LudumData

Happy Bot Mess by meursault

[raw]
made by meursault for LD 40 (COMPO)

Screen2.png

Happy Bot Mess is a turn based tactics game. You control two military happy killing bots that have a serious bug: their attack and movement are bound to the number of bullets in their weapon.

For example, if they have 1/4 bullets in the weapon their movement range is four tiles and they make four damage. If they have a full clip of 4 bullets they can only move one tile and make one damage. Every move also costs a bullet because the Happy Bots are rocket jumping. Choose your moves wisely. By the way these gameplay rules do not apply to the enemies.

Gameplay Basics

Your units have one move and one action per turn. The action can be used for attacking enemies, healing a friend and the unit itself or reloading. Using the action ends the units turn. Use the buttons on the units UI or the number keys 1-4 to select an action. Reloading is done instantly on clicking the button. For attacking and healing you have to select the action. Then all targets in the skill range are highlighted. If no unit is highlighted, you can not use the skill. But that is poorly communicated. When both units actions are used you have to end the turn via enter or the button at the top.

Unit_stats..png

Linux & MacOS

The game is built with Monogame so it can be run on both platforms with the Mono Runtime. On Ubuntu simply install the mono-runtime package and start the .exe of the game via mono HappyBotMess.exe. Sorry that there is no easier solution at the time. I only tested this on Ubuntu but there the game was running without problems.

Created with: Monogame, Pyxel Edit, Bosca Ceoil, ChipTone.

Created by Sören Hoffstedt. I'm looking forward to hear your feedback.

Windows https://meursault.itch.io/happy-bot-mess
Linux https://meursault.itch.io/happy-bot-mess
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/happy-bot-mess

Ratings

Overall 144th 3.725⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Fun 160th 3.638⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 198th 3.463⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Theme 176th 3.788⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 144th 3.838⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Audio 184th 3.35⭐ 42🧑‍⚖️
Humor 177th 3.257⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Mood 243th 3.27⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Given 57🗳️ 25🗨️

Feedback

Bookworm31
04. Dec 2017 · 07:59 UTC
That was a cool concept. I am a huge fan of turn based strategy games, so this was right up my alley. I really liked the way you need to decide when to hang back and aimlessly fire your weapon to increase your movement/damage, and when to press forward. I think that the UI could have been a tiny bit clearer (especially for healing) and it might have been nice to have a couple different types of bots to control. Overall, very cool game!
Dr_V
04. Dec 2017 · 08:14 UTC
Love the voice in the intro. The text does have some typos (savely -> safely, save->safe). Game play is pretty impressive for the time you had. The levels are limited, but enough to get a feel for the gameplay. I would say the healing could use a buff or be removed and rebalanced for not having it. Also you cannot heal without any ammo even though it doesnt require ammo.
meskaline
04. Dec 2017 · 08:22 UTC
Nice fun game, the UI needs some improvements as it is hard to sequence your ations and end turn is so far from WASD. Other than that is a nice concept. ;)
🎤 meursault
04. Dec 2017 · 09:46 UTC
Thanks for all the feedback :-)
@dr-v That's a good point about the healing, thanks!
wsKilljoy
04. Dec 2017 · 11:47 UTC
Incredibly impressive for 48 hours. The voice at the beginning was pretty funny as well! However, I didn't find the gameplay very enticing.
Niphram
04. Dec 2017 · 12:02 UTC
Really fun and interesting game, although I think the animations could be a bit faster.
pinkemma
04. Dec 2017 · 12:23 UTC
I like the take on the theme, works really well. Would be nice with a better indicator of where you can shoot.
jk5000
04. Dec 2017 · 12:44 UTC
This is a very fun little game, and it is really easy to learn how to play. And both the music and graphics was really good. Well done.
Scott R Howell
04. Dec 2017 · 12:56 UTC
fits the theme, has impressive mechanics, is fun to play, looks good, sounds good, works good, is good. hot damn this is amazing for a game jam timescale!
kezhaar
04. Dec 2017 · 16:42 UTC
Good concept, was fun to play!
Lawrence
04. Dec 2017 · 17:43 UTC
Pretty fun once you get a hang of UI. Too bad it's so short, I liked it. :slight_smile:
Strelly
04. Dec 2017 · 18:02 UTC
Really cool game, confusing at first but fun when you get used to it! Good job!
darkgrisen
04. Dec 2017 · 19:10 UTC
Very good game I must say.
bradur
04. Dec 2017 · 19:32 UTC
Wow, nice work! How hard was making the AI? The game could have used an indicator when you have no actions left so you know when to go next turn.

Nice looking graphics, but the sounds could have used some more work. Anyhow, it's very impressive for a compo entry!

