Don't squash the unicorn by LDJam user 266061

You were promoted to take care of the unicorn, congratulations! It's exhibited right in your desktop browser.
However, the zoo wants to cut budget by putting different species in the same cage... but the unicorn can't suffer such an indignant fate. Good thing you can resize your window (with spiked borders) to dispose of these unwelcomed beasts!
Your tasks are as followed: - You have to keep the unicorn safe and sound. - The unicorn grows discontent if it has to share its place with horrid cattle. - Fortunately, the unicorn is a generous creature : it will slowly be happy again if nothing upsets it anymore (be grateful it forgives you, you miserable wretch). - Do not accidentally kill the unicorn, as nothing stops it from ramming into the spikes.
We strongly recommend you to first reduce your browser (since you have to move the window edges) before opening the link, to not risk an accident.
And it won't really work on smartphones or tablets : you should obviously be on a computer.
| Link | https://lawnne.fr/ludum/dont-squash-the-unicorn.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/dont-squash-the-unicorn |
Ratings
| Overall | 682th | 3.452⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 585th | 3.429⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 7th | 4.619⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 153th | 4.262⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 742th | 3.31⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 172th | 3.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 955th | 2.895⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
Also a score or something would be great.
Also, very big ++ to the inspiring game mechanics
Had a lot of fun with this game, unique mechanics. My unicorn loves to live on edge and suicide in 10 seconds. Score system would be great so we can know if we get better or not (also brag about our high score)
Cool entry!
And funny comments in-game at that!! Congrats on this! You surprised me in at least 2 ways for the better!
And yet another HTML5-only game (my one was too). Cheers to that!
Any feedback? Nothing much to say but one tip - for your game description - you *would* want some BOLD text for the more important stuff the player needs to know. I got hurt quite a bit due to the inherent complexity of my game - I had not explained everything as evidently as needed. : )) For example.. I directly jumped into the game without reading the description (many people will do so).
First time I started the game I shrank my browser's window right away and accidentally killed my unicorn, it seems - thankfully I didn't even see the corpse that time, just got told off by some dude. For the second go I was more careful and kept window shrunk before starting the game.
I tried my best killing the enemies w/o harming my unicorn, but it wasn't easy as oftentimes their sprites would basically intersect with the unicorn's sprite. Unicorn seemed to just go into the spikes himself then, probably running away from monsters (?) and I got to see his corpse which was pretty upsetting (I am quite squeamish, for most people the amount of "gore" in this game would most likely be at a normal level).
On my third try, the enemies quickly grew in numbers, and though unicorn has survived, he was not impressed and left (I reckon the circle around the unicorn is his personal space? And the more it is invaded the angrier he becomes?). I like how his face grew angrier and angrier with time, it was a nice touch, showing his discontent with the amount of monsters. Then I got fired, and I am not sure I will be able to keep unicorn happy (maybe I should be faster in resizing the window? I tried to be careful not to harm the unicorn).
The graphics are simple, but you probably spent most of the time on programming and working out this mechanic. However, the design of the enemies is still nice and expressive, and the unicorn looks cute.
Overall, I liked the original mechanic, it's always cool to see and try something new.
-I personally don't like blood and stuff in games, but most people are ok with that, so it's just my opinion. I gave a game a few more tries and covered the screen with my hand when I got unicorn dead :(
-The graphics didn't really affect me in a particular way, I didn't love them but didn't hate them. Maybe in the future more details like light, shadows on monsters and unicorn and texture on the spikes could be added.
-Sound effects for when you kill the enemy/unicorn would be a nice touch as well. But that's all for after-jam-development.
-The difficulty is OK in my opinion, even though I failed pretty much, it didn't feel like an unbeatable game (not sure if it can be beat or if it is endless).
-It's not something that I personally enjoy, but as I said already, I appreciate an interesting mechanic, it was fun to try out. Thank you for the game!
I guess it sounds quite negative but I really think it's a neat idea and could be a pretty fun experience if not for the fact that I wasn't really able to control it at all :laughing:
Some quick ideas that might help with these two issues are:
1) Make an interior collision box that the unicorn wants to stay in just as much as it wants the other animals out of its personal space.
2) Allow the unicorn to kick other animals out of its personal space every once and a while to help mitigate the other sprites sticking to the unicorn and being unkillable.
Maybe you already thought of these things and just didn't have time, but I figured I'd mention them anyway in case it helps.
And as others have said, this is the kind of game that seems ripe for either a score or a time counter (actually, come to think of it, a time counter would be a great fit for the mood you were going for: "You managed to keep this job for 42 seconds!" :P)
As a final note, I have pretty weak eyes, and while the jitteriness of the sprites wasn't too hard to look at by itself (after all, I spent most of my time only half looking as I was focused on grabbing the window to resize it), I did find it difficult to read the unicorn's text while it moved around. Just a small thing, as it didn't really impact my game experience too much, but it would be nice if the text was anchored in a box somewhere in addition or instead.
All in all, it was a neat new mechanic and cool take on the theme :smile: