Mind The Vagazar by Ryan Ackermann

[raw]
made by Ryan Ackermann for Ludum Dare 46 (COMPO)

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Keep the horrific beast at bay

The great Vagazar of lore is ravenous without steak in it's belly. Careful the beast is hunted by spears... it will ATTACK! You, a winged Cluffen, are responsible for this beast. Feed it a healthy amount of food or else. The hunters do not know how dangerous this beast is.

Controls

  • ARROW keys or WASD for directional movement.
  • SPACE or LEFT click for action.

Guide

Attack cows until they drop streak. Pick up steak and feed the Vagazar. Keep the hunters away from the bestir it's hunger will rapidly fall.

I hope you enjoy and have some fun defending the land and keeping the beast at bay.

Development summary

  • macOS Catalina (os)
  • Game Maker Studio 2 (game dev)
  • Aseprite (pixel graphics)
  • GarageBand & BFXR (sound & music)
  • Affinity Designer (cover art)

NOTE: In order to launch the game on macOS, copy / move the game from the DMG to another place in the Finder, ex the Downloads folder. If you're running macOS Catalina, make sure to right click on the game after moving it and select "Open". After doing so, another "Open" dialog will launch the game. Annoying this is so complicated :dizzy_face:


Ratings

Overall 863th 3.02⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Fun 954th 2.64⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 924th 2.74⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 716th 3.46⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 500th 3.48⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Audio 459th 3.16⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Humor 594th 2.583⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Mood 773th 2.886⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 24🗳️ 22🗨️

Feedback

BRTEK007
20. Apr 2020 · 17:53 UTC
Cute graphics. I like the feeding meet to this weird thing in the middle mechanic. The pickup-attack area od the alien bat could be bigger.
Sergio Gonzalez
20. Apr 2020 · 18:03 UTC
Really cool game. I love the idea of defending the bad guy :) Also love the graphics.
The game could be a little more challenging, but overall it was very well pulled off!
khopa
20. Apr 2020 · 18:07 UTC
Really nice style for the characters sprite ! The background music fits well.
Good job !
PatateNouille
20. Apr 2020 · 18:59 UTC
Cool graphics, the controls are a bit fiddly, for example attacking a cow when you're surrounded by steaks is quite hard as you grab them from very far. Some more difficulty and maybe a more complex behaviour for the beast would make a really fun game :)
Horbee
21. Apr 2020 · 07:43 UTC
Nice game and very good idea! It would be nice to have a score system to actually keep track of how much time you survived or how much points you have. Good job! :)
🎤 Ryan Ackermann
21. Apr 2020 · 17:49 UTC
@brtek007 @khopa I do like how the the character sprites came out, next time I hope I can spend more time on environment art as well!

@sergio-gonzalez Thanks for the kind feedback. I'm happy with how far I got, but if only I had a little more time to add a few more things and tweak the difficulty.

@patatenouille You are right, would have caught that with more play testing before the deadline.

@horbee Thanks! I had an item on my list to add scoring based on time. One of the things that didn't make the cut though.
Tudvari
22. Apr 2020 · 05:20 UTC
When there was a downtime, I kept stocking meat, so if a big wave of hunters come, I can keep him alive.
:laughing:
![3333.png](///raw/a2d/8/z/3226a.png)

But there wasn't really a change of pace, they kept coming in the same manner for 5 minutes. Or I wasn't patient enough?
- If I just wasn't patient enough, then some indication would be good for the game's progress.
- If there isn't a progress or goal, then it's a shame, because I really enjoyed the game, and wouldn't have stopped playing it if something new would keep me motivated once a while.

Maybe you could earn points, and there would be multiple levels, with new mechanics, or enemy types. And the higher levels would need a good highscore on previous ones to be unlocked.

