LudumData

Dungeon Drifter -- A roguelike racing game by Triceraptodactyl

[raw]
made by Triceraptodactyl for LD 41 (JAM)

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Introduction

For our second participation in LD we came up with the idea of a roguelike racing game,
with an art concept inspired by steampunk ("gearpunk" might describe this even better). It features:
- Only handmade textures / animations / music / gameplay - A fully random dungeon generator
- Multiple enemies and objectives in each room
- Slippery wheels and high movement speed

You steer a racing vehicle with slippy wheels in a narrow dungeon.
Go through the rooms, kill all the enemies and get to the flag without dying!

HOW TO PLAY:

You start out in a room and your objective is to get to the finish flag. Unfortunately the flag is somewhere in the maze and you don't know where. The flag is guarded by monsters. They will lock you in a room until you beat all of them or die (or collect all the coins). You always drive at full speed, and your brake is limited to 20 seconds for the whole game!

Hitting the wall will kill you instantly.

CONTROLS:

  • Use A and D or the arrow keys to move left or right
  • S to use the brake
  • W to go even faster (Post LD version)
  • Space or click to shoot
  • Escape or P to pause
  • R to quickly restart when you died (You’ll need it)

Be conservative about your brake time! 15 seconds is not much, and you might need a lot of it in coin rooms. Hitting the button for a very short amount of time will slow you down enough most of the time without eating up a lot of your brake time. Try to go around corners without it. Drifting will slow you down too, so use that instead if there is enough space.

CHANGELOG:

​- Fixed bugs when entering and leaving rooms - ​Fixed flickering doors - Fixed wall textures has wrong rotation - Fixed coins spawning too close to walls - New door texture (PostLD) - Fixed car front wheels rotation (PostLD)​​​​​​​ - Accelerate with W (PostLD) - A lot of balancing: Mob sizes, count, health, speed, etc. The game should be a lot easier now. Increased braking to 20 seconds (PostLD) - Randomized shooting mobs (PostLD) - Fixed car front wheels rotation (PostLD)​​​​​​​ - Accelerate with W (PostLD)​​

POST LUDUM DARE VERSION:

​A Post LD version of the game is available in the downloads section. It got a lot of balancing that we didn't have the time to include in the official release, so it is a lot easier.

Linux https://tkindanight.itch.io/dungeon-drifter
Windows https://tkindanight.itch.io/dungeon-drifter
HTML5 (web) https://tkindanight.itch.io/dungeon-drifter
Source code https://github.com/saibotk/Bildschirmflausch.LD41
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/dungeon-drifter-a-roguelike-racing-game

Ratings

Overall 887th 3.132⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 986th 2.816⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 708th 3.211⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 521th 3.684⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 636th 3.395⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 490th 3.132⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 965th 2⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 844th 2.971⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Given 22🗳️ 5🗨️

Feedback

honey
24. Apr 2018 · 10:33 UTC
I just couldn't get into it, I'm sorry =( Maybe some greater allowance in the begining, or hitting the walls not being instakill, just rises damage bar? Just any sort of "getting used to" level. As it is, it was too floaty and incomprehensible for me, so I put it down pretty soon :( But that's pretty subjective I guess, hope someone's gonna have great time with it :) But I very much like the steampunk-ish setting!
YinYin
24. Apr 2018 · 10:40 UTC
This felt *and* sounded much more like a boat than a steam punk car.

Instant death on touching walls was a bit too harsh for me, especially with things like this:
![hn9YbG9.png](///raw/44a/d/z/136cd.png)

You'd think the quick restart would remedy that, but you still have to drive quite a long distance after every restart before you get to a new room (and cannot actually speed up on long straights).

The projectile/target aspect was pretty tough too. Either larger targets or larger projectiles would have helped conserving brake resources.

Brake and health indicators on the UI elements were a bit too subtle for my liking as well. While beautiful, the art around them distracted from communicating what they are meant to display.

