EXO by Firesplash Entertainment
About

Exo is a first person tower defense game developed within 66 hours by Firesplash Entertainment for Ludum Dare 44.
You are an astroneer on a far planet. Aliens attacked your habitate and killed your whole team. You are the only (and lonely) survivor. All your technology has been destroyed.
You were able to put some parts together to create anew exo skeleton robot but batteries went low quickly so you needed to attach a nuclear core. Unfortunatley that one emits a lot of radiation when under heavy duty so don't put it under too much load. You will pay with your life.
- Code: Alex
- Graphics: Jan, Marie
Game crafted from about 10 liters energy, 3 liters beer and a few more liters of water mixed with pizza. Much pizza.
How to play
The game supports controllers (not in menu) and Keyboard/Mouse. In settings screen you can setup the camera movement speed. This is important to know as movement is optimized for mouse by default. Speed it up for controller! If you pull the sliders to the left half the axis will get inverted.
Gameplay: Build towers to kill the aliens. The enemies will target and chase you. You can't run away. Each few waves enemies become stronger and faster. The game runs until you are dead. Every wave you will get a small heal. Warning: You will lose life when building/upgrading towers or using shortcuts!
Now drop into the game and have some fun :)
Found any bugs? Report them in the comments. We love too hear your opinion!
Known Issues
- Sound is hearable too far. We were not able to fine tune this as of time missing. If late game gets too heavy, turn sound off.
Build Time
I just rebuilt and reuploaded the whole project. Something seems to have gone wrong on initial build (defective file still uploaded for reference) as it freezes and sound is not working correctly. The 4:30 build is the in-time code just rebuilt.
Changelog
- Bugfix 1:
- Fixed Mouse Sensitivity Slider
- Fixed Weapons still targeting dead enemies
- Fixed Bloom effect not working
- Bugfix 2:
- Fixed Wave Timer not waiting for last enemy dead - OOOOPS!
- Game is now slowed down to 10% while building.
NOTE: The decision is up to you if you want to rate bugfix or original versions.
| Windows | https://oc.firesplash.de/s/4gnkCWxfrJaoomx |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/exo |
Ratings
| Given | 79🗳️ | 92🗨️ |
Tried it on a Windows Machine, but the sensitivity is killing me there as well (even when setting every slider to most left side). However, the sensitive setting does not seem to get applied correctly. The Y-Slider jumps back when switching to another menu.
Idea is interesting, I like TD games and doing it in a FPS way is nice.
My high score was around 43 or something. Then I got circled by the enemies, not being able to flee. :(
But you are in fact part of the game as you can use the map as a strategy element. guide the aliens a way through the towers.
Also have you upgraded all towers to level 3? Towers can be upgraded.
You regain a specific amount of health (raising with later waves) at the beginning of each wave.
- the force field rings below the weapons show the level (1, 2 or 3)
- different textures for the tower levels
- even more illumination (think of AVATAR)
- After placing them by pressing "F" (or A for controller) a second time there should have been a particle effect. Further the cam was supposed to make more kinematic transitions.
It was just a lack of time.
I had a problem understanding how large the range of weapons is so I can place towers efficiently. I also sometimes felt a little disoriented from the map. At a later stage of the game, I had nothing to do because I couldn't leave the turret safe zone to build another tower, and the towers in my vicinity had been upgraded to the maximum. So I just dodged the enemies. It would be good to have some time between the waves of enemies, and perhaps a greater life energy income for the possibility of building another new towers.
I also killed myself when I accidentally upgraded the catapult tower. I think it's better if a player can't kill himself by building or upgrading.
But overall it is a good contribution :sunglasses:
In overrall game cool. I am a fun of TD, especially Sanctum, so I can quess you inspiration source) Idea with global rantings also good. But I cant get how to fix broken platforms and change targeting. Also map should have more icons, at least for your towers, empty platforms and roads.
P.S. Ez world record
Well in fact we had rare time to playtest our game thats why we relied on our community feedback.
