Kudzundheit - Ludum Dare Game Jam #34

Kudzundheit was submitted to the Ludum Dare game jam #34 with the theme of Evolution.

It features a lone Airstream owner who just wants to get a good night's rest.  But the kudzu is out there, growing, evolving, ever moving closer...  Fortunately, he has a jetpack and a super-shotgun loaded with weedkiller rounds!  But watch out, that pesky kudzu is known to evolve and change, and you must use the right kind of weedkiller to destroy it!

Controls

• A/D to move left or right
• W to fly upwards
• S to enter shop (only if standing in front of trailer)
• F to activate fumigator bomb (you have a limited supply!)
• 1/2/3 to switch between weedkiller types (1=green, 2=blue, 3=red
• R if you want to restart a level quickly

Instructions

In order to kill the mutant kudzu plants, you have to shoot the weeds back to the point that their beating hearts are exposed.  From then, attack swiftly to dispatch the menace!  Destroy all of the kudzu hearts on a level to proceed.

But watch out!  The kudzu is always growing, and it wants your Airstream trailer, loaded with tasty booze and food.  If the vines of the kudzu reach your trailer, they will damage and eventually destroy it.

As you destroy the kudzu, it will drop coins.  Collect these, as you can then fly back to your trailer and activate the shop.  Buy more fumigation bombs, or upgrade your weedkiller.

Note that the color of your bullets only affects the same color of kudzu.  Green is the default, but later you will encounter blue or red variants of the kudzu, and therefore you need the level 2 (blue) or level 3 (red) weedkiller.  You lose your weedkiller if you die!

There are ten levels you must survive in order to beat back the kudzu.

History

Originally, my concept was far more loftier.  The shotgun-welding flying maniac was originally a spacesuited explorer on an alien world.  You were to change the evolutionary path of the recently discovered planet via a careful administration of genetic mutations;  Would you make a world of terror or a paradise planet?  However, I realized within an hour that this was way too complicated, so I scaled the idea back a lot.  I had already created the spacesuit sprite and had the flying/shooting system working, plus the expanding tile-based vegetation.  So I simply came up with a silly story and made the game an arcade shooter.

I'm always amused how time constraints modify the final implementations of my ideas.