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mjau

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TimestampSince previousGamemjau's comment
Mind Wall Wow, that was awesome! Reminds me a bit of Super Hypercube (except you're not rotating the pieces and punching holes in the wall in stead). <br/> <br/>Nicely polished, great style, excellent audio that adds to the atmosphere, fun and exciting to play .. my only complaint is that it's too short =) <br/> <br/>Well, almost .. I also think this would perhaps have been better with mouse controls. Specially on the biggest level, where there wasn't a lot of time to move around considering its size. On the other hand you could say that's part of the challenge; it did make it a little more exciting when I didn't know if I'd make it over to the right spot in time..
Evacuation This one starts out pretty fun, but goes on for way too long. Some more variety would've been nice. Also had a problem with major slowdowns when lots of people were following me. <br/> <br/>It's a nice game apart from that though. The wall of doom feels like a real threat, with its constant booms of doom and that extra little bang when it gets one of your stupid followers. I also specially like the little icons that pop up above people's heads. <br/> <br/>Some slight music would've been nice perhaps, or like DrPetter suggested, rain. <br/> <br/>Got rewarded with some horrible metallic screaming when I apparently won, which was a little unexpected. I'm guessing that's a bug =)
Sky Upon Us This was fun. At first it felt a bit pointless since there didn't seem to be any way to lose, but then I noticed the minimap =). It does get a little repetitive after a while though. <br/> <br/>Also, like others have said, clicking outside the window is a problem. Would've been better in fullscreen because of that. <br/> <br/>Btw, I lost on level 4, but then progressed to level 5 anyway. Bug? <br/> <br/>Also also, the little terminal window doesn't close when you quit the game (windows exe). It insists that you press a key. =)
Doom Runner Yay, I survived! Didn't seem like much of a prize to risk your life for, but hey. Made me think of Smash TV, but of course that's only because of the "deadly gameshow" bit since it's not even remotely similar to this. <br/> <br/>Anyway.. Apart from the lack of levels this seems pretty complete. You even had time to put in a backstory, which was nice =) (btw, for a tiny moment the "quit" button there made me think it'd quit the *game* .. wouldn't make sense of course, but it's labelled almost the same as the quit game button on the main menu). <br/> <br/>Nice difficulty curve and variety in levels. Not much of a challenge though (well, would've probably been worse if I'd tried to get everything, but I wanted the poor guy to survive). Also, the wall of doom didn't feel like much of a threat at all; it was behind me all the time and didn't let itself be known apart from on the minimap (which was nice btw). Some rumbling sound effects and threatening music would've helped.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa I failed spectacularly at this the first couple times, but it was fun when I got the hang of it. At level 2 I managed to get lodged on a wave right next to the tsunami, racing to the goal (and past it) at great speed =D <br/> <br/>Couldn't get past level 4, though .. I suspect I need to use the jump to avoid getting stuck, but I couldn't get it to work reliably. <br/> <br/>Title screen pic is great btw, but I guess I can't give points for that since you didn't make it .. would've been nice if you'd tried to do something like that yourself, maybe use that painting as a reference or something. The rest of the gfx is ok =)
AWD Cake Factory So I ate the cake, but got killed off anyway? Tried to run away to the right, but still got caught offscreen. Oh well, at least I died with deliciously moist cake flesh on my tongue. <br/> <br/>Pretty simple game, but well done for just 3 hours, and it was fun while it lasted. I specially liked how you used audio to heighten the sense of imminent doom as the wall approaches. Volume was a bit low though.
