Guardian Angel by blockerz
Theme Summary
In this game you play a guardian angel trying to delay the inevitable things that happen to people. You cannot possibly delay them forever but you can attempt to hold these things off as long as you are able.
Gameplay
The game is a hand/eye coordination challenge. You have to use your mouse and try to keep within the safe area while it moves around the screen. Each time you go outside you lose resources you need to keep delaying the inevitable. There are multiple levels and the difficulty ramps up on each playthrough.
Game Design Notes
I wanted a game mechanic that reinforced the theme. The best way I could think to do it was to have something that you would eventually fail. The goal being to delay the failure as long as possible.
Each level is also a scenario that applies to the theme. I tried to give each scenario a pattern, sound and animations that worked together to create a separate concept in each one.
Each playthrough increases in difficulty which means that you have a reason to keep going if you find the game enjoyable. It gets harder and harder as you progress.
Ratings
| Overall | 254th | 3.542⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 203th | 3.577⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 110th | 3.788⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 8th | 4.36⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 443th | 3.1⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 266th | 3.292⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 93th | 3.66⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 277th | 3.3⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 48🗨️ |
I was surprised by the amount of levels and the dificulty curve, I just kept thinking "OK, this must be the last level, it can't get much crazier than this" :)
I held it up to 12 seconds max
@papaya I thought about keyboard controls but was thinking it would make it a different game. The balance would have to be changed and the directions you can move more limited. It is a good idea to explore though for sure.
@peteywoufes Thanks! I put a lot of thought into the theme and how best to get a mechanic and mood that supported it. I felt it was hard with this theme because most games you inevitably lose so taken broadly it applies all over. I wanted to try to get a more direct interpretation as much as I could.
@bubakgames @oneowerse Thanks for playing!
The variety from level to level really kept me engaged. And the jokes .. THE JOKES ! The Alarm clock and taxes hit too close to home for me.
I used to play osu! so the age level was easy for me whereas the dishes one was really hard with its tight turns and random direction. I don't know if a ramping difficulty would be better, tho.
Great job !
Gameplay gets repetitive quite fast but it's kind of the point and I still had some fun with it. Especially with those very relatable "inevitable things", haha
I was recording my playthrough of your game so here’s a link in case you’d like to see it
https://youtu.be/gFusdrtgKRk
Your game starts at 6:36
@garazbolg2 I am glad you found the humor in it. It is hard to know how people will take it. As for the ramping, each time you go back to the main menu and begin again the difficultly increases. You may mean within the levels which also would make sense. My thought was to order them by difficultly so the patterns are that ramp. Which patterns are hardest seems to vary among people though. Please let me know if I missed the point there. Thanks for checking it out!
@caudatecoder I appreciate the recording and talking through it. That is very helpful for feedback. Thanks for doing it! I had thought about tax day being different around the world so that one is U.S. centric for sure.
I wanted to give multiple attempts for the mechanic in different patterns. For this attempt at LD, I also wanted each level to have polish through unique animations and sounds along with a background music track. That was the place I focused my efforts on content. I agree that more gameplay variety would be fun too.
I had thought the builds would work in all major browsers. If not, then I will look into if there is something specific I am doing to break Firefox. I just starting using WebGL about a month ago.
Well done :)
@zantze Thanks for checking it out! I am glad you enjoyed it. I was curious how you generated your maps so I was checking out your source today. I really like procedural generation. I have participated in the 7 day roguelike challenge every year since 2014. Last year I made a turn based procedural zelda-like and this year a turn based spy hunter where I generated roads. I have been interested in trying 3D map generation.
@theslate Thanks! I had not heard of towlr so I looked it up. It seems like something I would be interested in for sure. I learn new things every game jam!
So I played all the levels. Nice entry!
Music fits very well, the graphics are simple but match to the rest.
It's cool that you have so many levels.
This was my first jam using vector art. It looks like you had some experience with it. Let me know if you had any suggestions there.
@oneowerse @jk5000 @bubakgames The last couple of commenters mentioned they missed the Next button and almost didn't see all the levels. I wanted to confirm if you had a similar issue based on your comments. Thanks.