Zzap by HS_Dave
Written in 72hrs for LD39 jam by Tommy Brett and Dave Burford (it's my first LD!)
Restore power to the grid to activate the system.. but you won't have enough power to connect everything so think twice before connecting those power lines.
readme.txt:
Instructions & Tips: Using the mouse click on grid tiles to activate power to a tile. You may only power a tile that is next to an already powered tile. A powered tile has a blue circuit underneath and usually a visible power line as well. When you have provided power to the exit node you may click the exit node to exit the level when you are ready. Starting a new level will restore a small amount of power to your pool - the only other way to increase it is to connect the power line to Power Pylons on the grid.
The contents of each level grid is generated by the game at the start of each level. The game has a difficulty curve which affects the spawn rate of certain items and how much a move costs or restores. Expect to hit more serious difficulty after level 10.
Collecting points is the only way to increase your score but can be expensive in power. Try to spot a route that would take you through additional pylons. Also consider powering the exit node FIRST so if you run out of power trying to pick up other items you know you are still able to exit the level. In later levels you will want a good reserve of power to take into the next level to cope with the increased cost of building - you'll have to consider how much you want those points, really..
"Locked" points require powering a key node before you can collect them - this can be even more expensive but they are worth a lot of points for your effort.
Corruption (purple tiles) spreads as "real time" that passes. In early levels the additional cost to move through corruption is a mild nuisance but the further you get in the more prohibitively expensive it is to move through corruption. Corruption can not spread to powered tiles so sometimes its wise to try and cage it in. If you see corruption on the level when it starts it's certainly time to act fast and try and get that exit node powered before the corruption spreads.
Some times you will be able to see that there is no way for you to complete a level with the power you have. You may press the button in the top right to restart a level with new content but it costs power to activate. It's a bit of a gamble for whether you will get a better grid next time. If you do not have enough power to restart the level then the button abandons the current play through and you will have to start again!
Here is a link to a build that didn't quite make it to the 9pm deadline. It was completed and tested shortly thereafter and includes some nice level transition effects and GPU melting particles. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0hNHDNn5pX1FfNmNCM1Z5elk
| Windows | http://www.heavenlysoftware.co.uk/LD39/ZZAP.zip |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/zzap |
Ratings
| Overall | 124th | 3.85⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 128th | 3.712⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 95th | 3.746⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 73th | 4.102⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 263th | 3.932⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 54th | 4⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 378th | 2.489⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 198th | 3.643⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 78🗳️ | 76🗨️ |
I forgot to include the readme.txt in the zip - i've added it in now and also pasted part of it to the game description on this page :)
Love it.
Some of the levels didn't work with the different camera angles; I think it may be better if it always stayed top-down or nearly-top-down. Overall, though, great game! I enjoyed it.
At first I was a little confused, so a few training levels whould have been nice, but as soon as I "got" it I had a LOT of fun playing it.
Also, the music and FX really gets you playing, nice work!
@saramartins: truthfully the only incentive is if you care about your score! you get more points for collecting everything :) This was again due to the time constraints of LD. Future releases will have online leaderboards making your score more valuable but also we are testing a few points-to-xp based upgrade systems that would add way more value to the score.
Thank you all for the feedback so far, keep it coming! :)
A good jam entry with a good balanced difficulty.
Essentially, if you are quite good at quickly finding an optimal path through a series of obstacles, you are going to blast through the twenty levels.
The purpose of the gameplay is to plan a route through each level in as efficient a manner, and as quickly as possible. The corrupted tiles are supposed to add a sense of urgency, as waiting for too long will give the tiles time to spread, and crossing them is expensive. The levels are designed to take less than a minute to solve, in my youtube play-through I managed almost 40 levels (I failed on my first attempt) in about six minutes.
The reason for the short play-through (although we never really discussed it as Dave and I seemed to be on the same page about most things, correct me if I'm wrong @hs-Dave ;) was to let players see the end of the game without spending too long playing - there are after-all, many games for everyone to try! The knock-on effect of this however, is that the difficulty can seem a little random. Some players may face a greater challenge than others to a certain degree. As @frankiesmileshow noted the levels have a degree of random generation to them, although I should add that a) they are guaranteed to have a non-blocking path through them, and b) there is a difficulty scale that affects the spawn chance of the different tiles, the cost of movement, points awarded, player health etc.
