Monsters...BRAWL! by A Flat Miner Studios

[raw]
made by A Flat Miner Studios for LD33 (JAM)
Legend has it that some nights, when the moon is shadowed, the bones of the dead will rise up and do battle! Join the ranks of the clattering corpses in cryptic combat and defeat your rivals. If you find your brittle bones are not enough to fuel your rampage, try on the two mystic costumes: werewolf and eyebeast. Put them on and use their powers to bash, blast, and smash the other skeletons! Dangerous traps litter the battlefield as well, begging to be triggered by some sneaky skeletons. Just be careful that you aren’t the one ensnared. If you should fall, never fear – death is not the end…

Best played with one or two players and two XBox 360 controllers.

If you do use a keyboard to play, the controls are:

Player 1:
Left/right arrows: Move left/right
Up arrow: Jump
.: Action 1 (melee attack)
/: Action 2

Player 2:
A/D: Move left/right
W: Jump
C: Action 1 (melee attack)
V: Action 2

Credits:
Carla Castillo (playtesting, add'l consulting)
Dexter Davison (add'l music) - @dexter_ii
Jesse Slade (music, sfx, playtesting) - @jslade55
Jen Thrasher (playtesting, add'l consulting)
Jodi Slade (art, art, more art) - @jodisladeart
John Thrasher (programming) - @wjt1321
Micha Faw - (programming) - @ghostmaple

Ratings

Coolness 89% 2
Overall(Jam) 3.87 87
Audio(Jam) 3.49 216
Fun(Jam) 3.96 46
Graphics(Jam) 4.20 141
Humor(Jam) 3.02 398
Innovation(Jam) 3.09 454
Mood(Jam) 3.28 416
Theme(Jam) 3.69 334

Feedback

ManuelGF
25. Aug 2015 · 01:48 UTC
Funny game, amazing graphics and cool audio. Well done!
BoskoSokolov
25. Aug 2015 · 01:55 UTC
nice idea,nice graphics and audio
Aevek
25. Aug 2015 · 02:44 UTC
Had a lot of fun, going to make some friends now just so I can try this as it's meant to be played.
cowboycolor
25. Aug 2015 · 06:18 UTC
Love love LOVE when local multiplayer games get into the LD. Theyre never given enough love. Well done
DruhinM
25. Aug 2015 · 06:37 UTC
Nice
tweedle
25. Aug 2015 · 06:41 UTC
Enjoyed the multiplayer aspect of this game. Changing into different forms really makes this game.
Fun stuff!
Strike
25. Aug 2015 · 06:41 UTC
Multiplier is awesome ! AI does a pretty good job. Nice concept.
randoman
25. Aug 2015 · 07:01 UTC
Am I able to select the arena? Only seen the first one. The game is quite fun! Played with a controller and it was great.
redzero
25. Aug 2015 · 15:59 UTC
Nice game. Needs more costumes,though. =]
namrog84
25. Aug 2015 · 16:27 UTC
That came together nicely! well done! It was great to have some multiplayer too! I especially liked the O in the mOnster logo. Were you hoping for the other theme of death is not the end? :P
gnuwilliam
25. Aug 2015 · 18:02 UTC
Great game!
Zerkruemler
25. Aug 2015 · 20:09 UTC
Oh local multiplayer is cool. Nice game. The sounds are a little bit annoying
Kai20
25. Aug 2015 · 21:03 UTC
I love your Game it is smart diffrent and you can be lots of diffrent monsters. great graphics, great ai, great gameplay
Rulrite
25. Aug 2015 · 21:16 UTC
An awesome game; I imagine it's a lot of fun with multiple players! I really like the art/animation, too, especially the wolf.
Sergi Montaner
25. Aug 2015 · 22:27 UTC
Wow! This one feels like a finished game.
I liked the posibility to live as a ghost and activate traps even though I've lost.
The tutorial is really easy to understand.
Having bots for the single player is a nice detail, I know its not easy.

