Super Lefty Garden Fighty by hexagore
Plant a garden by murdering cauliflower monsters, twitch reflex style. When monsters get in range (GREEN LIGHTNING!), press left or right to attack them. Missing makes you easier to hit, and you lose your combo.
Killing monsters lets you plant instant growing trees which give you 1 hit point back.
So... theme used for these were Growing AND Two Button Controls.
Controls:
In the menu it's cursors/enter or gamepad
In the game it's L1 and R1 on a gamepad, or Z + X, or Left Cursor + Right Cursor, or Left Mouse and Right Mouse.
FACTS:
- Yes I sort of copied that game but I did it in a totally different style and I added the amazing HP giving tree mechanic, which is super boss, plus it's pixel art now.
- Trees are great, aren't they?
- Made with my own custom JS/WebGL engine.
- I used Sublime Text, Photoshop, Pyxel Edit, Reason, Audacity, Audition, Melodyne to make this
- The name comes from the fact that the first game I ever made was "Super Lefty Righty" and this is like that except with fighting and gardening. That was also a two button controls game.
UPDATE:
I added a standalone, downloadable windows build. It works in the Itch app if you're into that (I'm totally into that)
REMEMBER KIDS: GREEN LIGHTNING! GREEN! LIGHTNING!!!
Killing monsters lets you plant instant growing trees which give you 1 hit point back.
So... theme used for these were Growing AND Two Button Controls.
Controls:
In the menu it's cursors/enter or gamepad
In the game it's L1 and R1 on a gamepad, or Z + X, or Left Cursor + Right Cursor, or Left Mouse and Right Mouse.
FACTS:
- Yes I sort of copied that game but I did it in a totally different style and I added the amazing HP giving tree mechanic, which is super boss, plus it's pixel art now.
- Trees are great, aren't they?
- Made with my own custom JS/WebGL engine.
- I used Sublime Text, Photoshop, Pyxel Edit, Reason, Audacity, Audition, Melodyne to make this
- The name comes from the fact that the first game I ever made was "Super Lefty Righty" and this is like that except with fighting and gardening. That was also a two button controls game.
UPDATE:
I added a standalone, downloadable windows build. It works in the Itch app if you're into that (I'm totally into that)
REMEMBER KIDS: GREEN LIGHTNING! GREEN! LIGHTNING!!!
| Web (HTML5) | http://hexagore.net/superleftygardenfighty |
| Timelapse | https://youtu.be/hjzJkfdTevs |
| Windows (For the Itch.io app!) | http://hexagore.itch.io/super-lefty-garden-fighty |
| Source | http://hexagore.net/superleftygardenfighty/superleftygardenfighty.zip |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=34027 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 96% | 2 |
| Overall | 3.82 | 99 |
| Audio | 3.90 | 45 |
| Fun | 3.63 | 159 |
| Graphics | 4.52 | 11 |
| Humor | 2.90 | 240 |
| Innovation | 2.89 | 634 |
| Mood | 3.74 | 91 |
| Theme | 4.13 | 133 |
I would like to create something 50% like that... hahahaha
Nice game, and nice gameplay. I just don't get the relation between kill monsters and grow trees.
Anyway, congratz... =)
Well polished and tight controls. A great entry.
I still don't know what I was fighting though. With the fast movement and noise of the background it was hard to actually see what they were.
Also all my trees ended up stacking up at almost the same spot.
Hexagore wins Ludum Dare = Hexagore wins life
There is a lot of downtime in the game where you just stand and wait for them to come. I think that their spawn frequency needs some tweaking :). Also, if I press Left or Right when no one is on the screen the game tells me "Missed" and I think it resets my combo meter. Kinda confusing.
Good luck!
Only negative is that it froze up at 1hp for me with "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'position' of null" during my first game, but I played more and it was fine.
more action effect will be great, checkout "one finger death punch" for reference. congrats!
The difficulty curve is a bit too flat though, maybe that's just me.
Overall though super great job. Really liked it.
By the way the web build doesn't work in Safari, just thought you should know that.
The graphics are fantastic, the way the trees grow and sway is extra cool detail. The colours are fun and everything just looks great :)
Sometimes the combo thing seems to miss, I have no idea why - I would press right and I *know* there's an enemy there, and I would miss. That was hugely frustrating.
Some variety would be cool, enemies that require a different pattern of input. Have you played these games?
- Kung Fury (has a range thing so you won't always hit and you can "look ahead" to plan a little.
- Melody Muncher (from the previous LD, 33)
- One finger something something death something.
I would have loved to have added more enemy types with different patterns but there just wasn't enough time. It is a compo entry after all. :)
It's still a solid and really polished entry :)
Love the fast paced action
Great entry :p
You've made some great games in the past, but this one though!
I had to listen to the music for a few minutes before I couldn't even start playing. I'm not a big fan of this kind of game, but it played so smoothly and looks and sounds amazing. Didn't read your name at first and I though it was a Jam entry.
Really good work!
Combo are enjoyable, and reflex mechanic with green lighting makes it sharp ; i think it becomes hard at some point and could not beat it !
Very neat compo, and amazing job on visuals. Also, ty for the great timelapse !
