Space Invasion by Nam Nguyen

Space is being collapsed, and a little boxy guy goes on a quest to save humanity from space invasion by collecting 7 colored orbs. Along the way, he will experience a minimalistic adventurous Ori-inspired environment, opening mysterious treasures and laughing at some flat jokes. The longer he goes on the journey, the stronger he is. Eventually he will have the power to manipulate space and reclaim space.
Will he be able to conquer the space? Let's find out!
If not, there is always a skip level button!
* DISCLAIMER: Here is the progress of the game, skip level if you want to. Its important to me that you get to the end because the boss level is the most fun xD.


Space Invasion features: - Destructible terrain - Interactive tutorial with dynamic camera work - 7 levels of replay-able difficult platforming and a boss level - Control with ADW/arrow keys and mouse - My dry sense of humor
Game is made in 72 hours by me, except for sound effects and music.
My name is Nam Nguyen, this is my blog where I try to recreate one tutorial a day: https://www.tutorialdonedaily.com/
Leave a comment if you have beaten all the levels :smile:



Update log - Version 1.0: Fix bugs text overlapping and falling through floor - Version 1.1: Cut off waiting time between scene and allows jumping with space. - Finally fixed the OUT OF MEMORY bug on WebGL.
Version 1.0 is the original with small bug fixed (allowed by LD rules), version 1.1 I did change a bi the level lost UI and add space bar to jump. These are according to the complaints I got. If you can accept the changes in 1.1, feel free to use that. Web build is version 1.1.
Space Invasion Any% Speedrun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jM-nug2dGY
| Windows | https://southocean.itch.io/space-invasion |
| Other (web) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jM-nug2dGY |
| HTML5 (web) | https://southocean.itch.io/space-invasion |
| Source code | https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EQjgIHimVWfCPgOwkU17F3WHfWmLldru |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/space-invasion |
Ratings
| Overall | 96th | 3.952⭐ | 211🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 61th | 3.925⭐ | 209🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 151th | 3.734⭐ | 209🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 125th | 4.072⭐ | 209🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 452th | 3.639⭐ | 211🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 139th | 3.596⭐ | 199🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 180th | 3.661⭐ | 204🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 234🗳️ | 296🗨️ |
Great game, good job mate!:)
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Out of memory. If you are the developer of this content, try allocating more memory to your WebGL build in the WebGL player settings.
```
@adroitconceptions I will fix it, thank you for reporting!!
* precise platforming + forced short time => :( for me not sure if it was the webGL or the game in general or me... but some of the levels were really hard.
* Interesting use of the 'create stuff' gun... was odd that it only worked when shooting the outer walls and nothing else.
* the spikes being the same color as everything else did make it hard to tell what was a spike a few times here and there.
* the skip level didn't seem to work on every level... sometimes it just reloaded the current one.
Wait what? You are the guy writing 12 games in 12 weeks? The game Rewind was yours right? I remember checking out your blog and feeling much inspired by it. Thanks!
The humour is just great. Rarely seen in games anymore :P
I really enjoyed the Tutorial level. The addition of a skip level option is nice, but I did click it twice thinking it was a respawn button. The boss level was fairly difficult and it seemed to go from a 4 difficulty to a 10.
@aaranos Yes I understand. That's the difference between programmer art and Unity's particle system haha. The boss level used to be too easy so I tried to make it harder. I guess I went a bit overboard :(
I think waiting to revive after being killed is kind of unnecessary. In fact you might be encouraging the use of skip level button because you get back into game much faster pushing it. You could invert this, so that when you die you get button to restart instantly and if you wait 3 seconds you get to skip the level.
Music is good on it's own, but I don't think it quite fits the games atmosphere. It feels too pumpy somehow. Something calmer might go better. Otherwise sound effects are okay. Currently the music just dominates the audio too much.
Texts in the later levels were sometimes out of screen.
I think the unique mechanics makes this game stand out more than it would normally do. Pretty solid entry.
@hyprgloo thanks to point out, yes I was basically putting all the best thing I could to one game, no matter how they are related to each other haha
@extrone I wasnt happy with the timing too, it still feel unintuitive
@mortus Noted! Poor design choice T_T
@keppu thank you very much for all the feedback! I was really torn with the timing on the menu, kept going back and forth. I didn't think of what you suggested though, but maybe the best option is to display skip button right in the game when player has died some time. That adds more to the troll as well as I could display it with chance, so if you dont skip, you dont know when you can haha. Again, your feedback is very very valuable to me, thanks!
PS: Not a cheater
So yeah all in all, a very solid LD entry, one of the top ones I've tried out so far ! Keep it up !
-> Be careful about teaching through death
-> Momentum in movement
-> Feedback for when I am in a state that allows me to wall jump
-> In a training zone, do not remove text that is teaching me until, if you decide to remove it, I have performed the act properly.
