I like it but imho feels a bit too hard. I've consistently been dying just under the 3:00 mark. I think it's mostly due to how enemies spawn and don't leave you much area to go. Will try to revisit with some more specific feedback...
fantastic game! I have some trouble (cognitive problems from illness) where selecting the powerups leaves the cursor on screen distracting from the cars unless I move it off the screen with my mouse and die in the meantime so using 1,2,3 to select would be cool or arrow keys to highlight and choose with enter
You can get the achievement for lasting 3 minutes without driving forward even if you die. As long as you never press forward and continue letting the game run on the death screen, it gives you the achievement
Nice game! Reminds me a lot of a game I made for GMTK's Game Jam last year, "Greetings from Pair-O-Dice". I even also happen to have a shotgun and wrecking ball! I only spent a couple days on that, so it's cool to see a similar concept taken further and with more polish.
I came here from your devlogs on YouTube which I just discovered, I really like your idea of testing out prototypes with players and then figuring out which titles to develop and how to move forward based on the response you get. I feel like this is the best strategy also, except I only have a tiny audience so far as a developer and am sort of at a loss about how to build it up form scratch. Meanwhile, I'm just learning Unity and sending up prototypes to this website along the way.
Anyhow, I guess I'm rambling. I've subscribed and am eager to see what you choose to work on next. Great stuff so far, and yeah, I think your strategy is sound. Best of luck.
If you survive long enough to get full upgrade and get lucky with enough cursed swarms the gatling gun really gets owerpowered. Also, I think the time is not accurate, it took way longer. Damn, my fingers are sore now...
You have to decompress the gz files but leave the gz extension afterwards. The way the desktop application hosts the downloaded files for you to play, doesn't enable the transparent decompression.
With this method you will get a yellow warning at the beginning but it will go away and you can play the game just fine.
An ability to skip/reroll the upgrades. I've tried to go for a "Level 10 without picking up weapons" challenge and the game bricked me with a level up with all options being weapons.
Maybe an ability to choose a starting weapon? If it's a "Vampire Survivors but with cars", the builds are very important, and what's the biggest contribution to the build if not your weapon?
It seems that your car, after hitting an enemy car, gets immunity frames. It would be more readable if they were shown with a car model "blinking"/flashing/pulsating/whatever is the word, you get the idea. Also, it looks like you can hit two cars in a row which is... cheesy?
Speaking of hitting cars, whenever you hit an enemy car, it, for some reason, destroys, yet your car just takes damage. I think it would be more engaging for your car to also deal retaliatory damage to cars and not just straight up pop them out of existence, as it would make people think about tank builds where you're not just a shell carrying weapons but also a weapon yourself. Not only that, but it also would make your efforts of killing a single enemy not flush away just because you hit that enemy and it didn't drop any sweet gold.
There's a curse that gives a chance for a giant variant of enemy to spawn. It, of course, has a downside of enemy having more HP... but dropping the same amount of gold which is a bit unrewarding. Making them drop a slight bit more gold would make them a high risk high reward enemies.
It would be a good quality of life change to see what curses you've picked up. Just a small thought.
Instead of upgrades, healing should be a pick-up that, with a moderate chance, can drop from enemies (for example, regular cars drop health with 20%, trucks drop it with 40%, taxis with 10% etc.). This is suggested simply because you sometimes can upgrade very slowly/get unlucky and not get any healing upgrades, take a lot of damage and eventually die which doesn't seem that much fair.
Speaking of "taxis". Every single car that's not yours and not a garbage truck looks identical with just a color variation. This makes a "Cursed Swarm" upgrade a little vague: What exactly is identified as taxi?
If we wanna talk big changes for the game, then the upgrading needs a rework with each category taking its own slot (maybe as exceptions combine weapon upgrades and weapons into one and make curse upgrades either appear for every X level or randomly replace one of the upgrades).
