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[Montoli]

The battle had been hard-fought, but man had fashioned his creations too well.  The robots had finally emerged triumphant, ruling over what shattered remnants were left of the world.

They had forgotten to account for only one thing, in their endless calculations...

Post-Apocalyptic Unicorn Uprising!

Robots and unicorns battle for dominion over a ruined world!

*ahem*

So yes.  I've decided to throw my hat into the ring.  This contest looks far to entertaining to sit out.  Should have some actual gameplay builds to post later today, but wanted to get that out of my system first.


Artwork is (obviously) concept, and the work of google image search and photoshop,  not indicative of actual gameplay in the slightest.  (Although gameplay WILL involve at least one Unicorn, and at least one Robot.)

I'm actually trying an experiment in the development for this one.  Usually I go with the approach of "if I have a cool effect or art idea, get it out of my system so I can get on with development".  For this one though, I'm trying "get the gameplay hammered out entirely before ANY art work is done."  So while the gameplay is coming along quite nicely, the side effect is that any current screenshots I could post would be a collection of colored rectangles, which would doubtlessly fail to capture the... uh...  "majesty" and "epic scope" of the completed work.

Hoping to have some kind of update before the weekend is out.



--------------


Update!  Game is complete!

Download Link

Download and play and have fun!  Instructions are included in the readme file.

I didn't get everything I wanted into the game, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out, considering the time constraints.  At worst, I'll clearly win the runner-up prize for "Most Violent Unicorns".

[Montoli]

Update!

After spending most the weekend coding, (er, well, after spending most of the SUNDAY coding, and most of the saturday playing City of Heroes, and otherwise "selling out") I have most the gameplay in.

And a screenshot!  Goodie!




It does still look ugly though, since I'm still sticking to my goal of "no pretty graphics until I have the gameplay nailed down."  Which I think has been a reasonable design path, although it does make it difficult to build any sort of "hype".

It's been good for experimenting with gameplay mechanisms though, since I don't have any art that needs redoing if I want to change something.  Already I've had some significant changes to the input from what I had planned.  (I was originally intending it to be controllable with just the mouse, but after trying it, it didn't feel terribly intuitive, so I've reluctantly added a keyboard button.  Oh well!)


Still, it's starting to feel more like a game, and less like a tech demo.  Aside from the fact that I haven't gotten around to putting in the lose-condition, all of the gameplay elements are in.  And it's running at a solid 50-60 frames per second, which I'm pretty happy with, if I can keep it at that level.


Goals for this week/next weekend are to start filling it in with actual artwork, (which, given my art skills, is a tossup if it will be an improvement) and possibly start working on some variation in enemy behavior, and possibly the end-game boss I have planned.


The unicorns are coming.

[Montoli]

Oh man, got to work today, and my preordered copy of Smash Bros Brawl was waiting for me on my desk.

This turn of events is not going to speed up my development process...

[Hideous]

FYI, I've been playing it for a month now, and it's great, but not as great as I thought it would be.

[Montoli]

Further updates!

And as expected, Smash Bros ate up a significant portion of my week.  It is at least as awesome as I expected.  (And the online is nice for when it's 9:00 and I want a quick pickup game.)

Very few gameplay changes since last week, but I've started putting slightly better graphics in at least.

Screenshots!


Work continues to be busy enough that I'm not having much luck doing things during the week.  Which means that I have the rest of today, and then one more weekend left before the deadline...

[C418]

I love you.

[Montoli]

What's this?  More enemies?  Could that thing on the right be the half-formed art for an elaborate boss?




Only the unicorns know for certain!



Stared putting in audio and music tonight, and as always, I'm amazed at how much more "complete" the game starts to feel once the art and audio start going in.  It's starting to look like an actual game!

The core gameplay is pretty much all there.  Now if I can just finish up a few key pieces of content before next monday...


Side question - Anyone know if there is anything we need to do to officially "enter" the "contest" once we have a finished game?  Or is making one of these threads enough?  (Still really hoping that I reach the point of having a "finished game", but curious, since at the moment, I'm not sure what I'd be supposed to do with it if I had one...)

[Derek]

Haha, sweet - looks good!  To "enter," just make a post in this thread saying you're finished, and provide a download link.  I'll see it.

P.S. Unicorns in packs =

[moi]

Oh yes, this looks awesome, please finish it

[difficultman]

Sometimes unicorns are robots.

[Smithy]

Whoever wins... WE LOSE.



 

[Montoli]

Update!  Game is complete!

Download Link

Download and play and have fun!  Instructions are included in the readme file.

I didn't get everything I wanted into the game, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out, considering the time constraints.  At worst, I'll clearly win the runner-up prize for "Most Violent Unicorns".

[Gazillion]

I played this game for a good 15-20 minutes. That's a lot for a game that doesn't keep track of score or tell you how far you're into the game. Honestly this is the most fun I've had with any game in the competition right now.

Good job!   

[Montoli]

You are too kind sir!  Thank you!

[Derek]

Man, I love the sense of speed in this game... I mean, unicorns are always badass, don't get me wrong.  But these were like gangbusters.

The music was perfect, too! Great work!

[moi]

Oh man this game is so simple yet so awesome.
Unicorns are my new heroes (but they  probably have fascistic tendencies...)
Only little problem:
-it becomes difficult when you're on a losing streak, maybe there should be something like a special power that is available only when there is one unicorn left.
-vector anims are great for the unicorns but it makes the graphics a bit too simple for the background and robots.

[Golds]

The sense of post-apocalypticism is spot-on awesome.  Of course the unicorns would rise up against the future wasteland robots. 

Music fits very well too, and the game is fun and fairly well balanced.  Very nice, and great interpretation of your title.

[Soulliard]

This is certainly one of the better entries I've played so far. It was pretty simple, but still very fun. I think it's a little too easy, though. I played for about twenty minutes, and I was never in any real danger of being wiped out.

[moi]

Shame that there are only two bosses, Montoli should redo this game and complete it with more bosses (and better graphics). That would make a great game.

[Chris Whitman]

This totally would have had my vote if there had been any victory conditions (even just a little screen that said 'Hurray! You win!' after you've survived for long enough), but as it was, I kept looking forward to some kind of victory and eventually the repetition got a little stale.


Still! For the majority of the playtime, I think this perfectly captured what I would expect marching a horde of unicorns across a post-apocalyptic wasteland to fight evil robots to feel like: totally fucking epic. The music was an awesome complement, and the back and forth movement of the charging unicorns actually captured the feeling of motion really well. The simplified backgrounds did a lot to reduce clutter in a graphically simple environment. The rainbow drawing mechanic led to a lot of frantic mouse motion, and I felt it was really well balanced with the shooting (I liked the necessity of shooting some projectiles and blocking others).