Shutdown by mahalis

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

cover image

A little game about a struggle for survival in the depths of one of those amazing “computer” things, featuring:

  • colors!
  • polygons!
  • music!

Built in 48 hours with LÖVE (the game engine), love (the emotion), Shadertoy, Photoshop, and GarageBand.

How to play: Eat stuff! Consume your fellow denizens of the digital world. Aim with your mouse, and jump by pressing Space or clicking. Each jump costs power, and power drains over time, but eating stuff will give you more power and more time. The world will start to fade into obscurity as you run out, but don’t despair—if you can eat something before it runs out completely, you can scramble your way right back up again.

Here’s a video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC1w0zlwKg4

Ratings

Overall 108th 3.739⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 305th 3.208⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 310th 3.13⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 187th 3.75⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 53th 4.125⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Audio 180th 3.261⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 112th 3.522⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 22🗳️ 18🗨️

Feedback

Saithir
31. Jul 2017 · 15:38 UTC
A pretty nice distraction I guess. Would work pretty well as a mobile game I think. Once I got the hang of it i did about 700 points. The dimming screen when low on power and ability to still recover was fun.

Nitpicks:

- that little bit of music was annoying after a while
- at start I thought I was to avoid the differently colored polygons
- maybe some challenge other than just the power running out?
maxr00
01. Aug 2017 · 04:31 UTC
Pretty game! Nice beats too
nbitsstudio
01. Aug 2017 · 05:13 UTC
It's a cool game. I like it the difficulty progression, very smooth.. and the art is nice. If you add some modes with different challenges, you could launch on smartphones
Jupiter_Hadley
01. Aug 2017 · 10:29 UTC
Lovely graphics! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qv2KH3BQm4
MianaGames
04. Aug 2017 · 23:02 UTC
I love your game. Congrats.
pkenney
06. Aug 2017 · 17:47 UTC
The look of the whole thing is awesome! Great work with the shaders and the color selection.

I liked the core mechanic as well. There were some interesting tradeoffs between waiting for the right jump vs trying to not fall too far down the screen.

I felt a little un-present in the world of the game though, because there was no feedback to what I did. I would have preferred sound effects vs music if there was only time for one, I suppose.

But a nice entry here with super-slick look and a cool mechanic that's well grounded in the theme... great job!
grena
06. Aug 2017 · 18:15 UTC
Wow, really nice look! I came thanks to your post mortem on effects :)
The concept is interesting, the game is really fluid and beautiful, really nice done on those effects!
Could have been nice to have some sound effects when you pick up these weird things, it would have bring a nice feedback.

Things that could be improved in my point of view:
- Add audio effects!
- Maybe introducing new elements (things you DON'T have to pickup for example, some abilities or super pickup items that boost your speed, or I don't know)

In a nutshell, a nice small game, very polished, fluid and visually innovative :)
Devastus
06. Aug 2017 · 19:45 UTC
It's a nice little game, short and efficient. Like the animated glowing trippy colours of the polygons, it's really missing SFX for picking up stuff though. There would be room for more elements as said above, game-altering pickups and the like.

For what it is, it's very polished. Well done!
designernap
06. Aug 2017 · 20:47 UTC
Great fun little game with solid presentation. Good work!
Huitre
07. Aug 2017 · 01:29 UTC
Nice little game, as others have said, would be cool on a mobile device, dunno if LÖVE allows that. Maybe I'll try to understand your shaders math when I find the time!
SaraMartins
07. Aug 2017 · 02:45 UTC
OMG I just loved your game! Loved the polygons and colours, the whole generated feeling it had, the cool groovy music and the neons, it was just amazing and a nice fit to the theme. Congratulations!
🎤 mahalis
07. Aug 2017 · 04:21 UTC
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I agree it could use some more gameplay variety—I think I focused a bit too much on visual polish. Wasn’t sure whether to add sounds for jumping / eating things / etc., since I thought it might clash with the music, but that probably would have been a good idea too. Next time!
pilly
07. Aug 2017 · 05:27 UTC
Enjoyed playing this! It's uncommon to see this level of polish in a compo entry, so that definitely made it stand out. Sound effects would've helped solidify the mood, but the music was dang good on its own. Kudos!
pcmaster
07. Aug 2017 · 09:24 UTC
Very polished and nice. LÖVE it! Good job. Now go port this to phones and make millions! :D
RattyBloom40
07. Aug 2017 · 13:13 UTC
Hi there, read your article on shaders and it all went over my head. However, I wanted to try your game out after seeing how cool the character looks. Love the look and feel, controls are tight. My only complaint is the repetitive music and the eerie lack of sound effects (which I'm pretty sure you weren't going for). All-in-all, great game. Good job, I think your game will do well.
Antti Haavikko
07. Aug 2017 · 13:39 UTC
Wow, you got some serious use out of that "simple" shader. I really need to get into the world of writing shaders.

![844.png](///raw/1e4/3/z/8bfa.png)

The game itself was cool. Pretty simple but cool. It could quite easily be beefed up by adding a more interesting scoring system (multipliers and such) and an actual difficulty curve. Right now it's pretty much just go until you get unlucky with the enemy spawns.

Some other stuff that could be added to make it more interesting:

- Sound effects
- Pickups with temporary powerups (for example: speed boost, homing ability, spawn increase etc)
- Enemy variety (not just visually) like having a boss type enemies which could have different numbers (based on the difficulty of the enemy) of random abilities.
Their abilities could be something like a shield that protects them from one direction, requiring more than one hit etc
- Some kind of character progression which would keep the players interested in trying again and again
FelixMcFelix
07. Aug 2017 · 16:26 UTC
Pretty neat game, with some nice relaxing music and wonderful visual effects. For some reason I had it in my head that the purple programs would harm me if I ate them (colour-coding in other games?), but I soon realised you were meant to eat everything. :smile:

Keep it up!
Dustyroom
09. Aug 2017 · 01:40 UTC
very nice game, congrats! the only problem I had is thinking I should collect the blue objects and avoid the red ones