Nice entry, enjoyed it, and the graphics is neat!
🎤 Ryan Ackermann
22. Apr 2020 · 20:27 UTC
@tudvari wow, nice strat. I wasn't able to develop the difficulty curve like I'd hoped. thanks for the kind feedback, definentally motivates me to add a few more things to round this out!
Jason Woerner
23. Apr 2020 · 01:04 UTC
The UI and graphics are very clean and polished, and the music really helps set the mood.

While the movement feels good, the attack hit detection was having some issues - sometimes I'd be unintentionally killing cows halfway across the screen. As others have pointed out, there did not seem to be any win conditions, only a loss if too many hunters accumulated, which was very easy to avoid once you got the mechanics down.

This is a great little entry, and by adding a score and a ramping difficulty to eventually overwhelm the player, I think this would feel like a complete game. Good job!
shevek
23. Apr 2020 · 20:24 UTC
A little too easy and restless but very nice.
JonasPK
26. Apr 2020 · 14:58 UTC
Overall, a very fun concept. The balance and pacing was a bit off, a little too easy, to the point that I let the Vagazar's bar drain. I can certainly understand the difficulty problems under such time constraints though. And the game over sequence was beyond compare. I was a big fan of the art and the audio, very clean and crisp. And I have never seen a game with a cursor like you had here, great job on that. Excellent work in all.
🎤 Ryan Ackermann
28. Apr 2020 · 14:27 UTC
@jonaspk I'm glad you enjoyed it! I also liked the way the cursor turned out. I actually added it in so I could see where the player was facing before I finished the sprite.
tgiant
28. Apr 2020 · 16:24 UTC
Haha, funny little game. Simple but fun.
Good job.
Convg
28. Apr 2020 · 16:38 UTC
This game's cool. The music and small screen size makes it quite atmospheric. That cow sound was the best lol. Nice work, really good compo game.
fancypants
28. Apr 2020 · 21:40 UTC
Graphics look nice. Controls(aiming in particular) felt a little bit wonky.
snail
28. Apr 2020 · 21:51 UTC
Good stuff:

Very good sound, with the evocative soundtrack along with the satisfying sound effects. I really liked the graphics. I liked your twist on the theme, keeping alive the hunters by satisfying a hungry beast was a cool concept based around a relatively cut-and-dry theme.

Areas for improvement:

As others have said, a harder difficulty curve would have helped enormously. This isn't necessarily feasible for 48 hours, but I would have liked a few more twists to keep things engaging, such as different hunters, or steaks going bad. A boundary to prevent the player leaving the area could have been nice, but it was fine not to have one.

Overall:

I love the presentation, through graphics, audio, and story, although I would have liked a little more in terms of game play.
Baptiste Barreyre
29. Apr 2020 · 14:38 UTC
Nice game, I liked the little animations and sound effects, the aiming mode is a bit clunky but it's really good for a jam game!
DataGreed
29. Apr 2020 · 17:41 UTC
Nice theme interpretaiton, good sounds and animations :thumbsup:
🎤 Ryan Ackermann
30. Apr 2020 · 14:35 UTC
@convg thanks! I love making sound effects like the cow. :smile:

@snail I really appreciate the feedback. I agree with your ideas for improvement. Next game jam I participate in, I'll remember how much difficulty progression helps.
Naca
30. Apr 2020 · 23:51 UTC
Nice entry :) It's a great work with graphics and audio, and the core idea of the game is also very good. As others already commented, the only problem I find is that the game gives no sense of progression. But I know that's hard to do within the little time of the compo. I'm in the jam and even with that extra 24 hours I struggle with the same issue in my games.
NinjaCatz
04. May 2020 · 17:09 UTC
It is a pity that there are no scoreboard, but anyway nice job!
IceBox246
06. May 2020 · 10:03 UTC
Really nice game. I love the art style. But I think that the game lacked some sort of score counter and also you can feed the beast in advance (even when the bar is full). Otherwise a very lovely and respectable game for a one made in only 48 hours :)
Sublustris
11. May 2020 · 19:08 UTC
Great GFX! 5/5