LudumData

Lamplight by Wheffle

[raw]
made by Wheffle for LD 39 (COMPO)

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Description

Lamplight is a game about conserving your magical lamp energy while exploring a dark world filled with shadowy monsters. As long as they are in the darkness, they are invisible to you. However, using your lamp's abilities will help to detect them and ultimately destroy them. Be careful, though, if they manage to sneak up on you they will drain your lamp's energy. When it runs out, the game is over.

Instructions

Lamplight is a turn-based dungeon crawler on a hex grid. The objective is to clear as many rooms as you can before running out of lamp energy (which will happen sooner or later). Monsters are invisible until you use your lamp's abilities on them. Bright light will stun monsters, making them vulnerable. They also leave tracks as they move, allowing you to try to deduce where they are in the darkness. Follow the tutorial in the first room to learn the basics.

There isn't a ton of content in the game unfortunately, you'll see everything there is to see on a reasonable run. I feel like the concept was communicated quite well and turned out to be decently fun though.

About

This is my second Ludum Dare. Last time I submitted a "jam" game. I had plenty of time and managed to finish quite early, so this time I thought I'd go ahead and do "compo". It was definitely much more of a struggle, I don't think I had as solid of an idea as I did last time, and shaving that extra day off really does a number psychologically. I definitely wasn't able to execute all the ideas I had, and I wish I could have squeezed in one or two more enemies at least. It was a great experience, though, and I managed to at least finish a playable product!

Tools Used

  • Game Maker: Studio 1.4
  • Bfxr (sound effects)
  • JamStudio.com (music)
  • Audacity (sound + music editing)
  • MS Paint (doodles that pass as graphics)

All assets are original, as per compo rules.

Post-Submission Changes

  • v1.01 - Fixed a subtle bug I found right after I submitted.
  • v1.02 - Added android support.
  • v1.03 - On Windows made the game window resizable (some players with high-res monitors were having a hard time playing the game).
  • V1.03YYC - Re-compiled Windows and Android to run natively (GM's Yo-Yo Compiler) for optimization boosts (didn't really need it, but it might be nice for some mobile users). Also got a build working for Linux.
  • Got a web build up and running! Took some finagling, but I think it was worth it for the much easier access.

android_art.png If you're up for it, try it on Android! I think Lamplight feels really good on mobile.

Note: The HTML5 version requires WebGL, not all browsers support this. Also if you have an ultra-wide or 4K display, it might be more comfortable to use a non-web version so you can scale the game window up.

HTML5 (web) https://wheffle.itch.io/lamplight
Windows https://www.dropbox.com/s/76g6jig4bo8u59c/Lamplight-1.03YYC-win.zip?dl=1
Linux https://www.dropbox.com/s/6a12av22ilasm2z/Lamplight-1.03YYC-linux.zip?dl=1
Android https://www.dropbox.com/s/u642pjl5sr7fgue/Lamplight-1.03YYC-android.apk?dl=1
Source code https://bitbucket.org/Wheffle/robotwizard/src
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/lamplight

Ratings

Overall 96th 3.786⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Fun 91th 3.69⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 89th 3.738⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Theme 112th 3.902⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 406th 3.024⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Audio 60th 3.714⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Mood 84th 3.643⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Given 39🗳️ 49🗨️

Feedback

N4tticus
31. Jul 2017 · 05:18 UTC
Really awesome game! Love the graphics style :)

Something I discovered a little while ago might help you out. At the very end of your DropBox link, where it says "dl=0", change it to "dl=1". That should make the link download automatically and not make the player download it manually. Just a suggestion :)

Anyway fun game, congrats on finishing the compo :D
🎤 Wheffle
31. Jul 2017 · 05:27 UTC
@n4tticus Oh, thanks for the tip! And thanks for giving the game a go :)
stevenjmiller
31. Jul 2017 · 15:03 UTC
This game is great! The audio is really good and I liked the use of the theme. My best was 9 rooms cleared.

Edit: I played again and got 10 rooms cleared
ryzy27
31. Jul 2017 · 22:46 UTC
Nice, polished game. Reminded me of Hoplite. I think you should be able to see in 1 hex radius, but I guess it was a gameplay choice. Sounds were nice too. Cheers!
🎤 Wheffle
01. Aug 2017 · 01:09 UTC
@ryzy27 Thanks! I actually tested with 1-hex radius sight, and it was too easy with the beginning enemies. If I had time to implement more interesting enemies or revamp how they move, I agree it would have felt a little nicer to see 1 hex around you. As it stands you can still detect tracks near you at least.
PeachTreeOath
01. Aug 2017 · 05:47 UTC
Awesome job on the tutorial itself. It's so hard to plan time for doing a proper tutorial, I think it's actually the best one I've seen in an LD (yes I know its a lower bar haha). I'm also impressed you had all the hex math done in time, did you already have experience doing that? I feel like that would've taken up so much of my LD time but you clearly had time to put in lots of other polish. Great job!
🎤 Wheffle
01. Aug 2017 · 07:34 UTC
@PeachTreeOath Thanks! This was my first time doing a full-on interactive tutorial, actually, but I figured it was really needed for this game due to the weird mechanics. It was really sloppily done code-wise but it worked.

