Alien Parasite by itzmattu

[raw]
made by itzmattu for LD18 (COMPO)
Alright, so, this was my first LD48 ever and let me just say... IT WAS CRAZY!

I will never think to myself, "That's all they could do in 48 hours?" ever again. Phew!

Let me just say, I really only had 24 hours to work on this competition. For the entire first day I was learning Actionscript 3 and the Flixel library as I had never really used either before. I spent that time doing tutorials and such and really only began working on my game around 10pm Saturday, or 24 hours in. See the time lapse if you don't believe me! :P

Anyway, I am entering my game in the competition, but to be fair I'm not sure it even qualifies as a game seeing as you cannot win. Or perhaps I am just sadistic, haha.

What you will experience when you play the game is the beginning of an idea, and concept for the theme "enemies as weapons." The idea is you are an alien parasite who controls humans, but they can only survive so long with you in their body. You will notice that the life counter turns red at different periods for different humans. This is because I wanted to implement a mechanic where humans would start to attack you once you showed signs of infection (once the number turns red). Well, really only the army guy would attack you.

Also, I was going to make it so outside of a different pain tolerance (level when you start to show signs of infection), each human had a special ability. The army guy could shoot, medic could heal others (to help you reuse them easier), and the tech could use computers which would open doors. Combined I thought these mechanics plus some good level design would go together to make some pretty cool levels and an overall nifty idea.

I definitely plan to further flesh out this idea after I rest from the weekend, and hope to have a much more polished and playable version available in the near future.

A HUGE thanks to everyone from the Ludum Dare community, and also to the people in the #flixel channel on freenode. They were a big help while learning the library. I look forward to the next LD48 in 4 months.

Take care,
ItzMattu
http://gdg.uml.edu

Ratings

Coolness 4% 110
Overall 1.67 167
Audio 1.89 114
Community 2.83 81
Fun 1.39 169
Graphics 1.95 149
Humor 1.29 158
Innovation 2.74 116
Theme 2.65 131

Feedback

TheLastBanana
22. Aug 2010 路 23:38 UTC
Looks cool! Good luck finishing it up :)
AndrewBC
23. Aug 2010 路 07:34 UTC
You've got a good foundation there. I like the sneezing and infecting, but that's all that I felt was there so far, as you're aware. Would like to play this more developed, and see where it goes.
superflat
23. Aug 2010 路 08:14 UTC
Sounds like you had some nice ideas there. The theme of a parasite is quite an original take on it. I don't think I can rate it as is, because there isn't quite enough there.
JamesGecko
23. Aug 2010 路 16:43 UTC
Hey, it's like Paradroid! :-)

Perhaps some sort of timed maze sequence would have helped make it feel more gameish.
馃帳 itzmattu
23. Aug 2010 路 23:02 UTC
Yeah, I realize it's not really a flesh out game yet. Unfortunately I was stuck doing tutorials for the first 24 hours like I said, or I would have had time to really finish. Oh well, there's always next LD48.

This was my first LD48, so if submitting something that's not fully fleshed out is considered bad form, I apologize!
goffmog
24. Aug 2010 路 13:06 UTC
Unlucky, it was an interesting idea and I'd liked to have seen what sort of game could be made using this theme particularly if the humans were moving about doing stuff and you had to try to blend in with them as much as possible and maybe you have to try try to posess another one while nobody else is looking. I hope Beth liked it! :)
alistair aitcheson
24. Aug 2010 路 13:24 UTC
Kudos for trying, and especially for learning a whole new language and framework during the competition! You deserve a sticky gold star for that ;)

Would have been great if it had all come together, and I'm looking forward to the next version. Best of luck!
Jerm
25. Aug 2010 路 04:21 UTC
I don't have anything to add to what other people have already said, but I agree that this is an idea that could turn into something great!
Alan Lynn
26. Aug 2010 路 10:31 UTC
Congrats on learning as3 enough to make scrolling movement.
馃帳 itzmattu
27. Aug 2010 路 17:29 UTC
@Alan Thank you for the sarcasm...
Alan Lynn
02. Sep 2010 路 09:20 UTC
Sarcasm? I always find making scrolling movement difficult. I don't know if your version does this, but removing the off-screen graphics is a bit tricky.
Doches
05. Sep 2010 路 04:57 UTC
Definitely worth fleshing out -- it's a solid base just begging for a little more...
馃帳 itzmattu
14. Sep 2010 路 01:21 UTC
My apologies then Alan. For whatever reason just sounded sarcastic to me. Text never was good for tone in conversation. ;D