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Destroy KABOOM!'s itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Originality | #45 | 4.359 | 4.359 |
Overall | #60 | 4.103 | 4.103 |
Presentation | #83 | 4.359 | 4.359 |
Gameplay | #135 | 3.590 | 3.590 |
Ranked from 39 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What do you like about your game?
I love the theme of it all. It gives off tons of 90's action game vibes with it's pre-rendered graphics, cliches, and amatuerness. It's a really good satire and subversion of the boomer shooter genre
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Comments
this looks and sounds fantastic, but I ended up waiting the whole game to charge energy and swarming kaboom with kernels in the end to win
Yep! That's one strategy to win. Though, you'd probably have better chances of swarming him with Funglers since they do more damage at a much longer range. My main way of combatting the easy allegations is to say you should strive to beat him faster but I do understand that people log off when they beat the game lmao.
But thank you for the review! I'm glad you enjoyed the style of the game.
It's crazy how cool this game is. First of all, the style of this game is really well done, it's like a 90s 3D that reassembles games from the Nintendo 64 and PS1 era, while also having also looking like something out of a toys commercial from the era. I really loved this vibes and just because of that I think this is one of the best presented games in this jam. Gameplay wise this game is also amazing and fun, like the whole concept being a mix of tower defense and shooter is executed so well and it's so original This game is filled with charisma, style and fun. I must congratulate you for such a masterpiece and if you decide to make this a full game, I'd definitely check it out. Amazing game!
I'm still considering continuing the game but I'm glad to see the reception is really good! I'd love to hear suggestions on how to continue the game. I'm really glad you enjoyed it all! The style is something I really wanted to make sure looked right and it seems I achieved it judging by the reviews. Also the toy commercial thing wasn't exactly intended but may have been influenced by my brother giving me GI Joe action figures as reference while I modelled Colonel Kaboom lmao
I found the gameplay loop to be really addicting, one way you could make this into a full game could be creating an arcade mode that goes forever but the difficulty scales as you keep playing. Of course, this mode could be complementary to the small campaign you already have, but to be honest this game is so much fun that I’d play an infinite mode from time to time.
This is a genius idea, doom but you spawn the monsters, it can surely be imporved since there are only 3 levels and 4 monsters but it's already very great, also I love the 90s aesthetic the whole game has both in terms of visual and audio, you just need to remove the smoothing in the lower camera :D
P.S: Trappers are a bit op, you can beat the game with just them
Love the different characters and the ending
The gameplay is very interesting and interesting
Just ended too soon for me
I love the graphics and the twist. It did feel like you just had to keep spamming which left me wondering why I won and it felt a bit unrewarding but with some tweeks and some more explanations this could be really cool! Incredible work, keep it up!
love the visuals, really catch early 3D era aesthetics, gameplay is a bit rough on the edges but it really doesnt matter, its quite fun.
CERVEZA SPACIAAAAAAL
The idea and graphics are great. I do love the original Doom like graphics and map. I agreee with previous players about how there is more spam than strategy, but I overall love it! Good job!
Loved the idea for this one, really fun and creative! I think that in terms of balance, it might be a bit too easy to have a massive snowballing effect since damaging the player gives you money, perhaps that needs to be adjusted slightly so it's a bit harder to overwhelm the solider in the first few rooms. Anyway other than that, I loved the art, dialogue and story, really great entry :)
You actually did what was intended! The goal of the game is to overwhelm the hero. I think you either got lucky or are just that good at the game (maybe good at understanding the game) since most other people struggle even with the energy leech mechanic. I tried to balance the Trappers by making them exclusively for energy. You can spam them but it won't deal much damage and you usually won't get enough energy to spawn any other enemies. At least that was what i intended.
Thank you for playing the game!
Very original. I love the inverted "Duke Nukem" gameplay and the visuals. Well done!
it seems that there's a bug that causes KERNEL/corn guy not to spawn.
(Thank you for making this available on Linux :))
Thank you! I wanted to try to port it to as many things as I could and I noticed that I was able to export to Linux. I wasn't able to test it so I'm glad it ended up working lmao.
I also noticed the glitch through one of my playthroughs and I have no idea why that happens tbh. It doesn't seem to happen all the time luckily
I just love it. Didn't get what was going on after 30 seconds into the experiences, but then I was totally invested. I really liked the idea of frustrating the hero's plans.
In the beginning, I just spawned basic mobs, until I realised that by combining them I could really be annoying. So I feel the game invites the player to experiment with different combinations.
Also, the idea of facing and AI with different AIs, being you who coordinates them, underlined that, in spite what I am looking at looks like a FPS, it is in fact a management game. Quite a great crossover!
The interface might look too big for the mobs that can be spawned, but I think that is secondary, as what matters the most is where you place them and how you build your army. The hero's view is just secondary to this end.
Personally, I like UI brutalism (like those webs from the 90s, stuffed with gifs and violent colorful backgrounds. So I really liked to see all that move, with an intentional low quality audio and tons of action. You made mechanics go beyond graphics, which (IMO) is what nowadays AAA industry lacks about; too much glitter but no compromised with handling things "under the hood". In this case, getting to be in the background was very ammusing!
A clever twist on the Genre, i was appauled at how short it was! Would absolutley love to see this fleshed out into a larger more complete game!
I really liked the second person view approach the game does. Graphics and sound is good, It does a good job of delivering the vibe of the game! Really good job ^^
Very fun game loop and love the reverse DOOM idea, I think you capture the DOOM feel great, and feels great and high-action to play. Great visuals, homage to the real thing while having your own unique plant-y style.
