[SA Game Jam 2018] Fight Bots | Hobbyist | 72 hours

hammanandre

Planned on doing a 48 but some things broke as they do, so it's 72h now.
Basically it's a game where you fight bots and steal their parts to do more damage etc.
Still in development. didn't quite get to do the dev I needed monday, so still just the basic version.
Click to play and click the buttons and it'll play the right attacks and things.
I did my usual dev thing and I have full systems, not quite a game though.

Art by Lise Engelbrecht
Animations by Wilmie Smal

Progress GIF:


Itch page:
https://hamman.itch.io/fight-bots

xdode

Great game concept however I would have loved to hear a storyline that locates the game objects into a specific context for the player eg its a dystopia future and humans have displaced thier bodies with bits blah blah blah.

Tuism

Don't see a mac build, can't play :)

KleinM

I like the concept of a fighting game where you steal parts to become stronger, but I was confused as to if the attacks actually connects. I spammed the punch button and all of a sudden the start screen appears. It would have been nice if there was a "win screen". It would also have made a ton of difference if there was some kind of visual and/or audible confirmation to the player that the attacks actually connect

Pomb

Kudos for taking part and taking on a really difficult genre!
The robots could use with some feedback on getting hit, I was looking at the bars for that information when it should be apparent at the point of contact. Both the punch buttons act for the left bot! :D Unfortunately mace bots punch was stolen, that made me chuckle, even if it was a mistake I don't know. Without any movement the game becomes a about who can mash the button the fastest, instead of timing attacks against windows of opportunity.

Something on the attack poses to consider is how the line of action effects the strength of the pose in this case how the line effects the power of the combat strike. The limbs torso and head of the character during their strike all point in different directions making it seem like quite a weak attempt as if the bot's unsure what the limbs are about, you can make the strike 'feel' more powerful and deadly by really lining up the angles of the limbs in away that makes the attack "sharp"
Hopefully this picture will illustrate the point.

You can really see when you abstract away the content and look at the shapes which one you'd be more scared of, this is quite a useful technique of evaluating the essence of the pose, or designing shapes in general, you bots make use of very round shapes which lend themselves to a soft 'feel' so you could make the attacks echo this design in their movement, by having their attacks move in wide arcs.

All this being said I think you probably spent more time of the graphics and animation than you should have. The current implementation doesn't take advantage of the fact the sprites are animated which is a real pity, consider future jams focusing more on getting your game play complete than polished art, any art you do should really just serve the game play, and not be 'pretty' for pretty sake.