Unfoortunately I made a huge mistake. The Wave time (top left) should not start before you kill the last enemy. I did not notice that before elysia's stream.
Guess I will be doing a bugfix 2 for that.
I agree on the minimap icons. We di not think about that.
The Tower range was meant to be drawn by gizmo but also here time was missing. You can however see the range on the minimap.
We currently do only have windows builds. I prepared a WebGL. if it works I'll add it here tomorrow.
I like it :laughing:!
Good thing, that we can lower the mouse sensitivity now :D
Is there any way to regain hp?
I could not find how to upgrade towers.
It's a good tower defense game.
You should create a simple tutorial level.
@spiffy Thanks! Yes that was a point I've been considering. In the end the lack of time stopped me from reconsidering.
One thing I wish for would be a way to determine the range of each tower visually. So i can better plan the layout of my towers.
* show a topology map in the mini map
* for the lore, add in background a kind of broken spatial habitate
* augment speed of the game, I was able to go to bathroom while turrets killed enemies
* maybe a music more intense will be more suitable
- A little confusing. At the start I walked near the building point and it said to press F, but I kept running and hitting F and nothing happened haha. Maybe if the platforms had more contrast with the environment it would indicate it better.
- Sometimes I had to press F two times to enter building mode.
- I got confused when I built something and then got hit. I thought that some monster was near me while I was building, but then saw nothing. I took some time to remeber that the theme is "Life is currency" and realize what was happening xD. It could have something to indicate why you are losing health while building things.
- The green barrier dealt damage to me. Nothing indicates it, I think if it were red it would be better. But even then, I would think that it would be impassable and would try to pass through it just to confirm haha.
- The default configuration for mouse sensitivity was way high for me, had to fine tune it before playing.
- Monters died with a little bit of health on their life bar. When they were dying, I thought that they were hiding themselves or something.
- The music didn't combine very well. I think it fits more into a Horror game, like if you are entering into some unknown place. For this game I think a bit more calm ambient or even a bit of action would fit more.
- The Tesla coil simply didn't work, it did nothing. I even upgraded it and it still did nothing. I couldn't sell it too =(.
- The cannon hit the tall monster like 50% of the time. If it was intended, it needed to be more clear.
- Wave timer is too long, since I already had spent all my life building and upgrading towers and the life I gained per wave was a small amount, there wasn't anything that I could do while waiting for the next wave.
Things I liked:
- The ambient is very well done!
- Nice graphics for monsters.
- Weapons are well modelated.
- Particles are beautiful, the catapult explosion was satisfying.
- The rate of fire from the weapons are very satisfying too.
- The preview for the weapons are very well made.
Sorry for the wall of text and the complaints, I really like tower defense games and I feel that if this game got more polished on those things it would be a really good game!
I tried using a controller at first, but the look movement was significantly slower than the mouse. I do appreciate the control options though, so nice work with that. Same with the control explanation in the menu.
If I had a better understanding of what was happening on the field, this could be pretty fun.
Nice work!
I/we know about most of the cons. A few are result of lack of time (balancing of time and damage values, sensitivity issue), some are not.
Especially the sensitivity issue is one I was wondering about. I am using the camera controller from our game MAze Crusher (the steam version) and noticed that the cam is acting weird. I must ahve missed something but didn't have the trime to find and fix. This is why we used a middle way of speed and made it adjustable.
You are the first one who reports that pressing F sometimes didn't work though. This is a bit weird as technically the text appears when you ARE able to press F. (Same condition)
I know though that the effect of "realistic smooth walking", that makes you stop a few centimeters after you release the button causes some trouble as the build gets cancelled when you move. (We made it that way so you can flee if an enemy happens to come too near - but that seems to youse trouble)
Could you please re-try this and watch if you actually stop moving before pressing F?
And for the music: Well you are on an alien planet. Our thought was it should be a bit weird and even creepy.
That was somehow intended but I noticed many people don't enjoy that way. Did you notice that the music is completely random? The mushrooms are making this noise :)
Tha cannon-bug is known. It was even known the whole third day but I did not find out why this happens. IT's not that the cannon ball passes next to the enemy (this could happen as weapons are (intended) physics based). It's like the ball flying through it. And this should never happen.
