[Ludum Dare] RGBA
I have fully recuperated from last weekend!
Our Ludum Dare Jam Entry
What I think went well:
We had a good pipeline/workflow, simply because it's the same workflow we use at work.
Co-operation and team spirit was at a pleasant level.
Coffee was supplied at just the right times.
What I think we could improve on:
Spend more time on the game play side of things instead of the juice.
Progression and mechanics need to be understandable, before being swamped by enemies.
Listen to your body when it tells you to go to bed.
We had loads of fun and I think was a valuable experience for everyone in our team. The number one thing I learned was the speed at which things can happen when the goal/problem is precisely defined. It's almost as if the speed at which solutions are made are directly linked to the clarity of a problem/challenge.
Anyway have fun playing :)
Our Ludum Dare Jam Entry
What I think went well:
We had a good pipeline/workflow, simply because it's the same workflow we use at work.
Co-operation and team spirit was at a pleasant level.
Coffee was supplied at just the right times.
What I think we could improve on:
Spend more time on the game play side of things instead of the juice.
Progression and mechanics need to be understandable, before being swamped by enemies.
Listen to your body when it tells you to go to bed.
We had loads of fun and I think was a valuable experience for everyone in our team. The number one thing I learned was the speed at which things can happen when the goal/problem is precisely defined. It's almost as if the speed at which solutions are made are directly linked to the clarity of a problem/challenge.
Anyway have fun playing :)
Comments
I felt certain for a while that making the platform with the portal on a colour would have some effect, though this didn't seem to be the case.
Congrats on the jam, and daring to do something in 3D (3D always chews up a lot of time).
I really love the art aesthetic because it's such a fun and cheerful environment to play in. The splashes of colour against the white background is really effective. Additionally, the character design for the enemies is really awesome. I particularly enjoy the red enemy with its arms flailing about everywhere :D. One element regarding art I found is that the shift between the jump and fall animation was really sudden and jarring, but I'm probably being fussy :).
Mechanically this is a great start and, with some tweaking, it could be really elegant. I loved the synthesis between switching of weapons and the rotating cannisters on the avatar's back - this was an effective UI element :). I felt like the player could have moved around quicker just to motivate movement around the level and facilitate escaping overwhelming situations - which happen often.
Additionally, the radius before paint balls before they move towards you could be a bit larger to allow for easier ammo collection. Either that or they could provide a larger amount of ammunition when picked up. Running out of ammo happened really fast and became a slog to refill. This is fine if you want that sensation of constantly searching for ammo, but the continual spawning of enemies made me think a give-them-lots-of-ammo-to-shoot-shit-with approach would have worked better. :P
Also, the colour cube totem mechanic is a cool idea because it forces players to move around more and use different ammo types, but it's not very intuitively conveyed to players so perhaps change it to something like randomly alternating color totems. For example, if the totem is red then red ammo won't work on that platform - this would achieve the same effect while being simpler to understand earlier on.
Really good job overall! :D. Actually saw one of your posts during Ludum Dare and became utterly intimidated :/.
Now a word on gameplay - coming from a member of the 8% male colourblind population ;) This game is real hard! The red and green guys (or is it yellow? Dammit, never get this right) in particular are quite hard to distinguish. Spent quite a bit of time wasting the wrong colored ammo on the wrong enemies. Perhaps if the colours of the enemies had more contrast on the coloured bits (via self illum shaders or some such).
Another suggestion I think will go for regular folk as well - rather go for a positive selection over negative selection mechanic. So for instance I'd say that enemies can only be hurt by their own colour instead of being immune to it. Little things like that help the brain think under pressure. Also further cues like a colour coded reticle/crosshair helps, as when you're under pressure you're going to be focused on the rapidly approaching hordes rather than your backpack (which was a nice touch btw)
I did find the swarm mechanics quite overwhelming. That was probably what you were going for, and balance in this regard will always be difficult in a jam - that considered I found it very difficult to apply any sort of strategy beyond running away. The gaps between platforms for instance strike me as not adding much, especially seeing as enemies effortlessly and flawlessly leap across them every time. Either I'd say enemies can't leap across gaps, or there should be ways for you to humorously push them off the edge. Opens up more strategic play, and means you can "run away" to safe zones and get the balance between frantic skin of your teeth action and getting a breather.
That leaves the colour totem mechanic. Again I'd say go for positive selection. Felt good when i turned the platform any kind of colour. So I'd say turn it into a match 3 mechanic, kill any three monsters in a row for some kind of powerup while you're on that platform. Eg kill 3 red monsters in a row = rage power up for x seconds. Still gives you the incentive to kill strategically, but avoids giving monsters invincibility when you're already panicking, which feels kind of unfair on the player.
Thought the characters and general aesthetic looked pretty rad ;)
If anyone wants to find out more about colour blindness and it's effect on gameplay, this vid is awesome:
Something I would have liked to have seem was different terrain heights. With everything on one level it was difficult to assess the battlefield, especially when being mobbed. A couple of crates and waist-high walls to jump on would have been welcomed and the enemies could have knocked me off or jumped up as well.
This was the first LD for the team and it was a pretty awesome experience. I think we learnt a lot from the event and it definitely shed a light on some of the bigger holes we have in our process.
I am looking forward to the next few months, and having an opportunity to work with the team on addressing our tool and workflow shortcomings. My hope is that for our next LD we can buy ourselves more time to focus on prototyping and tuning of actual game play.
I am shocked at what you are capable of doing in so little time, you guys are fantastic.
I hope to see this game developed further.