I eventually got by via holding down the fire button continuously and making generous use of the brake. But once that runs out I don't get much further. Slowly replenishing brake power would help a lot.
piegames
24. Apr 2018 · 14:21 UTC
@honey @YinYin Thank you both for your feedback. We tried to not instakill on walls, but due to technical problems it didn't feel good and we didn't have the time to fix it. But I at least made the rocks in the rooms do some damage and it is a lot better (they still hit hard though). The coins on the corner are a thing I had already fixed, but apparently I was off by one in the bounds :smiley:. Going faster in long rooms are a great idea and only four lines of code, so I added it. I also made most of the enemies bigger and less harmful and now even I can easily finish the game.

We tried out having the brake recharge, but I commented it out since it lead to a different play style than intended. The brake is meant to rescue you when you are getting too close to the walls. But when the brake was recharging, you could easily stop the car in the room and then kill all the mobs and it would recharge enough until the next room. I increased the time from 15 to 20 seconds, which is double the amount I usually need to finish the game. The only place where you really need the brake is to access badly placed coins.

The changes mentioned above are not published yet. We'll decide which of them are bug fixes/updates to the game and which belong to a Post-LD version soon and then upload it.
juicensalsa
24. Apr 2018 · 20:17 UTC
I really like the theme! The instadeath when wrecking is quite intense for me since the controls are a little floaty what with you drifting all the time.
I really love the idea though!
LeonLaci
25. Apr 2018 · 13:45 UTC
Interesting concept but I have some issues with it.
The camera is really zoomed in so it's hard to see.
The car movement is pretty wonky so it's hard to precisely aim.
chunkybrewster
25. Apr 2018 · 13:49 UTC
I like the idea of a racing rogue like and the game looks great. However instant death on touching wall, not being able to accelerate, and making braking a limited skill just really made the game frustrating instead of fun. The fun of a racing game is going fast and in this you are just trying to snail around carefully to avoid death. Now if you added contact damage that wasn't instant death that could also deal damage to enemies, there might be something to that, but then I'd still want full control over my car.
n00b
25. Apr 2018 · 14:06 UTC
I really like this game. I think many of the other reviewers are missing the point of this game. The instant death adds so much frustration but a challenging kind of frustration where you just want to keep playing. My only suggestion would be to maybe add some kind of checkpoint after you get so far and maybe 2 or 3 continues where you can start from a previous check point. Also a score would be nice to that way I could continue to try to get a better score. Really great game.
Zarkonnen
01. May 2018 · 10:16 UTC
I theoretically like it, but the instant death does mean I got frustrated and never really saw much of the game. The aesthetics are great though!
Dan Violet Sagmiller
03. May 2018 · 13:10 UTC
I agree the instant death was too aggressive. This was painful to play. Its a drifting game, it seems like mild scraping especially should be part of it. Recommendation, Change it to health. On Impact with a static item, take damage in accordance with the force of the impact. perhaps a full speed head on collision would do it, but not something where you glance off. I.e. every frame, check the angle, if the angle suddenly changes beyond a certain amount, then apply damage, let the angle difference determine the amount of damage.

I did like the feel of how the ship moves, but instant death is too much.
Rolle
03. May 2018 · 20:25 UTC
I like the idea and the drifting together with the random dungeons each time.
Some better handling/sliding of the car would add a lot. I believe there are already comments about the insta death and I agree to a point. But it shouldn't be too easy...I think it adds some challenge to the game. :)
I think a bigger problem is it lacks a "game" element, score, progressions or something like this.
LuckyFeathers
10. May 2018 · 18:20 UTC
Cool game, looks absolutely beautiful, and the music fits very well with the art. I agree with most of the people in the chat who say the insta-death when hitting a wall is too harsh. Generally the game is a bit too difficult for a game jam. Remember that you've had a whole weekend to practice, and we only get 5-10 minutes of practice. What I would do is to make the levels ordered instead of spawning in a random level. That way you can have one fairly easy level at the beginning to let people grasp the basics of the controls and the mechanics. Then you gradually make it more difficult. One of these difficulty modifiers could be insta-death walls. Just give some walls a different color and/or spikes or something, and the player will understand that he needs to avoid those. Lastly, I think a minimap would be really helpful here, especially when you die instantly upon contact with the walls.