LudumData

Designated Victim by toasteater

[raw]
made by toasteater for LD 44 (COMPO)

Dear Citizen,

Congratulations! You have been chosen to be the next Designated Victim of Vokania. Effective now, life energy originating from YOU is considered the currency of this country. Be proud that you served Vokania.

As you may have noticed, most of your life energy has already been expropriated by the state for the greater good. However, to keep the process humane, enough energy was left in you for about 60 seconds of life.

Please live the rest of your life here peacefully, and do not touch the Portable Life Drainer if an official accidentally left it beside you. Have a nice day!

gameplay.gif

Controls

  • Movement - W/A/S/D
  • Buy Upgrade - E
  • Mouse - Aim
  • Left Mouse Button: Fire
  • Right Mouse Button: Switch Polarity
  • Esc: Pause

As some players are confused about this in comment section: You can only interact with the vendor machines while standing in front of them! To progress in the tutorial, you have to stand in front of the vendor machine and press E.

Prologue

Ever since life energy manipulation is known to Vokania, raw life energy has soon attained the status of currency for its enormous value. To regulate the draining of life energy, the position of Designated Victim is created by the state, as the only person whose life energy can be legally drained and used as currency.

Today, you were picked to be that person.

Just as you think you're going to die in around 60 seconds, you found this curious "Portable Life Drainer" device lying conveniently beside you... Maybe by using it, you can take your life back?

The moment you tried to activate it, a loud alarm pierced the concrete walls. Oh well. Looks like there is no turning back now.

Tools Used

  • Godot Engine
  • Krita
  • sfxr
  • Studio One

Fonts

  • Silkscreen: http://www.kottke.org/plus/type/silkscreen/index.html
  • SH PINSCHER: https://www.behance.net/gallery/49541299/SH-Pinscher-Free-Bitmap-Font
Windows https://toasteater.itch.io/designated-victim
macOS https://toasteater.itch.io/designated-victim
Linux https://toasteater.itch.io/designated-victim
Source code https://toasteater.itch.io/designated-victim
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/designated-victim

Ratings

Given 59🗳️ 40🗨️

Feedback

zactical
29. Apr 2019 · 04:53 UTC
Incredible! This is the most fun game I have tried this LD! I really enjoyed the mechanic of switching polarities, it made the gameplay super exciting. It did take me a bit to realize how to progress through the rooms, but figured it out easily enough. That last room is a real doozy! Amazing job!
🎤 toasteater
29. Apr 2019 · 05:01 UTC
@zactical Thank you! The way to progress is mentioned in the last page of the tutorial, after you destroy the turret, but it may be a bit easy to miss. Most of the game scales to your playing ability, but the boss always approach at full throttle. There're enemies that can be farmed for life, make full use of them if you're having difficulties!
ZanyG
29. Apr 2019 · 05:05 UTC
Very enjoyable experience, great music, theme, and a really innovative concept to match. The controls felt tight and only having to use WASD and the mouse helped out a lot. I'd only question the usefulness of the terminal shops - for the earlier rooms, I would just ignore them all, and use the large amounts of time to carefully dodge things instead of swapping polarities.
LIMZIJIE
29. Apr 2019 · 05:41 UTC
Nice game. I enjoy playing this game. Thank You
notb
29. Apr 2019 · 05:41 UTC
Looks great plays great feels great! I like the back story too nicely done
shp
29. Apr 2019 · 13:14 UTC
Cute drawings, I like the ikaruga mechanic, took me a second to figure out how to proceed though and lost my first game pretty early
🎤 toasteater
29. Apr 2019 · 13:27 UTC
Thanks to everyone for playing! It does appear that the game needs to do a better job at telling players where to go. It's kind of hard to figure out when working alone and it's invaluable to know!
Florian Thurner
29. Apr 2019 · 14:28 UTC
Great game, the visuals and musik/sounds are nice and the controls feel good.
Switching polarities is an interesting mechanic, adding more skill potential to this bullet hell type of game.
Enjoyed playing it a lot!
Zetius
29. Apr 2019 · 14:52 UTC
I love your game! The gameplay makes me addict. The sound isn't at all disturbing if I had to say a negative point, it would be room 1 I spent 3 minutes without knowing what to do since to interact with the bonus distributors you have to be in front. Kiss on you
🎤 toasteater
29. Apr 2019 · 15:03 UTC
@florian-thurner Thanks for playing!