I'm not a game developer nor a game designer nor a guy with a viable enough mindset to listen to, but I've at least tried my best
A garbage truck is a heavy transport, yet a simple car can push it around without any problem. I personally find it weird and think small cars shouldn't push the truck around with ease.
Sometimes the Sir Sword will drag your maces, causing them to be unavailable, or enemies, causing more possibilities of taking damage. If possible, the sword should just have the damage hitbox instead of collision hitbox, so that you don't cause any troubles to yourself like that.
I found a bug: if you don't press the W button at all, no matter if you die or stay alive, the game still will count the challenge of "not moving forward for 3 minutes".
I enjoyed the prototype, I am not a big fan of the new genre, but the fast pace nature and the ability to turn on a dime makes this fun.
Some suggestions:
What if the Ai rubbish/dump truck goes for the gold bars (whatever they are) and collects/steals them instead. These trucks could spawn less (1 or 2 at a time) it could have a load bar on top of it, and once full it will head to the exit or the middle of the map ?? or to a collection building it drives through it to unload those gold bars. Which means you have to destroy it before it does that, to get it to drop its load of gold bars it stole. It might need a few hits to do that. So you might let it steal those gold bars and reach full capacity before you attack it.
Harder levels it might have a turret on the top that fires a flame-thrower at you at intervals which you need to dodge, but it also destroys other cars. A twist could be when these rubbish trucks get destroyed they remain on the map but in black, and you can take damage if you slam into the wreck, so it becomes a hazard to avoid. However the player could push these trucks if they slow down and go slow. Which if you have several close by you could build a wall that the Ai cars have to go around. Perhaps the Ai cars cannot move them.
This could mean you could create gaps in the waves of enemies, however you still don't want to drive fast into this wall yourself. Its optional to move them. But could be a tactic when things get harder. But then you might later get Kamikaze enemies that explode on impact and this explosion might move these wrecks.
Other idea is, having pillars that come up from the ground for a few seconds and then go back down again, which you can see the rectangle or square outline on the ground so you know where they are. They all could come up at the same time. If an Ai or yourself cross over it as it comes up it will launch them into the air.
Also it would be fun to have static objects on the map that you can drive into and they become a projectile, like shopping carts or barrels. What about dropping down sticky substance that slows down whatever drives over it- this could fade away after 60s, which means if you double back you have to avoid it yourself. This could be handy for crowd control. Upgrades to it could allow you to dispense the stuff longer, so rather than a puddle it could be like a long one.
No doubt you will be thinking about different terrain/maps like a junkyard, desert, ice/snow map where driving is even more tricky for other levels. It would be fun to try and find the triggers for these, which the car falls down a hidden hole to the next map or there is a up-ramp like a multi-level car park.
I’ve been playing this obsessively XD. I’m terrible at it, and I’ve been trying to do the challenge of getting to level 10 without other weapons and failing. It’s a great game tho!! The movement is fun, the auto-shooting makes things a lot more fun to someone just casually playing on laptop, and the variation in enemies and powerups creates infinite possibilities for fun. Despite playing for months, I’ve not yet lost interest in the game. Simple yet addicting!!
Of course you may get bumped off or miss a turn here and there, but do your best to stay on the road and get back to it ASAP. No intentionally veering offroad to avoid damage. Just take it like a truck.
There's so much potential for this demo! I'd love to try out building a 3d environment with ramps, hills, hot dog carts to smash into, and other obstacles. Just the power up design space has plenty of room for growth, as does the variety of enemy vehicles you could encounter, especially if you start designing enemy types with abilities in mind and vice versa.
really good, I even donated a bit, not much, I'm poor xd. I would definately play this on my phone if I could. I would change something tho: like bullet time right after leveling up so you don't crash into other car by accident, make it so certain perks don't appear at the same time, because several times I was losing when I level up and I got the worst selection of perks to choose from and I didn't a way to skip it.