Btw: All three weapons are technicallynworking the same way (same behaviour script) but only cannon is affected...
Did the tesla not work at all? It should send out a particle wave when enemies are near. This causes enemies to slow down to 50% for 10 seconds. This is the same for all levels, just the range increases.
The HP issue is an issue of rushing in the end. Unity progress bars are not empty on 0 by default. Simply got no time to fix this in the end.
The damage thing is written down in description and about menu. It's your exo robot's radiation.
On the other hand I know the build UI is not that clear. It actually says what it costs. It's just not visible enough.
Lol, that part about the mushrooms making the sound is nice, didn't notice it haha. I got that this was the intention, to make it creepy, but I think that it just sounded displaced. But it's subjective, for sure.
Now that I'm testing pressing F while walking to the platform, I noticed one more bug: if I enter the building mode and press Esc, I expected that the building preview would disappear, but instead the paused menu appears and when I press F again, it doesn't go to the menu, it builds things, with the pause menu on my screen. Then I have to press Esc three times to open the functionak pause menu again.
And yeah, the bug happens because of what you mentioned: it's the inertia of the movement that causes me to exit the building mode.
One more bug I like to report is that my mouse continues on the screen while I'm playing :p. It remains fixed on the center.
Ohhh, the Tesla slows the enemies... When I saw the tesla I immediately thought that it would electrocute them, didn't even read the text saying "Slowness". That's my bad, sorry. But I think players that don't read things, like me, are very common haha. People like to learn while playing, through experience. Maybe if there was an animation or a sound feedback to accentuate the slowness, you would have a greater guarantee that the players would understand that mechanic.
Now that I'm playing more, I have more feedbacks hehe:
- I think it would make more sense that you gained life after a wave ends, instead of when it starts, because you could spend your life in the time between waves.
- Maybe if it had a button to immediately start the new wave it would make the game more dynamic. I started with a tesla and a catapult and it made me survive for many waves doing nothing, jut waiting to have enough life to update the catapult. I started to listen to a podcast while waiting for the waves to start haha.
- I'm very competitive and when I saw the ranking at the end, this game became much more fun to me hahaha, I had to take the first place.
- This made me see the late game, the level design is very good, lots of places to put the weapons, I died on a dead way, very good.
I totally understand not having time to polish the game, it's a jam afterall. Given the limited time, your work is very good!
One thing that was annoying; when upgrading / building turrets, it's hard to read the text on that UI background.
Yeah you are perfectly right about the lazy readers :D First thing I do whenever I receive something new is tossing the manual.
For that mouse thing: I noticed that in a few unity games we playtested yet. I am locking it down, it should disappear. I fear that might be a bug - or a change - in latest unity engine.
For my tests on EXO it even disappeared sometimes.
@zeriver Yes. I tried that UI several times and it looked great. My fault was, I only tested it on two platforms. The Camera mechanic makes it howeser look bad in some situations.
Liked:
- Leading enemies through traps by exploiting their path finding, bwahaha
- First person makes the mood claustrophobic and scary
- Trying to reach mount points near the enemy spawn has a great risk and reward sense of challenge.
Didn't like:
- Catapult upgrade costs are prohibitive in price, so it's unrealistic to perform more than one, ever, should be 200-250pts maybe
- Laser upgrades don't seem to do anything
- Not enough mount points located in pairs, for creating choke points, thus the slowdown tower seems useless
- Personally I'd rather have it third-person, still with an avatar that enemies chase, I think that would feel more strategic and tower-defensy
- No ability to gain money in the middle of a round
- No ability to gain life except waiting for end-of-round (did I miss something?)
- Camera movement with controller is painfully slow, with mouse is painfully fast. Even cranking sensitivity all the way down in options, mouse is still fast
- Please put the map layout on the minimap! Eventually I memorized the map, but it too awhile
Overall it creates a good tense mood, and reaching higher wave levels feels like an achievement.