Title Unknown This was great fun! Very impressive that you managed to do a Portal clone in 48 hours. Shame there's no sound. <br/> <br/>The portals felt a bit quirky with the push effect and facing (I see you already fixed these in the post-compo version, didn't try that yet though), but got used to their behaviour after a little while. <br/> <br/>Would've been nice with a restart button; I got trapped in the small starting room on the "You're getting the hang of this" level with no way out and no way to die. Though now that I think of it, I could've probably made an infinite vertical loop to fall to my death.. oh well, too late for that now. <br/> <br/>The theme feels shoehorned in, not much advancing walls of doom here. The moving checkered walls is more of a nuisance than anything, and I even used them to my advantage on at least one level. It's not a wall of doom if you can walk around on it and it sometimes even helps you getting where you want to go. <br/> <br/>Still, well done.
The Glacier of DOOM I won! Um. Yay? <br/> <br/>Found a little bug btw: Sometimes logs get stuck on the trampoline thing for a while.
Cat Protector! There doesn't seem to be any download links on either of the download pages. I've clicked everything, and got nothing but ads. Try a different host?
Wall Defence That was fun! It's a little annoying that your walls of Doom are cancelled if you happen to drag a little bit too far though, would've been nice if you could complete them after going back inside the circle. <br/> <br/>I like how you're destroying the village to protect the village from being destroyed.
superflat’s Balls Of Legend [Mac / PC] Hard but exciting =). Frustrating controls though. Didn't finish, got beyond the crocodile chasing the duck once but died on the twist after. Nice music.
advancing wall of math Oh god, math. <br/> <br/>Surprisingly fun though ;). Also, the walls of doom in this game really instill that feeling of, well, doom. Worthy of their name, they are.
The Attack of the Evil Unicycles of Doom LD14 Got the first level again after completing a bunch of levels, I guess that means I won? Very retro that, but a win screen would've been nice =) <br/> <br/>Anyway, I love games like Lemmings and Zep's Dreamland, and this is basically a mix of the two (except you can't remove blocks), so naturally I quite like this one as well =). I had fun playing it. Having to juggle finding a path both for the unicycles and yourself while conserving blocks, and making sure that neither you or they get stuck anywhere, makes for some compelling gameplay. The levels were varied considering they all used the same elements and didn't feel like they were repeating concepts too much. Well done =) <br/> <br/>On the less positive side, placing the blocks where you wanted them to felt a little finicky at times, and the wall of doom theme felt a little shoehorned in. Graphics could stand a little touchup, but works. Also, I see others mentioned music, but I didn't get any music here (Linux, used start.sh). Sounds worked though. Also, there's not enough levels ;)
If You Don’t Run Away From the Fire Then You Will Die So Thats Why You Should Run From the Fire The first time I started this game, I hit a bug that caused the game to detect space as always being pressed, so it skipped past the info and death screens, and the block guy always moved upwards and died instantly, in a never-ending death loop. Quit and tried running the game again though, and it worked fine then, and has since. Didn't do anything different that I know of the first time. <br/> <br/>Anyway, when it worked, this was fun. Felt a little bit odd to escape from the wall of firey doom *downwards* .. I guess the sun is going nova or something, but even if the block guy ever manages to reach the bottom of this seemingly bottomless spiky elevator pit he's doomed to a firey death anyway. Those birds seem remarkably unaffected by the situation, too. Not that there's any obligation for everything to make sense all the time =) <br/> <br/>Was a bit annoying that bonus points and birds sometimes spawned in unreachable places (inside spikes, halfway inside the fire). <br/> <br/>Not sure what my best score is exactly, but it was somewhere around 3600. I was just pressing space to go up at the time, so the death screen was skipped.. Having to press a different key to dismiss the death screen would avoid this problem (eg enter?). <br/> <br/>Saturated red text on a blue background was *not* a good decision. =) <br/> <br/>I like the block guy btw. He looks so happy! No worries about the impending firey death.
