SANDSTORM by Lucien Catonnet

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Objective
Go to the Safe Zone as quickly as possible to escape the sandstorm.
Race the storm, avoid obstacles, move from location to location to regain your health and reach the safe zone.
All timers indicated are the time left before the sandstorm devours you.
Controls
Move - Left Stick / A-D (or Q-D)
Throttle - Right Trigger / W (or Z)
Brake - Left Trigger / S
We hope you'll enjoy! :)
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Music & Sound - Freddy Clément https://twitter.com/DiFFtY
Programming (and Engine) - Lucien Catonnet https://twitter.com/LucienCatonnet
Visuals - Marjolaine Paz https://twitter.com/Linheha
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| Windows | https://lutopia.itch.io/sandstorm |
| Linux | https://lutopia.itch.io/sandstorm |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/sandstorm-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 455th | 3.517⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 174th | 3.7⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 824th | 2.95⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 928th | 3.048⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 348th | 3.806⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 280th | 3.433⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 212th | 3.607⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
Maybe the music not a so good pick, it get pretty repetitive but that's ok :)
I don't know if you can win without boosting every time, because my first play i lost because i didn't used boost every time.
Also the camera angle could be just a little higher since we can't really see if we will be able to avoid the obstacle or not.
And the camera could have smooth transitions when you boost/break, with maybe the camera that goes back and forth with particles effects to make a real sensation of speed :smile:
Anyway this is a really nice game i loved the overall theme !
However it seems weird to be on a band, you should have found a way to make it feel like you are in a huge desert, even if limited in movement on this band.
But overall the game is really cool and original ;)

In any case! I give it a try, and it's a very nice "race & evade" type of game with potential! It is missing a few things game-play wise to make it more interesting, but the core is there. The environment is very repetitive and static, and there does not really not seem to be any danger in going "slow" while racing. It would have been nice to see the effects of the "danger-zone" while racing and not only on the world map. The game itself reminds me quite a lot of Race The Sun, I would recommend checking it out, as it really does something special with the environment while you race.
The style itself is great! really like the low-polly look and solid colors of the ship and world. However while the 3d stuff is good, I think the background really should be improved. At the moment it's just a flat background and the issue with that is that you can FEEL it while racing. You lose a lot of the depth and the feeling of speed because there is no background parallax.
Also, while there are some great details to be found here (like the crash effect), one thing that annoyed me a bit was how jarring the speed-up felt, when i pressed the forward key camera made a instant jump! Do add some slight Tween effects between transitions like that, even if its just a millisecond, as sudden jumps just does not feel that great.
Other then that I think the danger-zone should be shown while racing, I do like your take on the theme! With the danger-zone and getting a choice of where to go next is a nice detail and creates a great logic to why you race.
Lastly the music was awesome! Also, the crash/hit sound was really spot on!
All in all, great job! Had fun playing it.
a lot of things could be improved gameplay-wise, but overall its a solid entry for a jam game, gg all !
The overarching 'select next destination' screen gives it just enough of a twist that it isn't just one of those 'avoid the blocks' type things. Bit of a StarFox vibe there :-)
Besides the technical issues (which I won't bore you with, but the whole process took quite a while), it was some time before I realised that the seconds displayed aren't how long you're supposed to survive, but how long your next leg of the journey can maximally be. So at first I always selected the lower numbers! I was confused as to why I died almost every time, despite boosting all the time and surviving those few seconds. Once I realised what was really going on, it became quite a lot more fun and I got to the end after just a few tries (b.t.w: 'congratulations' is a word that's always pluralised in English).
All in all, it (and it's different parts) feel(s) quite cohesive, and really pulls you in. A neat accomplishment.
There are a few (other) minor issues I noticed:
- You can click through too quickly at game over, making the process even more confusing (see above). When I noticed this in my own game a few LDs back, I made it so that a key doesn't count if it wasn't pressed in the current 'Room'.
- You can't exit the game from _within_ the game. I know we all like to have people play our games, but this is a bit much :-)
- My controller wasn't supported, even though it mentioned 'LT'/'RT' buttons :-(
P.S. So, Vulkan: How's that working out for you? Is the engine open source?
Sadly the input part of the engine isn't advanced enough yet to allow correct configuration for multiple controllers, so I decided to support X360 pads only (it's on my todo list to improve this aspect).
The engine is open source, it's actually even public domain, here's a [link](https://github.com/Lyatus/L) if you want to check it out!
Vulkan has been pretty great so far, I did the switch quite recently (about two months ago), mostly because of threading reasons (GL was a pain). To be honest my biggest regret about Vulkan is that there is no WebVulkan (which _kinda_ makes sense), therefore no web build for games :/ Otherwise everything is really great!
The flying feels great and fluid. The zoom could be bit more slower. Because the jump from normal speed to high speed was a bit too fast.
Overall a good game. :D
Strange, my controller _is_ an XBOX360 one... err, nevermind... After trying again I see I missed the huge _'press START'_ prompt (somehow??) It's even nicer with a controller!