Also, I'll tell you a little secret: I have no experience doing a hex grid. I definitely did not create a proper hex system, I totally cheated it in beyond doing a little geometry to make sure the physical hexes fit together well enough. Those hexes are each their own instance, and at the beginning of each room they just run some collision checks to find their neighbors and plug them into some data structures for future reference. Again, sloppy but functional.
Sheepolution
01. Aug 2017 · 09:59 UTC
Interesting mechanic. Really made me think about how to spend my energy and what choices to make. I also like how you added a tutorial. Good job!
stefvanschie
02. Aug 2017 · 08:57 UTC
Nice entry. The visuals and the music definitely created a fitting mood. The interactive tutorial is really useful and helps a lot. I felt like you didn't regain that much power from killing enemies, cause I ran out pretty quick without really getting enough back from the enemies. Or I'm just terrible at this game, either way good job.
stefvanschie
02. Aug 2017 · 08:57 UTC
Nice entry. The visuals and the music definitely created a fitting mood. The interactive tutorial is really useful and helps a lot. I felt like you didn't regain that much power from killing enemies, cause I ran out pretty quick without really getting enough back from the enemies. Or I'm just terrible at this game, either way good job.
elit3dgaming
02. Aug 2017 · 09:35 UTC
really enjoyed this a lot, the concept is really cool. The audio was great too, very good entry
PlantProgrammer
02. Aug 2017 · 09:47 UTC
This game got me hooked. What I like most about it is the automatic fading after a few seconds of revealing new tiles, so you need to memorize what you have seen.
Great Job :)
Damoy
02. Aug 2017 · 09:56 UTC
I loved the game ! Very interesting approach of the game, more complex than it seems and a certain duration of play :) Congratz !
Manafest
02. Aug 2017 · 10:00 UTC
I really liked this game, I think it looks good, I think it sounds good and I think it's interest and fun to play :)
Arkadynn
02. Aug 2017 · 10:55 UTC
I really enjoyed playing the game ! the concept is simple but not too easy, and addictive ! Great Job doing this on your own =D
Descrout
02. Aug 2017 · 14:44 UTC
Really liked the puzzle aspect of game. Also the music was so good. Great entry :)
Xsior
02. Aug 2017 · 18:23 UTC
THe game has fun concept and hexes are always good :). THe only problem I have with this game is that it's rally hard to regain energy. Maybe it should regen a bit for every level or just increase droprate from enemies. Besides that game was fun.
🎤 Wheffle
02. Aug 2017 · 20:07 UTC
Thanks for the feedback guys!

@stefvanschie @xsior About the difficulty of recovering lamp energy, in its current state there is not much to see content-wise so I didn't want to make it easy for the player to go indefinitely and kind of burn out on the game. I had plans to make floors with bosses (and many more enemy types), and after each boss you'd fully recharge your lamp, but of course I ran out of time.

I might continue with it post-LD and see what it becomes. Again, thanks for the feedback and ratings everyone!
gonutz
02. Aug 2017 · 21:35 UTC
Got five rooms cleared.

I like the gameplay, really nice idea. I like turn-based video games in general and this one has the right amount of random elements and required player thinking. Good balance in that!

The music is cool too, as are the sound effects. Is that Bosca Ceoil and SFXR? :-)

Overall, a great entry, thanks and keep up the great work!

Oh - and after the game closes, it crashes and Windows asks me to send a bug report, you may have a memory leak or null pointer acces on shutdown.
🎤 Wheffle
02. Aug 2017 · 23:03 UTC
@gonutz Ah, that crash is very odd. Does it happen every time? I can't seem to reproduce it on any of my systems. Give me some details about your system if you see this, could help to track it down.
Xsior
03. Aug 2017 · 09:53 UTC
About crash: I game crashed at the start (after press any key screen) on my work PC with win 10 but run just fine on my home PC, also with win 10. I didn't write about it because I suspect it just something about gamemaker and radeon cards or something.
MatKubik
03. Aug 2017 · 11:35 UTC
The puzzle aspect is very well-made, I like it ! I like the graphics and it's pretty cool to fun ! Good job !
🎤 Wheffle
03. Aug 2017 · 11:52 UTC
@matkubik Thanks! Glad you liked it!

@xsior Interesting. I *am* using a shader, so machines that don't have DirectX or OpenGL are going to have issues. I had one person get a shader-related error in the last LD. Was there a crash report of any kind?
Boxfort
03. Aug 2017 · 12:30 UTC
I really like this game! The tutorial at the the start was great because i knew exactly what i was doing straight away. Fun strategic gameplay, trying to anticipate enemies to lower the power usage. Really great take on the theme. Good job!
Jajo
03. Aug 2017 · 13:46 UTC
I have to agree, this does feel good on android. This could be a decent full mobile game if you spend some more time on it.
Pandakipu
03. Aug 2017 · 18:54 UTC
Wow, awesome ! Graphics are nice and simple. The music is really great, it goes well with the game (not like mine... I always put some "midi heavy metal" in my games ^^)

Great job !
Vivoubos
03. Aug 2017 · 19:21 UTC
Nice game! You did it very well! It's very nice too have 4 actions to do!

