LudumData

26 Prisoners by Devenger

[raw]
made by Devenger for LD21 (-)
Prisoners of a war of words, many women and men of letters need a guiding hand to escape from camps of genuine, physical terrors. Not every prisoner can be saved... you'll just have to try your best.

CONTROLS (game doesn't mention all of them, thanks Tulrath for reminding me of this in the comments): Letter keys to select and deselect prisoners. Backspace to deselect all prisoners. Space to pause. Click to move prisoners around (Ctrl-click to deselect them after click). Arrow keys to move camera around on the couple of levels this is required, or move mouse to the edge of the screen.

Game is a Flash .swf, so will probably run in your browser. Thanks ChevyRay for FlashPunk, a pleasant and powerful framework for a little game like this. Apologies to fans of good pathfinding - you won't find any of that here.

Web (Flash) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12753061/LD21.swf
Source http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12753061/LD21.zip
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=2661

Ratings

Coolness 11% 43
Overall 3.78 25
Audio 2.37 210
Community 2.96 143
Fun 3.58 33
Graphics 2.98 192
Humor 1.71 290
Innovation 3.85 34
Theme 4.48 1

Feedback

Tulrath
22. Aug 2011 · 02:59 UTC
It took me awhile to figure out that you could un-select a prisoner by clicking their letter again. Once I figured THAT out, the game got a lot easier. Very challenging :)
behindcurtain3
22. Aug 2011 · 05:00 UTC
Cool game, its challenging and fun!
kevglass
22. Aug 2011 · 11:50 UTC
Took a few minutes to work out what I was supposed to be doing, but it clicked and suddenly I had a challenging game on my hands. Very neat implementation!
migimunz
22. Aug 2011 · 13:08 UTC
Awesome idea, fun game
angrygeometry
22. Aug 2011 · 14:35 UTC
very challenging game, but a very cool little puzzle game.
zamza
22. Aug 2011 · 15:18 UTC
Wow, I would love to see a post LD version. Give me about 50 levels, a level editor and a better tutorial and you have my moneys.
foobaz
22. Aug 2011 · 21:43 UTC
Interesting gameplay.
Good intuitive (to me, at least) interface.
Good production.
Won with 11. Will try for more later.
Lattyware
23. Aug 2011 · 17:33 UTC
Really fun little game. Well made, slick, just generally good.
DPbrad
23. Aug 2011 · 17:55 UTC
One of my favourite LD games, I have even downloaded your source and have been playing around with making my own levels I enjoyed it so much!
N0_Named_Guy
23. Aug 2011 · 22:17 UTC
Your game is awesome, but I am just too dumb to play it =(
tnelsond
23. Aug 2011 · 22:47 UTC
This is a great game. Love the game mechanics especially. Very polished.
rawbits
23. Aug 2011 · 23:20 UTC
I can't say anything. This is a proper game and it has everything it needs. I just wanted to say thank you!

P.S.: Maybe you should extend it and make a bigger, sellable game.
Andrew
24. Aug 2011 · 12:42 UTC
Finishing the game is pretty straight forward, especially the last level where I just made a run for it, finishing it with a decent score is where the challenge is.
bluescrn
24. Aug 2011 · 14:51 UTC
Nice idea, well made and good use of the theme. I got a little frustrated by lv6 though and game up there. The use of unique letters for each prisoner was cool - but it made the deselect key a bit arkward to reach? (Also, the game would have benefitted from a 'select all' key)
ratking
24. Aug 2011 · 20:50 UTC
"Here, you cannot save both of them." - Well, I could! http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10650964/_trash/LD21/devenger.jpg ;-)

One of the best games of LD21 I played so far, good job! (Although it's a bit too hard for me.)
zdanielz
25. Aug 2011 · 15:21 UTC
Fun game! sound was annoying, and graphics very simple, but the mechanism was great and pretty challenging! way to go!
d_m
25. Aug 2011 · 16:46 UTC
Really smart game! The level designs were good, it was awesome you were able to write such good instructions and include in-game hints. Controls were a little hard to get used but work pretty well. One suggestion... it would be nice to have a key for "deselect all" (maybe ESCAPE, heh heh).. i often accidentally selected people while trying to select a group. Also, a little bit of music would be great. If you like the music I did in my game I'd be happy to try to compose something tense/mission-impossible sounding for you.
MacTuitui
27. Aug 2011 · 06:17 UTC
Nice concept, nice implementation (one time one prisoner went in a wall and got stuck btw), sadly I suck at this type of game (but my game is similar in a way, I know it does not make sense). Good level design (well I did not pass level 4). Very nice work.
Rudy
27. Aug 2011 · 13:21 UTC
Very original and nice and fits the theme better than most too.
refrag
27. Aug 2011 · 23:33 UTC
Solid mechanics and good execution. Difficulty ramp-up and learning could be gentler (but that might just be me). Hated that I had to sacrifice people to escape, so +1 for creating that emotional response.
Danik
28. Aug 2011 · 15:43 UTC
It was fun, well made. It's a good thing you can come back and play any of the missions to try to get a better score.

I wish it would remember the progress when you left the game though (really easy to do with net.flashpunk.utils.Data, or just SharedObject in flash).

In level 2, the stationary guards seemed to have a longer view range than the circle when they were alerted.
johnfn
29. Aug 2011 · 06:20 UTC
So intense. I have never felt so much agony as I have when I was watching my prisoners crawl slowly to the exit, one sacrificing himself for the other.
🎤 Devenger
29. Aug 2011 · 17:12 UTC
Danik: ah! I couldn't work out where FlashPunk's save/load functionality was hidden. By the time I implemented the menu/level select I was too exhausted to read documentation properly. Thanks for the heads-up.

And thanks everyone for your comments; I'm considering making a full, post-compo version of this, and the feedback has been both useful and encouraging.
Cosmologicon
03. Sep 2011 · 01:50 UTC
Great! I didn't understand why my guy got spotted sometimes when he was clearly outside the guard's radius, but I feel like the mechanics for the most part were intuitive. I ran into an issue on Level 6 when I saved 1 prisoner and the other three got hauled back to the beginning. I wanted to make another run for it, but the window never scrolled back to the left, so I couldn't see my guys anymore. If there was a way to control the scrolling, I missed it.

I gave you bonus Community points for supporting so many keyboard layouts!
🎤 Devenger
03. Sep 2011 · 12:56 UTC
You can use the cursor keys to move the camera left, right, up or down, or move the mouse to the edges of the screen to have the camera scroll. Sorry, more controls not mentioned. :/