Also, extra points for the effort of narrating the text. So rare, and it was actually quite good!
🎤 meursault
04. Dec 2017 · 19:41 UTC
@bradur the AI is really basic and hacked together. It checks all the tiles reachable via movement + skillRange (and that is not reliable when there are blocking objects, therefore sometimes the AI just says bug and the next turn starts...). For each reachable friend and enemy i save a score (best score is that an enemy would be dead after attacking) and select the one with the best score.
Thanks for the feedback :-)
bradur
04. Dec 2017 · 19:49 UTC
@meursault Ok that's cool thanks for the response :).
arcadia
04. Dec 2017 · 20:25 UTC
Love seeing voice acting in Ludumdare! Great little game, nice use of the theme, and nice style! Great job!
Colisan
04. Dec 2017 · 20:34 UTC
Nice ga... wait, voices? :astonished: that's so cool! x)

Simple yet beautiful graphics, and nice gameplay (took a bit of time to understand though =p). The music was a bit repetitive, but very nice game anyway =)
SadColor
04. Dec 2017 · 23:48 UTC
I really liked it! It's good for the limited time.

The only thing I thought was weird is that doing an action also uses up your movement. I can't remember if it's usual for doing an action to end your turn completely in other turn-based strategy games since I don't really play them.

For some reason, a couple of times when I got a game over the game didn't end and the AI would move for a few turns, and then the game would crash. Then I just went and checked again and it went to a game over screen like it's supposed to. Weird.
torcado
05. Dec 2017 · 01:12 UTC
Super cool! interesting puzzle integration having to manage your ammo, and wanting to have low ammo for tougher enemies.
The art and sounds are nice, the music is pretty good too but got repetitive quickly.
Nice job!
THX1342
05. Dec 2017 · 12:48 UTC
I really liked this idea! Well done on the graphics and custom sound

The game, however didn't frame properly on my computer which made it a bit hard to play (image below).

This was a great application of the theme, and the game has a very high fun factor (maybe I'm biased because I like strategy/turn-based games). I'll be trying it out again if a patch fixes the framing issue

![bot.PNG](///raw/7de/e/z/d728.png)

running on windows 10
🎤 meursault
05. Dec 2017 · 13:33 UTC
@sadcolor Sorry for the bug, i think i fixed the issue.
@thx1342 Sorry, but I have no idea about that bug, can't reproduce it. Might be a Driver+OS+Monogame bug that i can't really fix right now. It doesn't really help but you're not really missing anything... The buttons on the top left are: none-functional menu button, mute music, end turn (also enter on keyboard). Annoying nonetheless.
Thank you both for the feedback :)
SvartTand
05. Dec 2017 · 14:25 UTC
Cool game. Nothing i really can complain about, a solid game with a nice audio, graphics and even voice lines!
dom
05. Dec 2017 · 16:44 UTC
Looks like a nice game but unfortunately I don't have a Windows machine to play it on :(
🎤 meursault
05. Dec 2017 · 17:29 UTC
@dom Thanks for your interest. It should work on both Linux/Mac because its a .Net game and I used the multi platform Monogame project. You have to download the [Mono-Runtime](http://www.mono-project.com/) and start the game with mono HappyBotMess.exe from your command line. But I only tested it on Ubuntu.
snick
05. Dec 2017 · 18:24 UTC
This game was very fun to play, made me remember how much I enjoy playing turn based games. Nothing negative really comes to mind about this game only thing I can think of is that I would have liked to be able to see how far I could shoot. But that's just details, really fun game and it worked great on macOS.
mr-matt
06. Dec 2017 · 00:24 UTC
Very nice game, cool music and lovely graphics! Small nitpick would be that the middle mouse button panning is inverted and has no bounds, I can pan infinitely resulting in me losing the map. It should have a limit.
Tiberiusuciu
06. Dec 2017 · 02:37 UTC
I like that you integrated an actual voice in the game, it makes it so much more personal and unique :)

I like turn based games, it took me a little while till I figure out what was I supposed to do but I got it eventually.

Nice art as well!

Good job! :)
acoto87
06. Dec 2017 · 05:32 UTC
This game was very nice to play. Congrats on doing it in 48h, quite impressive.
Jupiter_Hadley
06. Dec 2017 · 16:17 UTC
Nice, well made game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 40 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlEs2Zt4em8
Antti Tiihonen
07. Dec 2017 · 06:43 UTC
Really well polished entry! A fun puzzle-tactics game with a very slick core idea that plays well with the theme. Thinking of the concept, renaming "ammo" to something more generic like "energy cells" or "power cores" might have made it more clear and logical that the same resource is used both for movement and shooting? Anyways, the balancing act of movement vs shooting vs reloading brought a lot of interesting decision making in the game. :thumbsup:
🎤 meursault
07. Dec 2017 · 09:33 UTC
@antti-tiihonen That's a really good idea. I'm kind of mad that I didn't think of it :grin:.
Zorg
07. Dec 2017 · 17:29 UTC
Nice idea. The mechanic works great, once you get the hang of it. Well done!
paulhocker
08. Dec 2017 · 22:09 UTC
good mechanic - my hats off for doing a turn based - you pulled it off nicely - wanted to play more - great game
blubberquark
15. Dec 2017 · 11:46 UTC
Great game, UI and turn-based combat looked great, mechanics were not what I expected based on the description, but easy enough to grasp in the first level. But why make me restart after I died on level 3?

Works well on Linux. Medium annoying UI thing: The camera did not pan to show enemies when they moved.