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A jam submission

Zombies Still Can't SpellView game page

Spelling game with a hint of gore!
Submitted by comfyBanana — 10 hours, 5 minutes before the deadline

Play game

Zombies Still Can't Spell's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Mechanics#2433.1983.750
Sound#2852.8783.375
Fun#3062.9853.500
Theme#3073.3053.875
Overall#3592.9853.500
Story#3992.0252.375
Aesthetics#4882.6653.125
Music#6771.2791.500

Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How many people worked on this game in total?
1

Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
1) Unity Shader Graph - Laser Beam Tutorial Gabriel Aguiar Prod (@GabrielAguiarProd) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGd3nYXj1Oc&list=PLk-KM0zXdQO_gxpCDRUXftBO5HteUCGVD&index=5 Discord: https://discord.gg/AN7CrC3Qbb 2) Isa Lousberg, www.isalousberg.com Tiny Treats - Bakery Building (1.0) Created/distributed by Isa Lousberg (www.isalousberg.com) Creation date: 30/10/2024 12:00 License: (Creative Commons Zero, CC0) http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ 3) ElevenLabs https://elevenlabs.io/sound-effects/weapon ElevenLabs_rapid_five_shot_sci-fi_pulse_cannon,_quick_low_frequency__burst_sequence,_space_weapon_rapid_fire,_s.mp3 4) RAGECore29 (https://pixabay.com/users/ragecore29-54507225/) ragecore29-htf-head-or-body-rips-apart-481466.mp3 https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/search/gore/ 5) DRAGON-STUDIO (https://pixabay.com/users/dragon-studio-38165424/) dragon-studio-zombie-sound-357975.mp3 https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/search/zombie/ 6) spinopel (https://pixabay.com/users/spinopel-46570060/) spinopel-zombie-chirping-sound-475184.mp3 7) freesound_community (https://pixabay.com/users/freesound_community-46691455/) freesound_community-080998_bullet-hit-39870.mp3 freesound_community-item-equip-6904.mp3 freesound_community-electricity-6353.mp3 8) GridBox Architect Lite - Free Edition (MilkGames) https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/level-design/gridbox-lite-364046?srsltid=AfmBOooQuUzRRD600UKaXu2cxWWPgP5-0KjekPoE_PJai9JB3YT6ACWE 9) All other assets were created quickly (hence the low quality).

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Comments

Submitted

There were some glitches, couldn't pickup some ammo boxes and got pushed off the stage but great job on this

Submitted

For a web platform I guess it’s not that suitable, there is quite a lot of lag from time to time, however I don’t think that’s very important at this stage, what matters is that you brought together this many mechanics and came up with an interesting idea, fps has always been a field I’ve been afraid of so I respect it :D apart from the lag I didn’t encounter any problems, thanks for sharing

Developer

Hi, thanks for playing!  The lag is something I have to look into - I published this in a hurry due to time contrsaints.  So, there is no optimization at all in this.  I hadn't even setup any occlussion.  Therefore, all that lag is definately my fault I think and something that I will work to improve on!

Submitted

This is an interesting idea. You already know some things to work on and update for later releases of this (the lag, the music, etc). There doesn't seem to be any particular vibe that this gives off, like a genre of horror or dark vibes. It has zombies but doesn't really "feel" Zombies, which I do understand this is just an early experimental development phase.   

I think this is a very engaging way of alternatively helping to reinforce spelling words and that's a pretty thoughtful goal. 

There should be a way to break up the zombies, possibly consider how they cluster up into a horde. There would be the one letter I needed but it was bunched in with a horde looking like a novel (it's hard to see the letters in a group of zombies if they happen to group up~ which happens when they chase you). Though you could probably just turn away and look for another zombie that spawned with that letter elsewhere. Not gonna lie, I literally got surrounded by probably more than 20 zombies... lol because I was so super focused on trying to get that letter. 

You should consider a raycast / line of sight effect for the bullet trajectory and or even animating the crosshair to signal to the player that they have a target in sight, even though you would think it's obvious. This could help potentially pick out targets from a horde or make the zombie you are targeting, more obvious. You could even change the Letter's color above the Zombie's head for the zombie you are targeting, would actually feel great since you really want to be hunting the letter associated zombie.

