Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD10 → Feedback comment stats → DrPetter
Feedback comments for LD10
DrPetter's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | DrPetter's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short Fuse | Argh. Ham's IRC voodoo hypnosis didn't work (I think) but I'm still sprinkling 5's over this one. The thing I love most is how the little fellow moves - that lurchy acceleration thing is just spot-on. Not too keen on how some levels scale to an uneven pixel ratio causing stretch artifacts, but I can live with it. The explosions are just magnificent, as are the sounds (too bad the music didn't make it). <br/>I beat all the levels at last, but the final one (gotta catch 'em all) was quite tricky. Fun fun. | ||
| Finally | Great concept, and well executed. Letting the player deduce gameplay mechanics through experimentation is fun, if it works... in this case it does. Nice and short turnaround time between sessions makes it suitable for highscore runs. | ||
| Mr. Splode | Very cute. I think my brother and I spent nearly an hour trying to beat that level where you start out with four crates above and in front of you, in a tight space. We intended to set them off with a quick match before jumping down into the tunnel beneath, but each and every time we messed it up somehow and left them intact. Must have played through the first few levels a dozen times by now to retry that one. <br/>It would have been more original/interesting if you put in that hiding feature you mentioned earlier (as a quick/short panic move?), but I guess the current scheme works ok with the present levels. <br/>The main concern I have is that there's no music. Even a simple little loop would have reduced the very empty atmosphere in those moments where all the fireworks have been set off and you're just waiting for them to die out. I could have put on some mp3's I guess, but that would be cheating ;) <br/>Also maybe a few "fweeeee" and crackle sounds that are set off now and again mid-flight to keep the firework chaos tangible. I totally identify with the whole "no time!" thing though, as I too rushed most of the content in the last hour and minutes. It's so annoying when you waste many hours early on doing nothing, and then you discover some stupid mistake or missing feature minutes after submitting your final entry at the deadline. Next compo I should set a fictional deadline 1-2 hours before the real one. <br/>Graphics-wise I guess the backgrounds could have used another tile or two for variation, but overall they're very good. | ||
| THE CAVES OF INSANITY!! | Love the cracklin' and the burnin'. Gets hairy when you're forced to play "in realtime" multiplying powder streams while they burn. Great idea and effective implementation, but no Galcon ;) | ||
| Hero School | Boom boom boom! Beat all levels after a few attempts. Great fun. I like how levels had very different mechanics going rather than just varying geometry. With more effort put into the graphics and some catchy music playing in the bg this one could be littered in 5's. <br/>Duplicity level could have been really hard if it weren't for the fact that you can easily demultiply all the guys back into one before the action starts ;) | ||
| The Chain Fight 1.0 | Echo: Randomness is a bit annoying, your actions don't yield obvious returns/results. Gameplay may be too complex. I don't have the patience to really get into difficult puzzle/strategy games so I might be missing some/any deeper nuances. <br/> <br/>Sound is very loud, but ok (of course ;)) | ||
| Partycle Popper 1.1 | I think it's a bit unfair and unethical for Sol_HSA to bring in multitudes of foreign sweatshops and inflate his game with an unrealistic number of levels like this. I mean, he could have kept them at somewhere around 5-10 to at least make it seem sort of credible. Tsk tsk. <br/> <br/>Anyway, the game is well polished and has all the fluff you'd not expect but still dearly miss in an average LD entry. I played a somewhat dodgy build earlier and the controls have been much improved for the final entry version. No complaints there. <br/>The scoring seems a bit unbalanced though, as some levels yield enormous returns without much effort at all. For instance I passed the halfway mark of the allocated score display from just running through the first two levels of the hardest difficulty setting. Skilled players should have no problem wrapping it many times over. <br/>By far the most enjoyable aspect of the game is when you drop all sense of caution, let off one careless shot and then zig-zag between bullet showers hoping to somehow squeeze through. Surprisingly it does work often enough and the results are spectacular. <br/>The game really does give the impression that Sol_HSA had vast amounts of time to work on it and didn't need to rush through a single detail. | ||
| Ramuh-Shmoo | Really cool in many ways. The wire dangling is great, and the puzzle element is just right - not too hard but not trivial either. Took a while before I figured out how you actually made connections properly, maybe the connector pods should light up when in contact with a wire or something to make it a bit more clear? <br/>Music does get a bit tedious after a while, but the metallic "clang" sound helps build some atmosphere. Overall very good. "Butterfly ninja" (I don't care what you call it, that's what I saw) was a nice touch and boosted the humor points ;) | ||
| Boomshakalaka Done! | Huff... Sorry, but I hate this game! Seems I'm the only one unable to get past level 3 (first one with green blobs). Yesterday I was stuck with two left, now I have one. Dammit! <br/>Purrty graphics though, and suitable (though loud) sounds. I think the rotation icons are backwards, but you know that already... I keep having to stop and think each time before rotating. <br/>EDIT: Ok, conveniently BenW posted solutions for all the levels and I caught a glimpse of #3. Might try it again later, but I'm probably just not cut out for this :) | ||
| Ms Green’s lovely day | Shitses. Those laughing sounds are really creepy! <br/>The game is very sweet, idea is peculiar but great. It works very well and has enough complexity to last for more than a few minutes. I guess there could have been more levels, but that's not to be expected in a timed compo like this. Maybe a level editor? <br/>This game would probably have been all 5's if the laughing samples had been recorded from some genuinely hysterical/giggling person. It would have been truly infectious (for the player as well). I guess since the samples are exposed in the snd folder this is wide open for mods... | ||
