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Tom 7

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game	Tom 7's comment
Dec 21 05:29:00		Light Source	Hah, I was assigned to rate your game. First thing I noticed: It uses my font "Action Jackson" on the title screen! :) <br/> <br/>This is a good concept for a game. I like the effect of firing the flash bulb, and it was instantly recognizable what to do. The maze is actually pretty hard, defeating my instincts about where the exit would be, several times. <br/>I won! After practicing the early part of the maze, I was able to navigate between the batteries with only maybe 2 flashes each. Definitely room for a 'hard' mode.
Dec 21 05:33:00	4m 00s	Disco?Very!	Got this one in my batch to rate, funny because my game has the same title. :) Your take on disco was much more literal and I love the pixel disco kings. I agree with the others that it should have gotten harder.. I didn't have any trouble keeping up with those other dancers pretty much forever.
Dec 21 05:38:00	5m 00s	Clarity	Wow, this game really is weird. In the 'grey bar' minigame clicking anywhere seemed to have the same effect on my score. I discovered at least CNN and the lamp, but I can't tell if there's more...?
Dec 21 05:54:00	16m 00s	Discover19	Was confused when the intro just ended with a blank screen; didn't realize at first that this took me to a separate web page. Game itself is straightforward; easy to figure out and fun enough to get me to the end. Seems like some parts are actually impossible (are they randomly generated?) like a trampoline immediately after a tall block, that you can't fall fast enough to hit. I liked the mysterious and weird atmosphere.
Dec 21 06:03:00	9m 00s	Quarters	What I like best about this game is that rules are very simple but the gameplay seems really sound. Is it an implementation of a classic game? If not, do you know of winning strategies? Graphics and sound are simple but stylish. I actually enjoyed figuring out the rules without any instructions, though it was not clear if suicide was a valid strategy to end the game when I was winning, or if that disqualified me. <br/> <br/>The jam version felt way more polished--maybe you should try making only one game during the weekend? :)
Dec 22 00:39:00	18h 36m	THE DISCOVERY WAS SPIDERS	Neat effect! The shadows behind the rocks do kind of have an infinitely-tall columns thing going on. I wonder if those are actually mathematically the same.
Dec 22 00:53:00	14m 00s	Ancient Mystery III: The lost symbols	This is an interesting idea. At first I had no idea what I wa supposed to do, even with the instructions. Then I enjoyed it when I figured out I was creating an image by shuffling the tiles around. I thought the point was just to make a symmetric image, which is challenging and objective. But then I got to level 4, I made a symmetric one and it was rejected. Am I really supposed to keep reloading the game in another window and hope to spot the target graphic for half a second? Or is there something I'm missing?
Dec 22 00:58:00	5m 00s	Where can I go now?	This crashes Java (!) for me in both Chrome and Internet Explorer. :(
Dec 22 05:20:00	4h 22m	Rememberance...	Well, I played through to the end. I like the blur effect and the minimal audio. The gameplay was tedious, mainly because I move slowly, and don't have a lot of confidence that my actions are going to lead to rewards--as I get towards 50 dots, I'm pretty much reexploring the places I've already been hoping to find a missing dot. A map or beacon or something to help with that would have helped. The reason I kept playing other than LD obsessive-compulsive disorder is that I had the idea that maybe the ending would be really awesome, but it was just text and not much of a surprise. (What I was hoping for was that the dot I had been staring at for half an hour was going to resolve into a doctor's pen light, and I'd slowly start to see a blurry doctor and some nurses checking me out, where the game was just an induced hallucination.)
Dec 22 23:27:00	18h 07m	dis_covery	This is cute! I like the graphics and music. At first I was disappointed that my flying discs didn't hit the airplanes, but when I found out I could get up there to smash 'em with bombs, that was even better! Pretty simple game but tight. BTW, I like the title and it counts as wordplay. :)
Dec 23 04:52:00	5h 25m	Retirement of the Space Shuttle Discovery	Haha! A nice dadaist space simulator. That's a lot of satellites! Sad that I could not destroy the moon.
Dec 23 05:14:00	22m 00s	Mother Robot	Loved this one. Very nice idea and execution. Just the right amount of information to figure out what to do. Good music and mood. The biggest frustration was that I would confuse the jump and switch-robots buttons, and it often kills you to press the wrong one. Played through to the end, and it didn't get tiresome. I think both of the last two puzzles can be solved with only three robots, though?
Dec 23 05:37:00	23m 00s	Panacea	X.> 0<,X <br/>X 11 Y 7 <br/>Fun <br/> <br/>.. I just had an idea where the assumed to be unintentional console window contains valuable gameplay insights. :) <br/> <br/>The rapidly depleting air and then health definitely stressed me out. My avatar moved quickly enough that I could explore, and got at least to the second level, but I didn't have any confidence that I would be making progress... exploration basically seemed random. Couldn't interact with anything except bodies, to get more air (are those pick-axes? why are there so many?). Also walked through some walls, and though I couldn't tell if that was a bug or a secret, it then made me even more stressed out because then I had to check the walls in each room to see if I could go through them. (Fortunately due to a classic physics bug, I can walk 1.4x normal speed when moving diagonally. :)) But, I guess these are all lessons of the apocalypse.
