One Armed Invader by PapyPilgrim

[raw]
made by PapyPilgrim for LD25 (COMPO)
[The entire game is played with the space bar and the mouse]
[If your screen is too small, scroll down, the top of the screen is just some fancy graphics]

You are the mighty (and feared) commander of an alien ship who stumble upon earth.

You need to assign your crew members to different work teams, and try to match the symbols to get what you want.

Multiple things can happen; depending on which symbols you matched.



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Tools Used
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FlashDevelop - flixel
Inkscape - gimp
bfxr - audacity

"24" seasons 1 & 2
And not a single drop of coffee :)

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Misc
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For every LD I participated , I tried to focus on a very specific aspect of my game. This time, I focused on the graphics, which I have absolutly NO experience with. So if you like the look of my game, you can thank that guy >> http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.fr/

I might change the swf after the deadline if I find some typos or grammaticals errors, but I apart from that, I consider that game complete, polished, and pretty much balanced.

I hope you enjoy the ride as an alien commander!

Ratings

Coolness 91% 2
Overall 2.96 376
Audio 2.19 437
Fun 2.67 448
Graphics 3.15 280
Humor 3.39 103
Innovation 3.25 187
Mood 2.64 447
Theme 3.31 313

Feedback

Logun
17. Dec 2012 · 20:41 UTC
A very good game ! One of my favorites. Nice and funny, but there is an end ? I tried a lot !
01010111
17. Dec 2012 · 23:58 UTC
One of the most innovative LDs I've played! I love the mechanic, but I wish there were metrics so I could measure my progress!
Will Edwards
18. Dec 2012 · 12:18 UTC
As I understood the mechanics, I became curious how the rules engine beneath it works.. care to describe?
23
18. Dec 2012 · 12:27 UTC
That was funny!
ix
18. Dec 2012 · 19:28 UTC
Odd slot machine game.
Casino Jack
18. Dec 2012 · 19:30 UTC
Quite a clever concept when I finally understood what was going on, but it would *really* benefit from a bit more instruction.
emveyh
18. Dec 2012 · 19:37 UTC
Wow cool game :D The graphics are awesome and it's the first one i've player for longer than 10 minutes :) the only thing that's missing is some background music
PapyGaragos
18. Dec 2012 · 22:44 UTC
thank you all :)

@logun There is a game over yes - if you let the humans destroy your ship - but no real winning conditions. I guess you can call it an end when you have seen all the dialogs, or when you don't see more nuclear blasts appearing on the planet after an attack.

@01010111 I also agree on the lack of metrics / feedback for the player. My original intention was to display some animations each time you match symbols, or when there is an event(think "advance war"). I actually have a lab animation where you see aliens severing poor humans, but that turned out to be VERY time consuming (especially for my noob skills with inkscape). So knowing I could make other, I decided to remove it from the game

@Will It is actually really simple : when you match a symbol, it generates a certain amount of that ressource (depending on the number of symbol matched, and the number of workers). Then, there is just a huge list of "if (ressource < 10) ... else if (ressource < 50)..." for each ressource :)
All I do in those "if" is basically displaying a dialog and some times adding/removing a symbol to the wheel.
Feel free to take a look in the source, but it is really just a huge if else.

@casino Agreed, friends told me that during their tests. But since my game is just a "smash the space bar", I could'nt really find a way to explain it more without adding a boring wall of text like "if you match 3 shields, it will charge up".
I actually hoped all those random absurd texts and the "story" would keep the player in the game long enough for him to understand the mechanics by himself. At least it worked for you, so I wasn't totally wrong :)

@emveyh I also felt a background music could have been a great addition; but I couldn't find a way to give an "alien" or "space" feeling to it, so I gave up and added a bunch of random texts instead :)
markengley
18. Dec 2012 · 23:07 UTC
Nice work. Hard to understand the mechanic at first but after that it's kind of compulsive...
dek
19. Dec 2012 · 00:27 UTC
I absolutely loved the dialogues.
wzl
19. Dec 2012 · 13:22 UTC
This is great! The dialogues are hilarious. The mechanics take a little to get used to.

And eventually i put all my men in one team and a nuclear strike wiped them all out. Had 0 men left but the game was still running. Should check for that condition ;)

Minireview: http://ldmr.wzl.vg/#PapyGaragos
fishbrain
19. Dec 2012 · 19:12 UTC
Interesting theme on slot machine.
Zelen3d
20. Dec 2012 · 00:11 UTC
A bit slow, but addicting and with lots of humour. Our beloved emperor Zorg, omg! Also, what does the number of workers change?
nilstastic
22. Dec 2012 · 08:19 UTC
Good: I liked the graphics.
Improve: I did not get the idea of the game.
ddionisio
04. Jan 2013 · 02:53 UTC
The dialog is what kept me playing this game. Very simple mechanic that works out well with the story progression, a nice touch! I was confused at first at what the controls are...and I wasn't really sure what allocating aliens on each row really does. Overall a good game!
h.attila
04. Jan 2013 · 15:18 UTC
It's an unusual idea, but nice execution. Some win condition could've made it better and some indicator to know how far away you are from your goals.
MortalWombat
04. Jan 2013 · 15:37 UTC
Very nice!
I ended up not being able to recover, though, because I lost all my men...

Is there a winning condition?
celsyum
04. Jan 2013 · 17:14 UTC
very addictive game (y)
SonnyBone
07. Jan 2013 · 23:13 UTC
Nice innovation and theme interpretation. Wish I would've known that there is no win condition before playing for 10 minutes after I actually reached 'the end'. Took a long while to figure out what the heck was going on, but I figured it out and was able to get what I wanted every turn.