LD34 - StarNinja vs SpaceHydra

This was my entry for LD34.
The game was based on Ninja/Cowboy; the game I've been working on for the past 2 weeks.

I incorporated both themes, 'Growing' and '2 Button Controls'. Because of this the way the character moves is slightly different from Ninja/Cowboy. You are only 1 block tall and cannot crouch, and instead of different height jumps, you have a double jump. You can hover at both levels but not jump again mid hover and because of this I think some people struggled with the controls.

Normally I excel in 1 or 2 areas and do badly in a couple of areas. This time however I seem to have done just okay in all categories (It's actually my second most successful LD based on scores alone). I would really have liked to have been in the top 50 for a category though.

By the comments on my game it seems people are quite split. Some people love it and others had trouble getting the hang of it. In hindsight, the game is probably too difficult. It has finicky controls (which I actually quite like) and the only people that tested the game (Me and 2 other friends) had also been testing Ninja/Cowboy; the game this was based on, so they already had a feel for how to play.


I spent longer juicing the game with particles and animations than I normally do in Ludum Dare and I think on a subtle level it connected with people but overall I don't think players were entirely impressed with the art style.

I am happy with how the audio turned out though. I used a similar method to what we used on out teams gamejam game 'Alien Deception', where the audio overlays different instruments based on what's happening to the character. I made all the music myself this time.

I'm tempted to use this same type of movement in Ninja/Cowboy for the ninja character (and the other movement for the cowboy). If I do though, I've learned that I need to give people some time to get used to the intricacies of the movement before I start throwing loads of bullets at them.