As a two button brawler, it works well, but I can't help but worry that the damage animation takes to long. Every time I get hit, I end up surrounded by enemies and taking extra damage. Apart from that, this was a rather solid entry, though!
Normally I wouldn't say something like this except for someone who created a narrative based game but I wish this game had a voice over telling some kind of story about the world I'm playing in simply because the visuals are amazingly well done and I want to be in that world.
Great work.
Congrats!
The gameplay got a little repetitive, although the scaling of difficulty with groups of enemies in quick succession was neat! I think some enemy variety (speed, movement type, floating/ jumping) etc. would have gone a long way. Just blending the same sprites a different color to represent different behaviour would have been great.
Great job!
My top combo was 113x. I found that while the gameplay is relatively simple there in one critical design choice that unlocked a key bit of depth, and that's the way the character doesn't simply attack but instead leaps to meet the enemy. This means that I can reposition my character through attack timing, and that makes all the difference because now it's a game about planning and choice rather than simply reactive button pushing.
The music was enjoyable. The melody was infectious but appropriately simple, and the bleak synthesizer timbre was a good fit with the art style, which I took as somewhat apocalyptic. The looping did not grate on me as it sometimes does with short songs.
I also thought the sprite lighting was a nice touch!
I always try to leave a few points of critique, especially for good games, so here are some thoughts on small points:
- There are two sound effects when killing an enemy. I felt like the game was trying to signal some information to me but I never picked up on what it was.
- I didn't really process the lightning, I just got used to the distances.
- For very close range attacks my character did not turn around during an attack, which alarmed me the first few times as I thought I was missing.
- The difficulty curve was nice for learning. Once I got better I enjoyed the hard challenge I had built up to, but when I finally died it was daunting to think of starting over and having to go so long to get back to the hard part. That critical "should I play once more?" moment was weighed down by this feeling and that was my eventual reason for stopping. It's possible I would have played more with some adjustment there.
- There's a *slight* visual confusion that I think is due to the way that the enemies and the "near background" (ie park elements, not city backdrop) are similar in color saturation. This was not a real problem but I wished the main character and the threats visually popped just a bit more.
- When I was in the zone I was in the zone and after learning phase I knew exactly what was going on. I had less experience with misses and taking hits, though... So I ended up in this scenario where I knew what was going on while I was doing well, but then once I made a mistake it would snowball and I would take two or three hits in a row and ask "What just happened?" Escalating crisis is just fine except that I was also somewhat confused. I'm not sure what the fix is or even if I can clearly articulate the specific confusion.
- OK that last point was my initial impression from playing as a player. I went back into the game to specifically test the wiff/get-hit conditions over and over to see if I could get specific... my confusion is clearer now and here are a couple of more suggestions:
- Wiff needs a sound effect and maybe a graphical swoosh, it's maybe the #1 critical event and needs more feedback
- Wiff does not change direction to face the way I press, it should so my mistake is ultra-clear
- Consider including an audible cue such a light click to signal when I am ready to re-swing after a wiff or after getting hit. Maybe a visual glint cue is another way to go.
- After wiff/get-hit consider buffering the input to swing again if the key is pressed while still stunned. This could get nasty if the window is too large but right now I don't think there's any window to pre-press the button. I have to wait for the ready-to-swing state, which is not strongly telegraphed, and then press the button.
- I did not have this input buffer problem with the attacks, chaining multiple attacks felt great actually and I did not feel I had to wait for one to finish before pushing the key for another.
- When I get hit I could use more feedback about the fact that I got hit, who hit me, and when I'm ready to act again. The sound effect is a big start but maybe a bit more.
- The issue with not turning to face the enemy you hit when they are very close was escalating some of my confusion after taking damage. I would be surrounded, push left, my character would swing right and I would go into shock. It's true the enemy on the left would die but I already lost flow with the game on the line.
- It's a good design choice to have the enemy physically back away from the player on a hit rather than just having some invisible re-attack cooldown.
All of that stuff is microscopic detail in case you want it, this is a strong entry and don't take the list to mean otherwise!!
It seemed that it occasionally misread my key presses though :/
Keep up the good work.
Chrome doesn't allow web pages to override the default behaviour of the space bar and arrow keys, which web users expect to be used to control scrolling of the page, and I sort of agree really. I didn't even want to use the arrows and space keys at all, but finding alternative keys as defaults for web games is proving difficult. I recommend just using a gamepad.
The gameplay itself obviously isn't anything new, though it definitely felt just a bit sluggish and heavy, hard to pin down what was the exact cause. Something between the blurred visuals and not a whole lot of feedback to crashing into an enemy. It might have helped if the enemies were easier to make out against the background, and exploded or got knocked back as they died. Something to make me realize the momentum at play.
As usual I utterly love your style, the art is gorgeous! All those lovely filters and effects are amazing.
Also the music and little funny sound effects were great too. The gameplay was simple but effective and it was great trying to beat your highest combo! Great work as usual! :D
(And to answer ye question, lack of sleep and lots of sugar...)
The enemies are hard to read against the background, and once I get into a rhythm it becomes really hard to focus on the screen.