The shoot and detonate mechanic is great! It's really fun. I think since you have invested alot of energy and focus into this logic/behavior, you should lean into that and make this effect even more intense. The exploding gore is a nice touch, but you could even do a screen shake or even a camera effect where blood is temporarily projected on the camera (the same way similar to how when you get attacked, you have the on screen damage mark). That effect could be lessened or strengthened depending on the distance from the player where the enemies are detonated. This is a very entertaining element for your game and you can milk that, because playing for that effect is very satisfying. Even though the point of the game is the spelling for points, I am like... yo, I'm gonna blow up this group zombies!! that's fun as hell XD 

You should explain and or convey the stamina bar to the player. You would think its obvious but didn't realize I had a stamina bar for some time.  

You should consider toning down the volume of the chain lightning effect because that is a loud buzzing especially when there is no music.

Happy developing!! : )

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks for playing! You made a lot of great suggestions for improvements.

I also want to do things like render the letters above the zombies' heads on a separate layer and capture them with a second camera before compositing them with the main camera. At the moment, the letters can sometimes be obscured by environmental objects, so having more control over that would be useful.

The play area could also benefit from some verticality, although that would need a lot of playtesting to determine whether it actually improves the gameplay.

The electric sound effect was added to the line renderer, but it should really be attached to the zombie game object instead. That's why it's currently too loud (and a little obnoxious!), so that's something that definitely needs to be changed.

Thanks again for playing and for the feedback. I'll work on getting it updated into something even more playable!

Submitted

It's a pretty cool concept, and satisfying to see the zombies get pulled together to explode. I feel that the letter spawning could be tweaked a bit; I found myself spending a lot of time just running circles trying to find a specific letter.

Developer(+1)

Yeah I had the same problem when play testing it.  My plan is to add a 3d 'compass' to point in the general direction and area of the target letter - kind of like a hint, I guess but not directly to the letter.  Glad you enjoying exploding zombies.  It also needs tweaking (like a lot of things in the game), so that each zombie in the chain will have an explosion particle effect to 'enhance' the experience :)

Submitted

On firefox the game froze each time I rightclicked to trigger the word, so I switched to edge which worked a bit better. In the second playthrough I had "stress" as word... and the third s didn't spawn for minutes. Are the letters spawning at random or is there some logic that all word-letters are present and they just got lost in my huge zombie-trail-mob?xD

Developer(+1)

The letters are spawnd in a cycle of 1) target letter 2) wildcard 3) wildcard.  But the last bug fix with the spawner I added introduced a bug which meant a letter couldnt spawn if the max number of zombies existed in the play area.  I (think) I fixed that now, so all of the words can be found with an update that essentially purges zombies to ensure that a required letter acn be spawned.  I'm posting that bug fix update today. But there is another problem with the gameplay itself - and that is actually finding the letter in the play area - it can take some time.  so an added feature (that I cant do during the Jam review) would be to include a 'compass' that would hint at the area to go to find the zombie/letter.  There are a whole list of other things to fix too! :)  I also havent had the time to play test on different browsers, sorry!  That is also something to add to the list. :P

Submitted

This was actually so fun. A little laggy I must admit. I think some music might have been nice. The loading times were fine for me. The gun sound is super satisfying in my opinion on so is the animation for severing a link between two zombies. Whohooo blood and guts! Well done, GG!

Developer(+1)

Thanku!  Yeah, music would be good!  I didn't have a chance to source any before I could get something submitted.  Definately something to add though :)

Submitted

Fun concept and nicely implemented the theme by connecting the zombies to spell the word. Not sure if all the letters needed spawn directy, but I had a lot of trouble finding an L for my Galaxy.

The game takes a LONG time to load, both at startup and upon finishing a word, there were times I thought it had completely frozen on me ;P

Encountered a bug in the 2nd word, where I accidentally pushed over the zombie with my starting letter and after that it would not let me get another zombie with the same letter.

Still, I shot zombies and had fun, so great job!

Developer

Thanks for playing my game the feedback!  Yeah, there is a LOT to fix with this! :)  I'll keep at it after the Jams done!