Chicken Little by LeviDSmith

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

Keep the chickens alive by clicking on the falling apples to prevent them from falling on the chicken's head.  If an apple hits a chicken, then it is knocked out.  Additional chickens are awarded after clicking a number of apples.  Once all of the chickens are knocked out, the game is over.  Enter your name to store it in the online leaderboard, which tracks who has the longest survival time.

Each level has three waves.  After each level, at random either the gravity is increased or an additional apple drops during each wave.

chicken-little_00004.jpg

chicken-little_00005.jpg

chicken-little_00002.jpg

Previous Code - https://github.com/gatechgrad/LeaderboardExample

I used my LeaderboardExample code for submitting the high score values to my database. The game simply makes URL calls to the PHP files on my server to submit and query the scores. The PHP and MySQL database code are also included in the examples.

Tools used - Unity 2019.3.10f1 - Blender 2.82a - Gimp 2.10.18 - GarageBand 10.3.4 - Bxfr 1.5.1 - Audacity 2.3.2 - UnityHelper

Thanks to my supporters - Seth Robinson - Mike Garcia - Games Finder - Lukasz Zelezny

Ratings

Overall 841th 3.048⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 764th 2.976⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 914th 2.762⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 772th 3.357⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 779th 3.024⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Audio 579th 2.95⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 246th 3.368⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 825th 2.789⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 22🗳️ 16🗨️

Feedback

coatline
20. Apr 2020 · 01:44 UTC
Actually really fun! I managed to beat your score (although I am sure that there will be more to come that will top mine). I found that it was better to hit the least amount of apples possible as to not get another chicken to chickensit. Solid entry. (I am a subscriber btw :wink:)
coatline
20. Apr 2020 · 01:44 UTC
I can't figure out how to delete this comment sorry
JCMonkey
20. Apr 2020 · 03:15 UTC
nice game, the one issue i had with it was the apple hitboxes were maybe a bit too tiny, and holy crap at 35 seconds!!!
Sen Kappa
20. Apr 2020 · 19:48 UTC
Chicken vs Apple... who could ever expect that apples were such a deadly blunt weapon?

I enjoyed playing the game quite a bit, but when I looked at the leader board was I sure in for a bit of a laugh.
Not to make fun of @jcmonkey, but dang that's a lot of highscores placed underneath his name.

For future updates, maybe make the leader board only record the highest score per session?

In any case, hilarious game!
JamesVaughan
24. Apr 2020 · 03:10 UTC
Fun game, I got 49 seconds due to some kind of bug, one of the 2 chickens disappeared (I think it was super close to / merged with the other chicken). The other scores were legit tho :)
Fernando Tonon de Rossi
26. Apr 2020 · 01:03 UTC
Great concept!
It feets to the theme and has the complexity enough to be implemented in a weekend!
U even created a score to induce the competitivity!
Playing it with trackpad was quite difficult, I imagine if a floating hand controlled by keyboard ou following the mouse arrow wouldn't give the game more agility...
Overall it was a nice concept, congratulations!
snail
26. Apr 2020 · 01:12 UTC
Good stuff:

The inclusion of a leader board was really helpful in making the game more engaging-- having a standard for competition is a rare but welcome feature in a game jam game. The core concept was super cool: having the chicken be beyond your control meant that you could choose which apples to hit and which to let fall, creating a really neat feature of having to predict the chicken's movement. Absolutely loved the apple animation; it made your actions feel more weighty and it was just funny to watch the apples flying away!

Areas for improvement:

The apples are simply too hard to hit once they get fast. This isn't just me griping about difficulty; I actually like the large number of apples, but I felt like I wasn't able to hit ANY of them, making the game feel more like luck than actual skill. A slightly larger apple hitbox would have done wonders to make the game feel more manageable. More predictable motion for the chickens might have also helped, but it worked just fine as is, and it definitely grew on me as I played.

Overall:

An outstanding, creative concept which one small issue (the apple hitbox) holds back from being the engaging masterpiece it has the potential to become.
recursor
26. Apr 2020 · 23:33 UTC
I had the same experience as some previous commenters regarding clicking on the apples in that it felt like I clicked on them but it sometimes would not register (especially when more apples started appearing). The leaderboard was a nice touch in encouraging competitive play, and I like the concept of the game. More chickens = more stress but in a challenging and fun way. Props for modeling and texturing your assets in Blender 3D.
SlimBun
28. Apr 2020 · 07:19 UTC
Very cool game. Great graphics. I didn't really understand the controllers.
SimanSimon
28. Apr 2020 · 07:33 UTC
This is a weird little game, but in a good way :D I found the sounds too loud and annoying (dont take it personally), but the graphics were okay. After like a minute, the apples started coming way too fast, I think a little bit of balancing might be needed there :D But nonetheless, it was fun
frenchie
28. Apr 2020 · 07:34 UTC
Cool, got the second place score! Hitbox on apples feels really off - registers a lot more at the bottom of the apple than anywhere else.

Also, I had fun trying to see if I could break your leaderboard. I hope you don't mind the one garbage value I put in and instead are amused that some random person on the internet spent an hour or so playing around with it :smile:
knason
28. Apr 2020 · 10:50 UTC
35.84 OMG this is intense!. I would have preferred A little bigger click area around the apple. It was quite hard to hit it. But otherwise nicely done!
🎤 LeviDSmith
30. Apr 2020 · 03:20 UTC
Good job to the leaderboard hacker. I will definitely have to up my leaderboard security! :smile:
SeriouslyCrunchy
30. Apr 2020 · 15:18 UTC
Great little game, the difficulty ramps up nicely, and quickly! So it definitely has that very moreish 'Just one more go' feel.

I do agree with the others that the apple hitboxes need a little work, however
NinjaCatz
03. May 2020 · 16:57 UTC
Apples cool fly away :yum:
Dylan Wolf
09. May 2020 · 19:09 UTC
I like that there's a balance to the mechanics: you don't have to stop every apple, but if you don't you won't have as many extra chickens (although that's easier to keep track of). If you kept working on it, there's a lot of possible game modes based on different win/lose/advancement conditions.

The graphics, music, leaderboard, and overall presentation feel polished--feels like you got scoping just right for a weekend game jam, which is tough to do.