RedditLudum Dare 25
December 14th-17th 2012 :: Theme: You are the Villain
Pathos - McFunkypants - Jam Entry
Pathos - by McFunkypants
A tragic love story and pathfinding puzzle game.
The brave Princess Pea is on a quest to rescue her one true love, Sir Mushroom.
Torment them by building a labyrinth.
Can you drive the lovers apart without making it impossible?
// Art Credits:
// Johannes Sjolund
// Luke Mehl
// FantasyMapMaker
// Music Credits:
// Piotr Pawlowski
// Sound Effects by SFXR
// All assets are either public domain or CC-BY-ATTR
// Grateful thanks to the artists above and everyone
// who participated in the LPC at opengameart.org
// as well as the Ludum Dare and #onegameamonth communities.
Written in HTML5 (javascript) using canvas. Levels designed using TILED export to JSON data. The maps are done in two layers, one for background tiles like grass and flowers, and a second that represents objects that can block pathfinding.
There are 5 levels that you can select from on an overworld fantasy map, with a bonus level that is randomly generated.
This is a turn based strategy game that uses the a-star pathfinding AI algorithm as the base mechanic. Two lovers are randomly placed in the terrain and your job is to spawn new walls in such as way that instead of walking closer to each other for a tender reunion, our intrepid lovers are driven farther and farther apart.
The strategy here is that you can't make it completely impossible for them to reach each other. A true villainous spirit wants to have them never lose all hope - to never give up - but to experience the heartbreak of a love that is just out of reach.
I hope you like it! I had so much fun making this. Thanks to the Ludum Dare community for being so awesome.
P.S. Your new year's resolution: join www.onegameamonth.com in 2013! Follow the hashtag #1GAM or #onegameamonth on twitter. We've created a community of game jammers with OVER 1000 MEMBERS. Join us!
Kind regards,
Christer Kaitila
(@McFunkypants)
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Ratings
| #11 | Innovation(Jam) | 4.02 |
| #36 | Theme(Jam) | 3.95 |
| #44 | Overall(Jam) | 3.66 |
| #50 | Mood(Jam) | 3.45 |
| #53 | Fun(Jam) | 3.43 |
| #57 | Graphics(Jam) | 4.00 |
| #104 | Audio(Jam) | 3.19 |
| #121 | Humor(Jam) | 2.83 |
| #1150 | Coolness | 10% |
Comments
The random starting positions made it feel too luck-based at first, but I eventually started winning consistently when I started taking into account the fact that they move as I place obstacles. I knew my TD mazing skills would come in handy! Take that, mom.
Thank you for making a game that can tell me my "torments were perfectly executed!" I haven't felt such evil glee in a long time ;)
Great game!
The levels won't load in Firefox on Mac (the intro and map load just fine). But they do in Safari.
The game is very nice, though!
My only complaint is that sometimes it can be a bit hard to see whether they can walk over a certain tile or not (especially on Thando Shores)
Art is nice, concept is certainly unique (it's a strategy game masked by the theme of love) and it fits the theme well. Good job!
Good job! Like so much how you've played with Pathfinding concept!
Great idea, had never played anything like this before! Sometimes you can't tell what's a tile and what's not, specially on the easter island one. Doesn't run in FF 17.0.1, had to use Chrome (argh). Great game overall!
After playing this game... i now know that there should be another level of evil behind the lawful evil sphere called funkypants evil.
Most realistic depiction of what evil really means.
Simply incredible. Authentically fun and engaging, very good looking presentation... all around great.
BTW: there are problems in Firefox 17.0.1 on OS X 10.7.5. Levels (specifically Jolly Island, I didn't test others) don't fully load. Worked fine in Chrome.
Incredibly frustrating - always a sign of a good puzzle game!
Great idea, well executed - nice job.
Thanks for all the kind words! I just fixed the bug in Firefox and other browsers. It should work "everywhere" now. It was a single line change: just two bytes difference. =D
The idea is excellent and I had fun to play it, but I really think you should display a grid of "walkable" tiles.
Hahaha :) Truly great idea for game mechanics. Damn those lovers!
Great game idea, totally different then I would expect. Well executed!
Great idea well executed :) Especially like the idea of driving the lovers apart without making it impossible!
One little detail, sometimes it's hard to know if a rock makes it impossible or not. Some kind of grid would have helped there.
Great concept, beautifully executed! Frequent confusion whether a rock will block the route or not, though - could do with the grid being clearer. Also some random start positions really hard to beat. Enjoying playing it though! <bookmarks>
Neat concept with trying to keep two lovers apart. I think there's an idea here worth exploring but currently the mechanics are a little off. I sort of blindly clicked as thinking about a path seemed like too much work (grid too large?) I think it may just be too hard to see the path, or that people aren't willing to try that hard without easier ramp up from smaller areas? In any case, good idea and would pursue it some more.
Fun mechanic. Won a couple of times. Had to see all the areas because the tiles are really nice.
Hah, this reminds me a little of pierrec's entry about the League of Mildly Annoying supervillains. I enjoy that you managed to stay true to the theme without resorting to shock value, and that you took a non-obvious route to get there (much like the lovers have to!)
Really quality entry. Not much I can offer in the way of improvements on this concept.
A* pathfinding the game! haha, had fun playing through this one, really nice spritework, the bgm adds to the mood and there's some nice strategic play involved, huzzah! I occasionally mistook the half tiles as walkable on the Moai Island level but aside from that lil thing, really groovy!
Great game. I love the innovative mechanic and the interpretation of villainy. There were a lot of nice looking assets, and the title screen is very nice. I wish there were more tools at my disposal other than just rocks, but it's a minor complaint.
I enjoyed the puzzling of this and I like the art you've done for it (or that Johannes has done)
Great concept, great execution - though I think the random starting positions make it a bit too unpredictable. A level can go from super challenging to trivial the next time you try it.
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Great game!