Trucking the Universe by FrozenCow

[raw]
made by FrozenCow for LD23 (COMPO)
You drive a pickup truck, which you equipped with jumping abilities. You ride your truck in the universe of mini-planets by jumping from one planet to another. Oh and btw, your brakes are not working.
Today you're going with your truck to the shop to get some beer.

This is a one-button game: press space or mouse button to jump.

Ratings

Coolness 78% 2
Overall 3.48 153
Audio 1.98 613
Fun 3.81 25
Graphics 2.92 411
Humor 3.67 29
Innovation 3.67 109
Mood 3.00 252
Theme 3.53 169

Feedback

brianshaler
23. Apr 2012 路 04:02 UTC
Hilarious! Felt a bit more like I was driving a cockroach than a truck
馃帳 FrozenCow
23. Apr 2012 路 12:56 UTC
Haha, I'll make sure to put in an option to choose your skin if I work on this further.
haslettj
23. Apr 2012 路 23:56 UTC
What' a strange concept. The only feedback I have is that the jumping was disorienting. I expected to jump forward the direction the truck was facing, not "up".
kutuup1989
23. Apr 2012 路 23:59 UTC
That was pretty damned fun! Controls were a bit hard to get down but it worked fine :)
oldtopman
24. Apr 2012 路 00:00 UTC
Pros: The graphics are excellent. Points for "BEER GET"
Cons: Not really a con, but your main link crashes at 15/23
Excellent game, with suprise difficulty after you've practiced with the booze run. 4/5
Thoughts: Some ukelele music would have been suitable for the beer run, so you could complete the redneck mood.
Hazard
24. Apr 2012 路 00:05 UTC
Great game! I'm ussually sceptical about one-button games, but this one is really fun. The second part is very hard. The planets look great too. Very smart way to make them look like they are rotating. :)
馃帳 FrozenCow
24. Apr 2012 路 00:36 UTC
@haslettj, yes I totally see what you mean. A truck might not be the best way to fit the mechanics... cockroach would be even weirder imo, but might have fitted the mechanics better.
馃帳 FrozenCow
24. Apr 2012 路 00:37 UTC
@oldtopman, :D the music that I wanted to use was http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/478099 ... but I didn't have time (nor skills) to make something alike myself.
馃帳 FrozenCow
24. Apr 2012 路 00:38 UTC
Oh, Firefox support is also fixed, which caused the crash at loading.
馃帳 FrozenCow
24. Apr 2012 路 00:41 UTC
@Hazard, Thanks! Earlier version used arrows to control braking and direction, but I caught myself being too lazy to actually use them... hopefully it won't piss off too many people, I'm usually skeptical about one-button-games too.
Peter Cooper
24. Apr 2012 路 01:00 UTC
More fun that it looks at first! :-)
FunkyDelPueblo
24. Apr 2012 路 01:03 UTC
Really awesome mechanic! Something novel, but not outstaying its welcome. The "second part" especially was a lot of fun (with the added pressure). Like some other people have said, a background music track would be nice, but even without, I had a lot of fun.
馃帳 FrozenCow
24. Apr 2012 路 01:25 UTC
If anyone has a suggestion on how to do ukulele without a ukulele, please post. I'm pretty clueless when it comes to making music :P
jplur
24. Apr 2012 路 01:31 UTC
Oh wow, this is what LD is all about, great game!
mneubrand
24. Apr 2012 路 01:53 UTC
Took a few attempts but I finally got home with my brewskis after defeating the evil worm thingie :)

Real cool concept. Had a blast playing it.
TyrusPeace
24. Apr 2012 路 01:57 UTC
It definitely took me a while to figure out that the jump went straight off the planet rather than following any angle, but once I got that it was pretty playable. The graphics could be modified a bit to make it more obvious, I suppose.