I enjoyed play your game!

And catch those damn ghost! Really good job!
CMLSC
04. Aug 2017 · 05:05 UTC
This was a very solid game! The graphics weren't the best, but it felt bug-free, it was nice to control, had great audio, and was a pretty fun game to play! :D

My only advice is to maybe add some animations to make it more graphically polished.

Good job(especially for your second Ludum Dare)! :smile:
🎤 Wheffle
04. Aug 2017 · 06:22 UTC
@cmlsc Thanks for playing and giving feedback! I was going for more of a retro feel with the visuals. Obviously I'm not an artist, I'm primarily a programmer. Overall I'm pretty satisfied that the visuals came out even passable, given I only had 48 hours and managed to squeeze in sound effects and music :slight_smile:
drtizzle
04. Aug 2017 · 08:51 UTC
First of all: the music is awesome, some high-quality stuff right there! The graphics are cute and functional ;). The idea is really good, but I found myself shooting flares more than anything else. When I found a ghost I just walk up to it and kill it, there was not really some skill involved, unfortunately. With some tweaks this could be awesome!

Well done!
pklaschka
04. Aug 2017 · 15:19 UTC
Very cool game.

I have to agree with @drtizzle, though: Shooting flares is pretty much the primary thing I was doing…

All in all: Great job :thumbsup:!
pianoman373
04. Aug 2017 · 20:50 UTC
This is a really nice concept! Feels like minesweeper mixed with RPG. I think the tutorial didn't explain everything. For instance one of the abilities was skipped over and there were some new enemies that I didn't know the rules of. The art style is good but I had a hard time figuring out what some of the objects were (such as the ghosts' trails). Music was definitely great.

However the Linux port didn't work for me, I got this error: "error while loading shared libraries: libcurl.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" Which doesn't really make sense since I have libcurl installed. It isn't a big deal though since most people will just go with the web version anyway.

Overall I really like the concept and I think it was executed really well.
🎤 Wheffle
04. Aug 2017 · 21:36 UTC
@pianoman373 Thanks for testing that Linux build for me! Sorry it didn't end up working. Linux can be finicky, and it's especially frustrating since I don't have a machine of my own to do real tests on. I'll try poking around with it today if I have time. Thankfully, like you said, the web build exists.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I don't agree with the "no skill involved" claim, but I agree that the game isn't balanced in general. I tend to play more fast and loose, moving around and using my character's 1-hex trail sight to find monsters to conserve lamp fuel, so there are different ways to play it. But yes, there needs to be some tweaking and more mechanics added to get the game into a more interesting state. I think the concept was communicated well; I wasn't sure if the core idea would turn out well and I was happy to see it works at least a bit. And it's LD, so ain't that the way, right?

Not everything is explained in the game, which is a common problem for LD games. I think in some cases this is OK, it can be fun to try to learn by trial and error what a new enemy is up to, but in other cases it's not optimal to go that route and it just confuses the player. Again, it's LD, ain't that the way.

Next time hopefully I'll be a bit more organized and the my entry will come out a little bit better in these areas. Again, thanks for the feedback, the time you guys took to play the game and write detailed comments is very appreciated!
Daepso
05. Aug 2017 · 08:00 UTC
Super cool Game! Music is very nice. Your gameplay have some very interesting mechanics. For example, I really love that enemies let trail on the ground : if you keep track of these trails, It gives important clue on the enemies localization.
Turncoda
05. Aug 2017 · 17:06 UTC
It's an all-around solid entry, from the music to the art to the well-tuned gameplay, and I know that's hard to achieve in the compo, so great job! :clap:

Amazing work on the enemy AI, it felt fair and, once I got the hang of it, I felt like I could outsmart and outmaneuver them, which feels really good. I get the feeling that you iterated on the enemy behavior before settling on the final version. Or maybe you're just really experienced and you nailed the AI first try :wink:

My favorite thing to do in this game is to guess where the ghost might be based on the trail. It feels really good when I guess right. Sometimes, I won't be able to line up the shot because of the hex grid, and on the plus side that means I have to move *then* shoot, adding some uncertainty to the equation. But it feels like the hex grid limits the player's options arbitrarily because of the "blind spots" and I wonder if there are alternative ways to retain the same mechanics but in a less limiting movement system :thinking: For example, you could look at the turn-based combat in Transistor, where movement is on a continuous plane and you can use your abilities on enemies as long as they're in range. It would be interesting to see this system applied in game like yours where the information is limited and you have to take a literal shot in the dark.

Again, I'm really impressed with how playable this game is. Good to see you at it again @wheffle, hope to see you again next time!
Togis
06. Aug 2017 · 02:41 UTC
I uploaded my gameplay of this game on youtube, you can find it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvUygbL9Dts

Thanks for being part of the stream :)
edomiyamoto
07. Aug 2017 · 10:57 UTC
Hey very good ! It's fun and easy to get. Powers are nice, the pace is well balanced. Good entry :)