Good Dog by QuadApe
You and your dog in a hostile world.

You can use either controller or keyboard + mouse to play. I'd say gamepad works better! There's a text input box, which receives only keyboard input, after it you're good to go with the controller.
Credits:
My friends who don't participate in LD recorded a bunch of whistle sounds for me.
Their dog Maya was the voice actress for all dog sounds in the game:

Font is Chocolate, by Chevy Ray: https://chevyray.itch.io/pixel-fonts
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGE57WjmY8s
| Youtube | https://quadape.itch.io/good-dog |
| Youtube | https://quadape.itch.io/good-dog |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/good-dog |
Ratings
| Overall | 42th | 4.259⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 9th | 4.426⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 6th | 4.574⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 14th | 4.5⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 477th | 4.135⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 85th | 4.185⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 80th | 4.269⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 40🗳️ | 28🗨️ |

The mechanic feels really fluid, creative, and it's presented with a simple colour design that's really intuitive and does the job for the game. I died a number of times in the fights but was really compelled to keep playing til the end. The story is mysterious but interesting and worked with the theme well.
Completely awesome entry, good job!
Excellent mechanics with great potential!
Good job!
P.S. Is this gameplay inspired by Spiderman, per chance?
One of the most creative and fun central mechanics I have seen this jam! I love a good grappling hook!
Difficult, but the good kind of difficult.
I loved seeing the procedural of the animation on the spiders. There is something I really enjoy about seeing new techniques used with an old art style.
Audio was fantastic, really added to the feel of the game!
[Screen Shot 2020-05-01 at 8.02.36 PM.png](///raw/ebb/61/z/33aaf.png)
Thank you everyone for your feedback and kind words!
@bredian strangely enough, not a single though about Spider-Man crossed my mind :)
@aaron-lehnen hey! This is a common problem with some Mac build from GMS2. This might be resolved by moving .app file to any other directory from your downloads folder. I work on Mac myself, and tested it before uploading - it should be fine. Tell me if you have any luck launching the game!
Either way, I really love what you've done here, great work!
I didn't really feel like the difficulty was quite there. I could tell things were getting more difficult as I progressed, but it didn't feel like much. The lasers were a bit too easy to dodge. Some kind of enemy homing rocket would have fixed this, I think.
Good dog!
Thanks for playing my game! I wanted to play yours as a back-favor.
@sciman101 aiming might also feel this way because it wasn’t properly explained, I think. It does auto-aim in most suitable target towards direction you hold the stick. It compares angles and distances to all possible targets and decides on what you’re looking at. I felt like arm and a reticle will convey this information, but it seems that didn’t work too. @alchemic yeah, it would be great to put a boss in for the final battle, but couldn’t make it time, unfortunately. As for the difficulty - the choice for the difficulty was deliberate. I’ve made some challenging games for the past jams, and wanted to make something more accessible this time. This was sort of successful, but some people still have a hard time playing the game.