Bokeh by arron-fowler
Update3? Post Jam some features added based on your feedback. Clearer weapons display (still minimal as you are not suposed to see clearly, it's based on my extreme shortsightedness) Some extra sounds to feedback being hit and out of bounds. HP collects visibly to make it clearer. Also big change to the movement to make it slinky. Thats about it as I work too you know. Thanks for all the feedback, So much love for the Ludum Dare Massive! Play the post jam as it is so much nicer than my incomplete jam entry. I dont need any more ratings.
Update 2!!!!!
I have got my ratings! So thank full as ever to the Ludum Dare massive. If you feel so inclined please play my post Jam version - it actually works. I really would love feedback on it. Just don't rate it. I will play and rate any games for feedback given. Please ignore my jam entry, it is dead to me now. Lol
Update 1!!!!!! I have finished this game and posted a Post Jam version. Complete with a full quota of weapons instructions in the practice mode and 1 player mode. Controls have been updated too. Please play and rate the jam version for all of its flaws and if there is enough there to grab your interest please play the finished version. I would love feedback on it. I am very pleased with it. It is as much a musical instrument as it is a shooter.
To fire requires you to sacrifice hp, it is possible to shoot yourself to death. You can pick some of the hp up again or collect it from your opponent. Don't worry about it too much, if you are close enough to it the hp will find you. All white Bokeh are hp.
Enjoy
WARNING THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE YOU WILL GET INSTRUCTIONS. I ran out of time to get the instructions done.
Untested and incomplete. There is so much still to do but this was the best I could do and I am satisfied I grafted.
You are going to need a friend. I ran out of time to get the AI working. I got 99 problems but an AI isn't one.
Bokah is a fight to the death made of pure light. Based on my Bokah. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh) I am incredibly short sighted and the only upside is the pure beauty of lights at night. It is an explosion of colour and pattern. I tried my best to draw it and the game is made entirely of this image. I rekon I got it about 90% accurate. This particular Bokeh is the LED on my power supply which I could study at leasure. Its a pretty vauge thing to try to replicate. I will look at getting variety and movement into a post jam version.
Player 1 controls: Arrows and "m" to fire
Player 2 controls: wasd and "r" to fire
Shoot each other to death
Don't go too far from the Rainbow column centre or you will loose life over time.
Fire to engage your default stance (Your character will turn red)
Once you have your stance equipped, your weapon time line will start to move (Regular Bokeh at the side of screen with a moving white Bokeh). Use the rhythm to fire a weapon. Full and half beats count.
If you miss the beat you will lose 12HP and your stance will turn off. (just the center white Bokeh of your character will be visible).
Change stances by hitting the alternative colours
Each stance has different properties
Every time you fire you sacrifice 12HP
The HP 'powers' your weapon. The HP attached to the projectile drops off at a steady rate. Be quick and you can pick it back up (white Bokeh trails). You can collect your enemies HP too! Any HP still attached acts as a damage multiplier when it hits your opponent and as a bonus you get that HP back.
Find your rhythm, work out your combinations and annihilate the light. Be careful not to be too trigger happy. Sacrifices will be made.
For all of its faults I am happy with this submission. My first Ludum on a PC, first using a current Unity, first using c#. I got to be creative with Quartz Composer too and look forward to animating an authentic Bokeh or two. I learned a lot and I am definitly much more relaxed about the idea of using c# now as I have been a Unity Script boy up until now.
I had so much I wanted to do but this is as far as I got. Enjoy
Note - Menu screen and audio fixed post jam. 4.12.18
| HTML5 (web) | https://thesoulselector.itch.io/bokeh |
| HTML5 (web) | https://thesoulselector.itch.io/bokeh-ld43-post-jam |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/bokeh |
Ratings
| Overall | 726th | 3.173⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 693th | 3.041⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 248th | 3.538⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 874th | 2.853⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 434th | 3.654⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 170th | 3.696⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 364th | 3.519⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 50🗳️ | 57🗨️ |
Like, the visuals, the audio, the mood, it's all the highlight. But then the multiplayer game feels almost like it's a totally different thing. Honestly I feel the game would have been more fun with something better suited to the art direction. Heck, I enjoyed it most when I played it single player and just moved around, playing with the light in the middle, while rhythmically pressing the fire button.