Dec 23 06:08:00	31m 00s	Minescape	The game plays smoothly, I liked the plethora of options and all the platforms available, and the music which was quite weird. It was pretty fun, even when I died, because it was quick to restart, and the music kept running which made it feel continuous. On the other hand, gameplay was mostly about luck in level generation. One time I couldn't even move. It would have been nice if the game generated a level that was guaranteed to be solvable. Can't give lotsa points for innovation since this is basically the same game as Boulder Dash, but I do miss that game...
Dec 24 05:05:00	22h 57m	The Final Discovery	I like the intro, pretty funny. For me, I had trouble getting it to register anything when I did the "try shooting this" screen. Eventually it did work (dunno why), and I see that's the end. :) <br/> <br/>You should set the registration point of your brain to the center so that when you turn around, it doesn't move the brain so much.
Dec 24 05:43:00	38m 00s	Lurker	Small but pretty complete game. Could have used in-game instructions, since I didn't even know that I could run or throw shirukens until after I closed the game and saw the RTF. Would have preferred to be able to use arrow keys, especially when running, since otherwise all the controls are on one hand. I ended up mostly dodging bullets because I am too impatient for stealth. :) Cute ending!
Dec 24 06:15:00	32m 00s	Space Miners	Hmm, the game doesn't look like the screenshots to me. I have a white background, which makes the game pretty hard to understand -- I couldn't even tell that I had money or that the planets did anything until I happened to put my ship behind their white hover text. I blew up some asteroids and even some planets, but nothing seemed to happen. I thought my ship moved very slowly, actually so slowly that it made me chuckle. :)
Dec 24 06:28:00	13m 00s	Drill Warrior	I discovered all three diamonds. The first one I found with the scanner (my favorite part -- I liked how I could trade off wide and short for narrow and long), the other two I could see peeking through cracks. Finished
Dec 24 17:42:00	11h 14m	Beacon	This game is excellent! I'm impressed. Nice mood, nicely rounded out, some good challenge, and appropriate length. Those security systems had great prediction; they were quite interesting to dodge. I loved the deaths. They were understated but brutal and lonely, like I imagine dying on a deserted planet would be. I was glad that they were not punishing since I died a lot. Nice ending. One of my favorite LD19 games so far.
Dec 24 17:54:00	12m 00s	BoxMiner	Congrats on your first outing. :) I chuckled at the intro story. There is not much to do in the game since there's no danger or resource limitations or constraints; I just made an efficient pattern to cover the grid and picked up gems when I discovered them. 600 points before I gave up.
Dec 24 18:09:00	15m 00s	Extreme Beachcombing	All the thrill of mowing the lawn with my eyes closed! Gameplay's kind of slow, but I think that's accurate for beach combing. I got four of five treasures, then I started digging for the last one, which had a special beep, and I was like, oh, this is going to be a particularly good treasure, but then it blew me up. :) What beach am I combing, Normandy?
Dec 24 22:22:00	4h 13m	Strange Lands	I win! Pretty solid execution. I felt like my success or failure had a lot to do with the randomly generated map, but maybe I'm just not good at strategy. :) For me, the best thing was grabbing a bunch of uncontested land and then turtling.
Dec 24 22:36:00	14m 00s	Coffee Forever	Sorta feels like my life, except for the bloody teeth. :)
Dec 25 00:37:00	2h 01m	Ghosts and Gemstones	Liked this one! The mechanic of the ghosts that dug through the walls but moved much faster than you led to some opportunities for creative strategies. Liked the speed and the powerups, although it was pretty easy to have enough money to buy them all, especially if you stock up in the first level. Those eyeballs were killer, though. Nice job.
Dec 25 01:00:00	23m 00s	i love snow man	Nice effect on the distant snow. I enjoyed how it flouted the expectation that the world would be consistent.
Dec 25 15:57:00	14h 57m	.WormFood.	This game was good. I loved the surprise on the opening screen. The first level was too hard; I almost gave up thinking the game was just that and it would just keep getting harder. It's a good thing you posted the screenshots. The second part (launch jumping) was probably my favorite, though everything after the first bubble level I passed the first time. Would have liked to see some more challenges in the jumping levels.
Dec 26 04:28:00	12h 31m	Husk	Good game! Though it was at it essence about collecting rods to bomb walls repeatedly, since I was able to move quickly and there was sufficient variety in the way the rooms were decorated and arranged, I enjoyed playing through it. I didn't really make much use of the batteries or gravity-reversal. The music and sound were great for the atmosphere.
Dec 26 04:46:00	18m 00s	Attack of the time travelling pygmy from outer paleolithic (aka Time Pygmy)	This game's great, but I wish I either didn't have a timer or didn't have to rediscover everything every play-through. The art is top-notch (though it looks to me like the lady has a beard, gotta say :)) and the gameplay idea and theme are lovely. Humor was a little bit lowbrow but appropriate for cavemen. Somehow I destroyed the platform that the portal is on, so now I think I'm stuck in my cave forever..?
