Word Salad by philliptrudeau

[raw]
made by philliptrudeau for Ludum Dare 45 (COMPO)

showcase.gif

WASD to move, click to attack. Escape to pause. Your gun uses letters from the word "nothing" as ammo. You start with the word "nothing" (which does nothing). When you run out of ammo, you automatically switch to your fists.

Punch zombies to make them drop letters. You can pick up the letters and they will go into your gun. If you are using your fists and pick up a letter, you automatically switch back to your gun.

Your gun does nothing unless you spell a word. The gun just farts out dust if there's no active word spelled out in your gun. You can use this to your advantage to discard unwanted letters, one click at a time.

Pick up letters in the correct order to spell out words. When your gun's letters are glowing red, you have spelled a valid word.

Spell a word to regain health and DESTROY your foes! Each word is its own powered-up weapon. Click to fire out a projectile that kills scores of enemies! Shorter words like "no" and "hot" are quick ways to replenish lost health, and long words like "thigh" are effective weapons against crowds. For example: - no shoots a 'no' sign - it summons Pennywise the clown - ting does... some-ting :wink: - hot creates flames - noon acts as a revolver (6 shots) - noggin is the ultimate victory!

This game was built from scratch, in one C file, starting with nothing. :) If the audio sounds like it's skipping or stuttering, please let me know. If your antivirus quarantines the game, try temporarily disabling your antivirus. If you maximize the window it will stretch the whole screen - I didn't have time to make it resize properly - sorry!

Full word list: - it go gt no - ton hot hog hon ion inn - ting onto noon hint goth thot high gong goon - tooth thong thing thigh onion night ingot - noggin

Patch v1.1 is here! - Fixed bug where dying didn't restore "noon" revolver ammunition. - Fixed bug where some projectiles disappeared when hitting zombies. - Fixed bug where zombies and projectiles moved too fast. - Fixed bug where projectiles lived for too short.

Ratings

Overall 401th 3.079⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 338th 3.026⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 110th 3.711⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 210th 3.5⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 428th 2.658⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 246th 3.026⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 85th 3.324⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 436th 2.559⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Given 25🗳️ 5🗨️

Feedback

NachtWitch
07. Oct 2019 · 00:51 UTC
I was waiting for this game, iv seen a lot abput it in blogs
Kazatan
07. Oct 2019 · 00:59 UTC
I have to say I found it very difficult - even with your notes on this page! Audio sounded good to me - the music was cool :smile:

I'd say slow down the enemies a little, at least to start with, to give the player a chance to make a word to discover how to play.
Corrade
07. Oct 2019 · 01:19 UTC
Creative and fun! The concept is simple but it offers a lot gameplay-wise.

With respect to the time constraints and insane choice of tools, more enemy variation and feedback in general would've been fantastic. Feedback for events like holding a valid string (esp. since not all words have effects) and regening health would've made the game more fluid.

A score would've been nice too.

The projectiles created by words such as 'it', 'no' and 'go' were sometimes immediately taken by a zombie. I get that they're short words so they should be fairly light, but their quick disappearance gave the impression that their were invalid/didn't do anything.
NachtWitch
07. Oct 2019 · 01:32 UTC
Interesting game
gagouman
07. Oct 2019 · 02:30 UTC
Fun game, really hard but had fun playing, impressive for something done from scratch!
Pavel Ivanov
07. Oct 2019 · 02:57 UTC
Very impressive to build this from scratch! Nice music as well!
AdamCYounis
08. Oct 2019 · 10:16 UTC
I thought the concept was great. If the zombies were just slightly less oppressive i would have really enjoyed finding more word combinations, but i felt like i never got the chance because of needing to throw out my letters to deal with the enemies.
Joel Davis
10. Oct 2019 · 04:31 UTC
Really impressive coding. The concept was good too, I'd love to see something with more words than just "nothing". I'm usually not a fan of zombie games but this was fun. Was really cool to see the music generated from scratch coding, but it kind of hurt my ears. It's too bad LDJAM doesn't have a "technical" category anymore, this would do really well in that. Nice work.
egawag
10. Oct 2019 · 05:15 UTC
This is sooooo cooool. And funny when I got ting I was so happy. same with high :P, Really unique and good use of the theme while also having a fun game. Super big props! But why C :sob:
also I did not find the game too difficult was fun to kite a group of 30 zombs and then go deep with the ting. Very fun, laughed out loud with that.
microwerx
16. Oct 2019 · 01:09 UTC
Fun concept. I like the idea of typing to shoot the weapon. I felt it would have been nice to type a word in with letters in the gun in order to get the gun to fire, rather than try to collect them in the right order.
Anion_Z
29. Oct 2019 · 06:11 UTC
Haha, I wouldnt be able to code that from scratch good job man, Nevertheless Im not taking into account how it was made or who made it, Im here to judge the game itself.

Concept is amazing, but I would love to see list of words ingame I ended up only using 'ting', 'it' and 'no' in the end.. Punching is working fine and feels great but zombies spawn too quickly imo. Also I think letters shouldnt stack onto each other its hard to see what you pick up

Graphics are not great but its obvious since you made the game from scratch.

its admireable you did that, but I dont think games made from scartch in 3 days are any match for games made using game engine in 3 days. I wish people with cool concepts like you didnt recreate the wheel and implemented their ideas to life using game engine and had time for polishing, cuz I would love to play this game polished!

Oh you even applied to Compo, ffs, I know you wanted to see your limit, but if you did it for Jam on game engine instead, I would love to see the result and play it!
Xotsu
29. Oct 2019 · 10:55 UTC
enjoyed playing the game the controls where very smooth!
niterich
29. Oct 2019 · 19:51 UTC
I think this was an extremely clever game mechanic, and introducing it by turning a useless nothing to a useful "no" was fantastic tutorializing. However, I found it very difficult to spell any words in the game, both because the zombie horde came too quickly and the letters they dropped were too close to one another. It was also frustrating that misspelled words had absolutely no effect. I know that's the point of the game, but it's frustrating nonetheless.

It's a bit late now, but how about implementing a word scramble feature? So if you accidentally spell "ignot" you have a chance to rearrange them into something proper.