Clockwork Dragon by wilsk

[raw]
made by wilsk for LD36 (JAM)
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NOTE: The HUD in the top right is obscured in the embedded WebGL version. Run in full screen or use the Windows download to get the HUD.

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In your mountain lair, you have slept for aeons. Now, your steel bones rumble and your furnaces are once more aflame. Play as a clockwork dragon, flying around raiding villages and hoarding gold.

Use WASD or arrow keys to fly, E to enter or leave your lair (when you are close), R to roar, Space to use your attack, and 1-5 to select an attack when you have purchased them from your lair.

I have only briefly tested the WebGL version but feel free to give it a go. Performance appears to be a lot worse than for the download version.

I made it mostly within the Compo period following the competition rules but decided to enter the jam so I could take a few hours to add some nice-to-have tweaks like the pile of gold in your lair and the watch towers. There is a story line of sorts with an "ending", although you can play indefinitely. Go to the lair and sleep to progress.

Tools:
- Unity / C#
- Audacity, BXFR and my mic for sounds and "music"
- MagicaVoxel for voxels
- Blender for rigging and animation

Change log:

- v1.0.2
1. Villages now scream
2. Menu music loops

- v1.0.1
1. fix a small bug preventing the story from progressing
2. press the tab key to allow skipping dialogue (escape still works but exits full screen in web player

Feedback

onyon
29. Aug 2016 · 12:09 UTC
Nice voxels! Solid!
indieyp
29. Aug 2016 · 12:12 UTC
It's really look strange, it inspires a sense of scale
psilon
29. Aug 2016 · 12:46 UTC
Great game, i'm upgraded max. At first it is really strange the controls and the rules, but its works great. Is there something secret with the egg or the castle?
Ilseroth
29. Aug 2016 · 12:47 UTC
It's definitely interesting, but for me the upgrade window was locked open and I didn't seem to be able to do anything other then just fly around, maybe I'm missing something.

The aniamtion on the dragon flight is really nice though.
Tarteau
29. Aug 2016 · 12:50 UTC
Looks great !
But we think there is a lack of feedbacks. It would be nice to have a gold counter for example, and we did'nt find where the lair is.
Besides, the controls work smoothly, and th IA is great !
🎤 wilsk
29. Aug 2016 · 12:51 UTC
@psilon well there is a bit of a story... just have to sleep a few more times.
🎤 wilsk
29. Aug 2016 · 12:52 UTC
@Ilseroth - hmm... that's a bit strange. You have to unlock the attack types in sequence, but if you have enough gold the first one shouldn't be locked.
🎤 wilsk
29. Aug 2016 · 12:53 UTC
@Tarteau thanks. There is a counter in the top right of the screen - it shows your Steam, Health, carried gold and gold in your lair.
🎤 wilsk
29. Aug 2016 · 12:54 UTC
@Tarteau oh and the lair is where you start. There is a compass needle in the top right of the screen which always points at the lair
Bentou
29. Aug 2016 · 12:56 UTC
Flying and roaring villages turned out to be fun. I don't know if it's a bug, but sometimes when I pickup a lot of gold (like 4 or 5) only one more is added to inventory. Story is a nice addition!
owndbyu
29. Aug 2016 · 13:05 UTC
Very nice! The mini-cutscenes with the thoughts of the dragon give it a nice bit of immersion! Sweet submission.
🎤 wilsk
29. Aug 2016 · 13:09 UTC
@psilon - oh actually I just realised the very last change I made introduced a bug in the story :/ Thanks for spotting it, I'll upload a fix in a minute
ursagames
29. Aug 2016 · 13:32 UTC
I love the game, but I'm so frustrated that the egg has shifted during the night about 20 times. Does the thing ever hatch? I stockpiled > 1000g thinking maybe I had to trigger it with money or something... man I want to know what happens next! Also the WEBGL version obscures the HUD information, I ended up downloading the windows version as I felt like something was missing. PS. That castle is wicked cool, but I really wish it had a better payout :P Especially with the low HP regen from sleeping.
psilon
29. Aug 2016 · 14:46 UTC
@wilsk thanks, i love the baby dragon's roar.
🎤 wilsk
29. Aug 2016 · 21:28 UTC
@ursagames I think you and @psilon spotted the same bug with the egg unfortunately. It was fixed around about the time you commented :(

Re the HUD, I can't seem to replicate that but I'll add a note in the description.

