Really creative and fun idea! It does a great job of teaching the player more mechanics and shapes as it goes along, and it's a lot more difficult to get to 3 stars than it seemed at first glance lol. There were a few bugs, like circles getting stuck on the wall, but nothing serious
Play game
Cause & Chaos's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #24 | 3.870 | 3.870 |
| Accessibility | #35 | 3.304 | 3.304 |
| Theme | #49 | 3.609 | 3.609 |
| Overall | #53 | 3.354 | 3.354 |
| Audio | #61 | 3.261 | 3.261 |
| Graphics | #79 | 3.304 | 3.304 |
| Controls | #84 | 3.174 | 3.174 |
| Fun | #91 | 2.957 | 2.957 |
Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.4
Wildcards Used
simple shapes, i am wait what?
Game Description
A chaotic, chain-reaction-driven game. You start with a few shots. Click and hold to aim (arrows show direction). Release to fire. Enemies explode into more projectiles. Fewer shots used = more stars. More enemies killed = more stars. Upgrade between levels. Move the mouse out of bounds to cancel a shot.
How does your game tie into the theme?
Its deterministic chaos. Tiny differences in starting conditions can lead to hugely different outcomesand. Also worth mentioning its chaotically unbalanced and the dev phase was chaotic too :D
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
iLLe
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
3
Comments
you did a pretty cool game, with a lot of level and diverse mechanics. I enjoyed your entry very much. Last level really puts a test on the CPU, xD. Well done.
Submitted
Boids will be boidsI love little incremental games, quick progression is just one of my favorite things. and this definitely scratches that itch for me. The sound design is really satisfying and the art is simple and clean. Only thing I wish I had was a way to auto collect the money because in some of the later levels on the web version the bills were causing a fair bit of lag. I loved it a lot
Submitted
Spot The AnomalyThank you. Glad you liked it :)
The money node is a real bottleneck because i just done it quick and dirty as rigidbody2D so it would just collide with the walls and stay in bounds. then at some point you have like 2000 rigidbodys with square collision boxes on screen in browser and the result is 0.25 fps :D
I had ideas to optimize that and also add upgrades for easier money collection but there was not enough time left.
It was fun to play, a bit confusing at first but really cool idea! Great job!
Submitted
Evil Triangulus MadnessHey
This is a cool game, and when I saw that you had so many levels built I was shocked.
I don't think I played more than a few levels but what I did was fun.
First of all, the music is perfectly suited to the game. Great selection/composition there.
Secondly, I am a little jealous because the look and feel of your game is what I was trying to with my game but I failed there too (and I probably made a few extra bugs). Good on you.
Like other comments, I struggled a bit with figuring out the direction of the projectile. It took a while and I think it just needs projectile path to make it easy to understand.
Good luck :)
Submitted
Dodge The ShapesThank you for playing.
The level is mostly procedurally generated (enemy placement, enemy types, amount, health, money dropped). The level borders I made by hand, just a bunch of white Line2D nodes :D. Then I stored the nodes in an array to iterate through.
In code, I used the coordinates from line2d.points to create a cutout PolygonShape2D (with polygon subtraction) for the collision. So in the end, creating a new level was basically just drawing a Line2D polygon and adding it to the array.
Level 45 is completely done by hand because I wanted a performance check at the end, with lots of spawns and a 99 HP shape. It's definitely worth trying out if you skipped everything else, just make sure to get some damage upgrades. It's the best level in my opinion but also the laggiest :D
Your idea with the projectile path is actually genius. That didn't even come to mind when I was deep in chaos during the dev phase.
Nice!
I am new to game dev and I'm always impressed when someone makes a UI screen with upgrades that make sense.
I think this is a great concept for the theme and well done.
Submitted
Geometry Greens GolfHi, thanks for the kind words :)
I have a background in UI/UX from web development, and I catch myself every time "wasting" way too much time in jams just to get the UI done :D
I had a much simpler upgrade system in GWJ 73 (if you wanna check it out:Plummet Panic ) and reused some parts of its scene composition and code to save time. Then spent 2 days this jam expanding it a bit more and making it work for this game before the game was even playable :D
I like revisiting old projects to see if some parts are somehow reusable in a new context or expandable.
