Beetle Thomas by NuggetTeam

[raw]
made by NuggetTeam for LD34 (JAM)
You're Thomas the Beetle!
Roll down your ball of dung in order to feed your family!
But it'll not be that easy! Your way down is infested with enemies and traps, to avoid them, you just have to resize your ball of dung.

Controls:
X to make the ball larger.
Z to make it smaller
This game was made in less than 72h to participate in the #Ludumdare #LDJAM jam. Be sure to vote us! #LDJAM

Here's the team:

Imjeax -> Music http://gamejolt.com/profile/imjeax/1057268

Joanrelos -> Programming http://gamejolt.com/profile/joanrelos/47900

Matla -> Art http://gamejolt.com/profile/matlahvi/1083672

Ana -> Art http://gamejolt.com/profile/anagf/123159

Xuso -> Art http://gamejolt.com/profile/xuso74/1083731

Iris -> Art
Fernando -> Art
Jorge "RGC"-> Art, Character

Ratings

Coolness 51% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.42 414
Audio(Jam) 3.38 313
Fun(Jam) 3.35 357
Graphics(Jam) 3.58 450
Humor(Jam) 3.57 132
Innovation(Jam) 3.44 290
Mood(Jam) 3.33 411
Theme(Jam) 4.07 177

Feedback

SayRafon
14. Dec 2015 · 12:26 UTC
This game is really awesome ! the graphics, the theme and the Idea ^^
danielsann7
14. Dec 2015 · 19:40 UTC
simple and fun game, the graphics are good, i really enjoyed, nice work!
ProjectX593
15. Dec 2015 · 17:08 UTC
Pretty tough, and relies a little bit heavily on memorization since there's not quite enough time to react to stuff, but very well done otherwise!
LadyS
15. Dec 2015 · 17:09 UTC
Simple and fun! Two extra buttons for the Menu :(
stargardengames
15. Dec 2015 · 17:11 UTC
Great art and neat idea! I did find it a little unclear at times how a particular obstacle would affect your dung (whether you needed to be big or small to pass it). great job!
ohmmus
15. Dec 2015 · 17:11 UTC
Great idea! and good work incorporating both themes!

I've always to know what it was like to live the life of a dung beetle, and now I know! well done!
YinYin
15. Dec 2015 · 18:11 UTC
21.869! Just can't seem to get past that stump just beyond the new terrain. Always a bit too small.

This entry does much better on meeting the theme than my beetle! :D

Here is what I liked:
The parallax background, it's beautiful. The foreground terrain could really do with a similarly calm style to make the other objects pop out even more.
The kawaii beetle sprites, a nice over the top combination.
The puddle warning sign, really useful.

I've had a lot of trouble gauging how large the ball needs to be for the ground obstacles. Just fitting below stuff overhead was easy enough, but how large exactly do I need to be to get over a stump? A fix would be making the exact height of all ground obstacles really obvious and requiring the ball to be at least twice as high (rotational axis being above the height it has to get over). Because the height of overhead obstacles *is* really obvious, which makes them easy to get past. This would mean you'd have to drop the puddles/holes or make their interactions a little more dynamic (perfectly getting stuck in the hole or simply losing size while moving over a puddle instead of breaking for example).
Some simple visual true/false indicator of whether you will get past the next obstacle at your current size would do as well (you can be subtle about that by for example making the beetles expression look worried if you won't make it and normal/calm if you will).

I also wish there was either some way to manually speed up, so you can get past the early section you already know quickly (hold both buttons perhaps), or instead making the obstacles random/different every time. I stopped going for a higher score because replaying the beginning got boring.

And it would've helped if the story/description was in game additionally to some sort of progress indicator. Had I known how close I got to feeding the family I might not have given up.

Last thing: qwertz keyboards. They exist and I'd like you to never again use the all too common XZ button combination without thinking about those.
justinooncx
16. Dec 2015 · 16:38 UTC
Rather difficult game, seeing as there's no clear indicator on what's what... Otherwise, it looks nice.
vicious_br
17. Dec 2015 · 02:01 UTC
lol, cool game, very fun. I would like to take this opportunity to ask a favor. You already rated my game, but I was not allowed "innovation rating." Please could you assess this item now? Take the opportunity to play with some corrections. Very thanks:http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=36629
DrFallos
17. Dec 2015 · 08:46 UTC
Good idea and combining of two buttons and growing! Hard a little but it's not a big problem
rd127p77
18. Dec 2015 · 23:27 UTC
Neat Game, like the music.
SinclairStrange
04. Jan 2016 · 18:05 UTC
I love the graphics and the theme/concept was really good as well! Fantastic overall! Great stuff :D