr 2014 路 06:39 UTC
ITS'S AN ANTARCTIC SHMUP
Solifuge
30. Apr 2014 路 07:37 UTC
Hi, this is Vector from the Victory Garden team! (posting under Solifuge's account)

Man, I love a cute danmaku game. The idea is great, it's adorable, I like the pace. Touhou controls are fine, though the penguin rotates in a way that's difficult to maneuver. Music and SFX are a bit unbalanced, too, while the backing track didn't quite seem to suit your mood.

Thing is, though, I can't really understand why I was collecting fish--I got to 46/25 and nothing in particular happened (I'm looking at the comments below--it seems that you're supposed to feed the penguin on the surface, but there's no indicator that you'd be able to do that).

Pre-post edit:

Okay, I went back and played a bit longer, getting to the baby penguin level, which I probably played about 5 times. Most of the jellyfish are clustered on the edge of the screen, hence most of the fish and powerups they spit out, and a hell of a lot of bullets. However, you have an ocean current there. Getting blown into danmaku over and over again was really frustrating, so I'd say the number one thing is, for this adorable game--do something else about the edges, perhaps? Otherwise, I love the theme, the general setup, the concept. I got pretty involved in playing! So, thank you for the experience.
x1212
30. Apr 2014 路 08:13 UTC
Yay, I always wanted to play a game with whale-hunting pingus :D
Great audio and storytelling (I consider this growing the child thing a story).
xdegtyarev
30. Apr 2014 路 09:24 UTC
A Great take on bullethell shooters! Controlls are not as good as they should be for a game of this type, but overall the game is pretty fun.
Jeffalisk
30. Apr 2014 路 09:35 UTC
Man that second level was tough, but helping the penguin to build his family was the perfect incentive to keep going right to the end. There was no way I was going to let the baby penguin down!

Really enjoyed that. Great job. If you could port this to the Vita and add twin stick controls, I would 100% buy it. :)
madflame991
30. Apr 2014 路 09:42 UTC
+ fun and simple
+ challenging levels, with a nice story (life's tough if you're a penguin mom)
- gathering large amounts of fish gets tedious after a while
rylgh
30. Apr 2014 路 09:47 UTC
realllyyyy liked this. good energy system, diagonal spray shots took skill, liked the little beating heart hitbox.
didn't understand why bullet-time was in there though (seemed unlimited?) so i just didn't use it.
also think it'd be good if your dash could hurt enemies (either that or you die touching them, felt weird just dashing into them and nothing happening)
dsoft20
30. Apr 2014 路 09:51 UTC
Nice entry :D , great graphics.
zkenshin
01. May 2014 路 02:16 UTC
Cute game, and neat idea. :)
Jupiter_Hadley
01. May 2014 路 18:14 UTC
Really cute, fun game! I included your game in part 6 of my Ludum Dare compilation video series! http://youtu.be/K5ATRciKj24
ThingoStudios
02. May 2014 路 02:19 UTC
I found this one hilarious. The giant fish that fired out huge blasts of energy like a Megaman enemy made me laugh much, much harder than I should have. Good music. Very enjoyable game play, if not a bit repetitive.
Thorig
02. May 2014 路 10:37 UTC
Nice game, the controls are fine.
PaperBlurt
03. May 2014 路 09:17 UTC
Hey I mean penguins are always penguins.

Like the animations...
dector
03. May 2014 路 14:21 UTC
Cool graphics. And challenging game.
ehtd
03. May 2014 路 17:18 UTC
I really like bullet hell games, just my type of game to play after work. Good job!
DonovanWu
03. May 2014 路 18:39 UTC
After I know the dash trick the game feels easier. While I used to think the game is hard, now I find the level difficulty balance is very well done and challenges players in a good way!
Maschinen-Mensch
03. May 2014 路 20:04 UTC
Holy cow this is the penguin shmup I never knew I wanted! Really nice idea with guiding the player along trough the different stages.
petey123567
04. May 2014 路 06:35 UTC
Solid entry! Protip: Z and Y are switched on European keyboards - best to sample both.
Oddly Shaped Pixels
04. May 2014 路 10:49 UTC
Super polished controls and gameplay. The persistence and seeing your family grow is a super idea! Great job!
hyouko
04. May 2014 路 16:04 UTC
Fun, and it has plot progression (of a sort)! The hitbox feels a bit big for a typical danmaku game, which makes it pretty hard to dodge some of the burst attacks.
馃帳 spotco
05. May 2014 路 00:13 UTC
You're supposed to use the "dash" button to get out of the hairiest situations (you can dash to destroy bullets). It's mentioned in the controls popup, but in retrospect should have made a in-game text popup to make sure it wasn't missable.

The game's probably pretty damn hard without it!
LemmingSurvivor
06. May 2014 路 13:57 UTC
Controls are a bit floaty - which makes sense, but makes it hard to squeeze through gaps. Felt like more of a problem with the mouse controls, actually - keyboard ended up being easier to me.

The surfacing mechanic puts a nice spin to the idea, and takes away a lot of the frustration.

Good work.
MaesK
11. May 2014 路 20:45 UTC
Great game! I couldnt stop until I finished it! (with a joypad, it was harder with a keyboard)

It is addictive, it has a good mechanic, and it has penguins! What else could it need? :P
King_Mew
12. May 2014 路 02:03 UTC
Fun game! It got a bit boring after a while. Solid gameplay and great graphics though!
udo
13. May 2014 路 18:57 UTC
That was fun! At first I walked up to the other penguin who said "click" but I was empty. Maybe it should say something else in that case... Anyway, good work!
ActionRemix
14. May 2014 路 12:37 UTC
Whew, I beat it! The penguin seemed to be magnetized to a random direction - this increased the difficulty tremendously. Cute level transition.
ohsqueezy
14. May 2014 路 16:26 UTC
Go to the surface, feed the baby, dive back into another maniacal killing spree!!
Nanolotl
17. May 2014 路 02:06 UTC
Quite a fun Danmaku game. The controls when near the edge of the screen felt really weird though.