Glacier A bit too slow to be much fun, and it felt a bit arbitrary whether or not I was allowed to place a block sometimes. Mammoths seem to speed up the longer the game runs (like they're freaking out.. is that intentional?) <br/> <br/>The effect when blocks are overtaken by the glacier is nice.
arcticum Collected everything required to doom the planet, and was rewarded with a nice crash screen from love ;) <br/> <br/>Anyway, the game was a little.. long. Had some fun at first, but it quickly got repetitive and by the time I finally collected the final piece I was desperate for the game to end. <br/> <br/>The game was very slow to react at times. The targeting area was following the mouse cursor at a snail's pace, and fireballs (which looked nice btw) seemed to change their destination in midair. That is, if I eg tried to do a quick circular sweep from left to right to remove a chunk of ice, all the fireballs would end up landing in a small spot on the righthand side. Or maybe it just cancelled the first ones. <br/> <br/>Music was nice but sounded like it was constantly running out of buffer, so I got short bursts of white noise at random intervals. Could be because of Windows 7, I've had some issues with sound in other things (not like this though). <br/> <br/>Apart from the technical issues and the eventual mindnumbing tedium, it was nice. =)
The Hotel Advance Had fun with this. Almost gave up on the level just beneath the roof where you have to jump under a laser that blocks your path, but eventually got it after many, many tries .. was happy to see the roof next then, and thought the game would be over. Nice twist there =) <br/> <br/>Hiding the first key behind the ladder was pretty unnecessary, specially since it's the first level with locks/keys. Also, could've used some checkpoints inside the big hotel area perhaps (was getting tired of dying for the nth time on that ladder up again..), and a health meter for the boss would've been nice. <br/> <br/>The red brick wall was a bit of an eyestrain. <br/> <br/>The music was terrible. Short repeating loops like that tends to get annoying, and the random notes of the boss music wasn't exactly pleasure for the ears either. The game would've been better without it. Sound fx was ok though. <br/> <br/>Nice level design. The difficulty curve felt right, and I think new elements were introduced at a good pace. The sudden boss fight and subsequent ending was a bit of a surprise though. <br/> <br/>Didn't find any secrets. I guess they're inside the hotel, since there was a bunch of inaccessible doors and such, but I don't feel like going through all that again to hunt for them, at least not right now =)
Hill Climber: Extreme Edition I love this. Played it in real text mode for good measure =) <br/> <br/>Gameplay is very simple, but it's fun, and it's got charm in spades. I really like the little comments the game give you. "My goodness, you fell asleep!" I picture a crazed and starved hill climber on an unfortunately timed feeding frenzy as monsters walk the earth and the oceans of the world rise, all the while a victorian era gentleman flying above in a balloon or something shouting comments and encouragements at the climber, eventual shock when he dies, followed by stubborn disbelief when he tries to move after death. Wonderful. <br/> <br/>Was a little odd with the invisible wall at the left at the start though. There's food past it, but you can't get at it. Also found a bug: the message box doesn't clear on restart, so old messages are overwritten, the end of longer messages getting appended to shorter new ones.
WALLS OF DOOM! Well, they're certainly walls of doom. Can't argue with that. <br/> <br/>Anyway, it's a nice simple game. Can't think of much to say about it right now.. Very minimalistic, but fun for a few tries.
Laser of Doom I just got the first room endlessly repeating too. Is there supposed to be more? As it is it's not fun at all since you're just holding down the right arrow key for as long as you bother to, but with some levels and obstacles and stuff this could've been a nice game probably. Too bad you didn't have time for more!
Wall of Locust The interface killed this one for me. <br/> <br/>The worst problem is the cursor. Why did you decide to make it invisible? And worse, it's even blocked by some obstacles so you have to navigate your invisible focus point around them. You do get used to the controls after a bit, but it still feels finicky and annoying, like controlling the game is a chore. Not good. <br/> <br/>That would be bad enough in itself, but then you've got the 3d perspective projection.. which may make the game a bit more interesting visually, but it's just completely unnecessary for this. The gameplay is all 2d, so the perspective adds nothing except maybe a little more vertical range, but a minimap could've done that. An isometric projection would've been much better. <br/> <br/>Combine these and, for me at least, the game becomes almost unplayable, not very fun at all. Sorry =(
The Growth Yay, cake! <br/> <br/>Had fun playing this. It's perhaps a bit too easy, but the narrative really adds to the game. It transforms it into something spooky and alien, something otherworldly. And it's you! =) <br/> <br/>The game was a little unresponsive at times though, had trouble building stuff sometimes. Also seconding that being able to remove accedentally built walls would be nice.
