Ishmael by dob

made by dob for Ludum Dare 54 (COMPO)

Ishmael takes place on a small island, one that's getting smaller because of relentless whale attacks. Nobody knows what is setting the whales off, but they're eating the island piece by piece. You've set up a defense cannon, and you're trying to stop the whales before they eat every last bit of land. Yes, your space is limited! [obligatory theme mention].

Play the game here: http://planktongames.com/ld54

On touchscreens, it is playable but doesn't work perfectly due to mouse tracking issues.

Control the cannon with your mouse. You can buy island improvements between levels. There are six levels total.

Ishmael was written in JavaScript using the CraftyJS game library. Art was mostly PowerPoint and GIMP with some Paint3D thrown in. A little bit of music using NoteFlight, but most sounds were from my mouth recorded and processed with GoldWave Audio. The cool font is Enemy Sub by ZapatoPI. The other font is Tahoma.

Post-submission Bug Fix Moby wouldn't come back after leaving the screen on level 6. 2 lines added to fix this issue.

Some pics:

Link	https://planktongames.com/ld54/game.js
Link	https://planktongames.com/ld54/
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/ishmael

Ratings

Overall	177^th	3.576⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Fun	129^th	3.682⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	175^th	3.424⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Theme	169^th	3.727⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	251^th	3.227⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Audio	219^th	2.985⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Humor	81^th	3.318⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Mood	221^th	3.172⭐	34🧑‍⚖️
Given		23🗳️	42🗨️

Feedback

mdotedot

02. Oct 2023 · 11:36 UTC

I feel sorry for the whales .. It played without any issues on chrome in Windows.
Good job!

sisuisa

02. Oct 2023 · 16:29 UTC

I played it through, and the length was good for the amount of variations and to get a sense of the gameplay with the mechanics. It was overall very complete and well-rounded experience.

There's always more to add like different enemies and so on, maybe an endless mode where you try to survive as long as possible, or so on. I bought lots of volcano kits and didn't really have time to click on the mountains to clear space to place a turret, so allowing player to keep playing after winning would allow for that. But, anyway, it was very clear how to play and I didn't encounter any bugs. UI was also very clear and informative!

jellycopter

02. Oct 2023 · 21:03 UTC

Very fun game! I love that you can destroy your own territory to free up land as needed. My only issue was that reloading was dependant on the last shot landing (unless I missed why that was). Excellent work!

henk

02. Oct 2023 · 21:17 UTC

I liked it a lot! The sounds were especially entertaining. I ran into some performance problems in firefox starting from the level that introduces Moby, although playing in "slow motion" gave me somewhat of an advantage for later levels :P. The "island growth" mechanics did sort of feel optional to me. Maybe some more levels would help give room to flesh that out.

sabasa

02. Oct 2023 · 22:18 UTC

Cool game! It felt a bit fast though, I played it multiple times because I wanted to explore different builds but maybe if it had some more levels it would have given me the posibility of exploring them more organicaly. Overall great game, had a lot of fun

kairuma

03. Oct 2023 · 01:02 UTC

Pretty good take on the tower defense genre. The stage with the one giant whale cause the game to lag a lot though.

LDJam user 268934

03. Oct 2023 · 06:18 UTC

Nice game , good controls , upgrade stuff I always like that . I’m a fan of mouth sounds but in this case you would be better to do some 8bit sounds.
Your game is good and the mouth sounds take the polish down a little instead of adding a fun factor (imo).

LDJam user 277876

03. Oct 2023 · 22:09 UTC

I love the whole island system, it is really cool to see how my island changed and became tailored throughout my playthrough. A cool idea that was executed fairly well! To balance out the criticism I suppose, I had bought a cannon early on and never was able to place it due to the nature of the world generation. That aside, great job!

PerfectSquare

04. Oct 2023 · 02:23 UTC

Nice idea and very well polished/lacking bugs for a jam game! I liked that you gave the player lots of different upgrade options and it felt like there was some strategic choices in deciding which city upgrades to go for. I went with mostly factories and farms which was going well and making me rich until Moby came and ate them all...Still a fun game though and easy to pick up/understand what to do!

quasilyte

04. Oct 2023 · 08:02 UTC

The game loop is good. That Moby took a good chunk of my base the first time around though!

I like the fact that whales move in dashes instead of having a constant speed. Makes shooting them more interesting.