I really enjoy the inverted controls when traveling the other way but I do find it a bit tricky when you're put right back in the action after making a selection. Real fun little game and after thinking about it some more, it's actually kind of fun seeing when our fate's been sealed.
But perhaps you can add something in the settings where we can increase delay even if it's a split second. Moving my hand from my mouse onto my keys with great speed, I sometimes situate them on ESDF and wonder what happened to my accelerator pedal.
I might be overlooking something but I assume most people would play with their left hand and then control the mouse with their right? Unless you are only able to play with one hand, then this game would be harder. Maybe if he added hotkeys for upgrades (e.g. 1,2,3) for the respective upgrades.
I mentioned this in my post some days ago: Most racing game players play with both hands on keyboard - e.g. left hand accelerating and braking, right hand (usually arrow keys) for steering.
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I am a simple man, you give a car, a sword and a gun and I will have fun.
Please upload game with .exe
Does anyone else have problems with the number of enemies slain not updating but the time survived and levels are?
Its probably because your on a high lvl so they just spawn a bunch and call it a day
how do you get the code trophy
No one knows...
you need to get it on his youtube video
I like it but imho feels a bit too hard. I've consistently been dying just under the 3:00 mark. I think it's mostly due to how enemies spawn and don't leave you much area to go. Will try to revisit with some more specific feedback...
moving backwards remove the knockback
damn bro, go touch grass
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN
fantastic game!
I have some trouble (cognitive problems from illness) where selecting the powerups leaves the cursor on screen distracting from the cars unless I move it off the screen with my mouse and die in the meantime so using 1,2,3 to select would be cool or arrow keys to highlight and choose with enter
gonna give my kids a run in a sec !
You can get the achievement for lasting 3 minutes without driving forward even if you die. As long as you never press forward and continue letting the game run on the death screen, it gives you the achievement
Is reaching level 10 without choosing a weapon possible? For me it always forces me to get one by about level 6
yeah it's possible, but it's a lot luck based...i've got it but it took a lot of tries
Hey! A very nice prototype!
Why not extend it to a full featured game?
This game is becoming a zen experience for me now. Not the highest level I've reached, but longest I've played and most enemies slain.
Wow this is super fun! Love it
Nice game! Reminds me a lot of a game I made for GMTK's Game Jam last year, "Greetings from Pair-O-Dice". I even also happen to have a shotgun and wrecking ball! I only spent a couple days on that, so it's cool to see a similar concept taken further and with more polish.
I came here from your devlogs on YouTube which I just discovered, I really like your idea of testing out prototypes with players and then figuring out which titles to develop and how to move forward based on the response you get. I feel like this is the best strategy also, except I only have a tiny audience so far as a developer and am sort of at a loss about how to build it up form scratch. Meanwhile, I'm just learning Unity and sending up prototypes to this website along the way.
Anyhow, I guess I'm rambling. I've subscribed and am eager to see what you choose to work on next. Great stuff so far, and yeah, I think your strategy is sound. Best of luck.
LOL
Really fun. Wish there was a downloadable version as even with low poly performance in the browser for me is horrible.
My laptop turns off a couple of second after I boot up the game, the laptop isn't strong but this is a low poly game.
potato pc
I object
That old pc is beyond worse than a rotten potato
true dat
The game is fun, it should be called apoCARlypse though
lol
Love the gamefeel. Too bad the name "clustertruck" is already taken.
If you survive long enough to get full upgrade and get lucky with enough cursed swarms the gatling gun really gets owerpowered. Also, I think the time is not accurate, it took way longer. Damn, my fingers are sore now...
hot damn u beast
why does it go to easy to hard off the bat that kinda bothers me
Love this game, can't get enough! Question: Do the upgrades max out at any point?
Whats the code?
Very fun, need more item, permanent upgrades and so on ^^
You have to decompress the gz files but leave the gz extension afterwards. The way the desktop application hosts the downloaded files for you to play, doesn't enable the transparent decompression.