@zetius Thanks for the feedback. The tutorial could be made a bit more clear I guess! For now, I'll add that to the controls section of the page.
randdir
29. Apr 2019 · 15:12 UTC
i'm really sorry @toasteater but unfortunatly i couldn't play the game. Start with not the first screen but more the game room. And got invisible wall on the first room and cannot leave from it ? Don't know if it' has been repported to you... shame :'(
🎤 toasteater
29. Apr 2019 · 15:17 UTC
@randdir Sorry, what do you mean by "start with not the first screen but more the game room"? I can't seem to understand that very well.

If by "the first room" you mean "Room 0/10" at the top-left corner, then that's the tutorial room. You have to follow the on-screen instructions to progress. If you want to skip the tutorial, right-clicking on the first page will take you directly to the game.
randdir
29. Apr 2019 · 15:26 UTC
Okey my bad i just miss some instruction and can play it clearly. But to be more clear with my bug is that your invisible wall to not leave the room 0/10 is not really in front of the exit. So I can pass not join other room and thought it was a bug. Sorry pal xD... guess need more sleep. By the way nice job had to speed up like in classic crawler, really like the game and graphics. Keep it up bro !
🎤 toasteater
29. Apr 2019 · 15:43 UTC
@randdir To be honest, I can't decipher a large chunk of your comment, but I think I know where to look at now. Thanks for playing and giving feedback!
Scott Steffes
29. Apr 2019 · 18:18 UTC
Always cool to see more games made in Godot! Great Job!
Symphonia
29. Apr 2019 · 18:20 UTC
I really like this game! The graphics look great and the gameplay is really smooth! Great job :smile_cat:
Fat cat
29. Apr 2019 · 19:42 UTC
Really fun game! The sound effects and music is nice, and I like Touhou games so this gameplay appeals to me ^^
plexsoup
30. Apr 2019 · 04:38 UTC
Great game!
Week of the agents
30. Apr 2019 · 04:58 UTC
Pretty graphics, exciting gameplay. Very good.
A little bit unbalanced, but it is common problem among 48h games.
🎤 toasteater
30. Apr 2019 · 06:18 UTC
Thanks for playing everyone! Glad you enjoyed it!.
DigiGee
30. Apr 2019 · 08:25 UTC
The bullet patterns were awesome! I beat the boss but I am still a little unclear how exactly the health system works but I'm sure that'd be easier to pick up on with a second playthrough. (I'm terrible at reading in game tutorials)
LiauJ
30. Apr 2019 · 08:27 UTC
Ikaruga! This was alot of fun, even though I'm absolutely terrible at bullet-hells. I liked the art style as well (which was what attracted me to play it in the first place, actually).
🎤 toasteater
30. Apr 2019 · 08:38 UTC
@digigee Thank you! Health is represented by the time left in your life (upper-left corner). Taking hits reduce health, and absorbing bullets increase it (by a much smaller amount). I agree that the tutorial has some room for improvement.

@liauj Thanks for playing! Glad you liked the art style.
fullmontis
30. Apr 2019 · 13:07 UTC
Just wanted to point out that the linux version's executable doesn't seem to work for some reason, I had to copy the Godot executable from my project to make it work. After that however it worked perfectly.

This reminded me of Ikaruga, and it was just as hard, I'd say. I think you did a great job in balancing the mechanics, I especially like the fact that you have that the character's time is also your time, so you have to make choices quickly. Excellent job!
🎤 toasteater
30. Apr 2019 · 13:13 UTC
@fullmontis Surprised that the executable didn't work for you, especially as I'm developing on Linux myself, but I'm glad it worked out in the end. Thank you for playing!