I will reverberate the sentiment that there is a bit of latency when buying and placing units but it is pretty manageable.
The balancing is a bit strange though, I think and it feels like both my win conditions were based on some lucky cascade configuration. I also think my second win condition was only because funglers started roaming the arena without being engaged
Thank you for the review! I'm glad the visual style came out well. it was my first time doing something to this extent with the style.
As for the balancing, that's a bit intended! Kaboom is intended to be a bit unpredictable (kinda like how an actual player might play) so there are plenty of different strategies to win. Sometimes he acts dumb and gets himself killed. You have to exploit every weakness you see.
One of the methods is spawning as many Funglers as you can too. They work well when they aren't being targetted. They can deal damage from anywhere and deal it passively. It's a strategy to spawn them in a room and get Kaboom to enter the previous room so he isn't able to engage. The main issue is getting enough energy to do so and keeping him in the last room. My main concern was the difficulty which I tried to balance as much as possible and I hope was just right when you played it. There are some strats that guarentee a win, but they take the entire game to do (Which is saving up for Funglers until the last room where you spawn them all before he enters it.) I hope the boringness of that strat gets people to want to try another strategy instead.
Nice bruh i liked it
This is a really fun concept but the controls are a bit awkward, having to click to buy something then click again to select it before you can place it makes so the most efficient strategy is to just buy nothing but the cheapest option so you don't have to switch between them. You also have an issue where all the cool and interesting stuff is happening in the bottom half of the screen but I don't get to see much of it because I have to focus on the top half. A more integrated layout and binding the options to keys instead of needing to click everything would go a long way towards making this super fun and engaging!
Thank you for the advice! This is my first time doing a game with UI as a heavy aspect. I knew it was a bit awkward to select them but I was running out of time to change anything about it. If i ever update it, I might make the selected trooper change to your most recently bought one automatically so you can go immediately from buying to spawning while still being able to select if you need to change.
As for the 2 screens, I'm not really sure how I'd fix that. Technically you can play the game without the bottom screen (UI for health would have to be adjusted) so it's more just there to make it fun to look at when you're able to. I found that I would look at it mostly when he was overwhelmed with enemies or when I didn't have any energy to summon new ones. Maybe the issue was a bit worse with your strategy since Trappers aren't meant to last very long, making you have to respawn them often.
i was very confused at first and i audibly said wow when i realized what i had to do! this game is one of those really great ideas that can only come out of a jam, fanatasitc execution to boot!
killer presentation and vibe. I was confused at what I was doing at first but it was a fun little challenge.
Thanks! I really wanted to sell that sorta 90's action game vibe where they made any excuse to use pre-rendered graphics. I actually consulted by brother on a lot of decisions since he's a total 90's action hero geek.
I played it twice just so I could defeat that smug Colonel Kaboom. At least I assume he's smug, I can't tell by looking at his cold, unmoving face. That was fun and a nice subversion of expectations.
Yep I was planning to give him facial expressions but was unable to with my limited time. Facial rigging is a beast of it's own and then I'd have to program conditions to do facial expressions. I'm glad you could at least gather his smugness (I assume from the voice lines? Done by yours truly)
Thanks for playing it twice as well! I really hope this game has a level of replayability that makes it fun to come back to!
Oh the comment about his face not moving is a joke. It matches the 90s game aesthetic. I was way too preoccupied with the action to actually focus on that.
I love this game, at first I thought I'm the one controlling the player, but after awhile found out I need to spawn mobs to stop the Colonel Kaboom. Interested to see where this game will go if you plan to further develop it
Thank you! That mistake was actually what I intended. I didn't make it immediately obvious that you'd play as the enemies because it'd subvert your expectations once you get into the game, relating to the theme of aberration!
As of now, there aren't any plans to develop this further, but I have gotten that suggestion by others as well. If I have ideas on how to continue this game, I might try it.
I kinda love it! The visuals are super sick, I like the story, the writing, the alien designs, the music is solid too.
The relation the the theme seems very loose though :D
I suck at it and it’s a bit frustrating to play. But I’d love to see it become something more!
Thank you! I was worried about the relation to the theme too, but it really is related in multiple ways.
Aberrance is "being different from the norm." The entire game is a subversion of the Boomer shooter genre where you play as the enemies instead. It's different than the norm.
This game's enemies are also not really enemies or even made for fighting. This isn't a typical "Destroy evil aliens!" story, but a story about a man killing aliens who he thinks are evil (even though they just wanna sell their beer.) Colonel Kaboom is the real bad guy here, which isn't typical for this genre.
And I feel like this is a big one, it doesn't feel like it's related to the theme and that's not following the norms! Instead of going with something entirely wacky or immediately obvious, it's more subtle with it's influences.
Sorry for the long response lmao. I know more people may ask about this so I wanted to make it clear. There's also more that relate to the theme (Aliens not really having a reason to be plant based is one) but I mentioned the big ones.
As for the gameplay, it's a bit frustrating but once you get the right enemies and gather energy really quickly, it becomes a chore. The main strategy is to overwhelm Kaboom by spawning lots of enemies at once. It requires some waiting but patience is key!
...or you could just save up for like 5 Funglers and place them in the final room, but that way is boring.
Thank you for the play again!
Yeah you’re right, it’s abberant enough, I allow it! 👍 And thanks for the tips!