Defend your castle Is there any reason to not raise the tax? I tried raising it to 100% just to see what would happen, and I just got filthy rich. My reign of terror was unstoppable until the rainbulbs came along and slaugthered everyone. My rockets and soldiers went straight through them =( <br/> <br/>The sound disappeared sometimes. <br/> <br/>Anyway, it's not amazingly fun, but it's not terrible either. It's ok. =) <br/> <br/>Timelapse is a bit long btw.
Closing My Eyes Sadly fading.. Those words popped into my head when I played this. It's the name of a SID-tune, which is now playing in my head. Starts out with a long solo and then gets some really nice bass and melody just as it ends. Funny how the mind works. <br/> <br/>Ahem. Anyway. <br/> <br/>Feels more like interactive art than a game. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.. I wouldn't call it fun though =]
AWOD This got a little bit too repetitive for me.. Maybe I'm playing it wrong, but for me gameplay was reduced to simply running around in circles with space pressed. At the later levels that strategy had to be modified a bit to survive, but I just couldn't get into it. Oh well. <br/> <br/>On the plus side, the wall really does look evil =)
empire the wall Worked fine in Wine here. I really wish you'd stop using rtf for your readmes though, there's nothing wrong with plain text .. <br/> <br/>Anyway, it's an interesting concept, but like noonat I felt the gameplay collapsed into just running around and spamming the borders, and I could stay alive for a long time.. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. <br/> <br/>I like the atmosphere though.
Hackworth’s Last Kick This game almost evokes that special feeling of surreal detachment you can get when the world crushes down on you and everything is utterly hopeless. Might as well just play with the ball then, make a game, beckon the wall closer so you can make more of those satisfying wall-to-wall bounces, until it's too late, the ball pops, and reality comes crushing in, and you die. <br/> <br/>Almost. <br/> <br/>Music adds to the atmosphere, but you don't get points for that since you didn't make it yourself.
Wallcraft Waah, tiny window! Still, it's a nice game. Music is also nice, gets repetitive though. <br/> <br/>Also: Why is the menu only usable with the mouse, when the game only uses the keyboard?
Short Fuse 2: The Escape Gah! Blue cyclopean bats! My one true weakness! <br/> <br/>At first I was having massive slowdown problems with very uneven framerates, to the point of rendering the game unplayable. Luckily this was fixed by running it in Firefox in stead of Opera. <br/> <br/>I was surprised the first time I fell into what I presumed was the bottomless pit at the bottom of the screen and discovered that it was not in fact a bottomless pit at all, but rather normal floor to be walked on in relative safety until the inevitable surprise attack by stealthy bats from below the screen. <br/> <br/>It feels a bit unfinished. Despite this though, I think it's a nice little game, and I had some fun with it. Challenging, too! With some polish I think it could be pretty good.
By Touching It With Your Spikes Same problem here.. kept dying for no apparent reason. Nice idea though.
