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GMC Jam The Swarm
- Thread starter GMWolf
- Start date
H
Hamed
Guest
Wow It looks very satisfying. I played it a bit and enjoyed it
T
Tirous
Guest
Today i played Fel666's 'The Swarm'...
A delightful little game about glowing airborne maggots consuming the corpses of the dead, a wonderful little aesthetic of the dark static colours in contrast to that of the ever dashing lights of your ever busy maggot cloud.
A clever little mechanic about consuming corpses in order to win levels, each corpse acting as a kind of hub of sorts, not long, but a nice moment relief if you got there will only 1-2 lads left.
These little lads likely being physics objects not effected by gravity, but instead by a gravity emitting object in the way of the bait you use to guide your fleeting swarm, with the camera focused about the group(which can get annoying at times).
(^also genius ;D)
Most of the rooms are dead ends, which i like, as it makes the game about trial and error, a execution challenge based on iteration akin to a mario game or dark souls, with the task in this case being to map out how to best run the course before you swarm so quickly flickers out.
Adding to this nice little execution challenge is the little physics puzzle at the first level, in which you need to gather enough maggots to your mass in order to push a wall of blocks out of the way to get at your prize, tho tis a shame this was not explore again.
I personally would have gone for a different aesthetic, one based more on flat colours rather then the detailed one you chose, maybe even using GMS's backgrounds to create a fog-like effect, as to better encapsulate the busy world you play within, but that's just me.
If i were to expand upon this games central mechanic, i would try about with a set of corpses that are semi-randomized, a fixed number of corpses paired with a fixed set of possible spawn locations, resulting in a semi-random layout with each pass, predictable but still forcing one to stay on the ball with whats going on, to both add a satisfying moment to moment challenge as well as bettering its replay value in general.
In fact if this game were built around each level being procedural, you could add to the experience by forcing from your players a kind of desperation brought about by needing to learn on-the-spot rather then learning by replaying a level over and over again, tho the specifics of such a game would still need to be worked out, this is just my idea, as it really could benefit from procedural generation in the same way spelunky did.
Regardless it has a single mechanic, and it explores said mechanic vary well!
A nice little GMCJam entry indeed!
ps. how did you setup a automatic download link? as i am just curious is all! ;D
A delightful little game about glowing airborne maggots consuming the corpses of the dead, a wonderful little aesthetic of the dark static colours in contrast to that of the ever dashing lights of your ever busy maggot cloud.
A clever little mechanic about consuming corpses in order to win levels, each corpse acting as a kind of hub of sorts, not long, but a nice moment relief if you got there will only 1-2 lads left.
These little lads likely being physics objects not effected by gravity, but instead by a gravity emitting object in the way of the bait you use to guide your fleeting swarm, with the camera focused about the group(which can get annoying at times).
(^also genius ;D)
Most of the rooms are dead ends, which i like, as it makes the game about trial and error, a execution challenge based on iteration akin to a mario game or dark souls, with the task in this case being to map out how to best run the course before you swarm so quickly flickers out.
Adding to this nice little execution challenge is the little physics puzzle at the first level, in which you need to gather enough maggots to your mass in order to push a wall of blocks out of the way to get at your prize, tho tis a shame this was not explore again.
I personally would have gone for a different aesthetic, one based more on flat colours rather then the detailed one you chose, maybe even using GMS's backgrounds to create a fog-like effect, as to better encapsulate the busy world you play within, but that's just me.
If i were to expand upon this games central mechanic, i would try about with a set of corpses that are semi-randomized, a fixed number of corpses paired with a fixed set of possible spawn locations, resulting in a semi-random layout with each pass, predictable but still forcing one to stay on the ball with whats going on, to both add a satisfying moment to moment challenge as well as bettering its replay value in general.
In fact if this game were built around each level being procedural, you could add to the experience by forcing from your players a kind of desperation brought about by needing to learn on-the-spot rather then learning by replaying a level over and over again, tho the specifics of such a game would still need to be worked out, this is just my idea, as it really could benefit from procedural generation in the same way spelunky did.
Regardless it has a single mechanic, and it explores said mechanic vary well!
A nice little GMCJam entry indeed!
ps. how did you setup a automatic download link? as i am just curious is all! ;D
GMWolf
aka fel666
wow, thaks for the great in depth review!
I like the idea of procedural levels, amd if I ever revisit the game, i may transform it it into some form of rogue-like.
I spent most of my time on getting the path finding to work though, not leaving much time for level design. In the end im not sure if it was worth it as having the Flies find their way no mayter what does simplify the game somewhat.
The download link is just a direct link to a file in my dropbox. I heard this was no longer available with newer accounts however.
