Tiny Sad Kraken by Erlend Aakre

[raw]
made by Erlend Aakre for LD33 (JAM)
A 2D top down action game where you must help a tiny sad kraken back to the sea to reunite with it's mother.

Swim around and grow stronger as you devour ships and their crews, watch out for stars and keep going until you are strong enough to break the dam separating you from the ocean.


==================== TIPS ====================
There are 3 towns (north west, north east, south east). The dam is in South West!

Ships will spawn at the towns, and they will head to a different town.

Your size can go from 10 to 70. being size 10 lets you attack the size 10 boat. Boats are size 10,20,30,40,50,60. Attacking a boat too big gives you a small amount of damage.

Sharks do a lot of damage and spawn randomly, you have to outrun them and they will stop chasing. Turn down difficulty level to have fewer sharks be active at any time.

Ratings

Coolness 92% 2
Overall(Jam) 3.67 174
Audio(Jam) 3.59 168
Fun(Jam) 3.30 352
Graphics(Jam) 3.85 302
Humor(Jam) 2.71 565
Innovation(Jam) 3.15 412
Mood(Jam) 3.59 191
Theme(Jam) 4.04 99

Feedback

Lucho9
25. Aug 2015 · 01:25 UTC
i enjoy it, i like the idea and concept
bladesatoshix
25. Aug 2015 · 02:29 UTC
Really fun game with gorgeous graphics!
TEAM-TIGER
25. Aug 2015 · 02:30 UTC
I like getting the boats but it felt as if they should spawn a little more. i was swimming through a lot of nothing for a lot of my play time. maybe an indicator to point you in a decent direction? looks good though
djfariel
25. Aug 2015 · 02:33 UTC
Two things: 1. I am downloading this game to play fully later. 2. You scared me half to death when I attacked my first ship. I thought I had died. Great game. I'm hugely happy about the tiny sad kraken.
Monkokio
25. Aug 2015 · 02:48 UTC
It feels like there's a good game locked away in here, but the pacing is too slow for me to find it.

I wondered around for about 10 minutes and couldn't find any ships small enough to consume. I got knocked around by some sharks and when I tried to eat the smallest ship I could find, I found I was still too small. Oh well.

The atmosphere was great. It was neat to explore around as the little Kraken and find island towns. There was just too little that I could actually do during my time playing.
🎤 Erlend Aakre
25. Aug 2015 · 02:52 UTC
HINT: there are 3 cities and 4 ports, ships of all sizes will spawn at the ports and travel to a different one.
retrogradeorbit
25. Aug 2015 · 13:44 UTC
Cool game. I really enjoyed it.
Goutye
25. Aug 2015 · 14:51 UTC
One of the best game I played. The mood is excellent as well as the animation.
Inateno
25. Aug 2015 · 17:36 UTC
Awesome arts and sound, the concept is really interesting but more level design would be enjoyable.

A big map with nothing I had to move long time before finally understanding that I only have to camp before the port xD (alos lot, lot decoration all around the sea, but we cannot do any interactions with it, so sad).

And, sharks are really OP, I was a 53 size and get killed in few seconds, no way to go faster than he, when it's on you you can just die :/
AlfalfaStudios
26. Aug 2015 · 01:45 UTC
See, monsters don't have to be mean, he just missed his mom! Having a clear indicator of which ships you could take on would make things more clear, but the guessing and learning was also enjoyable.
crucknuk
26. Aug 2015 · 09:57 UTC
Nice graphics and really good music. However, you should make sharks spawn out of the screen area. I had sharks spawning 2 pixels next to me way too often... Nice job ;)
zenmumbler
26. Aug 2015 · 10:01 UTC
Cute. Krakie could have moved a tad faster. The mood and setting are very calm and soothing for a game about destroying ships, but it all seemed quite natural. Nice.
dollarone
26. Aug 2015 · 10:30 UTC
Nice theme, graphics, sound and gameplay. Well done sir!
🎤 Erlend Aakre
26. Aug 2015 · 12:46 UTC
Small bugfix added: There was a bug in the code that allowed sharks to spawn on top of the player, and to have their attacks counted several times due to the knockback effect. those bugs have now been fixed
Obvious_San
26. Aug 2015 · 13:29 UTC
Super sweet :) Great concept, good gameplay and nice graphics :D Could be nice if there is one enemy ship right at the beginning, but that's cherrypicking.
Crefossus
26. Aug 2015 · 13:52 UTC
Nice audio (love that music) and graphics. I also got lost at first, but ended up camping some docks which worked.

Maybe this could be more fun if the pacing was faster and sense of space was easier (minimap? ship indicators/objective indicators?), or just a smaller mapsize in general. OR spawn more ships for more places so you don't have to hunt so hard. Maybe the trade routes could be marked more clearly somehow? Maybe movement speed boost/attack button to make exploration more exciting?

I'm digging the different sound effects for ship sizes and the shark animation/follow/ai is spot on !
HotBoxGames
26. Aug 2015 · 16:29 UTC
Very peaceful and mellow, I ended up roaming around as the kraken for a good hour! I liked how big the map was, as it promoted the feeling of exploration.
peterkirk
26. Aug 2015 · 21:36 UTC
It was sometimes hard to tell if I was bigger than other ships and I could only find out by injuring myself.
I like how big the world was with different biomes and villages with people running around. At the same time it felt difficult to know where to go.
The music was pleasant and I liked the art style.
Grahhhhh
29. Aug 2015 · 00:59 UTC
Overall very nice entry. The music felt aquatic, which for someone without music ability is impressive to pull off. I enjoyed the style, flow, control, graphics, a lot of things were right.
lukethecoder64
29. Aug 2015 · 02:14 UTC
Good game. Great Graphics.
BobMorate
30. Aug 2015 · 07:55 UTC
Very enjoyable game, good work! As a suggestion for an improvement, it would be nice to have some sort of indicator of where the ships are, like arrows pointing to them, if you are very far away from one you can eat. Also, I was not able to finally beat the game since I didn't know how to break the dam on the south east city. Nevertheless, an excellent entry, lovely graphics, good music and very enjoyable overall :)
liquidmedia
01. Sep 2015 · 01:29 UTC
I spent a long time swimming around seeing nothing that I could do just endless lakes, maybe 1 enemy in 5 min.
psychonull
01. Sep 2015 · 02:04 UTC
wow awesome graphics and music .. nice mood really neat game. were there some potions under the water? I'm pretty sure I saw some but I couldn't get them xD. the sfx was too high, first ship attacked made me jump on my chair haha.
shawn42
01. Sep 2015 · 16:56 UTC
Really, really fun. This was a hard game to put down. Also, I now hate dolphins! I really liked the graphical touch of the terrain, ports, campers, etc. great work.
AndyBrown
02. Sep 2015 · 21:09 UTC
Loved the tile sets and the boats and their animations, nice job! The gameplay did have some pacing problems, it would have been great to start out with little fish or something to eat at the starting area and then allow the player to venture further out to tackle boats etc. Great job for your first entry!
rodobodolfo
05. Sep 2015 · 16:44 UTC
Wow, really polished game, music, sound and graphics are really nice!!! solid entry
grynca
07. Sep 2015 · 09:55 UTC
great, much fun crushing all those evil ships ;]
RovingSquid
07. Sep 2015 · 19:51 UTC
Cool game!
General
13. Sep 2015 · 15:17 UTC
As a developer of a tentacle monster game, for me it was especially interesting to play yours. Your game is really great, I like the whole world you built!

The video reviews of the games I played: https://youtu.be/gAPMEoLs5yA
Your game is at 22:01