Combat Hell by antonuklein

[raw]
made by antonuklein for LD34 (COMPO)
First entry into a game jam and first game to be properly completed as well. I'm well aware that the controls are not that great, yet it's fully playable if you can figure out how to cleverly dodge the enemies (hint: they're clever, but not complicated).

This is controlled with the two mouse buttons (and if you want to shut off the music, hit M). That's it; qualified for the Two Button Controls theme. How does it fit into growth? *shrug* You grow in power and your wallet grows if you play well? That's as close as I can get.

EDIT: No updates to the game, I just want to let everyone know that while I'm aware the balance becomes extremely difficult at Notoriety 30 and the amount of enemies seems simple, there's 8 types of foes, all using unique sprites and weapon patterns. Sadly, there's not a lot you can make that works great in 48 hours, so sorry for the balance. Again, Windows binary is recommended since it has better graphics, performance, and full screen, and... yeah, that's about it.

Ratings

Coolness 82% 2
Overall 3.41 339
Fun 3.63 159
Graphics 3.18 437
Humor 3.21 155
Innovation 2.57 788
Mood 3.04 426
Theme 3.34 755

Feedback

馃帳 antonuklein
14. Dec 2015 路 15:15 UTC
Also guys report any bugs to me if you find them. I also opted out of the music (and humor as it's inapplicable), because even though the recordings are mine, the song's origin is from Gyruss's rendition of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
kiiro94
14. Dec 2015 路 15:28 UTC
Awesome! Great graphics and gameplay!
One of the best LD34 entries so far
laFunk
14. Dec 2015 路 15:29 UTC
Nice work! It's fun and has nice aesthetics. I actually found it pretty humorous, nice dialogues :)
Beep2Bleep
14. Dec 2015 路 15:31 UTC
Fun game, good gameplay loop of losing half your coins, very neat game. Plays well could use some more combat and power up variety but overall fun game.
Obvious Industries
14. Dec 2015 路 15:33 UTC
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=21552

There is a shop in there ;) but hey...it was fun to play anyway. Just a bit tricky that you basically have to hold the two buttons down ALL the time
chriiis88
14. Dec 2015 路 15:36 UTC
Simple and fun but could use some landscape below the planes to spice up the mood.
Jeroenimoo0
14. Dec 2015 路 15:38 UTC
Hahahha, fun game, reminds me of luftrausers. The controls where nice and the fx was good. Also some jokes in there. Unfortunetly you have humor rating disabled. Good game!
馃帳 antonuklein
14. Dec 2015 路 16:06 UTC
Wait, people actually find my text funny? Hold on, bringing Humor back up then.
Jimbly
14. Dec 2015 路 16:14 UTC
Fun game! I seem to have difficultly getting more than around $200 before dying, back to $100, then back to $200 and dying again =). Hard mode is probably not for me anyway...
馃帳 antonuklein
14. Dec 2015 路 16:44 UTC
Hard mode is literally sadism.

Second update: I've added in a Flash port of the game to Newgrounds, so if you want to play it without downloading, feel free! Note that performance issues may arise and quality is lower than the standalone version.
amras0000
14. Dec 2015 路 16:58 UTC
The music was a fair bit grating. Tocatta and Fugue in D is much quicker, so hearing the slowed down and un-quantized version on primitive synths was...unpleasant. The graphics are nice, with the scanlines and all that. I feel like the cash you get per plane shot down is a bit small, takes a long time to get to the $1000 you need, and the game doesn't have enough content to make it enjoyable.

Ramming other planes seemed like an effective strategy. Not sure if that was intended, but it was rather fun to do.
Also, seems like the bullets despawn when they go off screen, even though there might be enemies there?

As an improvement, I'd recommend that powerups spawn a lot more often (think several weapon changes per minute) your plane get much faster movement, and have the whole game zoomed out a lot more (larger playing space, smaller planes). There wasn't really enough room to dodge properly and the whole thing felt sluggish and heavy.
馃帳 antonuklein
14. Dec 2015 路 17:44 UTC
amras, all of those are extremely valid issues I've had during development. Especially the music one, hence I added in a mute button (hit M).