That's the good thing after a while, when you've done like a bunch of half-arsed projects that you forgot about or abandoned :D
I don't think i figured how how to shoot the direction i wanted. Wasn't sure of the controls. But you did a good job with some of the effects like the money gather. felt nice and juicy. nice job!
Submitted
GrimwalkerThanks for playing. i tried to make the player be able to chose the direction but failed hard and then just made it so it picks a random direction, so i understand the frustration. if you keep the mouse pressed you get the shape with an arrow drawn on it as preview to see in which direction it will fly off. if you dont like the direction it wants to go you can drag the mouse outside the level and the shot will reset. thats the best i could do :D
This is such a good take on the theme and a fun game ! Really liked it !!
Submitted
Leaping RealitiesThanks for playing. I wanted to make big chain reactions too but the game lagged so much and then i stuck with the skill based approach.
level 45 is the closest one to pure chaos (and also might get your cpu hotter than a triple A game because of 0 instancepooling and other missing optimizations :D)
Love the cover art! I enjoyed the puzzle like element to the game, though I had a difficult time with my shot resetting while trying to position it. Cheers!
Submitted
Samhain SmashThanks, glad you enjoyed it :)
I'm not a great artist myself and didnt create the cover per se.
The template is from a page called textstudio where you chose template designs and just fill in your text :)
If you wanna check it out thats the link Font Generator & 3D Text Style Effects | TextStudio
(Click Studio in the menu -> pick template resolution -> click templates on the left)
I love the game! It feels amazing to hit that level 45 chain reaction. It works well, it has simple and consistent controls, it looks and sounds nice, it fits the theme, and it manages to create satisfying and responsive visuals with only polygons and lights. It's amazing, thank you so much for this game.
I love this idea and there is so much work put into this game, especially for a single dev. I had an issue with aiming tho, shots wouldnt fly in the direction I tried to shoot
Submitted
Leaping RealitiesThanks :D
I was totally in over my head this time. Even with the extra day, I couldn鈥檛 polish a lot of things because programming all the directional vector logic made my brain melt.
Everything is done with polygons, which was kind of cool because all the graphics are basically just math. But also... incredibly time-consuming and maybe a bit dumb in hindsight :D
I struggled a lot with getting the shots to rotate and snap to allowed directions while holding the mouse down, and at some point, I just gave up. Now it fires in a random direction on click, which unintentionally adds to the chaos, I guess.
That said, you can kind of control it by dragging the mouse outside the level to reset the shot or just upgrade all 4 directions :D.
Thank you for playing.
Super fun! I like the idea of the game, it's really satisfying to watch a huge chain reaction occur. I like the upgrades a lot, tho they seem to be priced really high unless you do level 45 to get a ton of money. Level 45 is what I was waiting to happen the entire game, it's so fun to watch a huge chain reaction happen. Great work!
Submitted
Chaos GroveI'm glad you liked it.
This is my first time trying something with a kind of semi-procedural level generation. I ended up cutting it off at level 44 and added one big final level by hand, featuring a boss with 99 HP.
Honestly, developing the game was very much in the spirit of pure chaos :D. I completely underestimated the scope and so many aspects of the process. I rushed the pacing and difficulty balance on the last day, which is why it might feel a bit all over the place.
Thank you for playing :)
I agree, the big chain reactions feel the most satisfying imo
In hindsight, I should鈥檝e taken a different direction with progression. It turns out it鈥檚 way more fun to just stick with level 45 after grabbing a few damage upgrades, and then slowly work your way through it, triggering bigger and bigger chain reactions with each attempt.
It becomes more of a loop where you replay the same level, steadily improving your stats and pushing a little further each time, kind of like in Learn to Fly or Burrito Bison.
I watched your vod where you played my game and it looks like you had fun, followed you :D
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