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dessgeega

Feedback comments for LD15

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game	dessgeega's comment
		2XUE	i really like the idea of this kind of two-player experience: one player creating levels while the other plays through them (and splitting the controls between the keyboard for playing and the mouse for designing is smart). the pace of creating a map doesn't seem to match the pace of playing one, though, and i'm not sure that making the player wait for the designer is the right solution. <br/> <br/>i'm interested in a variation on this idea where the player starts the next map as soon as she reaches it, whether the designer is ready or not. in this way the player's speed would keep the designer's ability to assemble difficult maps in check.
		Fake Gold	i like that the player's actions determine the layout of the caverns and the locations of their inhabitants, and i like that every action the player takes has an effect on the world. showing the player the full map at the end of the game is really appropriate.
		Beacon	polished, but it feels really safe. i do like the parts where the beacon and the protagonist are seperated, and i suddenly have to be much more careful about where go. i also like all the creatures that bolt at the protagonist's touch. i don't like the phrases that appear upon the protagonist's death: they feel melodramatic. i assume the split \| phrases are meant to evoke the split between the protagonist and the beacon, but i think it would be much more effective to just have the screen fade on death and leave the protagonist's fate ambiguous.
		Caverns	i like the way the creatures interact, and that the goal of the game is to see as many varieties of them as possible. i think there could be a wider diversity of behaviors and interactions - most creatures seem to move back and forth, changing directions when they encounter something. i appreciate that each creature makes a distinct sound. <br/> <br/>i'm also glad you added the ability to select a type of tile by clicking on it, because my biggest frustration with the original version was my inability to do that.
		Heart of Gold	i really like how the world is laid out and the journey to reach the center of it, but i think the game is too hard for the good of the story it's trying to tell (and in fact i didn't finish it because i got too frustrated trying to navigate the rings of the turning lock). it's a shame that the rotation of the world makes it so hard to deal with, because it's a very effective continual reminder of both the nature of the space the player is navigating and the goal of her mission.
		Candle	i like how many people seem to have chosen the more interesting theme of "light" over the fairly inert theme of caverns. and i like this game. the melting of the wax ground beneath the protagonist's feet is both a challenge to the player's ability to keep her footing and an avenue to creating new paths through the level. <br/> <br/>this game would really benefit from having designed levels, though the short, fast, randomized scenes - particularly because of the music - give the game a kind of pleasing meditative quality.
		Collapse	the sight of all these enormous walls shifting and growing unpredictably is scary and exciting. sure, we can call it a cavern. i also like the competing desires to collect as many pick-ups as possible and to reach the exit as soon as possible before the exit becomes too hard to reach. it reminds me of crystal quest.
		DiggR	i like that this game is really about controlling the movement of water around, and breaking a wall and watching water rush in is wonderful. it's also a bit tedious to play, in that the solution is usually obvious (and is usually to break all the walls i can reach) but requires a lot of keypresses to execute. having to click the game at the start of each stage is annoying - because i have to take my hand off the keyboard - especially when the message doesn't even bother showing up.
		Broken Cave Robot	i like the idea of a map that persists across multiple plays, so that although i may play and run out of time a bunch of times, i'll eventually put together a complete enough map to find my way through. except that this game's caverns don't really seem very interesting to map, and i wasn't really inspired to replay it.
		Caverns of Light	i like the idea of this game, but - in addition to collision problems that make it very hard to play - i think the player ought to be allowed to reposition reflectors. having a limited supply to cover all of the lightboxes in the cavern makes sense, but positioning them - especially off the ground - is a little to clumsy to justify keeping them stuck where they land forever.
		Bunker	i liked working towards a solution, then stumbling onto a booby-trap that messed up my plans, then hastily coming up with an alternative plan and succeeding. what i didn't like was the waits between plotting holes. the game often became frustratingly slow-paced around the middle of each stage.
		Dwarven Rock Smash	it's that osrinal game, but with a tiny unicycle? each gradual unveiling of a new nuance of scoring (via the hints at the beginning of each round) does make the game more interesting to play, and it's pretty enjoyable to bounce from stone to stone. i appreciate that the game is played with just the arrow keys, and that they all affect my movement as i'd expect.
		Secret Cavern	i like secrets in games, and i think a game about secrets suits this theme really well. i also found the game a bit too long and slow-paced to complete, but that seems like the inevitable result of a game built entirely around discovering unlabelled secrets, and it wouldn't work if they were labelled in any way.
		Refuge	this game is a really good argument for how much of a non-theme caverns is: since it's a setting, you could set just about any game there, and you could set this game just about anywhere. <br/> <br/>it's also a really pleasing game. shooting an invader and watching it tumble into other invaders which knock down even more invaders is really satisfying. watching my shot rebound off the wall and hoping for it to hit something so i can shoot again seems in the spirit of space invaders' one-shot-at-a-time rule, forcing the player to use her shots thoughtfully.
		NICE CAVE!	though it's apparent you got a 3d cave working and then added in some arbitrary things to find, it's a really nice cave to explore. the varying shape of the caverns (stairs, bridges, rivers) and the messages of the cavern population keep exploration interesting and ensure it's not TOO easy to get lost.
		Shafted!	sticking the protagonist to the top of the camera rather than the bottom made this game much more playable, but it's still very hard to react to incoming obstacles because of the amount of time it takes the protagonist to deccelerate from terminal velocity. i don't think it can be easily played as intended (hold off releasing the parachute for as long as possible before landing safely).
		Cave Explorer	the gameboy graphics really suit the tone of the game: the smallness of the gameboy screen in relation to the size of the worlds of its games makes them seem that much bigger. i like the progressively smaller scope of the player's light, and the increasingly personal tone of the game's status messages (and how the critique the naiveity of the basic premise of this kind of cave-crawling adventure game).
		Lurking.	i made a flashlight game too! i really like the way this game uses the flashlight: as long as you're pointing it some way, there are lots of other ways you aren't pointing it. the way that the shadows of solid objects seem to waver in the light causes me to second-guess a lot of the things i see. it is always obvious when i run into the creature, though. genuinely nerve-wracking.
		In the Shadows	i really like the way this looks and sounds. i like the shifting hue as i move through the caverns. there isn't much to provide motivation to explore the randomly-generated caverns, though.
		Thingy Munching	i really like the way this looks. the slow swaying of the seaweed, the bubbles racing upwards, the faintly-visible parallax caverns in the background, it's all gorgeous. i also like that the hints are in natural language (i.e. "left and a bit up"). without them the game would probably be too tedious to complete; as pretty as the cavern looks, there's nothing to visually differentiate one part from another.
		Sally Spelunker in CAVE EXPLORER	you should have called it mr. jiller.
		I'm In A Cave	this game aspires to a kind of first-person robotron, but it never gives the player a reason to move. i do like how the enemies continually encroach further and further on the player, and holding them back becomes more and more frantic as the game goes on.
		A CAVE FOR MY BIKINI BABES	i like the chaos of of parades of cops and bikini babes meandering through ant hill-like caverns, and i like being able to pick up any of them and toss them into traps. the traps don't seem very interesting, though, and it looks like they're differentiated from one another only by the number of times they can be fired.
		Excavatorrr	there are a lot of really neat little systems in this game. in spite of that, the game's really rigorous: while i like that i have to plan, it's very easy to make the game unwinnable, even by accident. the game's a little clumsy in some ways, particularly with the mattock and latters. but that stuff can be fixed with a little work. this is probably my favorite game of the competition.
		Ninja Spelunker	i like this. the status updates seem a little unnecessary, but i like the rest of the text pop-ups (not just because i designed the font. i think this is the third game i've spotted it in).