Not gonna let my backseat driving on your design choices hamper your score though. Gameplay was a bit lacking, but I actually enjoyed just about everything else to it. You outlined a vision (heh) of making a game inspired by the beauty of the lights you see at night without glasses, and I really felt that beauty. So very nicely done, and genuinely one of my favourite entries so far!
Unfortunately at the start, I didn't quite understand the gameplay even as a single player. I had tons of questions like where was my HP bar, how do I shoot? This was made even more confusing by how there appeared to be visual feedback for pressing 'R', yet nothing was happening even when something was coming out from my character. In-game controls and instructions could have gone a looong way here since most players may not bother with scrolling down to read long game descriptions. Even till now I feel like I am still missing out some elements of the game.
After figuring out that I had to press in rhythm, I thought the idea was genius. It is such a waste as I almost left the game due to confusion and am not sure if there are others like me who might not have had the patience to try to understand the game.
But moving beyond that, this is just my personal opinion, but I think it would have been better use of time to focus on a single player game during the jam and not actually do the AI but maybe have a stationary/static boss? I found it really wonderful to just keep shooting blankly at the other player and watching the projectiles fly as that has its own charm. I really wished that the other player had infinite or more health so I could keep doing that :D Of course I understand you have your own vision of the game as well and if taking it beyond the jam, you can definitely have the second player/AI implementation if given more time. I don't have a friend to play with this so I cannot comment on gameplay or give a rating on 'fun', but if the gameplay works well, I can imagine it could look really spectacular with two players!
The music was great and combined with the mood it makes the game very relaxing to look and listen to. I actually left the tab open and continued listening to the game's music.
Good job on the game! Definitely very innovative with the graphics. :)
However, the aesthetics were really nice and the audio as well, so it was a pleasant experience for my eyes and ears even if couldnt understand what was going on.
I guess ill try again later with a friend.
The multiplayer element seemed a bit limited. I don't actually have a buddy :cry: , I'm just simulating one in my mind. Here's my guess to where the game's multiplayer flopped a bit. I read over the game mechanics and was wondering, 'what'? The gameplay mechanics feel a bit complex, and when I'm playing around with my mates, I don't really want to be learning complex weapon and health systems. Lives, hp, damage multipliers, rhythms, combinations, stances, distance from centre, stance properties and HP of projectile drops off. This seems a bit too complex, and isn't really fun in the ways that multiplayer games should be. An effective multiplayer game is rather simple or easy to understand, and complexity arises from the chaos of players using simple mechanics in advanced ways.
Phew, hope that makes sense. Certainly a nice attempt, but I can't imagine myself enjoying the multiplayer aspects. Art and music is nice, could maybe focus more on that? Nice game, :thumbsup:
The audio is very interesting. It definitely achieves the feeling of wonder and awe while still being ambient and subdued.
Cool game. From one near-sighted person to another: Good job!
It works just like a drum machine or sequencer you press fire to start it off and then the GUI displays on the side. A white Bokeh starts to move and this represents time passing, it passes by 6 coloured Bokeh each of which represents an available weapon. If you press fire again at the right time to select a weapon it fires and the time (white) Bokeh starts again at the begining. If you dont fire before 4 beats pass it counts as a missfire, if you press fire off beat it counts as a missfire and everything turns off and you cant move until you start it off again by pressing fire.
I realise that I am quite comfortable with playing with sequencers. Having watched a few people play it now it is a case of it "clicking". Once you get it there is not much to get - until that point total confusion. A successful selection keeps you looping through the weapons. I wanted to do a one button game that accessed multiple options through code breaking. In the post jam version I have got 72 different weapon options all working off of a single button press. It seems I have a knack for making simple things that are really hard to understand - but once you get it, it is really simple. Also the longer you wait the more powerful the weapon you fire - just dont wait for longer than 4 seconds!
If you have time to play the post jam and manage to get it from this additional explanation I would love to hear if it has clicked for you. I am trying to perfect my explaination. It is actually fun once the confusion ends.
I think this as the potential to being shown at an art+game show. The music and bokeh aesthetic is a really good mix. You could do a cooperative variation as well, where the two players shoot enemies rather than each other.
Projectile system was interesting as I had to focus on tapping at the right time to get right type of projectile. After that the available projectiles changed. I can imagine this to be quite fun game when playing with friend.