With this method you will get a yellow warning at the beginning but it will go away and you can play the game just fine.
Alrighty, here come some reasonable suggestions:
An ability to skip/reroll the upgrades. I've tried to go for a "Level 10 without picking up weapons" challenge and the game bricked me with a level up with all options being weapons.
Maybe an ability to choose a starting weapon? If it's a "Vampire Survivors but with cars", the builds are very important, and what's the biggest contribution to the build if not your weapon?
It seems that your car, after hitting an enemy car, gets immunity frames. It would be more readable if they were shown with a car model "blinking"/flashing/pulsating/whatever is the word, you get the idea. Also, it looks like you can hit two cars in a row which is... cheesy?
Speaking of hitting cars, whenever you hit an enemy car, it, for some reason, destroys, yet your car just takes damage. I think it would be more engaging for your car to also deal retaliatory damage to cars and not just straight up pop them out of existence, as it would make people think about tank builds where you're not just a shell carrying weapons but also a weapon yourself. Not only that, but it also would make your efforts of killing a single enemy not flush away just because you hit that enemy and it didn't drop any sweet gold.
There's a curse that gives a chance for a giant variant of enemy to spawn. It, of course, has a downside of enemy having more HP... but dropping the same amount of gold which is a bit unrewarding. Making them drop a slight bit more gold would make them a high risk high reward enemies.
It would be a good quality of life change to see what curses you've picked up. Just a small thought.
If anything - I'll add more in the replies
Instead of upgrades, healing should be a pick-up that, with a moderate chance, can drop from enemies (for example, regular cars drop health with 20%, trucks drop it with 40%, taxis with 10% etc.). This is suggested simply because you sometimes can upgrade very slowly/get unlucky and not get any healing upgrades, take a lot of damage and eventually die which doesn't seem that much fair.
Speaking of "taxis". Every single car that's not yours and not a garbage truck looks identical with just a color variation. This makes a "Cursed Swarm" upgrade a little vague: What exactly is identified as taxi?
If we wanna talk big changes for the game, then the upgrading needs a rework with each category taking its own slot (maybe as exceptions combine weapon upgrades and weapons into one and make curse upgrades either appear for every X level or randomly replace one of the upgrades).
I'm not a game developer nor a game designer nor a guy with a viable enough mindset to listen to, but I've at least tried my best
I agree for the most part, but curse upgrades appearing every X levels would make the trophy for choosing 3 cursed upgrades in a row impossible
A garbage truck is a heavy transport, yet a simple car can push it around without any problem. I personally find it weird and think small cars shouldn't push the truck around with ease.
Sometimes the Sir Sword will drag your maces, causing them to be unavailable, or enemies, causing more possibilities of taking damage. If possible, the sword should just have the damage hitbox instead of collision hitbox, so that you don't cause any troubles to yourself like that.
I found a bug: if you don't press the W button at all, no matter if you die or stay alive, the game still will count the challenge of "not moving forward for 3 minutes".
Nice, but hard!
Amazing game!
I love the game, the features are fantastic and the difficulty is good but a bit too hard.
Some features you could add might be more game modes including online multiplayer where many people work together.
or Creative mode where you have everything in the game.
I enjoyed the prototype, I am not a big fan of the new genre, but the fast pace nature and the ability to turn on a dime makes this fun.
Some suggestions:
What if the Ai rubbish/dump truck goes for the gold bars (whatever they are) and collects/steals them instead. These trucks could spawn less (1 or 2 at a time) it could have a load bar on top of it, and once full it will head to the exit or the middle of the map ?? or to a collection building it drives through it to unload those gold bars. Which means you have to destroy it before it does that, to get it to drop its load of gold bars it stole. It might need a few hits to do that. So you might let it steal those gold bars and reach full capacity before you attack it.
