Lumi by AwfulMedia

[raw]
made by AwfulMedia for LD34 (COMPO)
Lumi is what I come up with when I have 12 hours to brainstorm, design, and code. I really wanted to get a game out this weekend, I just didn't have that much time.

Control an Entity of Energy that can jump between Light and Dark energies using the left and right mouse button (2 Button Controls!), respectively. All you have to do is match your entity's energy to that of the Beams of Energy that are flowing at you.

For each beam you pass, you gain a point. I created a goal system that gives you little "achievements" along the way to indicate how you are doing. Every now and then, based on your current score, the beams will get a boost of energy, making the game more difficult as time goes on. The game GROWS in difficulty, if you will.

The game is pretty easy by default, but I added a difficulty setting in the Options menu so you can adjust it as you please. I feel after hours of playing with it that the highest difficulty isn't quit hard enough, but I would like to know what you guys think.

What's the highest score you can get? How far can you get on the highest difficulty?

Controls:
LMB to switch to Light
RMB to switch to Dark

Tools:
Unity 5.3
Visual Studio 2015
Audacity
Audiotool.com
Bfxr.net
Photoshop CC
Illustrator CC

Ratings

Coolness 35% 1888
Overall 3.38 363
Audio 2.94 345
Fun 3.24 412
Graphics 3.18 437
Innovation 2.67 745
Mood 3.20 325
Theme 3.50 664

Feedback

pianoman373
14. Dec 2015 · 05:13 UTC
Well done. I feel like there should be a bit more margin on the beams though.
🎤 AwfulMedia
14. Dec 2015 · 05:18 UTC
Hmm, you're probably right. I think it was a case of it getting too easy for me as development went on so I kept lowering the spacing.
logorrhea
14. Dec 2015 · 05:18 UTC
Fun game, especially for such a time constraint. I'm really impressed with the quality of your UI!
EwChap
14. Dec 2015 · 05:22 UTC
Fun and straightforward concept. I like your background music as well, I wish it looped a bit cleaner but it had the right feel for the mood of your game.
tjxx
14. Dec 2015 · 05:25 UTC
Very nice! The graphics were really nice.
Elenesski
14. Dec 2015 · 07:43 UTC
Great idea. Simple. Good audio. I found random easier than classic. Easy to mess up, but easy to try again.
mukult
14. Dec 2015 · 09:22 UTC
Nice game overall..
Good music, sfx and simple gameplay.
Like it! :)
rjhelms
14. Dec 2015 · 20:45 UTC
Lots of fun. I could see this working well as a mobile game, and it also wouldn't be out of place as a classic arcade game. Good stuff!
deadpixelsociety
15. Dec 2015 · 00:12 UTC
This was pretty cool! My two pain points are the margin of error on alternating my color vs the beam felt a little too tight at times, and I wish that the pattern of the incoming beams changed up some. Even if you had 'chunks' of patterns that fed in randomly would change the dynamic a lot over just alternating colors. Feel like this game has some potential to it. Almost felt like it was on the verge of wanting to be a rhythm game.
🎤 AwfulMedia
15. Dec 2015 · 00:21 UTC
There's definitely room for improvement when it comes to tweaking collision boxes, beam margins, and speeds. I haven't considered the idea of patterns.

I know that "Random" at times spits out too many of the same beams, I'm for sure going to handle it differently as I continue development.

The idea actually started off as a rhythm game, but I just didn't have the time to implement what I had in mind.

Thanks for the constructive criticism, deadpixelsociety!
MaulUdder
15. Dec 2015 · 14:44 UTC
"Try not to suck" Thanks for those helpful distracting messages :D. Agree about making the margins a bit bigger, I'm already so bad at these reaction games as-is :).

OS X version didn't work without proper permissions on the binary. Here's a fixed version:
http://files.benvista.com/ludumdare/34/Lumi-v021-OSX-AwfulMedia.app.zip
(can make it .rar if you insist. But at least .zip works OOTB)

And here's the virus scan analysis (please do compare the files yourself as well) :
https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/13ba9c8c8d384b14244f5762543667914ebbcc15376efb62fb45d7abcbc41964/analysis/1450189520/
🎤 AwfulMedia
15. Dec 2015 · 16:47 UTC
Aha, the messages were meant to make you try to read them. I just hope they didn't turn out to be too much of a problem.

Thanks for fixing my OS X version. I haven't worked on a Mac in awhile and wasn't thinking about which archive format would be best. Thanks for that!
tanjent
16. Dec 2015 · 19:04 UTC
Simple game and idea. I think it is actually too difficult right from the start. I died almost instantly, and often when I had just passed a beam, it was very hard to know when you had "passed" it. My best was like 8 beams :) Reading the blurb about energy I was trying to charge my cloud and matching the width of the beams, not really sure if that was intended? Or is it just a binary pass/fail?
🎤 AwfulMedia
16. Dec 2015 · 21:42 UTC
It's just a pass/fail system. I have a feeling based on some of the comments that the difficulty is defaulting higher than I meant for it to. The difficulty level can be changed in the Options menu, though.

The hit boxes for both the entity and the beams are quite a bit smaller than the sprites as well.
JamesMowery
21. Dec 2015 · 08:09 UTC
Pretty nice attempt, though I wish there was a bit more sense of success. Or maybe some sound would have really made this game very good — having the beat match when the "energy" flows through you.