sekhar Didn't like that it grabs the mouse at the start in windowed mode, and none of the keys to ungrab etc work before the game runs .. so you can't move the window, or go fullscreen, until the game starts. Also, why ESDF? The nice thing about WASD is that it doesn't use the F key, which has that nub or whatever it is those things are called. Either have that on the middle finger (RDFG?) or don't have it at all, or it upsets the balance of the.. ok, that's somewhat hyperbolic perhaps, but still. Also I found myself automatically adjusting to WASD and having to readjust back to ESDF all the time for some reason. It's a bit weird actually, I don't play a lot of FPS games, so I didn't think I was that used to it, but apparently I am. Who knew. <br/> <br/>Anyway, the game is .. chaotic. Collecting a few of the data spheres is no problem, but then there's always a few left that seem to be trapped inside other cubes with no way to get at them except waiting for the wall of death to close in so the spheres will clip through the cubes enough for you to get at them, but by then everything is utter chaos, you don't really have much control, and you'll be dead in a second anyway. I saw the "enter the portal" message a few times, but didn't see any portals. <br/> <br/>I think the potential is there and this is a game I could like. It reminds me a bit of a hectic version of "My Cockpit Is Bigger Than Yours" from TIGsource's cockpit compo, which I loved, though of course in that game you navigate mostly based on sound alone, it's not hectic at all (rather the opposite), and there's no wall of death, and the atmosphere (which was a huge contribution to me liking it so much) was completely different, so it's not similar at all, really.. (Well, you collect things.) <br/> <br/>Anyway, at the moment this one's a bit more frustrating than fun, I think, because of the control issues (for me, anyway), spheres hiding in inaccessible places, etc. Also, the movement speed is a bit on the slow side.
Wall of Cats Didn't have much fun with this. <br/> <br/>At first, it was very frustrating. Since walls disappear as soon as you let go of the mouse button, you have to catch the mice exactly if you want to get all of them; there's no time for waiting for a mouse to hit your line, or other mice will throw themselves at the cats in the meantime. But, if you draw the line too close to the mice, they get stuck, flickering back and forth under the line until you let go, at which point it's pretty much random which way they're going to go. So you have to be very careful to avoid that behaviour, drawing the lines exactly, not too far away, not too close, and not hold the line too long .. and hope you didn't draw a tiny bit too close to the mouse, or the mouse might get stuck, change direction twice, and just continue forwards anyway. <br/> <br/>After a little while I got a feeling for where to draw the lines and didn't have much problem keeping the mice away from the cats, but then there was another problem: It was very repetitive and still not much fun. <br/> <br/>Looks like some of the other commenters enjoyed this though, so maybe it's just not for me. Well done on completing a game, anyway =)
Stickman’s Escape That was pretty short =). Fun while it lasted, though. <br/> <br/>I didn't like the controls much. Arrow keys for movement, space to proceed, mouse clicks to warp .. feels like they're all over the place. Maybe A/D or something on that side of the keyboard for left/right would've been better. <br/> <br/>Also, sorry, but the graphics is terrible. Look up some color theory and try making it less busy next time maybe? =] <br/> <br/>Btw, if you die on the second level, it's possible to be stuck with no gems at the start, so you have to restart the game.
Walla Zombies! Doesn't work in linux. First it complained about not being able to include "rubygems", whatever that is (I do have both ruby and gosu installed). Commented that out, now it can't find images/Black.png, which is no wonder since it doesn't exist. There's a file called black.png, but Linux is case sensitive. Renamed the file, got errors about another. Don't feel like going through all of that right now, so I'll pass on this for now. Might try it in Windows later.
Flood of Air When I first started playing this, I thought it was going to be at least a bit hard, because I assumed it was going to be like a match-4 with two different match mechanics, and blocks doesn't move when you remove them. But then I discovered that blocks doesn't have to touch to be candidates for a match, and it suddenly got way too easy. You can basically just keep matching colours and not care about anything else, and you'll keep the wall all the way at the top of the screen, waiting for it to give enough new blocks so you can match again. Maybe it starts going faster after a while, but it didn't seem like it did and I wasn't having much fun since there wasn't any challenge, so that's where I quit. <br/> <br/>So uh, I guess the high pain threshold or forgiving mind that the readme mentions is due to slow repetitive unchallening tedium? (Wow, that was negative. I'm sorry.) <br/> <br/>I see it's your first LD though, so well done on completing a game in 48 hours =)
Unnamed Entry Hmm.. The directory in the zip is called LD13, and the game screen seems to feature roads prominently. Meanwhile, no advancing wall of doom is in sight. Sure you're in the right compo here? =) <br/> <br/>Anyway, the game ran here, but I didn't figure out how to actually do anything. I could click on points and get some info, but that's it. Tried clicking other places, dragging between points, pressing keys, nothing seemed to have any effect. I'd guess you didn't have time to implement any actual gameplay, but your journal and 5parrowhawk's comment implies otherwise.. so I guess I'm just dense. Some instructions would've helped perhaps.
