Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD18 → Feedback comment stats → Dan C
Feedback comments for LD18
Dan C's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Dan C's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 29 15:24:00 | Zombies as Weapons | I liked the ragdoll physics and the way the zombies fall down when punched. That alone was enough to keep me amused for a few minutes. <br/> <br/>Unfortunately there isn’t really any skill element because you can just hold down the mouse button and run towards the zombies. It also rather dented the fun for me when I realised I was invulnerable. | |
| Sep 5 16:15:00 | 168h 51m | Flinger | I really liked the innovative idea. Unfortunately I found that the fun was let down by confusing controls and mechanics - which is a shame because I believe the problems I observed could be fixed fairly easily. <br/> <br/>It took me a long time to figure out which direction an enemy would get flung in. At first it seemed totally random, but eventually I worked out that if you last thrusted forwards, then the enemy gets flung in the opposite direction to the direction you're currently facing, and that if you last thrusted backwards the enemy gets flung in the direction you're currently facing. I'm not sure I can even explain those rules to another human being, so you might want to consider simplifying them. My preferred choice would be to fling enemies in the direction the player is facing. <br/> <br/>I don't agree with L that Asteroids-style controls are inappropriate. Actually I found the controls confusing because they were insufficiently Asteroids-like in the space setting. I wasn't expecting turning the ship to immediately change my direction of travel, and it took me a while to figure out what was going on. I think I would have been happy with Robotron-style controls or Asteroids-style, but I struggled with it as it is. <br/> <br/>I'd also consider fixing the size of the ship. I didn't find much use in changing it, except to 'cheat' by making it really big and spinning around in the centre and over the bases. <br/> <br/>You said on your blog that you're somewhat embarrassed by the code. I don't see why. I took a look and it looks perfectly reasonable to me. For two days' work it is remarkably clear and well-documented. |
| Sep 5 16:25:00 | 10m 00s | HochEmpor | It's an interesting idea but the implementation is rather too flawed to be fun for me. <br/> <br/>It'd be better if the mounds arranged themselves more evenly. They tend to be tall and narrow, which is difficult to climb. <br/> <br/>It'd also help if the default direction of fire wasn't downwards. It'd be more helpful to fire in the direction the player was last moving, and require the player to hold the down arrow to fire downwards. The current behaviour is particularly unhelpful because firing downwards destroys your progress. |
| Sep 5 17:26:00 | 1h 01m | Rubber and Glue | This is really cool. Beautiful graphics, clever use of the theme, and wonderfully simple and fun. <br/> <br/>If I were being fussy I'd say that it doesn't quite fit the theme because the words aren't really being used as weapons. But the game is so cute I just don't care. <br/> <br/>My only real criticism would be that I found that I could score quite highly by just pushing the left arrow as fast as I could and ignoring whether the messages were compliments or insults. I'd like to see this rectified by adding a time delay between an incorrect response and the next message appearing. <br/> <br/>Like some of the other commenters I'd have also liked to see a bit more variance as the game progresses, for example by jumbling up the colours. |
| Sep 5 17:37:00 | 11m 00s | Money Thief | This is really, really impressive given the time constraints. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the theme and I fear it's only fair to award a slightly reduced overall score for that reason. <br/> <br/>I didn't mind the difficult jumps, although I probably would have increased the jump distance just the tiniest bit -- about enough to give you an extra one or two pixels leeway in the last jump in your shot4.png above. <br/> <br/>Other than that I'm going to agree with everything said by the other commenters above. |
| Sep 5 18:08:00 | 31m 00s | Double Bounce | The graphics and sound are absolutely beautiful. I particularly love the coloured particles that appear when the balls collide. I'm quite fond of using glowy vectors myself, but I hope you won't mind too much if you find some of your other graphical ideas make their way into my future games. <br/> <br/>To me the goal seemed fairly vague. With more than one scoring ball on the screen I was expecting to score different points for different balls, or score bonus points for scoring with two balls at once, etc. Scoring only by the number of shots taken seems uninventive, and doesn't leave much room for incremental improvement between a good score and a great one. Most courses could be beaten in one shot just be firing the cue ball as hard as possible in a random direction. <br/> <br/>I found this quite innovative, because although the idea of blending Pool with Mini Golf seems fairly obvious, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything similar. It reminds me a bit of Lightning Break or Lightning Pool, but those games are still located on tables with four sides and six pockets. <br/> <br/>I agree with some of the other commenters that this *just barely* fits the theme. But I still love it. |
