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[onirium-games]

Play!

The lives of millions are threatened by a huge volcano on the verge of erupting.
You're a renowned and highly-educated geologist, but you're also the only one crazy enough to go down there and release the pressure before it's too late.

Lava Rush is an arcade/platform game where your goal will be to go deep as possible into the volcano. Your main weapon will be the bombs you carry: they will allow you to blow rocks blocking your path. Time is of the essence in this journey: the pressure level of the volcano will increase continuously, and too much pressure will result in the dreaded eruption.

Sometimes along the way you will encounter rock platforms containing the lava behind them. These will often leak lava: be vary careful! A well-placed bomb in their weak point will make these platforms blow, and the pressure level go down again.

The game runs on Javascript and WebGL (compiled with LibGDX and GWT).

Please tell us if you enjoyed the game, and how far you've explored the volcano!

Gameplay gif for cool:


This game is the first game by Onirium Games!

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[ryansumo]

Just filled out the form.  Interesting premise, but I could never really figure out how to lower the temperature so i got frustrated after a few tries.  Looking forward to try a new build!

[armedpatriots]

I could not quite understand what I needed to be doing either. Work on relaying to the player what they need to do and how to do it, but kind of a cool idea. Looking forward to seeing what you change!

[quisseh]

Hi!

Always nice to see an original concept.

My main issue was that - like ryansumo and armedpatriots mentioned - I did not have a clear understanding of what I was supposed to be doing. I thought I was supposed to throw bombs at the sources of the lava, but then they would burst and I would die.

One solution to that issue could be to have the speech bubbles walk you through how to get past your first big pool of lava as you're doing it. Doing so would reduce frustration and teach the player how to play by example.

As for bugs, I didn't notice anything major other than some minor collision issues (landing on the corner of a rock sometimes leads to shaking or awkward movement).

I also filled out your form. Hope that helps!

[onirium-games]

Hey guys,

Thanks a lot for your honest feedback. It's really helpful. Since I've had the game playtested mainly by the same persons over and over the "I don't understand what's going on" comment is pretty new to me. I'll add an introduction screen, with general explanations and also a bit of lore/flavor text for the cool

Olivier

[Xanthus]

Took me a couple of tried to figure it out, but really great game! Really fun to carefully descend and satisfying to make it to the next layer. I dig the random generation, you have to approach each layer differently. Although it would be cool if there was more variation, like pockets of air on the side that you could blast through to, and use them to descend to a better spot. Or boxes in the middle (for the same purpose/ different style of descent / blocking lava shots). Or if bombs took out adjacent blocks instead of just 1 to give players a little more freedom about their descent (if it wouldn't make it too easy)

I do like that if you rush down quick enough, you can just blow up the next layer before lava spawns. If you have a clear'ish shot you can fall down as fast as possible, using thrusters just to dodge volcano ledges, then crash at the bottom, and destroy the layer. It's not a sustainable / guaranteed strategy (sometimes there is lava), but I got my high score (12,000?) doing this .

Also, for the first layer, you could had a hud aspect (on edge of screen or around character) pointing to it , and when you get close it could say "Throw a bomb at this!", and outline the weak spot. A little more intuitive instruction rather than telling somebody how to do something beforehand.

[onirium-games]

Hi everyone!

Lava Rush has now been released in its final version, with many things added, bugs squashed and a better tuned difficulty! Also there is a sweet scrolling background made by hand, and a funky low-fi music.

http://www.onirium-games.com/lavarush/

Please help yourself, enjoy and tell us what you thought!

Olivier, Onirium Games

[PlanarChaos]

good game, not really sure what i was meant to do though couldn't blow up certain blocks so kept dying, really like the art style and graphics

[Klaubauf]

Cool idea! Very fun and infuriating when you lose which is really good!
 

[Vincelee]

Really fun game. quick note, i encountered a slight bug where sometime the bombs would not blow a hole in the rock even if it directly hit the highlighted area. thanks for the game.

[marcgfx]

I liked the game. but I didnt like the jumping up the mountain part much, as you dont want to waste fuel on that already. is there a way to beat the game, or does it go on until you die?

[onirium-games]

Hi, there's no real way to beat the game. The (maybe too well) hidden goal is to discover as much of the background as possible, and of course beat your own score

I'll soon start working on a new version that will be compatible with platforms such as itch.io and kongregate, so I guess I will reduce the "getting up the mountain" intro part because many people complained about this.

Thanks for your replies by the way, I'm very glad you liked it!

[mtarini]

I also enjoyed playing. Fun!
Mechanisms are good, but maybe the addition a little story would make this great.

In facts, I really wanted my achievements to be recognized by the game,
especially after the grandiose intro where I saw how crucial my mission is.
Currently, I left asking  myself, "Well, how did my super-important mission go?".

Here's an idea:

[spoiler]
When you die, you could get a score sheet where you see, in the background, a map of continent and the blast radius of the vulcano. The deeper you went, the smaller the radius. On top of it, you would get a textual description of what happens, in the style of the intro. This could go from "Atomic Winter engulfs planet for 10K year, all life forms bigger than a bug goes extinct", all the way down to, I dunno, "Massive explosion, three years atomic winter, 50% human population starves, back to stone age."; and, after even more steps, a much better "Lava inferno, 3 major cities engulfed in lava, 10 millions killed." and so on, down a steep ladder of decreasing disasters. It would be even nicer if many of these things would come with a some accompanying small image, like the intro.
[/spoiler]

I think this would keep me glued to the game for much longer.

Further idea:

[spoiler]
Maybe at the very latest stages the disaster would have shrunk to a mere "local eruption, small local village destroyed, 5K deaths -- newspapers talks about other stuff in one week.", and even down to an even smaller "only few bystanders killed, 10 victims", but, even then, when you are about to settle for it and loose interest, you get informed that your sweetheart (who unexpectedly flew all the way to the site because she was worried sick for you) is among the victims. You would need to go really really really deep to save her too, at which point you get a romantic ending on the lines of "you sacrificed but she lives", which would serve as a kind of You Have Beaten The Game ending.
[/spoiler]

[onirium-games]

Hey mtarini,

Wow, that was a great read I think your idea of measuring your actions consequences is great. That was definitely something I left aside since I was focusing on the 'before' and 'during' part, but now I feel I've missed this part altogether.

Thank you for that, it got me inspired. I'm also thinking of an extended version of the game where the focus would be more on exploration, supplies management, calculated risk-taking etc. Combined with a more developed context and story, I guess this could become an interesting 'adventure' game.

[Blackstar Studios]

The game is promising and is original, rather addictive but it still took time to get around to what I am meant to do. Overall this game is truly fun and wild, and has much potential for any future projects. I would like to state that this game is inspiring for my own project and I would gladly note down Lava Rush as an inspiration. 


Chris @ Blackstar Studios

[Tunabeez]

Played for a while, very good but quite difficult as the lava physics can be quite unpredictable. but the challenge makes it fun.