Thanks for the comments
🎤 wilsk
29. Aug 2016 · 22:17 UTC
@psilon it's my 18 month old daughter being a dinosaur :)
retrograze
29. Aug 2016 · 23:07 UTC
A very cool concept!

Some occasional bugs:
-Amount of coin objects spawned does not always match the amount of gold received
-Able to return to lair over villages (or at least one of them, to the west)
-Second baby dragon snaps to the location of the baby dragon already following when entering lair (doesn't seem to cause any animation, culling, or other issues, but is noticeable)

Some feedback:
-Very easy to sit above one village and spam attacks without worrying about health ticking down too fast
-No way of knowing attack cooldown without timing and memorizing it
-Very satisfying to collect large amounts of gold
-Feels good to level up

Overall: Great concept, with a progression style reminiscent of Swords and Souls (which is a good thing). A bit too easy, and definitely light on polish, but a solid and unique entry. :D
masamunedragon
30. Aug 2016 · 02:45 UTC
I AM FIRE! I AM... DEATH! I am king under the mountain! (I enjoyed this) Love the gold hoard.
🎤 wilsk
31. Aug 2016 · 10:15 UTC
@retrograze thanks for the feedback - yep would love to have done more but game jam :)

@masamunedragon haha
justinooncx
31. Aug 2016 · 13:15 UTC
Oooooh my goodness gracious me. I loved this game. The narration was very nice, helped me empathize with the mechanical dragon and set a surprisingly emotional tone to the whole thing... And the gameplay was rather fun too, flying around and roaring at villages. And then I got the egg, and then it hatched... The tiny little roar my baby dragon makes after I roar just melted my heart.

One issue with the gameplay was that I found it much easier to just camp outside the closest village north and spam my strongest attack until I had no inventory space, then return. I had 0 need to fly out further.

Other than that, a stellar game. First game in the jam to make me feel. And the voxel art is great!
Ghen
31. Aug 2016 · 13:21 UTC
the idea and execution is great, i love the voxel style graphic
the control quite smooth, nothing really to complain about

but theres something bugging me, the coin didnt move fast enough, the dragon outrun the coin, thus i need to slow a bit to collect the coin

and i don't know if this intentional or not, but the ground texture blurry, i pretty sure you meant it to be pixel style, try to change the renderer type into "point" rather than "billinear"

the villager attack doesnt hurt much at all, and thus very easy to collect the coin

other note tho, somehow i like the lair/cave scene tho, i like how those coin get "poop"ed out by the dragon with physics lol
kunzbe
31. Aug 2016 · 16:57 UTC
I like the wing animation & smoke effect. Also the roar gives a cool base mood ;) well done!
🎤 wilsk
31. Aug 2016 · 23:46 UTC
@justinooncx baby dragon roar melts my heart too but I'm biased :) Re camping, yes that is a bit of a hole. I'd like to have some sort of global mechanic where a village can get run down and abandoned after time if you rob too much from it, or even a bunch of knights run out from the castle to attack you if you stand still too long but... time constraints

@kunzbe thanks :)

@Ghen thanks for the hints, yes, the coin thing is a bit annoying. I didn't really spend much time on the terrain to be honest - i.e. I'm only using a terrain so I could paint trees and roads :)
zulman
01. Sep 2016 · 09:35 UTC
Voxel dragon for the win! Roaring villages is fun, good job!
Gipzo
01. Sep 2016 · 10:04 UTC
Nice game with good story.
A bit unbalanced - I could fly over a village and farm forever: they have no real damage and a can go to liar from there too.
thomz12
01. Sep 2016 · 10:07 UTC
Fun game, took a while to figure out what to do exactly. I like the "voxel" art! The animations where on cool as well!

