Omega Men by Alistair Aitcheson
Really enjoyed doing this Ludum Dare! The game began from an idea based on "The Omega Man", but it changed a little bit - so the one "last survivor" is now three survivors, but at least they're still "alone" as a collective... except for the mutants. But that's how the film works, isn't it? I don't know I've only seen the Simpsons spoof of it!
Anyway, I don't care about the points, but would /really/ love some feedback. I don't know if it has potential to evolve into something bigger from here and where I could take it, so I'd really appreciate any thoughts you have :)
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Use the mouse to play. Press "R" or "Escape" to reset if it gets stuck.
Your objective is to get to the checkpoint, marked by a light-blue square towards the top of the map.
Each turn you can move one of your guys by clicking on one of the glowing squares - these represent the squares you can move to. If there are mutants in your line-of-sight then you will have a chance to shoot one of them. Any neighbouring mutants of the same colour will also be killed.
Then it will be the mutants' turn to move! If a mutant moves to a square adjacent to one of your team that team member will be killed.
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Known issues:
- Line-of-sight isn't spot on, and probably could be made more intuitive/clear/consistent.
- Pathfinding is sometimes wrong. But all the locations enemies go to are within their reach, even if the paths they choose sometimes go through rocks! ^^;
Anyway, I don't care about the points, but would /really/ love some feedback. I don't know if it has potential to evolve into something bigger from here and where I could take it, so I'd really appreciate any thoughts you have :)
---
Use the mouse to play. Press "R" or "Escape" to reset if it gets stuck.
Your objective is to get to the checkpoint, marked by a light-blue square towards the top of the map.
Each turn you can move one of your guys by clicking on one of the glowing squares - these represent the squares you can move to. If there are mutants in your line-of-sight then you will have a chance to shoot one of them. Any neighbouring mutants of the same colour will also be killed.
Then it will be the mutants' turn to move! If a mutant moves to a square adjacent to one of your team that team member will be killed.
---
Known issues:
- Line-of-sight isn't spot on, and probably could be made more intuitive/clear/consistent.
- Pathfinding is sometimes wrong. But all the locations enemies go to are within their reach, even if the paths they choose sometimes go through rocks! ^^;
Ratings
| Coolness | 14% | 605 |
| Overall | 3.40 | 72 |
| Audio | 2.73 | 194 |
| Community | 3.29 | 78 |
| Fun | 3.40 | 39 |
| Graphics | 3.72 | 64 |
| Humor | 2.71 | 103 |
| Innovation | 3.44 | 57 |
| Mood | 2.28 | 373 |
| Theme | 1.88 | 605 |
full stars for graphics from me! Care to tell us how you did them?
The players walking through the stones is because I didn't have time to implement the pathfinding into their walking paths - just the bits that tell them which points they can access. It should be easy enough to fix that for post-competition versions.
I'm really glad you liked the graphics! I wanted to do something very simple that I didn't need to animate much, so making the characters out of bean-shapes without feet seemed to make sense. I find that when making shapes look round it often works to draw the big round oval in a base colour, then do a lighter tone and put a small oval somewhere on there - that gives you an idea of where the light is coming from, so it's really easy to imagine where the shadows are coming from. Hope that helps! I drew them in a really old version of Paint Shop Pro with a graphics tablet.
I did run into a bug where the game wanted me to shoot a zombie on the checkpoint, but wouldn't let me shoot or cancel, but otherwise it ran great.
Really love the audio clips, it makes a huge difference. I think you missed out on the opportunity to make zombie noises, however.
Quite good and funny, as you were already told, zombie voices would be nice (and probably better than using your "lock and load".
It would be nice if there was more variability and content, but as LD game it's quite sufficent, it's one of those I'd rate as "I like it"
My only real criticism of the gameplay is that it seems just too easy as it stands. I have to either be incredibly careless, or intentionally trying to die in order to lose. Maybe you should have permanent death for characters who get devoured by the mutants? That way you really have an incentive not to let anyone get splattered, and it would help stick to the the theme as well.