Running from the monster was definitely cool. There were times I felt like I was unavoidably stuck, but I kept playing until I beat it. Nice work :).
馃帳 FrozenCow
24. Apr 2012 路 02:35 UTC
@jplur,@mneubrand, thanks!
@TyrusPeace, I might experiment with other jumping mechanics to make a better game out of it. I'm not sure yet how the truck-graphic can be modified to make a 90-degree angle jump upwards more obvious :P, though I agree, it isn't intuitive with the current truck.
dacap
24. Apr 2012 路 02:47 UTC
Bizarre concept but I really liked. After the beer it becomes a really hard game :)
fatSquirrel
24. Apr 2012 路 03:08 UTC
Had me and my wife laughing.
PapayaJuice
24. Apr 2012 路 03:09 UTC
I laughed so hard playing this. Sent it to all my friends too. Did NOT expect that snake.
FireSlash
24. Apr 2012 路 03:11 UTC
Had a blast playing this. I was going to mention buggy collision until I noticed the planets themselves are moving too!
paslam
24. Apr 2012 路 03:12 UTC
Nice game. I like the physic of the little planets and the humour of the game
FaBrito
24. Apr 2012 路 03:13 UTC
Great way to get the user trained before it gets difficult. Extremelly original idea and good physics, except for the jump straight up instead of forward, but, whatever... Nicely done!
gavin5564
24. Apr 2012 路 03:16 UTC
Tricky little time killer, Loved it. The giant monster reminded me of the worm from the movie called "tremors".
馃帳 FrozenCow
24. Apr 2012 路 12:19 UTC
Wow, lots of comments, thanks you all for playing and input.
@FireSlash, I first imagined the 'planets' to be amoeba/cells which did not collide but bigger ones eating smaller ones ala Osmos. This was however even more WTF, so I went for colliding planets.
@gavin5564, indeed, those 'segmented' monsters are a blast to code with often cool results.
Evgis
24. Apr 2012 路 18:24 UTC
Super fun, great job! Pretty hard to master.
MurrayL
25. Apr 2012 路 15:35 UTC
That giant vacuum thing was terrifying!
Hume
26. Apr 2012 路 12:44 UTC
Solid marks from me. The planet eating monster turns this game from goofy fun into serious business. That said, I kept dying until the beer store planet disappeared, and still didn't get anywhere near the finish. With the speed of the truck and the size of the smaller planets, it felt like luck.

If you add music, you'll need pre-beer music and post-beer music. :)
馃帳 FrozenCow
26. Apr 2012 路 16:58 UTC
@Hume, yes, I really need to make the difficulty more progressive. The pre and post-beer music would be awesome :D Thanks for the suggestions!
Ryusui
29. Apr 2012 路 05:30 UTC
Good game, sir. It could use some music to reinforce the feel, but overall, it scores points across the board for cleverness. Shame I couldn't actually win; is the worm supposed to eat the shop planet eventually? At any rate, two thumbs up: some more polish (maybe space the planets out a bit more so navigation isn't such a hassle?) and this could be one of the best entries.
demonpants
03. May 2012 路 21:52 UTC
Cool entry, but I eventually got so frustrated dealing with the monster that I gave up. It just gets too difficult to always jump at exactly the correct time when the movement is so fast. I'd say slow things down every time you die, or have less planets, or just make everything closer (the last option may be best, as I got bored getting the beer eventually).
ExciteMike
03. May 2012 路 22:13 UTC
Amazing and broken and weird and difficult in the best of ways :D After a while of failing to get to the volcanic planet I got a black screen, but I was having fun up until then!
ExciteMike
03. May 2012 路 22:18 UTC
Tried again and beat it :D
matthias_zarzecki
03. May 2012 路 22:30 UTC
Oh, this is great. One-button-controls work quite well and funnily. I kinda went off in the wrong direction for some time.
Datw
03. May 2012 路 22:32 UTC
A cool little game, but the controls are kinda hard to use.
R茅mi
03. May 2012 路 22:57 UTC
The control are weirds, but finally it's part of the fun of the game!
ghRibacki
03. May 2012 路 23:09 UTC
Haha! So much fun! Very challenging too. Awesome game. :)
馃帳 FrozenCow
04. May 2012 路 18:35 UTC
Thanks for all the comments. I've worked on the game some more to include some of the suggestions. The new version has:
- forward jumping (instead of upward)
- slower driving speed (so you don't miss your jumps)
- shop cannot be eaten by worm anymore
- several fixes, like more robust preloading
Catman
05. May 2012 路 11:12 UTC
Funny!!! I liked that big monstruous thing :O
It crashed on me after I got eaten three times, tho!
kibertoad
05. May 2012 路 16:59 UTC
Too many planets, IMHO. Would be more fun to actually plan you hopping, rather than crawl from one to another.
MrBarnslig
05. May 2012 路 20:03 UTC
Interesting idea, I always like one button game explorations. I got hit by that big pipe mouth thing and then the game froze. Liked the rotating texture effect on the planets! Points for humor.
Tom 7
14. May 2012 路 00:37 UTC
Hah! Boy am I glad that driving is not really like that. The worm was scary since it reminded me of the experience of watching the movie Tremors. The game was quite challenging and sort of nauseating but I played through it and had a good time! :)