Ludum Dare #14 What, no directory in your tarball? Bad telaviv! Baaad! (Okay, so it was only like 3 files, but still. Bad!) <br/> <br/>Anyway, yes, the game. I played for a bit, and then thought I was getting screwed by the random level generator until I realized I could move boxes around freely, not just click and drag already existing groups of 3 or more like I'd done til then. That just made it even easier than before though =). So I kept playing for a little while, then decided to lose on purpose just to see what would happen. Nothing, as it turns out. <br/> <br/>So yeah, seems a tad unfinished. Still, interesting idea! I don't think it's got much to do with the theme though.
Drag the Wall Controls feel slow and floaty, making it kinda awkward to control. Was slightly fun for a little bit there though ;) <br/> <br/>The window doesn't have a close button here btw. (Windows 7, if that matters.) <br/> <br/>Also, no source code? (Looks a bit like you used an existing engine?)
Wall I like your handle. It's like you're some kind of superhero or maybe even a supervillain, hiding in your secret lair, biding your time while quietly knitting all kinds of stuff in preparation for that day sometime in the future when it'll all be essential for your mad scientisty plans to succeed. They will all pay! Or receive knitted gifts perhaps, who knows what those secret knitters think. <br/> <br/>Anyway, you made a game! I can only assume you knitted it, which is pretty amazing really. I played your game and won a bit, and lost a bit, and like DrPetter said, I think that's it. (Also, I agree with nilsf about the wall.)
Escape From Hell Congratulations on finishing your first Ludum Dare =) <br/> <br/>Was a little confusing at first since the protagonist starts offscreen, and he's sometimes even obscured by platforms at the start. Also seems like the random platforms can screw you sometimes, making configurations that's impossible to jump. Apart from that the game is ok. Not terribly innovative, but it's fine for what it is. <br/> <br/>Was about to stop playing when the faster-moving platforms started dropping, and I thought that was a nice twist until I saw that ALL the new platforms moved at the faster speed. Would've been more interesting if you mixed things up a little; a slow platform here, a faster one there, etc. <br/> <br/>I didn't like the sound much. Better than no sound at all, but the effects you used was a little too annoying at length. The graphics is simple but works, if perhaps a tad heavy on saturated red =)
Falling Wall of Doom Doesn't work here, I just get a grey window (and sometimes some sounds).
Stomp Clicked once, and it was off! And on it went, on and on and on .. Minutes ticked by, but the Colo-- ahem, Wall, showed no sign of stopping. Whee! <br/> <br/>It finally came to a halt several minutes later, and subsequently crashed flash. <br/> <br/>Reminds me of Nanaca Crash, except there's not really anything to do here. The autonomy kinda makes me think that this isn't meant seriously at all =)
abandon compo release Um. Is the sound supposed to be white noise in a short, endless loop? <br/> <br/>The game itself didn't seem to work right either. Some other squares went flying by at first, and the background changed colour, but then my square was all alone on the screen. Nothing else happened. Did I miss something?
Walled Off Well, I got it to run eventually, clicked to start, got ready!, and ... um. Nothing? <br/> <br/>But yes, nice food.
Run Away Little Bouncies Tried to install pymunk, but it failed for some reason, so couldn't get this to work.
“You First” Download doesn't work here either. Can't connect to the server.