I am Death and Fire by derr
Tonight we will feast on delicious human souls, for tonight you may control me: The firebreathing menace of the sky, the infamous black dragon! Burn our enemies to cinder from above. Just watch out for those pesky little wizards - their magic makes me choke. Let's hunt together!
[Controls]
Mouse cursor - Direction of flight.
Left mouse button - Fire!
[Known issues]
Sometimes the "I'm stuffed button" doesn't work. Just hit Alt+F4.
[Important note]
The content is all about hunting and burning villagers and may not be suited for individuals who are offended by meaningless violence.
[Tools]
Unity 5
Visual Studio 2013
PyxelEdit
FL Studio (Music)
Universal Sound FX (Unity Asset)
GDC Audio Bundle
Thanks for playing!
[Credits]
der_r (Code, Music) - https://twitter.com/rendelmann
Phyrexianian (Arts, Design) - https://twitter.com/mstuetzer
[Controls]
Mouse cursor - Direction of flight.
Left mouse button - Fire!
[Known issues]
Sometimes the "I'm stuffed button" doesn't work. Just hit Alt+F4.
[Important note]
The content is all about hunting and burning villagers and may not be suited for individuals who are offended by meaningless violence.
[Tools]
Unity 5
Visual Studio 2013
PyxelEdit
FL Studio (Music)
Universal Sound FX (Unity Asset)
GDC Audio Bundle
Thanks for playing!
[Credits]
der_r (Code, Music) - https://twitter.com/rendelmann
Phyrexianian (Arts, Design) - https://twitter.com/mstuetzer
Ratings
| Coolness | 93% | 2 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.86 | 92 |
| Fun(Jam) | 3.80 | 83 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 4.27 | 119 |
| Humor(Jam) | 2.76 | 533 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.04 | 499 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.94 | 73 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.95 | 152 |
Also, sounds of towers destruction!
Looks good,
Controls work really well
Decent audio
very strong entry
Nice work!
I also like all the details and all the little spears flying around. This is really cool. For Gameplay I am no so enthusiastic. Something is missing like a goal for the level. Or a target to destroy. The endless flying mode is not motivating enough.
@g_o: Embarrassingly I forgot to scale the health back down. It's still at a value I had for some testing, dragging the game on a bit longer than we intended. Thanks for playing!
@Frozen Fractal: The samples were taken from the mentioned libraries so I opted out of audio voting. I put a ton of effort into the music and the audio mixing, though, so thanks for the comment!
@zenmumbler: Those were the mages. I intended the halos to be shields. The mages are protecting the archers until the shield fades. Also you lose all your ammo when you fly through the shield. But yeah, the mages are pretty weak mechanically in the game and you dont really see them. :/
@GeorgeBroussard: I contemplated publishing the source but it's embarrassingly bad. I could upload it, though! Is it possible to add a link at this point? Otherwise I could just mail or tweet you the download link.
Well done.
my critique would be that the gameplay needs to be broken up more. this might be as easy as lowering the amount of health you have. but maybe also multiple levels. also you need to give more feedback when you get hit i think.
I can't think of anything to criticize really. Just a minor suggestion: When flying up into the sky to refill my breath, I wanted to see the visual of myself silhouetted against a huge moon before I dive back down for more carnage. The tiny moon at the far right did not afford me this opportunity :)
Super solid! Way to go!
Nice job capturing the feel of a Smaug attack!
I scored 1249 before dying.
Everything else isn't not to shabby either. It controls well, sounds good and is fun for a short while.
My biggest complaint is the lack in variety and challenge.
I got 1458 souls.
The only thing Im missing is dashing through the baloon with my head.
High on everything
It is very satisfying to fly around with these controls.
My biggest problem with this game is that it feels like there's no way to avoid taking damage. In order to burn things in the city, I need to get within their attack range, which leads inevitably to depleted health. If there was some added layer of skill that would allow players to survive longer based on how they navigated volleys of arrows, this game would be vastly more enjoyable.
Amazing job, congratulations!
I really liked the detail where the music volume would tone down as you went up higher into the sky. Made for a nice change of pace.
Excellent game. Everything about this game is done well; the gameplay provides an excellent high score challenge with plenty of variety, and the graphics and audio work together to truly make you feel like a dragon bringing about death and destruction.
Because this game is good enough to replay over and over again, two balance flaws stood out to me, though:
- Balloons are too difficult to destroy. They dominate the airspace, and with how hard they are to destroy it is better strategically to remain close to the ground. It would add a lot of depth if coming up to destroy them would be a viable (hell, required for a good score) tactic.
- Wizards aren't effective enough. You can just fly through their barrier, and immediately start breathing fire again once you're out of the barrier. Your breath regenerates fast enough that by breathing in short bursts, you can still deal more than enough damage consistently even if your breath is reset to 0. It might be better if wizards stop or slow your breath regeneration in addition to slowing it (or if breathing in short bursts is nerfed entirely).
Due to these two issues, staying close to the ground and breathing in short bursts (using continuous breath against towers) seems to be easily the dominant strategy for getting high scores, which doesn't feel like the right way to play a dragon.
But that's nitpicking. For an LD game, this is beyond excellent.
Any part of the entry details, including its links, can be changed by clicking 'edit' on the front page or 'edit entry' on the games listing. After LD33 voting ends, those buttons will be unavailable, but you can still edit your entry through http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=edit . (Replace the number for any of your earlier LD entries; I can even still edit my LD22 entry (from December 2011) if I want.)
@pirate_shell
@NickMakesGames
I strongly disagree with the idea of regaining health. Games like these work only because your health only ever goes down, never up; if it can go up and you're good enough, the game would become endless.
You can't avoid all damage. (Again, this is good; if I could keep avoiding damage it would takes ages for the game to end.) However, you can minimize the amount of damage you take by killing enemies quickly enough and maneuvering well. It makes a huge difference, so the amount of damage you take really is affected strongly by skill.
We're working on a post-compo version and playing around with a few different ideas. I thought about adding some type of "Armor" that is quickly depleted but regenerates. I want to keep the mechanic that avoiding some sort of damage is unavoidable, but a regenerative armor rewards skillful attack and retreat patterns. I'm not sure tho, because it also feels like a hack on the other hand.
Regenerative armor could work, it works very well in Tyrian for example. In Tyrian, you have your 'Shield' (regenerative armor) and your 'Armor' (health); your Shield automatically regenerates quickly (assuming you have enough power - on power-intensive ships you need to stop firing for a bit to have enough power to regenerate your shield), but Armor damage is permanent (well, until you get a repair block).
However, for this game personally I'm a bit concerned about such a mechanic leading to endless games. For high score challenge games, you need to kill fast and die fast. It gets really boring in games like this if runs take 15+ minutes once you're skilled enough.