Terror of the Lazy River by Birdwards

It's a wonderful day at the water park, and you are a horrible kid.
You're relaxing on the lazy river ride, pocket knife in hand, when you get an idea: if you poke a hole in everyone else's inner tube, you can have the whole lazy river to yourself! As you begin your reign of terror on the lazy river, you notice the park employees handing something to every rider except you. Are those... darts?
Instructions:
- Use the arrow keys or WASD to swim. The river current is pushing you along, too- don't expect to get anywhere if you're swimming against the current.
- Click in any direction to slash your pocket knife in that direction.
- Slash everyone else's inner tubes to win!
- Don't get hit by the darts being thrown at you- you can dodge them, or you can slash them out of the air!
All art, audio, and code made by Birdwards within 48 hours for Ludum Dare 47. The font used is an aliased version of Jellee by Hanken Design Co.
If you experience performance issues on the web, try a downloadable desktop version.
Ratings
| Overall | 98th | 3.828⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 42th | 3.984⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 138th | 3.703⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 65th | 4.172⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 136th | 3.844⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 46th | 3.922⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 33th | 3.891⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 77th | 3.786⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 48🗳️ | 0🗨️ |
Otherwise a nice and polished fun entry!
✔️ The gameplay is intuitive and a creative take on the theme.
✔️ The music in the game is very nice.
➖ I feel a few more mechanics could have been implemented, maybe attacking could also push you in the opposite direction?

Enjoyed it.
Great job.
And you are doubly stuck in a loop - in a tube on a looping river. 10/5 for theme :wink:
Fun game! Everything felt easy to grasp and satisfying. Thank you!
Honestly I don't have anything to say! 5/5
I liked the relaxing atmosphere the music created.
I'll be honest, I think it's criminal that this game doesn't have more ratings. It's simple, charming, and rewarding to play, through and through. Never really encountered any bugs, and even though I only played it for a little bit, I could feel myself improving with each round.
Very awesome job here, I hope you get more attention!
The idea is very cool, the movement feels right and original, the audio and visuals makes for some nice feedbacks.
The only issue I could see is that the more you defeat enemies, well the less they are and the less it's interesting.
Awesome game anyway, great job on making this 💕
All in all, a nice little compo entry with a bit of a lack of game play variations! Keep it up!
First I played Normal a few times and sunk each times so I thought it was a overly difficult game. Changed to Easy and breezed through in 43.86. Back to Normal and beat it first try that time in 51.77. I jumped on Hard excited for a challenge and got one. Finally beat it with the score in the screenshot. Great controls, difficulty, theme, graphics, and music!
By the way, thank you so much for playing my game in your stream! You play very well :v::grin: