A Town of Questionable Morals by CaseyH
A Town of Questionable Morals by Casey Hardman
Gameplay footage (if you can't see the video below, your ad blocker might have prevented it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBg8BpZT-5Y
MOVEMENT
A and D or left and right arrow keys to move.
Space to jump. Hold the key while going up to get a little higher; tap it for a short hop.
K or C to perform a dash in the direction you're moving (you can dash up, left, right, down, diagonally - just hold the corresponding WASD or arrow keys!)
MAKE BABIES
Stand near the door of a house with a lady outside it and press S or the down arrow key to enter. You will call the lady in with you and make sweet love to her. You'll exit the house first, and she will emerge shortly after with a baby in-hand (you have incredibly potent sperm).
Press J or X when standing near a lady with a baby to take the baby. Press J or X again with a baby in-hand to fling the baby.
SAC BABIES
Fling babies into the beams of light over any 3 altars in the village to sacrifice them.
The bar on the bottom of the screen runs out over time, and refills whenever you sac a baby. If it runs out completely, your god will smite you for insufficient sacrifices. Nail ladies faster!
SPECTERS
However, the babies are vengeful. The more babies you sacrifice, the more they haunt you. Specters of sac'd babies will begin to show up and throw magic at you, and it only gets worse the more babies you sac.
You get 5 health. Whenever you take damage or leave a house, you get a second of invulnerability to recover.
OBJECTIVE
Try to sac as many babies as you can before dying, whether by specters or judgment from on high!
Tips:
Dashing (K or C) is super useful and has a very low cooldown. Use it!
You can dash in any direction, even straight up when you're on the ground, or straight down when midair.
Ducking into a house is a good way to protect yourself in a hitch.
Ladies can't smash with a baby in their arms. Try to clear babies out of their arms quickly. There's always an altar nearby!
Likewise, you can't smash with a baby in your arms. Don't be afraid to ditch a baby if you need some quick cover, even if you aren't near an altar (it's okay if they hit the ground, just pick them back up later).
Judgment comes sooner and sooner as you sac babies.
Move around the whole village; spread the love. Falling fireballs can be a real problem if you stick in one place too long.
My current high score is 42 babies. Post yours in the comments!
Enjoy!
Created with Unity3D, Paint.NET for art, and Bfxr for sound effects.
EDIT: Mac and Linux builds should be available now. All platforms are the same link; use the button that looks like 3 dots by the "Download" button to change platform if necessary.
Ratings
| Overall | 297th | 3.667⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 158th | 3.757⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 261th | 3.514⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 112th | 4.114⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 590th | 3.386⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 476th | 3.086⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 109th | 3.814⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 369th | 3.5⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 51🗳️ | 9🗨️ |
Thanks for the heads up!
If you're gonna play in the Web browser, don't press F to fullscreen (it's glitched). Just use that little button in the bottom-right of the web player.
Tried a few times, and my personal best so far is:
Im sure I can do better!
Initially I did not read the instructions and tried the game out, and obviously was very lost and died pretty quickly as the time ran out. I thought that the women were going to attack me, and I had to hide from them behind the doors. Was very confused how they would always end up following me inside and I thought that they were beating me up inside haha
When I read the instructions it made MUCH more sense (i guess that happens if you read instructions, huh). I also did crack up when I found out what was actually going on behind the door lollll
I really enjoyed how the difficulty picked up so well -- it felt like after every few sacrifices there were more 'specters', and towards the end, it felt like they were getting much closer! Really good job on ramping up the difficulty!
Also, really good job on the graphics, and animations! I really loved the art style!!
I did find one bug -- one of the on-ground specters seemed to be way off to the right, inside the cliff (but I was happy that he wasnt in the way of me and de ladies)
Really really impressed by the game, and the art and sound effects! Maybe add some music next time? Brackey's has a good tutorial on making 8-bit music. [BeepBox](https://www.beepbox.co/) is also a place where you can make 8-bit music pretty easily.
Really really awesome work!! :D Glad i got to try it!
Good job on that!
My brother actually suggested that, with the shaking of the camera and the way the player comes out flashing with hit invulnerability, it could be seen like you're beating the ladies until they give up their baby. I'm not sure which is worse...
The most I've gotten is 36 babies, but I want to try for more...
The time is actually glitched right now. I thought I had fixed it, but it's actually telling you how long you've been playing the game, not how long the last run was. Oops. I may try to fix that in a bit (is it legal to fix glitches this late?)
And you are correct about the specters; every 3 babies sacrificed = 1 more specter spawned. It gets pretty ridiculous after a while...
As for the music, I pretty much ran out of time. I only put the sound effects in during the last 2 hours, so even they barely made it!
And I didn't want to just throw any old publicly-licensed music in because I wanted to be able to say "I made all this myself!"
I've always wanted to get into making music, though. I appreciate the advice on where to get started. I'll check it out. Thank you!
@keldy Thank you, happy to see you liked it!
Great and funny take on the theme! a bit weird controls and they took me few games to understand totally. here's on of my results :D forgot to to capture my record, 20 babies! solid entry, good job!
@danilo-freire I didn't even know the game could support controllers, to be honest...I didn't explicitly support them because I've never dealt with it before, and a game made in 72 hours needs as few learning curves as possible lol. If I take this game anywhere else, I'll try to support controllers better.
Controls were a little weird but I probably got there? Although dark this definitely had some humor too it too. Overall a fun entry :)
Controls are responsive, but a bit messy on the keyboard. Have you considered a joypad implementation? Also, expanding the world to include multiple heights of doors might be a big improvement. Make it a bit like a classic Mr. Do game, in that way.
