Air-Raid Architect by ZungryWare
Take to the skies in this voxel-based arena shooter! Prevent killer wasps from destroying your island and collect wasp honey to rebuild.
Play it in browser (Chrome recommended)
Controls: - WASD: Move - Mouse: Aim and Shoot - Space: Jump and Jetpack - +, -: Change Mouse Sensitivity


| GitHub | https://github.com/Zungrysoft/ld54/ |
| Link | https://zungrysoft.github.io/ld54/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/air-raid-architect |
Ratings
| Overall | 154th | 4.018⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 135th | 3.982⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 94th | 4.071⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 273th | 4.071⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 612th | 3.554⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
Small idea: Why not connect the player's life directly to the environment? Well done !
The game is fun and original!
Well done!
A couple of times I fell down through the floor, but for the life of me my jetpack wasn't enough to get me back up there again, just hitting the bottom of the platform with no way back up.
If there had been something like an ultimate to build up using drops/kills of weaker wasps, to then dispatch the bigger bosses more quickly, I would've stuck around a while longer.
I really wish I had gotten the chance to get someone other than me to playtest it. I think the game is really fun if you're skilled at the mechanics, but I don't know how fun it is for people who haven't been playing it repeatedly for 72 hours straight. Now that you mention it, I think we should have given the jetpack a higher fuel capacity to reward the player more for conservative use and make it easier to save yourself from falling.
I think you could have been a bit more generous with power-ups, the basic pistol is far too weak for later waves, and shotguns/2nd pistol last very short. Also, I misstepped a few times and fell to my death -- but maybe some time penalty (respawn) during which your territory is defenseless is punishment enough?
The mines/bombs also seem extremely strong. Once they were there, and I was with single pistol, it was instant game over.
Overall very fun and intriguing mechanics! :)
@bromeon The powerups are pretty easy to get a lot of if you make good use of the shop's reroll button. In particular, you should make sure you reroll for the pistol once you get past wave 3 or 4 since it's a very strong permanent upgrade. That also goes for hearts when you only have one left. That's an interesting idea for the death mechanic though. It would certainly be nail-biting to sit there while you watch the wasps tear down your territory for free! It kind of goes the other way around. Currently, you preserve the environment so that you don't fall into the the void, rather than avoiding falling into the void to preserve the environment. I'll definitely consider that for the post-jam version.
The jetpack definitively saved my ass more than once!
The basic pistol is a bit weak and the shotgun is hard to come by. Maybe more enemies per wave with less health each would be more interesting?
Well done nonetheless!
I wish I knew how much jetpack fuel I had, made jumping for coins very risky!
@smitner I am working on some post-jam changes already! Not sure how much I'll get to develop it, but I definitely plan to further improve it in a few ways. The most recent thing I added is positional audio, so you can tell where enemies are coming from.
@chailotl You can control mouse sensitivity with the + and - keys. Glad you enjoyed!
Unfortunately the combat is extremely unfun. The spread is obnoxious and the enemies take too many bullets to kill.
I would very much like to see a post-jam update, I liked it a lot despite the shooting.
The visuals seem nice, at least?
It was still fun to play though :D Also it's very impressive that you used your own engine!
The rebuilding mechanic with different structures was a cool feature, Initially I was confused about what good it does, but when they started shredding my floor it quickly became a big decision what to pick each wave.
Nice touch with the jetpack and multiple different weapons, overall a great entry! :x: :bee: :x: :gun: :smile:
Also, something with the mouse and player movement felt REALLY off. Sometimes my mouse sensitivity would seem to jump way up and then go back down again. The mouse was even moving on its own a few times. Walking movement seemed to speed up and down as well. I wonder if maybe some of the physics logic is tied to the framerate?
The purpose of the spread was to ensure the player can't just stand on one platform and snipe enemies from afar. It was to encourage movement and reward the player for getting closer to enemies. A lot of people have been saying the gun deals too little damage, but I've never felt that way. I'm wondering if the people complaining about that never collected a second pistol. Admittedly, I should have made the wave 4 shop contain only structures with the pistol so the player is guaranteed to get it. I can see why a player would think, "Why would I buy a pistol? I already have that!" The jetpack fuel meter is supposed to render right underneath the crosshair. Is it not showing up for you?

What browser are you playing on? The weird sensitivity might be caused by mouse acceleration turned on in your OS. Chrome allows the pointer-lock api to override mouse acceleration, but not all browsers support that. The physics engine is tied to framerate, I think. Did you have framerate issues while playing?
I also got further, thanks to those issues no longer being there, and I can definitely say the second pistol makes shooting feel better. It's kind of a slow grind until you get one, though. On the jetpack recharge, I think I didn't notice it my first couple times playing because it recharges so slowly that I didn't realize it was there, even with a battery (not sure if batteries stack, I only sprung for 1). I do also think the jetpack drains way too fast, especially given how extreme the gravity is. Making what seems like a small jump to grab honey got me killed more than once due to how fast I ran out of fuel.
As far as encouraging the player to move goes, why not have the enemies shoot at the player's feet some of the time? They seem to be content to shoot parts of the ground where I'm not standing, which actually doesn't really punish me for standing in place and shooting them. At the same time, the environment can be destroyed so granularly that I'd have to be looking at my feet a lot to make sure I'm not going to fall into a player-sized hole and lose a life just for that. Maybe the environment could consist of fewer, larger pieces that take a few hits before being destroyed, that way falling to my death wouldn't feel as "random", if that makes sense.
I'm not really sure. I test everything on Chrome since it seems to be the most optimized for games.
I attribute a lot of this game's problems to me being too good at it. I learned early on that the best way to use the jetpack is for horizontal movement. If you tap the space bar rhythmically instead of holding it, you can cross the entire map on a full tank. Add in a circle jump and airstrafing and you only need a half tank. Mastering this technique is key to getting lots of honey. If you want to go vertically, however, you need a full tank to go barely ten voxels up. I'm thinking we should increase the jetpack capacity and make the initial press instantly drain a few percent to balance between horizontal and vertical movement. The batteries do stack. Each battery gives +50% (additive) recharge rate.
There was a plan for an enemy that would directly attack the player, but it was cut due to lack of time. So while you can stand completely still while killing an enemy, you do have to move around to get to a different enemy. Also, the shotgun encourages you to take specific angles to line up multiple wasps. Though we could definitely do more in that department. The enemy AI attempts to shoot loose, singular voxels so you don't end up with all these random floating voxels. But you can end up with a lot of random holes. The way I play is to just stay away from places with lots of holes or thin floors and make liberal use of the jetpack to get to safer places.
Thanks for the in-depth feedback! I plan to do some more work on this game after the jam is over, but it's a tough thing to balance for both skilled players and normal players.