The Madness of Larry Donovan by The Lame Brain
DESCRIPTION
This is a Horror Stealth Game. Larry Donovan must explore a forgotten space and deal with the demons who dwell there. He must be stealthy, as the demons cannot be killed, only delayed by his trusty Tazer.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Arrow keys move.
Left Shift is run
X to drop the currently held item
Z to use the currently held item, if it has a use.
Space to fire the Tazer. Each use costs a battery, but if the Tazer is still firing when a Demon touches you, they will be temporarily stunned!
Paint Cans
Use the red cans to increase your Red, use the green cans to increase your Green, use the Blue cans to increase your Blue. (they cycle back to 0) If you match the RGB value of the floor you are in, Demons will have a much harder time seeing you.
Theme
To clarify how I used the theme: Unstable as in mentally unstable as in madness. Also, the way the level changes is not meant to be a new level... Larry Donovan does not travel anywhere, the world is altering itself around him. That's why the screen shakes and he says things like "ooh my head!". Probably could have made that clearer somehow...
(note: The sound slider on the main menu is not bugged, just part of the vibe.)
TOOLS
Unity 2020.3.17f1
Audacity
BFXR
BeepBox.co
Paint.Net
www.1001fonts.com
| SourceCode | https://github.com/Lame-Brain/TMoLD |
| Link | https://the-lame-brain.itch.io/the-madness-of-larry-donovan |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-madness-of-larry-donovan |
Ratings
| Overall | 465th | 3.018⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 488th | 2.705⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 496th | 2.596⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 451th | 2.921⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 498th | 2.526⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 234th | 3.25⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 353th | 2.375⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 76th | 3.768⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 55🗳️ | 94🗨️ |
i feel that the paint mechanic has a lot of potential, but when the main thing you're doing is wandering from room to room its pretty difficult to plan out a certain color that you want to have.
great work overall tho!
To clarify how I used the theme: Unstable as in mentally unstable as in madness.
Also, the way the level changes is not meant to be a new level... Larry Donovan does not travel anywhere, the world is altering itself around him. That's why the screen shakes and he says things like "ooh my head!". Probably could have made that clearer somehow...
Mental illness is something interesting to use as a theme if you use it to raise awareness for these issues (see hellblade for example) :)
great work :)
I was a bit nervous about using that as my theme, but I tried to very respectful with my treatment of mental illness.
1. Larry Donovan is not a raving madman, he is just suffering and doing his best in a confusing situation.
2. When the Demons speak, it tells you their name. (I really need to make this system better, it might be going by too fast.) Notice the names of all the demons are types of mental illnesses or parts of the brain. My intent here is that Larry Donovan's struggle is against these illnesses or against his own brain.
3. My writing sucks and is mostly place-holder because I added it too late when I was already worn-down. If I had being doing the Jam and not the Compo, I would have gotten someone else to give me better lines to present.
The gameplay is really fun and intuitive. I know which things I should walk towards and which I should not. One thing I really liked, which is small but important, was that the player character properly turned around depending on what direction you moved. You could have just as easily left it as a static image, but that extra bit of polish goes a long way. I also really like that the art style is so consistent. It's got a really strong mood.
That is a good point, I didn't think about how that might be unintuitive.
The Taser is supposed to change what happens when an Demon runs into you. Instead of causing damage, the Demon is stunned. Different Demons shake off the effects faster or slower, but it acts to protect you from an attack, if you use it at the correct time.
Good suggestion!
I should totally have done a mini-map. I want to change some things anyway, and a mini-map is now the top of my expanded feature list.
It occurs to me now that a mini-map would be a good way to hammer home the whole "you are not travelling somewhere else, the level is changing around you" aspect of levels.
I'm curious to know what the flower does though. (Hysocyamus ?) It says it ward off confusion, but what does that mean exactly in game ? Does it prevents a specific monster from attacking you ?
Some of the monsters inflict different effects. If you pick up the appropriate item, it both cures the condition and prevents you from contracting it on further hits.
(Good idea that it could ward off the associated monsters! I like that!)
The status effects that are implemented are:
1. Confusion. When you get Confused, a Star symbol appears and your controls get mixed up.) Hysocyamus (the flower) to counter.
2. Venom/Sickness. When you are affected by this condition, you are slowed WAY down. Antidote (the syringe) protects you from this effect.
The only problem for me was that the enemies weren't much of a threat (except the bouncy pink guy that gave me a lot of trouble).
All in all I really liked the game. Well done!
For some "levels" I just could run through the levels - monsters never became anyhow dangerous. That makes it hard to handle them in the later levels.
What I really liked was that the game is communicating every item to the player very well! In many games one gets an item and creators thought they are self-explaining ... and I often don't understand them.
Like others I had problems to recognize the theme. After your explanation I got the idea behind it and I think it is totally valid to implement the theme as the story. But then the game should get more story-telling.
Never realized that a bunch of polygons could be so creepy. Eye indicator is quite cool as well.
The trapezoids are mostly random, it makes it really hard for them to catch you, but they HIT HARD!
The boots make you too fast. not a fan of pixel art, but the atmosphere in the game is there. especially felt when I was running on my first try alone. not a bad ambient.
The reason why I cannot forgive you for is that I got killed while I was on a menu screen, waiting for the info stack to reach the end (I gathered several objects and descriptions pop up quite slowly). That decided my stop in trying the game, sadly (I went quite deep, though).
Overall, mostly, I liked the way you put things toghether.
Also may be a little bug : I kept having items description show up again and again, not related to my current item...
But overhall good job!
Tbh wasn't really sure what the goal was. It felt like I was just mindlessly exploring. Sometimes the monsters felt really easy to avoid, and other they'd just pummel you to death in an instant.
I quite enjoyed the atmosphere!
Some mental diseases are very buggy like chasing across like 5 rooms. And also item pickup texts are shown infinite. But despite all these minor things, this game is legit! Well done!
I managed to take 4 of them, then horribly died from two pink demons or whatever.
I like all the mental-illness things. It's a good idea.
The texts said by the hero and the demons should be written on bubbles, above them. I could not read any of the demons sayings, because I was watching them to try to avoid them, and did not have even a microsecond to look at the lowest part of the screen where the text was.
It would have been good to explain more clearly how the paint cans work. I thought they were only one-shot, so did not want to use them until I realized they are "infinite paint cans", and you can use them to cycle through the quantities of color you put on yourself.
This painting idea is really strange, but I liked it. I also liked very much the monochromic designs, with color changing at each room. It reminds me of "Sortilège", an old game I played 25 years ago on my TO7-70 (a computer with cassettes). You can see screenshot of this game here : [http://dcmoto.free.fr/programmes/sortileges/](http://dcmoto.free.fr/programmes/sortileges/)
Overall, a nice and weird game. Thank you !