-> Watch your difficulty level, I would tone it back already by about 30% remember that any time you add a time limit or create pressure on the player, it increases the difficaulty of any task 10 fold
@tontonpizza yeah intended to be precise jumping, but I learned the hard way that you have a false assumption about the difficuly of game levels as you play it over and over again during testing
@tungunity96 that was a poor design choice, but I learn from it. Thanks for the feedback! Growing from everthing else if very doable, but I will need more time to implement it, possible for an after jam :smile:
Something that could make this even cooler is if you add some time trial challenge, maybe high score list fastest times on each level.
Fun and challenging with an interesting mechanic.
Great job!
Here is my playthrough:
https://youtu.be/F6VSVeX3aO0

And the humour of the tutorial ahah
@jamesolivermusic Im glad you find it helpful, it was helpful for me too. One of the first thing I added to the game. I think all the games in game jams should have that button
@jimdarkwind thank you Jim, I am all for interactive tutorials. I have seen some other entries this LD with great tutorials as well. Idk about you but Im the kind of player who skips totally the tutorial if possible haha
Really nice music, level design, aesthetics, good jokes, haha, good job!
Congratulations!
Thank you for your game, Nam!
I played through the webgl version because I had no choice (on a business trip and I can't run executables on my company laptop) and webgl crashed for me just before my final boss :(
(got an out of memory problem)
But I really enjoyed playing the game. The graphics were simple but the cool particle effects and camera movement made it look really good.
@serious07 thank you for giving it a try! xD
@matank Im very sorry that you experienced that. If you think of playing again, here is the cheat button to pass the level automatically: just press K xD. Thank you very much for playing the game!
Fell through the floor in the boss stage once, that was weird. Just hit Restart and tried again.
Beat the boss stage. And then I definitely wasn't a cheater at the "end". :) This was a BLAST. I had fun.
I like the growing black stuff :)
Gameplay and controls felt good!
Only downside is the text that vanishes quite fast. I was not able to read everything, but that's only a minor. Good job!
@yayapipi thank you very much! I tried my best, I was very satisfied with the camera movement as well. Glad you have gone far enough to get the gun xD
Also a shorthop and a less heavy character would be great.
@yayapipi hahaha I made the right choice then :joy:
One of my favorite games for now :)
@gaming-night I appreciate it. I was trying to go for a similar kind of humor to your game, but it definitely was not as epic haha
At this point I thank Elysia for showing you the game in the stream.
I wish you success!
The humour was also funnier than you gave it credit for. The dynamic camerawork was actually really smooth and polished, as was the entire experience really, I very much enjoyed it, and managed not to skip any levels, woo!
Really liked the ability to shape the darkness that was enclosing, though it did take some getting used to and was a bit finnicky, but that was certainly not a deal breaker. Sound was effective. This was just a very polished and complete experience that didn't feel like an LD entry at all. Besides the finnicky gun controls, the only complaint I would have would be that there wasn't enough of it! (though there was plenty :) ) By which I mean you should definitely expand this! Thank you for hanging out on stream!
Perfect the 'Tutorial System', the gameplay was really cool and that gun really surprised me! Really innovative.. Nice solid entry.
@neuralcoder noted, I know it was not handy too but didn't have time to implement a proper tool tip system. Thank you for playing and leaving feedback, I will fix that in the post-jam version.
@n-feofentov yes I LOVE destruction! glad you enjoy destroying stuffs too
@pickens-inc watching you play on the stream was everything, thank you again for playing and all the support! I will try to keep it up and expanding!
@designernap haha yeah I agree with that, assuming that you measure the difficulty by the number of deaths. I wanted to encourage people to get to the end so things start to be less difficult after introducing the second mechanic. I really appreciate the feedback and will try to balance between the levels. Thank you for playing!
@ryusui Hmm I don't know which scrolling you mean because I didn't have any scrolling in the game. I get some people reported about the text being cut off too, I wonder if you were playing not in full screen? because WebGL does not show all the screen and cut off the border. Also you don't have to fire it as fast as possible actually, the space may look scary closing in but you will never die if you fire your way out, don't need to clean everything on the screen (impossible anyway). I guess you're not a fan of destruction xD. But honestly I really appreciate you playing that far, many quit even before they have the gun T_T.
@stroe-andrew Im glad you like the game and leave a feedback. It means a lot to me!
@honey I totally understand - now. When I was developing I thought people would use that, but when I watch the stream I learned the exact lesson you said. People don't use that. I get a mixture of feedback about the difficult curve too, I guess it's very much based on personal skill and taste. But it was difficult even for me too. Will try to balance the difficulty curve, thank you very much for your feedback!
@realmar whow thank you for the support man. I didnt think it would be something potential, just a LD entry. I will try to expand it post-jam, depending on how much work it needs :joy: thanks again for playing, much appreciated!!
@bhavesh-tiwari thank you for the support! Connecting to players is exactly what I wanted to do. Im glad you got the spirit. Not many people did :joy:
@shakedimus Oh thanks for the feedback, I got people reporting about memory overflow too but I havent been able to recreate it. May I ask how long did you play in the last level before getting the memory out of bounds error? Anyway Im very pleased that you like the game, yes the antimatter gun creates almost a sort of reversed difficult curve, I didnt notice until people leave feedback. Will definitely need to find a way to make it more difficult even when you can reclaim space.
Graphics and sounds are quite nice, but the really really shine with its mechanics. It fit very well within the theme. I would love to see it fully released with even more feature on the market.
@demn Not everyone appreciate it, the mechanic may appear boring for some people. Thanks for leaving some encouragement! It means a lot to me.
@amba Thank you! I really appreciate your encouragement! Its not everyone's taste, and the fact that you get lost in space seems very finicky for people. It still needs a lot of refinement but again, I appreciate your support!!
The title screen appears to have a memory leak if you leave it running for a couple of minutes.
@michael-wingfield Thanks Mike "The educator" haha. I really like the sound effects in your game, would definitely play with it in my next entry. Thanks for the post on LD feed too!
@anubhav-kashyap Ahh knowledge and skill accumulate very fast, you will only get better. I think for beginners (Im also a beginner), it is very important to do clones of other games so you learn much more about level design, game balance and all. Would love to see you in the next LD, keep it up!
@tomg Yes I got the same report from others too. I think there is a memory overflow somewhere that I thought I have fixed but apparently not. Thanks for playing the game, I was not inspired by super meat boy at all but it seems to turn out that way :joy: Again, thanks for reporting the bug!!
@geckoo1337 Thanks for the compliment, the game still needs a lot of refinement. Im glad you gave it a play and liked it, very appreciate your support!!
The only issue I had was that when I wanted to retry a level, I had the bad habit to reach for a button as there was two of them, and I clicked several times on "Main menu" instead of pressing a key. But maybe it's just me? ^^ Not a big deal though, the game itself is really solid!
@kiirohanabi Yes, that is a poor choice, I really don't know why I did that, no one wants to go back to main menu from there. I saw on streams many times people mistakenly clicked the main menu button. Thanks for playing all the way through and leaving a feedback!
@mza Thank you, it was the first thing I implemented because I myself can't pass some levels until I saw people did it on the streams. In that level you're supposed to open the chest on top of that black circle, the you would get the second mechanic upgrade, that's when the real fun comes in hehe. Thank you very much for playing!
Great job.
@cassio-eduardo I understand, I needed something to indicate that I can now manipulate environment, "gun" was a choice, but not a good choice. Thank you for playing and leaving a feedback, I appreciate it!
PS. I highly recommend going to some compo games and get the source code to learn from them too. Some recommendation (I've got a bunch too): Mass Coalsce (also a very polished game), Crushed, EventfulHorizon, and S. These are all very good Unity games that have the source code released.
Brilliant x). I had so much fun, 11/10 would buy full game
I think this is my favourite for this jam and i've saw some pretty good games !
GRATS !
@firehawk haha thank you, I think it's because the blinking makes it a bit cuter than it is. Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it!!
You already played our game: The legend of the looter and the incredible backpack that never runs out of space, so we can't do anything but thank you. 」( ̄▽ ̄」)
I haven't found any flaw while playing, other than finding narrow passageways near spikes hard to get into, but that's just my typical need to die and improve. The fact you can manipulate where to put platforms is the highlight.
@lexyvil thank you for playing long enough to get the gun and leaving a feedback. That means a lot to me!
Good job!
Very innovative gameplay, the addition of the add/remove gun added a lot more depth (and made it easier for me :P)
Good learning curve + tutorial flow, well done!
Minor feedback/improvements:
- Experienced some slowdown/choppiness occasionally
- Even quicker level reload can help to stay in the zone
- Offer skip level after X tries perhaps
- The game is not at all optimized so the frame rate sometimes drops to 20, Im surprised I didn't get that complaints before maybe because people were too nice to point it out.
- Yes, I could have ditched completely the death screen, but I needed somewhere to put the skip level button, hence that menu
- I actually have that implemented, you can only click after 1 death, but the disabled animation was not very visible.
I stil havent figured out the best solution of where and how to show the skip level button, I would love to hear your thoughts if you have some ideas. Otherwise, I will try to come up with a better solution in my next LD. Again, thanks for your criticism and suggestions!
@arcus thank you for playing!!
Also thanks for leaving a feedback, I see that you rated many games but didnt receive much back T_T. On your game now, good luck!! :smile:
Thoughts and suggestions: Perhaps shortening the iteration time between deaths, making the Skip Level a thing in the menu, or an onscreen hint? I had a LOT of trouble with the Mouse Shooting and where the character was in the world. Maybe having a line renderer show me where the shot will land would help me not kill myself so often.
Great job! I really liked this entry!
Gosh, it means a lot to see some constructive feedback. Thank you very much Occultone!
I couldn't figure out the "unbeatable" level unfortunately haha.
Also, another REALLY impressive thing about this game was how polished all of the menus are. I was super impressed by the animated pause menu slipping into the screen. The zooming and camera effects now and then are fantastic (the first level, where the camera zooms out to show you that space is collapsing, the camera zoom when you first load the game, etc). It's little things like that that make the game feel really polished for a Ludum Dare game.
Great job!