Absorber by FaeDine

[raw]
made by FaeDine for LD35 (COMPO)
Controls:

WASD (or Arrows) to move
Q/E (or Control / Num 0) to change form
Mouse to Aim
Left Click (or Space) to shoot

Goal:

Absorb smaller enemies of the same shape/colour as you to grow. Shift into a new form to absorb your enemies. Shoot enemies (at some expense to your size) to lower their size. Don't shoot enemies who are the same colour as you.

There's no end, so just see how big you can get.

The game does implement some basic AI: enemies will change their form to absorb you if they think they can, or run away if they notice you and you're larger than them.




Disclosure: Life got in the way so I only had about 6 hours to pump a game out. The game didn't get to a point where it got very polished. I'm not expecting the ratings to be that high but that's okay, I had fun making it and that's the point, right? :)

Ratings

Coolness 44% 1416
Overall 3.00 636
Fun 2.82 675
Graphics 2.79 580
Innovation 2.74 695
Theme 3.35 470

Feedback

batmanasb
18. Apr 2016 · 05:38 UTC
Aww, making a game in 6 hours is rough :(
merrak
18. Apr 2016 · 05:46 UTC
6 hours is pretty tough, but this was a fun game :)
stephenhaney
18. Apr 2016 · 06:04 UTC
Pretty darn good for 6 hours! I like the concept a lot. I enjoyed flying around the cool star field. Great start!
Ithildin
18. Apr 2016 · 17:00 UTC
Cool concept, at first I thought it was similar to mine, but when you notice the focus on the absorption mechanic then it feels really different.

I really dig the parallax effect on the starfield and the shape transition (but it's a bit slow, sometimes it was a bit hard to find a vict...a shape and change before it escaped).

You accomplished a lot in just 6 hours, great job!
Firephoenix
18. Apr 2016 · 22:06 UTC
This is amazing for just 6 hours of work. Game looks very nice, but some minor bugs exist. The AI's sometimes go off the screen, so that makes catching them that much harder. As @Ithildin pointed out, the shapeshift animation is a bit slow, but the idea of it is very cool. There are also some bugs where an AI would randomly keep shapeshifting for around 10 seconds before calming down. Somehow reminds me of agar.io, but at the same time is pretty different. Great game overall!
hunttis
21. Apr 2016 · 13:40 UTC
Interesting mechanics. I think the game would've benefited from "non-rotating" shapeshifting. I mean, dedicated keys for each color. Almost every time I changed into the wrong color that I intended to. it's a 33% chance, that almost every time, right? :D

For 6 hours, nice work. At that point, I had boxes on screen that didn't do much of anything :)
thegoofromspace
22. Apr 2016 · 03:38 UTC
Like everyone else is saying: nice for 6 hours!

I guess the obvious criticism is that I didn't like how enemies can spawn right on you, but the game wouldn't really have any challenge without that. Zooming out as you get bigger would be nice too, if you're gonna make a post-LD version.

6 hours, though? Good job!
BlennosoftGames
23. Apr 2016 · 00:48 UTC
Super fun for only 6 hours work! I liked how the larger you got the bigger of a target you became, so it had a naturally scaling difficulty curve based on how well you were doing. I managed to get up to size 250, before a huge shape totally enveloped me and took me down to 0.

I did feel the slowdown trade-off for large size was a bit too exaggerated. By the time I was 150 I was barely moving at all. Oh, and the parallax looked great :D
Mixer
23. Apr 2016 · 05:53 UTC
Hey this is pretty darn good for 6 hours. Gameplay was good, and I liked the transition between shapes, that was nice and polished.
Freank
24. Apr 2016 · 09:47 UTC
Hi, nice game ! We're realizing a video with several games of the Ludum Dare #35.
Can you add your game on indiexpo.net ? (it's free)
So we can include also your game in the video ;)
p.s. write #LDJAM in the game's description
curtamyth
01. May 2016 · 23:21 UTC
For a 6 hour game this is quite nice. The parallax background was an especially nice touch. I found myself wishing it was faster paced however, and I quit when a larger shape spawned on top of me and absorbed most of my progress almost immediately :( Like I said though, in 6 hours it's hard to get much better than this. Good job!
qikcik
05. May 2016 · 11:21 UTC
Nice :D
linseyray
05. May 2016 · 11:21 UTC
Good job! Glad you got to make something after all :)
h2n0
08. May 2016 · 09:16 UTC
Fun little time waster, I filled the screen and got put in my place my a pesky triangle I couldn't see. Good job.
madk
09. May 2016 · 22:05 UTC
So basically agar.io