| Chain Reaction: Detonator, the final? | Nice. I bailed out at Bomb Golf, but up until then I had a lot of fun. Pretty good levels although they're not perfectly balanced (there were cases of a very simple level just after a hard one, but a breather is always welcome). <br/>Lots of polish, gives an overall smooth impression. Sounds are good. | ||
| M3 – Molesting the Match-3 Market | Moderately interesting. The idea is perhaps chuckle-worthy, but it feels too much like a non-game when you actually get going. Put pieces in, run session, stop, add pieces, run (same) session again. Gets repetitive. | ||
| Shrapnel | Yay, pretty pixels! Actually your screenshots inspired me a bit when my own pixeling wasn't going quite in the right direction. Rather than going with a crazy "realism"-style subdued palette I just went a bit crazy with high contrast colors etc, good old retro stuff. <br/>Music is nice and moody. Gameplay is simple but fun, it gets kind of hairy when you set all sorts of enemies off exploding at once. <br/>My only complaint is with the sound effects as they seem to suffer from a huge latency problem which kills the sense of direct feedback. Sounds are triggered about 0.5 seconds after the associated event. I'll mark down on technical for that one, as the sounds and music themselves are great. <br/>EDIT: Replaced bad SDL dll fixed it -> no mark-down, hooray! | ||
| Boostcraft | Kind of fun in a chilling-out kind of way. No real gameplay, more of a hazard thing - click a polygon and hope it sets the others off. Trying to figure out the chain reactions beforehand is way too hard to be worth it. Graphics are stylish. | ||
| Zanmato | Cool stuff. My best is at 14 segments, gets kind of heavy to control after a while. Felt like I was driving a big rig or something towards the end there. Seemed like a good strategy was to push your tail in front of you using the main ship/nose, although hitting the big guys left the egg/base open for small guys to attack. <br/>These weirdish vector games are always fascinating, I should make one some day :) | ||
| Space Chaos | This is a great game. The song is wonderful and relaxing, the pacing is also suitably subdued and calm, and the difficulty is spot-on to make it challenging but not frustrating. I did manage to get a pretty respectable chain reaction going with 3-4 enemies exploding from one shot, so that's ok too :) <br/>The main thing I like about it is that there is a great sense of level progression even though the scenery doesn't change at all. When you get to level 3 and all those (thereto unknown) little kamikaze guys come hurtling towards you it's very clear that you've entered into a new area/wave and you sort of panic a bit while trying to figure out how to deal with them. <br/>I also had one of those great sweaty moments where I lingered at the end of level 4 with a one-pixel health bar (having survived an unreasonable number of fights on my very last energy reserve), slowly peeking around to find that last enemy remaining that kept me from proceeding to level 5. I finally found him (a little guy) and managed to take him out without disaster in a fair dogfight (as fair as it could be with him not having weapons and all...). Promptly slaughtered on the next level though, of course :) | ||
| Moonbase | Aw. Wasn't much fun to be honest, but could have been great with some more thought and work. The gun mechanics and graphics seems to have been a big focus but in the final product it's useless since you can only fire left and right while most enemies come at you from random directions involving vertical components. <br/>The chain reaction is also a bit odd since it's not at all clear what the motivation for it is. Enemies just sort of burst if they're nearby other dead enemies. Enemy movement patterns are great though, I like their relentless pulsating motion. Pixels are also very nice, but a bit sparse (lots of empty grey space). <br/>Death sequence obviously isn't finished, but even some simple sound or flash would have helped there. <br/>Next time, perhaps... (or post-compo?) | ||
| Space Reactions | Very odd. Idea is interesting and non-obvious, so that's a plus. For the record my brother did manage to lose one level, but it wasn't repeatable (yeah, he actually tried to fail again but... failed :)) <br/>Music is definitely the high point of this entry. | ||
| Vector Chain Attack | Whee. Some great minimalism going on here. I love just about everything about it, but there's a sore lack of sound effects (even some simple blips to illustrate worm hits would have sufficed). Music is the best in compo as far as I've seen/heard yet. <br/>Collision handling is a little bit mysterious as well, since you sometimes float through worm heads without damage (I'm theorizing maybe only the green segments hurt?) and your hits are non-distinct due to lacking aural (sfx) and visual (flash/explosion) feedback. <br/>Highscore: 2585 (on my second attempt, will try some more) | ||
| Skalle: Galectric | If you check my comments on Lerc's game you'll see that I didn't quite handle that one very well, and since yours is almost the same concept this applies here too. The first three levels are boringly simple, and the fourth is impossible (to me). When I fail at level 4 the game quits (doesn't seem to do that for everyone, strangely) so I have to restart from level 1 over and over, which is annoying. I guess I could rename the level files, but I doubt I'd complete level 4 anyway. <br/>At least the animations are cute :) | ||
| Paramecium | Would have been nice to be able to do more than... eat. I guess. I expected to evolve somehow and be able to spear the red guys and eat them. Managed to win once at least, and the ambient soundtrack is nicely soothing. | ||
| Fairy’s Light | Semi-indirect control is cool, though the platforming movement is a little off. Lasering orbs are awesome (and have a nice sound effect, whee) but strangely laggy. Gameplay is difficult, I got stuck on level 2. | ||
| Final entry, un | Following others, I went for mostly N/A. You do get some marks for graphics though, and bonus effort+journal points for the awesome concert hall pics. Gotta love those arches. |