If you care to provide some details, which distro are you on? I don't think it should matter since Godot is mostly static linked, but there might be edge cases.
fullmontis
30. Apr 2019 · 13:48 UTC
@toasteater I'm on Ubuntu 18.04.2. I did another test and it actually runs when I open it from the shell. It says that it isn't an executable but a shared library, so maybe that confused the distro. It's also much bigger than my own executable (95MB vs 30MB).
🎤 toasteater
30. Apr 2019 · 14:12 UTC
@fullmontis I see. I use a custom build of Godot with various PRs from myself cherry-picked. I also compile with Clang and optimize for speed (as opposed to size, which you might be doing because you're exporting to Web). That may or may not explain the problem and the size difference. I'll look into this when I get the time. Thanks for reporting!
Naruvan
30. Apr 2019 · 14:22 UTC
Amazing game! Switching polarities really adds a lot. It really feels great when you polarity switch at the right moment and catch all the good bullets and dodge ~~all~~ most of the bad ones!
Rolly
30. Apr 2019 · 14:36 UTC
Waw, what a nice entry. I am honestly impressed by every single detail in this game: gameplay, visuals, audio, prologue, everything. Nothing much to say, great work!
caevv
30. Apr 2019 · 18:03 UTC
what a great game. as an avid binding of isaac player, i immediately loved it :) great work, especially for a compo submission. i didnt quite understand the boss, maybe i was supposed to die there since my weapon got removed. guess i didnt read the text careful enough. only thing i'd change would be maybe SFX for hit effect of player and towers. maybe the description for the items you buy could get some more highlight or details. anways awesome game!
T-Bo
30. Apr 2019 · 19:02 UTC
Cute charater, nice concept and nice intro !
Beautiful game ! :clap:
cppchriscpp
30. Apr 2019 · 22:38 UTC
Not a lot to say that hasn't already been said but this is a fantastic entry! The mechanics were great and felt solid, and you nailed the theme. I liked the switching polarities idea, and love that you added a boss at the end.

Thanks for a fun entry!
🎤 toasteater
01. May 2019 · 02:04 UTC
Thanks everyone for playing and giving such kind words. I'm very flattered!

@caevv You need to survive for 60 seconds for the boss fight. I think it would be clearer if the boss had a timer of itself, but the boss intro (cutscene?) was hastily added during the last hours by a sleepy me who didn't realize it :) I agree that the items are under-explained. It's quite lacking especially given that time continue to flow as you inspect the upgrades. Thanks for the feedback!
Aileron
01. May 2019 · 10:11 UTC
An artist! Awesome game. My biggest gripe (minor) was the vendors not showing their upgrades without being in front of them (could be intentional). Also for some reason my brain often got vendors and enemies confused.
Great music, cute artwork (certainly made me click), and nice work on the bullet spreads!
JustusPan
01. May 2019 · 11:43 UTC
Rapid pace and exciting play experience.I'm too nervous to read the store description carefully since the time counter keep in losing time, maybe a visualized icon indicator can help player greatly here. The music fits the battle pace well and it create a atomsphere like those classic bullet-shower game. The switch mechanics is also helpful to increase the varity of this game. Really enjoyed it, thank you.
🎤 toasteater
01. May 2019 · 13:22 UTC
@aileron As for the vendor machines, I did set it up that way, so you can say it was intentional. I can see how the behavior can be annoying when you're short on time, however. The vendor machines can use some additional visual and auditory cues, too. Thank you for playing and giving feedback!

@justuspan Using icons for upgrades looks like a very good idea to improve readability. Thanks!
Golden
01. May 2019 · 16:18 UTC
This is great! I'm a big fan of Ikaruga that uses the same mechanic so playing this was a treat! NICE JOB
mikelovesrobots
02. May 2019 · 01:56 UTC
Nice bullethell! Loved it.
JakobTheQuizGuy
02. May 2019 · 18:16 UTC
Wow, very impressive game! The concept is cool, the graphics are nice and the audio is great. I really like the enemy movement and bullet patterns. One time a vending machine spawned too far down and I couldn't interact with it, which was a little annoying. The boss was great. Overall one of the best games I've played this LD so far!
candlesan
03. May 2019 · 08:57 UTC
Excellent game! Great music, sound effects, game design and execution on the concept.
Love the roguelike manner in which there are different powerups on every playthrough
Also love the rad art
Great design on the enemy bullet spreads too and the way that scales up.
Overall this was a fantastic entry!