Cowquest by papacheech
This is a game about Friendship. This is a game about Cows. This is a game about not blowing those friends up with bombs.
About
NOTE: Everything about the game is hosted on the itch.io page. page on itch.io.
Cowquest is a simple game about defending your heard of cows, using a variety of weird resources and abilities. I think you'll quickly grow addicted.
The goal of the game was to make things exponentially tougher and more chaotic the more you progress, and the more cows that you are managing. Since they can poop explosives, things can get ... hectic when you have more friends!
Inspired by Spelunky, I based the mechanics off a simple set of physics rules. As it turns out, the possibilities within this system were pretty vast. When I ran out of arrows, I still had an option at my disposal:
Controls
WASD: Move
Mouse: Aim
Left Click: Use Item
Q: Drop
E: Pickup
Space: Throw Item
Mouse Wheel: Change Item
1-9: Item Hotkeys
Development
Engine
I used Unity to make the game, and managed to get pretty far with their new 2D tilemapping tools making the destructible terrain. Check it out, the results were pretty good:
Art!
For the sprites, I used Aseprite. I have a custom script to export my spritesheets straight to Unity, because my only gripe with the program is that the file system is kind of clunky. This saved me quite a bit of time. The tutorials I found here have given me so much good info and changed how I think about spriting, so check them out!
Sound?
I use Logic Express to make all my music. This little ditty just sort of popped into my head. I'd like to fix it up and put it on SoundCloud sometime after the jam. For the sounds, of course I used BFXR. It's a game jam, after all.
Changelog
1.0 First release for OSX, Windows, and HTML5! 1.0.1 Fixed issues where arrows wouldn't fire, and the bomb gophers didn't spawn. 1.0.2 Did some gameplay balancing and simplified the controls. 1.0.2 (macos) Fixed macos build to not use fullscreen. 1.0.3 Fixed known bugs and improved player collision to prevent entering level geometry.
Endnotes
I make a lot of games about cows. But I think this one is extra beefy. I hope you enjoy it! Please leave comments and feedback below and I'll gladly return the favour!
Twitter: PapaCheech
Cheers, Dan (PapaCheech)
| Windows | https://papacheech.itch.io/cowquest |
| macOS | https://papacheech.itch.io/cowquest |
| HTML5 (web) | https://papacheech.itch.io/cowquest |
| Source Code (Scripts) | https://papacheech.itch.io/cowquest |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/cowquest |
Ratings
| Overall | 88th | 3.833⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 116th | 3.759⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 268th | 3.324⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 378th | 3.364⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 113th | 3.912⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 94th | 3.651⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 35th | 3.972⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 163th | 3.43⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 57🗨️ |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVTILpipNJU
The combat is surprisingly good, I think I blew up a few cows and it made me sad when they got hurt and complained about it :( Lucky cows can't talk IRL eh?
and @exezin , I think we would all be better off with talking cow friends like these.. Thanks for playing!
I have just released a quick patch, as I noticed that a couple people shared @muromets feedback! The controls have been updated to bind THROW to space instead of right click to avoid confusion. Further, some items default to throw when use. This makes throwing rocks way easier and more fun. Enjoy!
Works on the web though and is very cool! I like the idea and the game itself is challenging in a good way. Btw I got my hands on a rock and couldn't throw it (bug?) I tried pressing space to do it.
I have disabled the macos build for now until i can get home and resolve it. As for the throwing issue, i will look into it when I get home as I have not seen that before!
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Check Out my Game if you like!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected
@sholf hmm I think that the WebGL version of the game could use some performance improvements.. ill do some more research on that tonight! Thanks for playing!
I had some trouble with aiming (maybe the collisions aren't fully tuned, maybe I am just a bad player). At one time, the timer stopped to count days and no more enemies spawned. Other than that, I found no bugs. Great job, I am impressed! :-)
Conceito interessante e com mecânicas que reforçam a experiência, parabéns pelo jogo, simples e eficiente. :flag_br:
I have released a patch addressing the collision glitches some of you have seen ( Thanks for pointing them out @lmb @paulhocker and others) and other minor tweaks and improvements. Enjoy!
I couldn't throw the arrows by themselves and sometimes the bow wouldn't fire. Also autoselect of the bow after throwing a bomb would be great.
The bombs were also really fun and sometimes you could get combos throwing bombs on enemies who would blow up holding some projectile that would blow up other enemies :)
The music was also really catchy and made for a really good mood in this game. Awesome job!