Triad by BlackBulletIV

[raw]
made by BlackBulletIV for LD27 (COMPO)
Triad is mix of top-down shooting, puzzle, and strategy. You control three unique soldiers, playing them each one by one for 10 seconds. Each soldier overlaps in time with the previously played soldiers. Use their abilities in combination to eliminate all hostile defence turrets.

I recommend browsing through the tutorial if you haven't played before.

The game requires support for FBOs. If you're using the .love file, you'll need Love2D 0.8, which you can get at: http://love2d.org

Controls
Move: WASD/Arrow keys
Shoot/Select Solider: LMB
Use Ability: RMB
Restart: R
Toggle Music: M
Quit: Escape

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If you leave a comment with your rating I'll do my best to play and rate your game.

Ratings

Coolness 87% 2
Overall 3.87 47
Audio 3.35 135
Fun 3.80 45
Graphics 3.15 401
Humor 2.13 622
Innovation 3.87 63
Mood 3.53 97
Theme 3.94 48

Feedback

Plu
26. Aug 2013 路 06:30 UTC
Really nice! The overlapping time turns this into a pretty cool puzzle game. Takes a little getting used to, but great fun after.
josefnpat
26. Aug 2013 路 07:27 UTC
Great job! Very innovative, with three essential characters. A puzzle game at its finest!
Mclogenog
26. Aug 2013 路 07:44 UTC
This is some clever design. Some balancing might help though, since the shield guy's role was way more valuable (at least the way I played) than the the others' roles. It's also kind of frustrating to mess up one part of a plan and have to restart; if I could infinitely retry each guy, you'd still have the puzzle game without as much demand for skill.

This could be really interesting if you kept at it, post jam.
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
26. Aug 2013 路 07:55 UTC
Thanks guys!

@Mclogenog The way I play the gunner and shield are about as useful as each other, but yeah, the demo is often more of a sideshow.

As for the single-character replays, yeah, I wanted to add that, but thought of it too late and ran out of time. I'll probably do some post-compo work, so that'll be high on the list.
LionelJitro
26. Aug 2013 路 07:55 UTC
Lots of fun.

Great concept and well executed.
Zephyr89
26. Aug 2013 路 08:21 UTC
This game is great at making you think. Also the theme is being used in a rather generic (ie. as a timer) fashion.
Zephyr89
26. Aug 2013 路 08:29 UTC
Also you might want to turn down the shield's health.
nicotuason
26. Aug 2013 路 08:59 UTC
Cool way to add puzzle elements to a tactical game! I enjoyed playing. Was a bit hard to distinguish your soldiers from the enemy turrets at first, but I got used to it.
kikito
26. Aug 2013 路 10:02 UTC
The .love file seems to be missing.
kikito
26. Aug 2013 路 10:04 UTC
The correct link for the .love file is http://nova-fusion.com/games/triad/triad.love
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
26. Aug 2013 路 10:10 UTC
kikito: Wow, thanks for catching that.
vrld
26. Aug 2013 路 11:10 UTC
Really well executed game, but not mentioning the very similar "Ten Second War" (http://tensecondwar.wordpress.com/, also a L脰VE game) leaves a bitter aftertaste.
It's still very impressive what you managed to pull off in 48 hours. Kudos!
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
26. Aug 2013 路 11:16 UTC
vrld: Sorry. I mentioned it on the Love2D forums, but I didn't feel it really applied here (as from what I can gauge, Ten Second War isn't very well known outside the Love2D community).

Anyway, thanks for the positive feedback.
ellipticaldoor
26. Aug 2013 路 14:10 UTC
Good gameplay, good idea, good game.
rfgpfeiffer
26. Aug 2013 路 14:14 UTC
This game is awesome! You had the same idea as I had, but your execution is just perfect!

One annoying thing was that when my first two dudes died then I could still play the third, but one time the first two survived and the third dude died and all turrets were destroyed but I had to restart anyway.

But apart from that A++ would play again!
kirbytails7
26. Aug 2013 路 17:57 UTC
This is really cool!
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
26. Aug 2013 路 20:52 UTC
Woah, I never realised you could shoot with your shield up. I'd consider that a near game-breaking bug, so I've fixed it.

Anyway, thank you all for the positive feedback. :)
goyal
27. Aug 2013 路 00:33 UTC
Nicely done! Fun to play and its challenging too.
leafo
27. Aug 2013 路 05:18 UTC
Wow this is one of the best games I've played so far. I really enjoyed it
recursor
27. Aug 2013 路 12:07 UTC
This game is really fun. Well done on the grainy visuals, the gameplay, and even the music loop goes well with everything. Very well put together!
oxysoft
28. Aug 2013 路 05:04 UTC
Frustrating as hell but very well thought
devi ever
28. Aug 2013 路 05:37 UTC
A really cool take on a puzzle game. Have been seeing similar ideas to this recently but definitely one of the better. Would love to see this fleshed out.
klambrike
28. Aug 2013 路 06:11 UTC
Very good game!
Empyrealhell
28. Aug 2013 路 06:18 UTC
Well put together. Feels much more like a game than most entries; cohesive graphics and level design with a strong adherence to your core concept really make it stand out. My only real complaint is that it's a bit punishing when you mess up. Having to suicide the other two because you mess up early on, or having to redo the same actions for two because you messed up on the third is a bit trying.
HunLyxxod
28. Aug 2013 路 06:18 UTC
It would have been nice to be able to play for the 10 seconds even if we die. If you mess, you need to restart the level, you can't save your characters with an other one and continue the mission. That's frustrating.