Some issues I got with this game while playing it:

* It would be convenient to have a way to undo a purchase in the "level cleared" menu. I ended up buying many farms while trying to cancel it; I had to restart the game due to this.
* The FPS dropped considerably when Moby appeared. It never went back up, every next level felt slow with ~10 fps.
* The water tiles look like a grid, but it seems like they're not aligned or have a different size. This feels a bit off.

LDJam user 238500

05. Oct 2023 · 18:10 UTC

This is amazing, I want more levels! When I finally figured everything out it was over :)
One minor thing: I would like to be able to hold mouse button instead of clicking.
Really cool upgrade/building system. Great job!

mossymushroom

06. Oct 2023 · 12:54 UTC

I also feel bad for the whales hahah, the Moby feels a little overpowered, but narratively it makes sense. I also experienced some FPS drops when it appeared, the game fits the theme well and I like the simplicity!

MozokEvgen

06. Oct 2023 · 13:05 UTC

Nice game, I liked this combination of ideas.

Has few issues: FPS dropped on 3rd level (Firefox), and on one level I had 1 Whale left, but it never appear.

Dan Burns

06. Oct 2023 · 17:37 UTC

Cool space invaders-type, and nice work with mouth-sounds for sound design, etc. great work!

stmate03

06. Oct 2023 · 18:27 UTC

great game, the only complaint I have really is my finger hurting from spamming bullets like crazy to clear mountains, otherwise fun little game, the first moby level had me in shambles because I had no idea how to kill it...

Tankou

06. Oct 2023 · 19:27 UTC

Very addictive game! I liked the artstyle and the conrtols felt smooth. I also appreciate all the upgrade options you implemented.

Ismael Rodriguez

06. Oct 2023 · 21:48 UTC

Fun game. I felt a little bad about killing whales. I felt helpless watching Moby eat half my island, that was awkward. Moby could use some visual feedback for taking damage, I wasn't sure I was hurting him till I saw the HUD in the corner. I also ran into a bug where the game got stuck on "Whales Left: 1" on the last level, which was unlucky. I like the way the water animates, and all the different upgrades to play with. The little songs that plays between levels are fun, and the overall plot/narrative presentation. Good job overall.

Harmadillo

07. Oct 2023 · 13:53 UTC

The main game was excellent. Shooting has a nice speed making shooting at distance different to shooting close by. Liked the sound effects too. The buying and upgrading the island interface could be improved to make it more intuitive/obvious. Fro example being able to see the island while buying upgrades. I could never remember what I had space for.

José Bonilla

07. Oct 2023 · 23:03 UTC

Cool game, I liked the game.
As others have said, Moby needs damage feedback.

Martin Bousquet

08. Oct 2023 · 16:11 UTC

Played it with some issues in firefox, the game lags so much after 5mn of gameplay that it's hard to aim the whales. Cool concept though.

Panda king 976

08. Oct 2023 · 16:46 UTC

It seems to get too hard too quickly but I like the idea.

cheesepencil

08. Oct 2023 · 21:31 UTC

The angry pink whales are very humorous!! Starts slow but ramps up quickly...

Johnsensei

09. Oct 2023 · 13:01 UTC

Moby went right for my canon at the start of level 6. There was no hope. Very good overall. It would have helped me to have some checks. For example, I bought a canon after level 1 without understanding that I couldn't place it anywhere, and it never got placed the whole game. If there could have been a warning in the shop that I had no where to place it, I might have beaten that darn Moby!

caeonosphere

10. Oct 2023 · 03:00 UTC

Starting after Moby's first appearance, I found there was very little time for terrain management — is there a better, more hands-off method of getting useable tiles back? Also, my clickin' hand hurts.

Still, I liked the idea! This approach to limited space is a nice fit for tower defense. Or... whatever the manual version of tower defense is. Nice work :)

StrangerYann

13. Oct 2023 · 09:32 UTC

I really enjoyed that!

the mechanics and menuing reminded me of your game from LD50

it works really well --- the 1st level with moby got me really scared I was like "well that's it it's over"

buffed my stuff and it worked out in the end

I really like the dynamics, it's simple but works really well

even the fact that you have to aim slightly ahead of each whale

it's satisfying to grow your city as you intend and buff it

the mood is good, the humour is nice - well done sir :grinning: :sparkles:

Shigor

14. Oct 2023 · 11:36 UTC

I think it would be better if the building phase was made in a bit more "normal" way, this feels rather clunky. I guess you wanted to add a bit of depth of forcing player to go through the phases, buying stuff first, then using it in phases.