Blitztanz by haette

[raw]
made by haette for LD 39 (JAM)

logo.png

A twinstick-style game about clotheslining enemies with an electrified grappling hook. Rated #2 Safest Dance in the world!

Move with arrows or WASD.

Left-click fires the hook, stealing energy and speed from enemies.

Right-click activates the lightning chain, frying everything between you and whatever you've hooked.

Both your ship's shields and the lightning chain draw from the same energy pool, so balance your time between draining and zapping.

Blitztanz 3.png

Blitztanz 5.png

Ratings

Overall 107th 3.889⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Fun 164th 3.611⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 29th 4.111⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Theme 87th 4.056⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 536th 3.222⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Audio 454th 2.833⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 20🗳️ 12🗨️

Feedback

Artur Hawkwing
01. Aug 2017 · 04:50 UTC
Very fun and creative game! Simple to play, but very challenging!! Great job
Angela He
01. Aug 2017 · 20:43 UTC
I like how the white blocks are what saves you and kills you. The gameover screen made me laugh. It was pretty fun!! My only recommendation is to make it progressively more difficult as time goes on.
🎤 haette
01. Aug 2017 · 22:00 UTC
There is a difficulty curve, it's just reeeeally slow in the beginning. It suddenly gets real crowded right around the two minute mark.
jwin
02. Aug 2017 · 01:48 UTC
Cool mechanic! I really liked rounding up a bunch of bad guys then taking them out with one big spin around.
phantom-lab
02. Aug 2017 · 05:33 UTC
Very, very cleverly designed mechanic!
I am literally jealous ;)
hndmrsh
03. Aug 2017 · 06:33 UTC
I really love this game! It's super cool, great use of balance as a mechanic. One little thing I wasn't super keen on was the requirement of having a full power meter before being able to use the lightning chain – I thought this made the game a little bit too hard. Think the game is hard enough without that restraint, especially as the power meter is also your life meter – it also adds the extra challenge of deciding when to spend your life to attack.
MickeyG
04. Aug 2017 · 15:39 UTC
Really good game! I like that you have your movement speed up but also get restricted whilst latched on to an enemy, it adds extra layers to the gameplay like chosing the best time to heal or choosing how to escape an enemy hoard! The right click a little difficult to figure out at the start, that tutorial would have been a really great addition if you'd finished it!

I guess with arcade style games like this, it helps to have really snappy controls or awesome game feel. The explosion sounds and effects are really nice in this regard but maybe the hook could shoot out and reel in a little faster or you could add a little camera shake to the right click attack and see if that feels better.

I don't have much to say to be honest, most of what this game needs is polish on the details! Gr8 game m8! U did gud!
🎤 haette
04. Aug 2017 · 19:05 UTC
Totally agreed, tutorial and screenshake were top of the list if I had extra time. And I agree on the hook being a little slow, reeling it in while running away feels kinda lame.

hndmrsh, the lightning chain should work any time the hook is stuck to a wall or enemy, I don't check for full health. It's possible the hook bugged out for you somehow, it's a huge spaghetti mess and I'm not 100% sure that it's bug-free.

Thanks for playing, everyone!
mechanicallife
05. Aug 2017 · 21:35 UTC
I really enjoyed playing this. At first I was quite confused about what to do, however once I got the basics down I started to have some great fun!
It gets a bit crazy with how many enemies spawn after a while!

Great stuff!
pklaschka
05. Aug 2017 · 22:35 UTC
**Great work :thumbsup:!**

I really liked the concept of it. You really took the theme and went into a direction I wouldn't have expected a game to go with this theme.

Also, the implementation rounded everything of.

One little thing: Although the power level meters are nice, but I didn't have the time to look over to them while playing as your game has a very high pace, which meant I just tried to balance it by intuition. Maybe, some more feedback would have been nice (colors getting less saturated or something like that).

**All in all: a great game, much fun to play, so: Great work, thanks for sharing it :thumbsup:!**
🎤 haette
05. Aug 2017 · 23:09 UTC
In retrospect, making the meters the same color as the walls and "charging" glow wasn't the best idea. I wanted to keep them from blocking the player's vision, but forgot that that means they need to be readable from the corner of your eye. I never even considered that, thanks!
pilly
06. Aug 2017 · 00:04 UTC
I love the mechanic, super creative and lots of fun too. The feeling of being electrified and zapping all the enemies was super satisfying. Music would've been nice, but overall I was impressed. Would love to see this expanded upon!
Russell Ng
06. Aug 2017 · 01:48 UTC
The tethering feels great. Good job. Feels really good destroying enemies while tethered.
foxor
06. Aug 2017 · 02:58 UTC
Very solid. Great theme, great mechanics. It feels super fun to kill enemies.

Only shame is that the enemies are cubes! Also, I don't think the grapple needs to shoot so slow.
minimumentropy
06. Aug 2017 · 03:49 UTC
This was really fun once I got the hang of it!
elmismopancho
08. Aug 2017 · 01:18 UTC
Cool game! loved the mechanic, very original. Well done.
LegalSoul
08. Aug 2017 · 13:50 UTC
Seems too easy in the beginning but after 2 minutes everything changes and you understand the whole point! Also would be cool to add some chain multi explosions maybe (just a suggestion!).
The grapple gameplay feels fluid and fun.
Rahtainka
08. Aug 2017 · 17:20 UTC
Nice little game. It would be good to have something like poweups to get a short time another weapon to bring more variety to the game. And the sound is annoing. Some backgroundmusic would be nice too.
I like the playermovement and the controls. Well done.
RattyBloom40
08. Aug 2017 · 19:21 UTC
Loved the idea, very engaging