Harder levels it might have a turret on the top that fires a flame-thrower at you at intervals which you need to dodge, but it also destroys other cars. A twist could be when these rubbish trucks get destroyed they remain on the map but in black, and you can take damage if you slam into the wreck, so it becomes a hazard to avoid. However the player could push these trucks if they slow down and go slow. Which if you have several close by you could build a wall that the Ai cars have to go around. Perhaps the Ai cars cannot move them.
This could mean you could create gaps in the waves of enemies, however you still don't want to drive fast into this wall yourself. Its optional to move them. But could be a tactic when things get harder. But then you might later get Kamikaze enemies that explode on impact and this explosion might move these wrecks.
Other idea is, having pillars that come up from the ground for a few seconds and then go back down again, which you can see the rectangle or square outline on the ground so you know where they are. They all could come up at the same time. If an Ai or yourself cross over it as it comes up it will launch them into the air.
Also it would be fun to have static objects on the map that you can drive into and they become a projectile, like shopping carts or barrels. What about dropping down sticky substance that slows down whatever drives over it- this could fade away after 60s, which means if you double back you have to avoid it yourself. This could be handy for crowd control. Upgrades to it could allow you to dispense the stuff longer, so rather than a puddle it could be like a long one.
No doubt you will be thinking about different terrain/maps like a junkyard, desert, ice/snow map where driving is even more tricky for other levels. It would be fun to try and find the triggers for these, which the car falls down a hidden hole to the next map or there is a up-ramp like a multi-level car park.
Anyway just some ideas.
Nice play my game : https://firecgg.itch.io/jumperze
I’ve been playing this obsessively XD. I’m terrible at it, and I’ve been trying to do the challenge of getting to level 10 without other weapons and failing. It’s a great game tho!! The movement is fun, the auto-shooting makes things a lot more fun to someone just casually playing on laptop, and the variation in enemies and powerups creates infinite possibilities for fun. Despite playing for months, I’ve not yet lost interest in the game. Simple yet addicting!!
Since we're posting big scores:
Build: Fire Spell, Sword, Mines. I find it's often worth spawning taxis for the -10% enemy health.
New game variant! Stay on the road!
Of course you may get bumped off or miss a turn here and there, but do your best to stay on the road and get back to it ASAP. No intentionally veering offroad to avoid damage. Just take it like a truck.
So far my top score is
Level: 13
Time Survived: 3:16
Enemies Slain: 270
New personal best for staying on the road.
Level: 29
Time Survived: 6:21
Enemies Slain: 910
Another idea would be to have the aim of travelling as far as possible along a set road. That would gel well with the truck theme.
There's so much potential for this demo! I'd love to try out building a 3d environment with ramps, hills, hot dog carts to smash into, and other obstacles. Just the power up design space has plenty of room for growth, as does the variety of enemy vehicles you could encounter, especially if you start designing enemy types with abilities in mind and vice versa.
really good, I even donated a bit, not much, I'm poor xd. I would definately play this on my phone if I could. I would change something tho: like bullet time right after leveling up so you don't crash into other car by accident, make it so certain perks don't appear at the same time, because several times I was losing when I level up and I got the worst selection of perks to choose from and I didn't a way to skip it.
you should make it so when you level up all the enemies respawn
I really enjoy the inverted controls when traveling the other way but I do find it a bit tricky when you're put right back in the action after making a selection. Real fun little game and after thinking about it some more, it's actually kind of fun seeing when our fate's been sealed.
But perhaps you can add something in the settings where we can increase delay even if it's a split second. Moving my hand from my mouse onto my keys with great speed, I sometimes situate them on ESDF and wonder what happened to my accelerator pedal.
I might be overlooking something but I assume most people would play with their left hand and then control the mouse with their right? Unless you are only able to play with one hand, then this game would be harder. Maybe if he added hotkeys for upgrades (e.g. 1,2,3) for the respective upgrades.
I mentioned this in my post some days ago: Most racing game players play with both hands on keyboard - e.g. left hand accelerating and braking, right hand (usually arrow keys) for steering.