I like that the difficulty increases because of the sacrifices you have to make. It starts quite peacefully and one minute later it's like hell on earth. I never did more than 11 sacrifices, but it seems that with a bit of training it can be done. Overall it's a solid interpretation of the theme, GG !
As for a vertical element, I actually intended for there to be several 'stands' that you could jump on that had further houses on them (basically two background, vertical pillars holding up a foreground, horizontal slab of tiles you can jump on; these can be layered on each other to build up multiple stories).
But I kind of ran out of time and the added complications of implementing this didn't seem worth the trade, I guess. The flying specters would have to adapt to the player's vertical position as they jumped up stands; altars would have to be accessible from any level or it'd get annoying; etc.
Ultimately I decided to simplify like I probably should've done from the start, and just give one clear objective and one small level to work with.
@hygon not good enough, try harder.
I'm joking, of course. Thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing, everyone!
Love the graphics, the passing and the sound effects.
The only really annoying thing is the controls. Any alternatives of the mapped controls are awful to use and I keep clicking the wrong keys because their are too close.
The lack of soundtrack is another bad thing.
In general, it's a fun and well paced game!
Can't wait to see the next one
I initially had the idea that the player would sac babies during the day, then the specters come at night and you have to shoot fireballs at them to kill them. But basic platforming + shooting fireballs wasn't very fun. I implemented all that, and then thought "damn this sucks" and concluded on a tighter, more focused objective. I have a lot of trouble with scope, which is part of the reason why I decided to do LD (it forces you to tone it down, suck it up, and ship something).
As for the controls, I've fumbled over them a fair few times myself. I'll probably switch it to Up/W to jump.
Also I'm sorry about your love life lol
Thanks!
Pros :
- The layout of the level is perfect, and allows for challenge while also being fair to the player (Altars at the side)
- The baby ballistics and the control scheme in general allows for quick reaction and fun gameplay
- Well balanced difficulty (immunity after baby making, baby timing, ennemies, ...)
- Beautiful minimal graphics
Cons :
- Audio : A short tune would help to set the mood, and some audio feedback (baby cries) to indicate when a baby is born at the other side of the map could ease planning in end-game
The cons above are more suggestions than anything else however, as your game is already excellent as is. Congrats !
You're right about the audio, it's pretty bare. I wanted a whistling noise when the player first opened the door (to alert the ladies *what time it is*) and some door banging open and shut noises, baby noises, etc. but I actually only got the sound in during the last like, hour and a half.
I really like the idea of alerting the player when babies are born with some distinct sound. Thank you!
Honestly one of my favorite LD games ever. The concept is hilarious and unique, but most of all the gameplay is solid. It's a crazy mix of Elevator Action, Ghouls & Ghosts, and uhhhhhh, some kind of baby management sim. I think 42 babies is doable but I can't quite get there, I can get 35 at best. Correct me if I'm wrong @caseyh but with some patience and some more planning I think I could achieve a ton of babies. My strat is to build up babies by just tossing them onto the floor when I get a hold of them, and only sacrifice a baby when it's as close to sac time as possible. Then when you're ready to cash in, you start tossing them like crazy and get ready for the absolute onslaught of enemies that's about to run you over. That's the hard part, and in some ways requires a bit of luck in using your doors properly as a resource and racing across town. I think I'm a bit too impatient and either accidentally chuck some extra babies prematurely into the pit, or I threw them too far from the pillars to be useful during the crazy portion. I may revisit this later this jam after I've gone through reviewing other games. Brilliant gameplay though, I loved this.
I did think that would be a pretty solid strategy: pile babies up near an altar, throw one in every now and then. I never had the patience to do it myself though.
Because of that, I considered cutting the 'judgment' mechanic out completely and making it so specters come automatically based on time, instead of coming every 3 babies sacrificed. That way, this strategy isn't as useful and the player is rewarded more for efficiently making babies and moving around the town.
After all, the main point of judgment was to prevent the player from stockpiling babies on the ground near an altar for 5 minutes and then chucking them all in at once. If specters come automatically every X seconds, this isn't a problem anymore, and you might as well sac every baby as soon as you can.
There are a lot of things I liked, so I thought it would be good to make a list. This contains general things, so it's not incredibly detailed. Here are the main things I thought were good:
- Tutorial
- To the point
- Very helpful
- Use of theme
- Very interesting and different
- Overall fun concept
- Visuals
- Nice pixel art
- Beautiful particle effects
- Audio
- Well made sound effects
- Controls
- Smooth
- Gameplay
- Requires focus and effort
- Gets hectic as the number of specters increases, but doesn't feel unfair
In contrast, there are some things I thought could be touched up on:
- Controls
- Easy to get keys mixed up
- Gameplay
- Gets a little repetitive after a while
I think if you set the keys to something farther apart, it would be less easy to mix them up. The repetitiveness is really just a side-effect of having a score-based game, because no one can do the same thing over and over without eventually getting used to it. Don't get me wrong, though-- this was really fun to play! Those little things aside, this was very well done. Great work!
Solid dexterity challenge. I like the enemies who keep appearing and disappearing, a potent idea.
The audio-visuals are adequate, but rather low fidelity. Then again, it is better not to see the babies up close taken the circumstances.
The theme is tacked on. This could just as well be about building bombs and throwing them at enemy teleporters or something similar. Sure, the current setup is rather bizarre and funny!
Functional, competent work. Too bad the theme isn't integrated into the interactivity.
Overall: *Above average (3.5)*
Fun: *Above average (3.5)*
Innovation: *Above average (3.5)*
Theme: *Interchangeable (1.5)*
Graphics: *Below average (2.5)*
Audio: *Below average (2.5)*
Humor: *Good (4.0)*
Mood: *Average (3.0)*