Good job!
PlonkyDonkey
01. Sep 2016 · 12:25 UTC
Nice Game, again took a while to figure out what I had to do exactly but once I understood it was a very nice game.

Very clever idea
local minimum
01. Sep 2016 · 16:15 UTC
Cool game flying around. Nice flight and flight animation. It took me a while to realize that most of my gold got stuck in the air and never caught up with me. Once I realized that I simply flew back and forth to the closest village and hovered within range attacking with my claws. Still, as I said, cool game.
fragileannihilator
01. Sep 2016 · 16:25 UTC
A mechanical dragon terrorizing villagers and stealing their gold - cool idea. I came to a conclusion that there's no need to fly any further than the closest village, just hover over it and spam the space button. It would be more logical if you made a certain limit of gold which can be dropped by each village every day. Also the presence of weapons and enemies made me think that I can attack those outposts and I was confused when pressing space button did nothing to them.
Also liked the looping steam engine sound - my game features it too, but yours is much more calm and relaxing, mine is irritating. Did you record it yourself?
And finally, writing is very good, you must be either a native English speaker or a professional translator.
🎤 wilsk
01. Sep 2016 · 21:48 UTC
@Gipzo @thomz12 @local minimum @fragileannihilator yes ideally there would be a bit more depth to the farming system that would prevent "hover farming" but this wasn't possible in the time. I'm considering a post LD version which would have a bit more guts to it.

@fragileannihilator I'm Australian, I'll let you decide if that makes me a native English speaker :) The sound is a combination of banging a glass on the table and hissing into my microphone. Then a bit of editing in Audacity. I was also worried it would be annoying so the volume is turned right down too.

Thanks for the feedback guys :)
Avalanche Games
02. Sep 2016 · 01:26 UTC
Controls well and looks nice!
Satyre
02. Sep 2016 · 21:20 UTC
The animations of the voxel models is really great :) I like the concept and love that you don't include gore to the game and use the scare factor of the beast more. Nice game :)
Cliff Lee CL
03. Sep 2016 · 11:28 UTC
The graphics is great, but the interface design don't go along with the graphics well.
Nice game overall!
Franklin's Ghost
04. Sep 2016 · 14:32 UTC
Liked the voxel graphics, thought they worked really nicely with the gameplay. Was fun to just fly around and figure out the map layouts with the towns.
Bobsleigh
05. Sep 2016 · 03:06 UTC
I played only a little, but I like the desing.

Keep going!
Alsatian Studio
05. Sep 2016 · 04:08 UTC
Nice game! You can add some textures into the ground. Currently, it looks quite flat & boring
Jupiter_Hadley
08. Sep 2016 · 16:41 UTC
Cool game! I included it in my compilation video series of Ludum Dare 36, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/Ym4iAq-_TIg
🎤 wilsk
08. Sep 2016 · 22:48 UTC
Thanks @Avalanche Games @Satyre @Cliff Lee CL @Franklin's Ghost @Bobsleigh @Alsatian Studio @Jupiter_Hadley for the feedback. Lots of ideas that would have been great to implement time permitting :)

@Jupiter_Hadley I watched the video, thanks for your kind comments - its good to see somebody else play the game to get a feel for how they interpret it. There are some missing animations for some of the attacks which is obviously a bit confusing, but I promise when you buy new attacks they are more effective :)
csanyk
11. Sep 2016 · 04:36 UTC
The voxel art made me feel like I was playing with lego.

Sometimes the gold instead of being picked up as I flew over it, would sortof get stuck to my butt and follow me.
🎤 wilsk
13. Sep 2016 · 06:34 UTC
Thanks @csanyk, yes I think I got my lerp values about 5% off :D
AinoraZ
17. Sep 2016 · 19:50 UTC
love the voxels!