Noob question of the day: how do you get to customize the itch.io site like that??
🎤 A Flat Miner Studios
25. Aug 2015 · 22:47 UTC
@Sergi Montaner - When you're logged into itch.io and looking at your game's page, click the Change Appearance link at the top to bring down the appearance widget.
Quadnozzle
26. Aug 2015 · 01:21 UTC
Great job guys! Was expecting to use WASD for single player but ended up having to use arrows. Well-thought out directions screen and fantastic art!
🎤 A Flat Miner Studios
26. Aug 2015 · 14:38 UTC
@Quadnozzle - We actually originally had WASD for the first player/single player, but it didn't actually work as well for some reason (I honestly don't remember why, that last day is a bit of a blur, as usual)

@namrog84 - The O was a bit of genius on Jodi's (artist) part, I think.
crucknuk
26. Aug 2015 · 15:09 UTC
Really nice graphics and animations. Good game to play multiplayer!
glerikud
26. Aug 2015 · 17:28 UTC
Maybe we'll try it with the team once, but it's cool in single player too.
Kuchalu
27. Aug 2015 · 14:23 UTC
Nice concept, fun game and awesome art.
MechanicMoon
27. Aug 2015 · 15:18 UTC
Very funny game with cools animations,graphics and local multiplayer!! Awesome brawl game :-)
Xanjos
27. Aug 2015 · 18:58 UTC
The AI is pretty relentless but it does a valiant job at being credible opponents when you play this on your own. I also like the fact that even if you die, you can still block your opponents and activate the traps in ghost form.
CtrlAltTea
28. Aug 2015 · 02:07 UTC
Looks great and plays well, cool idea!
MrTwister
30. Aug 2015 · 03:51 UTC
Wow! I wasn't expecting to see a multiplayer brawler game this LD! Awesome idea! Loved the graphics and musics/sfxs.

It's very well-thought design-wise and incredibly fun. I think I'll try this entry later with a friend!
Kizler
01. Sep 2015 · 04:58 UTC
OMG YES! This game is so much fun!
CorgiCommander
01. Sep 2015 · 16:35 UTC
I'm another fan of LD multiplayer games. Great job guys!
Robot Souls Games
01. Sep 2015 · 19:07 UTC
Good, but a bit imbalanced, it seems, with some costumes being too powerful. Also, you shouldn't be able to ride on the other player's head. There doesn't actually seem to be much strategy.
🎤 A Flat Miner Studios
02. Sep 2015 · 13:41 UTC
@Robot Souls: Yes, we tried to balance the non-skeleton costumes a bit more, but know the werewolf is still too powerful (it's way better than it was when I initially set it up). Ran into time issues during playtesting balance (as usual). We are aware and if we were to do more with this game (as we are thinking of), balance among costumes will be very important.

In regards to riding other people's heads: Some of us liked it, some didn't, so it's good to have some outside feedback there. Thanks!
los.pixelados
02. Sep 2015 · 15:02 UTC
A very good brawler game. Very nicely polished, good gfx, fx, sound and music. The controls were not the ones mentioned in the tutorial screen so i had to literally press evey key on my keyboard until i found them.
Look, most people that play games here DONT have a controller and expect the game to run just fine with the keyboard and mouse. This contest is for PC games, NOT console games. It's nice that you have controller support but you sould make the controls just as fun to use on the keyboard.
Good job for making a nice game that supports local multiplayer as well.
🎤 A Flat Miner Studios
03. Sep 2015 · 14:08 UTC
@los.pixelados:

I'm guessing we just weren't clear enough there. The controls are actually exactly as listed in the controller screen, but I see now we should have labeled which were 1P and which were 2P. They are listed in that order, though. For example, where it says <- or A, that means the left arrow for player 1 and A for player 2. But that definitely doesn't seem as clear to me when looking at it now as it did at the time. I apologize for that. Hopefully if anyone else is having issues, they will see this comment and it will clarify. I will also go up and add keyboard controls to the comments up top. Thanks for the feedback.
Linus123xbb
03. Sep 2015 · 16:19 UTC
Good game, I liked it but my friend didn't so much. However we agreed upon that it was good graphics, the controls could've been more polished on PC. Great to see multiplayer games on here!
WizzardMaker
04. Sep 2015 · 13:57 UTC
Nice game, had a really good time playing it!
shawn42
04. Sep 2015 · 21:40 UTC
Had lots of fun just playing against the AI. The art is amazing for the timeframe.. nice work!
Jupiter_Hadley
06. Sep 2015 · 13:14 UTC
Nice entry! I included it in part 19 of my Ludum Dare 33 Compilation video series, if you would like to take a look :) http://youtu.be/bouSnGLQUcs
jk5000
09. Sep 2015 · 14:29 UTC
A simple and great idea.
SecondDimension
09. Sep 2015 · 17:48 UTC
Absolutely great entry, very fun and I loved the art. The collision detection was sometimes a bit dodgy but overall it's a fun little game.