Except that, that's was fun to play. Good work.
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
28. Aug 2013 路 06:23 UTC
Thanks for the feedback guys. I wish I'd recognised earlier that having to completely restart for any mistake was a really big issue; it's the one negative that keeps being brought up. If I make a post-compo version (which I most likely will), that'll definitely be fixed.
keyboardmonkey
28. Aug 2013 路 21:06 UTC
The game hangs any time any of my players get shot. From what I can play the control is great, the mood is captivating and it looks really fun all round! I am running the .love version, I have love 0.8 installed. There are no debug or error messages in the output console. I could help find the cause if pointed in a direction :)
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
28. Aug 2013 路 23:08 UTC
keyboardmonkey:

Is your computer particularly low-performance? The game creates a number of physics-driven particles to simulate a mini-explosion every time a player, enemy, missile, or weak wall dies/explodes. If that were the cause, then the game would hang even more when an enemy or missile explodes.

Also, what operating system are you running it on?
GeorgeBroussard
29. Aug 2013 路 00:07 UTC
Great audio and idea. I'm terrible at the game but I see what you are going for. Should possibly start off a lot easier so you can get use to it? The turrets were super punishing. Great effort.
Norgg
29. Aug 2013 路 00:09 UTC
Really nice use of the theme, tight level design, interesting concept and well polished.
cobrajs
29. Aug 2013 路 01:27 UTC
Excellent game! I really liked the concept, and the controls have a great feel to them. Overall very well done.
alts
29. Aug 2013 路 04:47 UTC
This is a really cool game. Nice work. Everyone else has mentioned the desire for single character replays already, but I think that's really the only thing missing from this game. I did have one weird issue where the Demo failed to kill a turret at the first player, yet when I played through the shield guy's turn as the second player, the shotgun spray was just different enough to kill the turret. Worked out in my favor, but I could imagine it going the other way.
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
29. Aug 2013 路 07:03 UTC
alts:

I've programmed it so that the game remembers when turrets are destroyed and will make sure they die at that time in the replays. It's same with "ghost" players; they can't be killed until the game goes past the time when they were killed (if it exists).

TL;DR: The replay system always works in your favour.
gre
29. Aug 2013 路 10:40 UTC
Very good game mecanisms, audio and graphics.
The difficulty is bit high for my taste.
Thermite
29. Aug 2013 路 23:25 UTC
A thinking person's top down shooter! My kind of game :)
markengley
29. Aug 2013 路 23:26 UTC
Wow amazing work! Really clever idea and very tight execution. Well done :)
KunoNoOni
30. Aug 2013 路 15:50 UTC
Really cool concept. Very original. Great Job!
Tom 7
31. Aug 2013 路 02:27 UTC
Neat idea. It was tricky to figure out at first, but once I got going it was more puzzle than performance. I did think it was mostly about the shield and shotgun though...
Purplescape
31. Aug 2013 路 03:43 UTC
Wow, this is a very interesting strategic game. After a bit of learning the mechanics, it had me puzzling over it for a while
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
31. Aug 2013 路 03:50 UTC
@Tom 7: That's interesting. I thought it was mainly about the shield and the gunner. I guess it all depends on how you play.
cbear_wallis
01. Sep 2013 路 00:28 UTC
really nice game! I love the idea and the themeing! the mechanics are spot on too
01rafael
03. Sep 2013 路 12:04 UTC
COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Latcarf
04. Sep 2013 路 22:40 UTC
This game looks very interesting but with only a touchpad I don't think I can rate it fairly. The music is quite good, how did you make it?
foumart
06. Sep 2013 路 19:45 UTC
Impressive! Add some enemy behaviour and this can become alot more reallistic. Also thought about finishing the action after killed in some kind of "ghost mode".
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
08. Sep 2013 路 21:38 UTC
Latcarf: I made the music with a few synthesisers in Logic. Turned out alright for a 3 AM job. :P

foumart: Adding enemy movement to a game with overlapping time such as this introduces more complications that it might seem. It's something I'll try to do in the future though.
shard123
09. Sep 2013 路 10:57 UTC
Really fun, everything is really polished and well balanced, nice work!
Oxygamer
16. Sep 2013 路 23:10 UTC
System unsustainable
馃帳 BlackBulletIV
16. Sep 2013 路 23:56 UTC
Oxygamer: I'm unsure what you mean by that.