LudumData

Unholy Holes by Alchemic

[raw]
made by Alchemic for LD 41 (JAM)

The undead have risen from the nearby graveyard and it's up to you to defend the golf course!

Controls

  • Arrow keys to aim
  • Space to golf
  • 1 and 2 to select tower type

Notes

Mac users please use Safari.

If you get a black screen, please try a different browser.

Credits

  • @alchemic: Code and background artwork.
  • @gizmolo: Code, sprites, audio, level design.
  • @domb: Code and logic scripting.

Custom engine written in C++ and Lua, artwork done in Krita and Pyxel Edit.

Version 2.0

Version 2.0 brings 3 new levels to the mix and tweaks the designs on the original 3. Now the levels ease you into the gameplay experience starting off easy and gradually getting more difficult.

Two new turrets are introduced into the mix: - Fire turrets deal damage over time - Frost turrets slow enemies down

Also added is enemy variety: - Zombies have more health - Skeletons got a big speed boost - Ghosts ignore the path

And here are some of the gameplay tweaks: - Aiming golf ball now has tighter controls - Red line added on power meter to show previous ball's power level - Standard turrets have shorter range but do more damage - You get 15 seconds at the start of each level to start placing turrets down before enemies start spawning - Enemies spawn at a more rapid pace as the game goes on - Added ability to skip levels by pressing T

HTML5 (web) https://alchemical.itch.io/unholy-holes
Windows https://alchemical.itch.io/unholy-holes
HTML5 (web) https://alchemical.itch.io/unholy-holes-20
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/unholy-holes

Ratings

Overall 615th 3.423⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Fun 468th 3.423⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 284th 3.692⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Theme 156th 4.15⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 994th 2.6⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Audio 533th 3.063⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Humor 631th 2.797⭐ 40🧑‍⚖️
Mood 812th 3⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Given 67🗳️ 40🗨️

Feedback

nubmuffins
24. Apr 2018 · 03:37 UTC
This is the flappy birds of 2018. Died in 3 seconds 10/10 would play again
Adrien Dittrick
24. Apr 2018 · 18:20 UTC
Woah, the music is super cool!

I reached level 2 :)

Some of the holes are unreachable though.
Roidz
24. Apr 2018 · 18:27 UTC
great idea, and although the golfing part is a little hard its a great idea. I enjoyed it, good work
Ripter
25. Apr 2018 · 02:30 UTC
Getting an error "The webpage at https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/858929/index.html might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address."
lectvs
25. Apr 2018 · 02:38 UTC
Neat little game! Getting the towers up is absurdly hard, but I got a little better as I played.
djfariel
25. Apr 2018 · 02:38 UTC
I did it! Yay!

This idea has some potential. It would be nice if the power meter was from the put location and I could see the actual distance. It took me a few tries to figure out how to actually play the game, too.
jcsirron
25. Apr 2018 · 02:41 UTC
Novel approach to a tower defense! I thoroughly enjoyed the golfing mechanic, although I ran into a situation where I ran out of balls on level two and just had to wait for the wave to end. The paint artwork with handwritten text was amusing as well.
Matt Pattabhi
25. Apr 2018 · 02:42 UTC
I agree with the complexity.

The blend of the 2 genres was well done, good job!
adhesion
25. Apr 2018 · 02:47 UTC
Cool concept! For some reason it took me a bit to understand the basic gameplay (how towers could only go in holes), but once I did it was pretty fun. Wish the hitboxes for the holes were bigger though, any far-away shots seemed really tough to get. The dominant strategy seemed to be to just put red towers really close, blue towers weren't as good so there wasn't much of a reason to do anything else. Still a pretty fun game and the concept definitely has potential. Nice work!
Goplite
25. Apr 2018 · 03:01 UTC
I liked your idea. It took me awhile to understand what to do, but in the end I enjoyed spamming balls left and right. May be difference in different balls behavior or movement to substitute cost of the towers will be interesting with that concept.
RodrigoNietiedt
25. Apr 2018 · 06:57 UTC
Sooo hard. But very fun anyways.
I think the golf part is so hard it eclipses the tower defense mechanics.
Plopsis
25. Apr 2018 · 07:25 UTC
Hard but fun. With a little polish this could be real gem.
🎤 Alchemic
25. Apr 2018 · 14:39 UTC
Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

@Ripter The CDN might have been blocked by your firewall, that link works for me.
gi11
26. Apr 2018 · 03:23 UTC
That was fun, ha ha. Just spent time and I guess I beat it. Only three levels, right?

Anyhow, overall the game was great. I had a tough time getting the timing down and felt like my turrets got set up more by luck than anything. Also the arrow was super sensitive so sometimes it was hard getting the perfect angle.

