3DU: I Hate Clowns

[Matthew]

I posted the first build of our entry, I Hate Clowns, to: http://www.flashbangstudios.com/iloveclowns/

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/166/latestclownis8.jpg

As the notes on the download page mention, this took about two weeks. We're new to both Mac OS and Unity, so it was quite the learning experience. For us this was actually an evaluation of Unity first and the contest second.

The assets are pretty beefy--our interest is in creating higher-end games, so I'm not sure how well this will run on older hardware. The clown is extremely high-poly--certainly much higher poly than is required for his on-screen size. We just wanted to test out the pipeline with assets similar to those we'd use on a real project.

Comments and critiques welcome! There's a whole lot of gameplay ideas and art assets that I didn't have time to implement, but I'm planning to do that after the contest.

[JonTrainer]

I like the basic idea and presentation. But, I found it very hard to play becuase the pies don't get thrown immediately when I click the mouse button. There seems to be a randomness to the delay -- maybe processor load releated as I'm testing this on an old Ti PowerBook (800Mhz).

I like the artwork and music. Very nicely polished, attractive, and funny.

Good Luck!

[maximile]

I love it! I had no performance problems (MBP 2GHz), and it was great fun.

I just wish that there were more combos to achieve, though. I love this sort of game, but what I want to get the whole thing to go crazy by hitting one clown into another, doubling my score, then sending particles flying everywhere by hitting both into a wire, accompanied by insane sound effects. I want to feel like there are almost too many combos to actually achieve, and I want to get that satisfaction of discovering a new one after hours of play.

Or maybe I just suck and I've only found a tiny fraction of them?

Either way, I don't mean to sound demanding. It's already awesome; my favourite so far. I just think that that is what makes people play this sort of game again and again, and maybe it'd be fairly easy to implement without adding loads more graphics. More SFX would be cool, though.

:)

[Matthew]

Or maybe I just suck and I've only found a tiny fraction of them?


No, you're right--that's something we'd like to focus on but didn't have time for the contest deadline. I did sneak a ball in there last minute, but we have a pile of props and things already made that just weren't implemented. There are some events detected in code that aren't exposed, too (clown-on-clown collisions, etc).

I'm going to redo a few things in the gameplay for a post-contest version to try to bring out more of the potential: a simple store system with multiple weapons, tons of various props and level layouts, and different level types (and some joke levels--ie pies are thrown upwards and you shoot clowns, etc).

[Fenris]

Awesome.

A couple of comments for the future - there doesn't seem to be a back slam awarded for pushing clowns out into the red foyer. Maybe it could even be a special achievement?

I too would like more combos - making air hits increase the bonus linearly?

I'm sure there are three more puns to bring you up to 50 levels. ;) Love never pies? I spy with my little pie? This circus is occuPIEd?

The pied piper has to be punnable.