We're continuing to work on the game; in fact, I'm in the process of adding an "Endless" mode now after having added proper campaign and scaling difficulty support. Feedback about the game's difficulty is greatly appreciated, I think moving ahead that's going to be a big factor in whether or not the game has replay value especially in its endless mode.
Thanks for all of the feedback everyone, we're glad you found the game enjoyable!
Criticisms:
- for what seems like a slow, thoughtful puzzle game, having an element that requires you to speed through it didn't feel right (the purple corruption blocks). It just seemed to mix action and puzzle in a way that I didn't think meshed particularly well.
- I thought the level design was a bit all over the place. Once I'd understood what each tile did, I blasted through the rest of the 15 levels in about 3 minutes. I had a good time, since the game felt so nice, but I didn't find myself stopping to think at all - something you're actually penalised for doing due to the time-limits imposed. I don't think this sort of game works well at all with randomly generated levels and would have much preferred a set 20 levels that actually pose a challenge. In a similar vein, 'restarting' would completely annul the existence of purple tiles since you could think, figure out the route then restart and instantly complete it.
- I thought the 'obstacle' tiles could have been presented more clearly. I'm not super familiar with electrical nodes but it looked to me like I could hook them up - I'm not sure what fantasy world the grid is set in, but it might be worth having objects that are completely non-electrical related so they can be read a little more clearly (a toy wooden block, a knocked over bottle, even a non-tile much like the borders).
- Costing points to restart also feels very punishing too, though this ties in to my previous issues with randomisation and time-based puzzle games.
I'm only being so critical since I think it was great! :) Do what you will with the feedback.
Good job!
In any case my main complaint is with the graphics - they're mostly pretty nice but they don't all exactly go together. That is, some of them look more.. realistic (?) than the others. In any case, it doesn't really hurt the gameplay - just something to think about.
Aside from that, my only criticism is that points are not really a huge motivation given that attempting to get them could very well cost a player the game, so perhaps there should be some alternative motivation for collecting points (such as, perhaps, holding back corruption for longer? Could allow players to build up points in the early levels so that they could have longer to think in the later levels)
All in all a good game, I had lots of fun and played through a few times.
In general, we've been looking at difficulty scaling a lot, and right now the level builder doesn't have enough control over where it places corrupted tiles. For example, we've added the concept of different zones to the game that can be reached by taking an alternate exit. The exit should naturally be harder to reach if the zone you are moving to has a higher difficulty rating. However with the present implementation of difficulty, the chance of spawning hard tiles is uniform across the entire level, not just near the alternate exit.
Thanks again for your feedback folks, it really helps to give us an idea of what parts of the game need extra attention.
The game itself has an interesting concept, but because the level design and progression it doesn't quite work. Making the levels random took away the "experience design" part of the game, a lost opportunity to teach and engage the player with the mechanics. Throwing the player into an arbitrary part of the game needs a great deal of design to work, but here it just happens, so I don't think the decision was justified. Maybe time constrains?
Level design definitely was the part most in need of attention, since it's a puzzle game. I firmly believe it would have benefited immensely from having fewer levels, but more thought out, cohesive and challenging.
Graphically, it was nice as well. However, what would make it nicer, would be some variation on the patterns of the grid cells. :)
Really loved it! Was a nice game to play.
It would have been nice if either a collapsible hud were available stating what each of the items do or a tutorial (that could be skipped) were available for one's first playthrough.
Presenting information is a continuous challenge. Imade that dinky little rotating hud display at the start, but it's nothing compared to a decent tutorial. Allowing the player to pause the game mid-play on "easy mode" (whatever that turns out to be) and presenting contextual hints might be the way to go.
An endless mode has been implemented, and we are currently working on skills, and level generation ahead of releasing the game.
The balance of the game seems to be dishonest sometimes. For example, you successfully finish a several levels and then get to level that gets away most of your power even in the best possible solution. This situation devalues the power gained previously.
Thank you for this game, good job!
The graphics, sound and music worked really well together, the game felt very polished!
As others have mentioned, the randomness of the levels made the difficulty vary quite during the game, but I actually think that it worked pretty well. There was a certain satisfaction in surveying the game map, trying to locate an ideal route at a glance, and then sometimes getting a map with an easy solution. But I guess it depends on whether you play it from an "incremental difficulty" vs. an "get through a lot of levels" perspective.
Nice game!
>Moving like the wind,
>Find the path, avoid the slow.
>Unlock the Exit!