Other than that, fun game. Good job!
Gizmolo
26. Apr 2018 · 03:28 UTC
@gi11 yeah I basically scrambled at the last hour to get the levels put together. I wish I had more time to make more levels (and design them better) but that's the way it goes during a game jam! Thanks for playing it :)
Fil089
26. Apr 2018 · 04:19 UTC
Aside from balance issues like enemies walking too fast, finnicky turret placement method and the blue towers never hitting targets because their shots are too slow, I think you have a very nice idea here. Worth building up if you wanna try...
Zapturk
26. Apr 2018 · 04:22 UTC
I like the idea! I feel if you had a little more time to prepare before the monster star that would make it a bit easier
Axe
26. Apr 2018 · 05:31 UTC
The concept here is so freaking coll, WELL DONE!

i'd say that more variety in tower, remaining enemies indicator and maybe some map effects would be some nice additions!
nidup
26. Apr 2018 · 14:34 UTC
Super cool idea and good mix of 2 gameplays for a unique result, the mechanics are good, a bit more content (levels, towers, enemies) and a more rich/progressive level design could level up a lot your entry, anyway, very good game, congratz :thumbsup:
27. Apr 2018 · 02:05 UTC
I love TD games. This one was a little rough on the art but the gameplay was solid, if a bit limited.
Tikikala
27. Apr 2018 · 02:29 UTC
other than that the second level is already hard this is a nice idea

could give players some time in the beginning before the wave to lay some towers down

and more starting health
ctran13
27. Apr 2018 · 02:45 UTC
This was hard to start. Didnt realise you had to shoot in the hole, and man is that tough to do. Once you manage to set enough towers though, it becomes way too easy. More variety on the monsters would be nice.
BlazeDragon
28. Apr 2018 · 00:17 UTC
wasn't even able to land in the hole, was a bit fast pace. theme and idea is solid but not a fan personally.
HS_Dave
28. Apr 2018 · 09:31 UTC
Winner! you did it yay! Yay me :D Okay so I actually really enjoyed this, thought it was a neat concept! The only thing that was letting it down a little for me were the controls, over sensitive I think! Very hard to get the angle I wanted (like not because of a skill issue, but because pressing a key moves it X amount and sometimes i wanted X / 2) and the same for power. For example on the last level the two holes near your ball launcher (?) at the very bottom are seemingly impossible to put a turret in - I was aimed right at them and would slap space bar as quick as I could twice in succession and it would still over shoot every time, I had to give up on them.

What I think I would personally like is mouse controls - aim towards cursor and hold+release left click to charge a shot - would make it nice and skill based! If you wan't to be really cruel add a par for each course ;)

Good work!
Durgan
30. Apr 2018 · 23:27 UTC
An enjoyable game. Takes a lot of practice for that perfection though. I agree with the post above that maybe rotate left/right with the mouse would make for better precision. All in all though I liked this game. Great job!
AlejandrodeCea
06. May 2018 · 13:13 UTC
Beat it! Lovely little game, I like how you have to plan to place the close-range towers very close to the road, and the others far away. But maybe the game itself was a bit too easy, I guess it just needs more levels though, I'd love to see it expanded :wink:
royur
08. May 2018 · 09:49 UTC
I like unholy hole(sigh.. sound like...) . Tricky little bastard on the third level the closest one can't get the ball in.
StrangerYann
10. May 2018 · 18:07 UTC
It doesn't work on my PC or on Chrome neither, couldn't grade :-(
🎤 Alchemic
11. May 2018 · 00:25 UTC
@StrangerYann Can you give me some more details, such as what OS, browser, and hardware are you using? Can you check your browser's javascript console for any errors?
Shellfish Games
12. May 2018 · 06:18 UTC
I did it! yay!

Cool concept which is very true to the theme, and generally very well done. A few notes:

- missed attempts are kind of cluttery, might not be necessary to keep them around for so long
- aiming for further away holes is really difficult, it might be an idea to smooth the rotation somewhat (i.e. it moves very slowly initially, but holding an arrow key accelerates the arrow)
- this might make the game too easy, but having an actual visual indicator where your tower will end up would be helpful
- at first I really had no idea what I was doing - after the first failed attempt at level 1 I realized what was going on and what I was supposed to do; after the second failed attempt I started having an idea of how to use the towers properly and hence how to actually beat the game, and eventually did that. Quite a nice learning curve, plus the game has just the right length for an LD entry.

I think that's about it. Nicely done, cheers!
StrangerYann
13. May 2018 · 18:08 UTC
@Alchemic I get "Exception thrown, see JavaScript console" at the end of the loading time on Chrome - the sound does work and start though, which is uncanny ^^# - beyond that as for the .exe I use an old laptop running Windows 7, it has an Intel core i7 in there... helpful at all?
ghostmaple
15. May 2018 · 05:28 UTC
Excellent mash-up. A little tough to get those perfect shots!
Blazen
15. May 2018 · 05:35 UTC
Great idea, a both difficult and fun game works really well. Good job.
jusw85
15. May 2018 · 19:38 UTC
A really interesting idea! It's aiming's tough though, I had to spam quite a number of balls to get them in the hole.