| Sep 5 18:31:00 | 23m 00s | Enemies, (Such) as Weapons. | I spent quite a lot of time on this, but in the end I just couldn't make head nor tail of it. Sorry. <br/> <br/>I worked out how most of the minigames worked, but almost all seemed to behave inconsistently. This is probably because I was missing important plot points that -- as you say -- lack explanation :). <br/> <br/>The game would have been better without the dialogue. I'm all for humour, but I'm sorry to say I didn't detect any. The dialogue also did not help me understand the game at all. For me it was just an annoyance between pressing F5 and trying to figure out what was going on. <br/> <br/>I hope you'll try again at future Dares. Next time I'd recommend trying to get one idea working before you add complexity :). |
| Sep 6 15:43:00 | 21h 12m | dance dance dance | This is great. It reminds me of the way arcades used to be, before everything was spaceships and guns. I say this without irony, knowing that my game prominently features both. <br/> <br/>The graphics remind me of the family members in Robotron, so I was half expecting big fullscreen pixel-shatter animations. Actually, I think it could benefit from some of those, but then I think that about everything. <br/> <br/>I liked the way the scoring system rewarded hitting more than one couple at a time with extra points. I would have liked to see more complexity there, to reward more interesting play. <br/> <br/>It reminds me -- just a bit -- of a C64 game named Stars and Rings, which has a similar mechanic involving spinning an object and releasing it at the right moment. However, I don't recall seeing anything else remotely similar, and I love the mechanic, so full marks for innovation. <br/> <br/>I was just slightly confused by the direction the partner took when I flung him. He headed 90 degrees clockwise relative to the direction I expected. I was expecting him to keep moving in the direction he was moving when released, if that makes sense. Instead, it behaves more like the main character pushes him directly away. I don't think this is a big problem. Actually it might even be easier to control as it is, but it was counter-intuitive to me at first. <br/> <br/>The sounds are great and I wouldn't change anything that's there. However, given that it's a game about dancing it really ought to have some music. <br/> <br/>Unlike the author and some of the other commenters, I think it's a clever and fitting use of the theme. <br/> <br/>I had a lot of fun with this. I look forward to seeing an updated version with more different types of dancers. Please don't change it to an underwater theme. I love it as it is, and it would lose some of its charm. |
| Sep 6 16:06:00 | 23m 00s | Bubble Tag | I like the graphics but I couldn't make much sense of the game. <br/> <br/>I went around destroying the enemy bases and dragging the bits back to build up my own, but there didn't seem to be much relationship between what I was doing and how long I lasted. After a while a whole bunch of enemies appeared and I got annihilated. I couldn't work out if there was some strategy to avoid this or not. I never was any good at strategy games so that may be my fault. <br/> <br/>At one point I found that I couldn't fire any more. I'm not sure if that's because of something I did or didn't do, or if it's a bug. <br/> <br/>I couldn't point to where but I feel like I've seen this idea before a few times and it's never worked for me. Looking at some of the other comments I do feel like I'm just not getting it. Sorry! |
| Sep 6 16:14:00 | 8m 00s | iceFIREice | It's a nice idea but unfortunately the gameplay often descends into a frustrating struggle to get the enemies round awkward corners. <br/> <br/>I died quite a few times on the third level before realising I could pass through the walls. I don't mind this, but it would have been helpful to point it out! :) <br/> <br/>The graphics are cute, I particularly like the mix of colours in the trails and explosions. |
| Sep 6 16:30:00 | 16m 00s | Cave Flyer (green) | I like this a lot. Everything about it is polished and it's fun too. <br/> <br/>Like a lot of other commenters I especially liked the size = health thing, which was immediately intuitive to me even though it's not something before. |
| Sep 6 16:52:00 | 22m 00s | Magno-Warrior | I wanted to like this but I found too frustrating to control with the mouse because you don't necessarily have a gun that's facing forwards. It would have been a lot more fun if I could have controlled the rotation using the keyboard. <br/> <br/>The enemies take far too many shots to kill considering the slow rate of fire. Annoyingly they seem to take only one shot to kill once they're attached to your ship. <br/> <br/>I liked that you could attach to enemies without shooting them first, but it seemed inconsistent when that was allowed and when not. <br/> <br/>In the end I found it was easier to not bother attacking and just play the game as an avoid-em-up, but that wasn't fun. <br/> <br/>I liked the music. I also liked the graphical style. |
| Sep 6 16:57:00 | 5m 00s | Atop Mt. Brawlalot | Kept me occupied for a while. It was annoying that the enemy I was swinging tended to hover in mid-air. That didn't make it much use for knocking away other enemies. Otherwise it was fun, though. |