I originally had the playfield be able to be moved around, yet I had issues rendering the mouse properly (it tended to move wherever it wanted), which fucked with the physics. Overall, the balance of enemies health is also quite broken as well, since they're too tanky and you don't really have any power to stop them. Honestly, I actually want to remake this for a higher res with better quality... everything, really. Movement to be less sluggish, the music to not be grating, the shop to be fleshed out and less unfair (literally was running out of time when I was making it), more enemy types, enemies to have patterns... also the bullet thing was some bad optimization on my part, as I had huge slowdown without it since my game was made on a 1.4GHz AMD laptop, and I tried to keep it 60 FPS as much as possible.
fluidvolt
14. Dec 2015 路 20:17 UTC
Love the scanline raster look. The gameplay was interesting too -- trying to skid to your next location while rotating and shooting a target behind you feels good. And the shopkeep got a laugh out of me!
jcmonkey
14. Dec 2015 路 23:24 UTC
the game was enjoyable, though the shots lagged behind the mouse cursor a bit, and when i was panning to shoot a enemy it wouldnt catch up with it.
arzi
14. Dec 2015 路 23:25 UTC
Nice controls, though a bit difficult with a touchpad :D
esayitch
15. Dec 2015 路 03:36 UTC
Excellent entry, I mean the only thing that can be asked more of this is to have more enemy types + some actual upgrades at the shop :X Everything else is very top notch.

Good job, good luck!
madjackmcmad
15. Dec 2015 路 18:18 UTC
Pew pew pew! Good show.
chaomoon
15. Dec 2015 路 18:32 UTC
pretty cool game. it's funny, the controls feel natural, and it's pretty fun to kill the enemies. the enemies do get boring after a while though, and eventually it just becomes way too much to handle.
silkworm_sweatshop
15. Dec 2015 路 22:11 UTC
Simple, fun arcade-like game. The sprite differences in the enemies might by too subtle though. Maybe throw some more color in there?
Fathom
16. Dec 2015 路 00:12 UTC
This was super fun. The gameplay was very solid - you did a really good job making the "two button" controls feel like a strength rather than a limitation.

Great work!
local306
16. Dec 2015 路 16:33 UTC
Fun and simple game. I don't know why, but I loved the attention to detail for the cursor and how it changed with shoot, navigate, and the combination of both.
uthamon
16. Dec 2015 路 22:29 UTC
Fun, cool-looking game, humor was spot-on. Congrats.
tantumgames
17. Dec 2015 路 01:54 UTC
Good funny game. Nice gameplay.
x92rwzb
17. Dec 2015 路 18:14 UTC
+ Creative idea.
+ Fun gameplay.

- Graphics could be better.
MaulUdder
17. Dec 2015 路 20:09 UTC
Awesome game already! Once I turned off the accidentally enabled hard mode on first start, it actually became fun :). Would be nice if the enemies weren't always going to hit you if you don't move. Say hi to that weirdo shopkeeper from me :).
danidre14
17. Dec 2015 路 21:26 UTC
Pretty cool mechanics, although I could never get used to them.

No new objectives arose, so it became less fun as you progressed, maybe you could work on adding more gameplay.
NirabazGAMES
17. Dec 2015 路 21:35 UTC
awesome simple game. like it
馃帳 antonuklein
17. Dec 2015 路 23:54 UTC
Maul, but hard mode is turned off by default?

Danidre, I would totally have added other objectives, but time was my biggest issue.
Big Cow
18. Dec 2015 路 12:43 UTC
This was really fun and addictive. Shotgun upgrade was harder to use than machine gun tho! I thought you got the graphics and movement just right. Very nostalgic feel especially the low-bit noises and music. Well done.
TomenLuca
19. Dec 2015 路 17:50 UTC
The graphics and audio make this game feel good. I liked it!
Acerio
22. Dec 2015 路 05:19 UTC
Funny game if you ask me. I liked the sloppy minimalistic graphics, and the funny dialogues. Great game!
Jwatt
22. Dec 2015 路 05:25 UTC
This could scale quite a bit faster, so that one could see the different types of enemies and test out the shot types with less tedium. The cash system is a decent start.

Reeaally not a fan of the audio. Brings back PC Speaker flashbacks in a bad way.
eruiz00
26. Dec 2015 路 19:46 UTC
Hey simple idea but fun. liked the art.
torcado194
31. Dec 2015 路 09:43 UTC
interesting game. i wouldve gone further but it was super frustrating to play because of the controls, since i cant right click and left click at the same time. also you cant click or more the mouse outside of the window which was annoying. other than that it was a charming game with cool art and gameplay! nice job