Sunburn by LDJam user 301358

[raw]
made by LDJam user 301358 for Ludum Dare 51 (COMPO)

A game where the sun burns you to death every 10 seconds... unless you stay under the cover. In the meantime, enormous bugs try to attack your unarmed character, who has to lead them into traps.

Press 'F' to go fullscreen.

Unfortunately, the web build seems to not work on every device. I provided simple ZIP files that you just extract and run. Sorry for the inconvenience!

2022-10-02-232137<em>1366x768</em>scrot.png

Ratings

Given 6🗳️ 17🗨️

Feedback

dnivie
03. Oct 2022 · 05:43 UTC
Neat looking game! I like that the enemies can pick up the hearts as well, nice touch.
🎤 LDJam user 301358
03. Oct 2022 · 07:10 UTC
@dnivie Thank you! About the hearts, that was unintentional, but when I saw it happen while playing I couldn't help but keep it in haha
thegamearchitect
03. Oct 2022 · 17:02 UTC
well done!
foolmoron
04. Oct 2022 · 15:59 UTC
Love the ink on paper style! The game kept me engaged for about 7 rounds but it never escalated so it became samey very quickly
Jungle
04. Oct 2022 · 16:01 UTC
I needed to download the build because html version didn't worked here (Windows PC). This game is very funny and the graphics are just AWESOME, feels like playing with my scratchs done in my notebook's last pages when I was young. hahahahaha.
MsPlanlos
04. Oct 2022 · 16:01 UTC
Don´t know why but I love the graphics! :D Nice Game!
Vykri
04. Oct 2022 · 16:50 UTC
Very fun art style. I loved how simplistic the tutorial screen was. Much nicer to see it drawn out instead of a block of text explaining everything.
lomstfer
05. Oct 2022 · 17:14 UTC
pretty cool game!
Quinn_Patrick
05. Oct 2022 · 17:24 UTC
Bruh 😭
![thatsnotfair!.png](///raw/7aa/d2/z/525d2.png)

I like that this game tries new things, but I'm not sure they all work. Having to guide enemies into traps rather then killing them directly is difficult, especially since they don't follow the player in a straightforward fashion. I really like the notebook art style, though.
🎤 LDJam user 301358
06. Oct 2022 · 07:53 UTC
@quinn-patrick Yeah, sorry for that. The worldgen is just math.rand() snapped to a grid, and I didn't have time to improve it. I tried regenerating a couple dozen times and I figured it's rare enough to not be so bad.

The pathfinding can be annoying too. It originally followed you perfectly on a straight line every frame, but they would gather in a ball and follow you, and it became boring. The status quo is definitely better, but it doesn't work very well as you noticed. Another thing would've been to take a curved path and kind of surround you, but I don't know the math for that and it would've taken way too long to figure it out.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the feedback. I'm glad you liked the art!
Kizilejderha
06. Oct 2022 · 10:19 UTC
I like the artsyle and the way tutorial is mostly arrows and drawings instead of text.

Having to lead the enemies into traps is a good mechanic. They don't always follow the player directly, which gives the player an extra challenge but also kinda hurts the core loop of the game as sometimes you are just waiting around for an enemy to start chasing you again.

Having to rush to a heart while dodging enemies, then running back to the shade before the sun shines was quite fun. Enemies being able to steal your health pickup is also a cool mechanic, tho often times they will get there first before you can.

Map being randomized each time is cool and could be expanded further, perhaps have the trap locations randomize every time the sun shines?
indigo
06. Oct 2022 · 17:10 UTC
Hmm, this entry is hard to rate for me. On the one hand, I really love the idea and like the cutesy art style; on the other hand, the execution is just not really there, unfortunately.

My main gripes:
- The bad worldgen that was already mentioned. In my opinion, if you can't find the time to implement a good procedural worldgen (which indeed is a lot of work, and probably out of scope for most LD projects!), just accept that you'll have to manually create like five levels that are fun, and then just randomly pick one of those on startup. Player frustration will be much lower.
- The graphics are endearing, but there are no animations at all. A very-low-frame-count "flipbook" animation would have been a cool effect, and probably not too much work to implement; for example, for the insects, you could have gotten away with just two frames, probably (left legs in front, right legs in front).
- The enemies like to spawn nearly on top of the player, giving the player no time at all to react when they immediately charge them. This one is such an easy fix coding-wise that it makes me think it may have been intentional, in which case: please don't do that, it's just frustrating and not fun. A good gameplay improvement (in addition to giving the player a little bit of distance) would be to have the enemies be "frozen" for a second or so after spawning, such that the player can plan their moves.

All in all, it's a nice entry though! I'm just trying to give constructive advice. :smile:
hotaloca
06. Oct 2022 · 17:18 UTC
@indigo you have summarized this very nicely! I agree with all your points. Great start with the aesthetics, yet with some simple improvement on both this and mechanics could have gone a long way for this entry.
🎤 LDJam user 301358
07. Oct 2022 · 12:08 UTC
Thanks @kizilejderha and @indigo for the feedback, it’s really helpful.

I agree with all of that. It does feel like not a lot of work to implement it, but then again, I did finish with 1 minute to spare. And I think most of this is just because of my lack of experience (it’s my first actual game).

About the enemies spawning on top: I would’ve fixed it if it occurred in testing, but it never did, so I never even thought about that. It definitely is an issue that I knew existed in the world gen, and I just realized that it would’ve been an easy fix there, so I have no excuse for that.

Thanks again, I appreciate the detail.
jk5000
16. Oct 2022 · 09:11 UTC
A super simple little game. I overall liked it, and the art style is really good. The game could have used some kind of high score system. But else a fun little game. Well done.
spudboy
19. Oct 2022 · 03:49 UTC
It's pretty unclear to me which enemy is hurt by which obstacle. There's nothing that gave me an intuitive sense of what corresponds to what, and just straight up memorizing them dind't seem worth it.
🎤 LDJam user 301358
21. Oct 2022 · 13:54 UTC
@spudboy I admit, my logic is pretty flawed there. The idea was that the round and long kinda bug would have an outer shell that’s resistant to fire, but you can hurt them with spikes on their belly. The flower thing has spikes so it doesn’t take damage to them, but it’s a flower and burns. The ghost obviously doesn’t react to spikes, so I thought fire works.

I probably should’ve found some more straightforward rules. Thanks for the feedback!