Dec 26 22:43:00	17h 57m	The Detectorizer	This game was pretty fun. My player moved fast enough (especially in a zig-zag pattern) to cover ground and listen for the beep without it getting too boring. Digging while avoiding the dogs and dudes was sometimes challenging, though I preferred the zen trap approach. :) At first I was just tapping the spacebar and couldn't figure out why I was never finding anything, so some kind of indicator for progress of digging or otherwise better conveying that I should be holding it down would have improved it.
Dec 26 23:01:00	18m 00s	mindeeper	Nice! The graphics are much better than they look in the screenshot because of the psychedelic pulsing. Loved that and the transitions. Fitting music, too. I feel like I did drugs. The gameplay was pretty sound, except: Sometimes the game would be slow (lots of on-screen particles I guess) and then all of a sudden get much faster, which I think was not intentional, and is pretty disruptive when you're doing a bullet hell dance. The aliens are really dumb, always shooting right at you, so if you sit near the edge of the screen, then when the bullets get near you you can pop off to the other side which is always clear. Since the rounds are short, this almost always lets you clear the round without much danger. <br/> <br/>185 kills, level 25.
Dec 27 18:54:00	19h 53m	Corpse Runner	"1 people died so you could escape." :) <br/> <br/>Nice idea. I moved fast enough and the maze was complex enough that it was fun. I think it would have been better if the light was a bit larger (maybe just for the corpses), because I generally had trouble distinguishing maze walls from corridors because of various things about the graphics. The fact that light penetrates walls makes it hard to determine shapes of things from the way we expect light to interact with them, and since I'm always looking at a lot of different shades of grey, it's hard to see continuity of walls except when I'm moving. Would love to see this game with walls that occlude light but a much larger light circle (and actually a circle, not Manhattan distance), because I think it's fundamentally a clever idea.
Dec 27 19:08:00	14m 00s	Epic Spice Quest	Cute. There are some oddities (grid still present on the tiles?) and bugs (items stick around after the level if you don't collect them; on the last level I think I keep hitting an invisible flag to reset?) but things like that add to the charm, for me. There's basically no challenge because the jumps are easy to perform, it's obvious what to do, and there is no risk.
Dec 27 19:25:00	17m 00s	Code Monkey Trials	This is a good idea for a play mechanic. It needs more levels, since only the last one provides any challenge (and really that one is all about guessing and remembering because you can't possibly know which order to get the keys in). For a long time I thought the grey and white squares were representing the falloff of the lightbulbs, but actually it's just a pattern--could definitely have done more with light effects. The problem I see with turning this mechanic into a full-fledged game is that in order to conserve lights, you need to wander out into darkness and place them blind, but when doing this you can easily place in such a way that you don't light up the corner of some room (or worse, step in a trap). So harder puzzles are going to almost always involve guessing, which I think is unfortunate (guessing punishes the player for something outside his control). I bet there is some good direction to take this idea, though.
Dec 27 19:48:00	23m 00s	Cardiac Arrest	Nice! I've done some Z80 for Gameboy before and I'm impressed you were able to put this together in a weekend. The music is excellent. The game totally works, though obviously it's kinda simplistic and has some minor problems (slowdown of the music when there are too many sprites, z-order of player's bomb and 'people'). I did beat it. Unfortunately crashes MEKA for me on Windows, but works in FreezeSMS. <br/> <br/>Makes me want to make my next LD for some crazy old platform.
Dec 29 04:21:00	32h 33m	Discovery Shuttle Defender	Welcome to ludum dare! You'll get more people playing your game if you make it easy to run. Java was actually on the path for me, so it wasn't so bad, but if it wasn't on my list to rate I wouldn't have bothered. <br/> <br/>I found it very funny to hold down the spacebar, because I shoot an enormous missile laser that way. If you start after you're already holding down an arrow key, you can sweep it across the screen, I guess depending on your key repeat settings. I like the graphics and I had a good chuckle at the explosion sound. :)
Dec 29 05:11:00	50m 00s	10 Minute Galaxy	I liked this one. Neat to see a game in pure JS, and it plays smoothly. Small criticisms: I wish it reported the amount of fuel I needed to get back to base ("bingo"), since I died while I had enough money to refuel. :( The exploration seemed sort of random to me, too, with little I could do to influence whether it would be successful or not.
Dec 29 05:26:00	15m 00s	Epic Treasure Hunter	Game completed! <br/>This was a fun and straightforward platformer. Good character graphics; the tiles were pretty simplistic and had some rough edges (like visible on the stairs in the screenshot). There were some bugs, too, like when the floor would vibrate continuously. I didn't understand why the rocks were limited, when there were piles of them everywhere including under pretty much every monkey. But, I played through the whole thing and enjoyed it. Thanks for the signs--without them, finding every last treasure would have been annoying.
Jan 1 01:29:00	68h 03m	Pickup	Crashes for me on startup. :( <br/>By the way, the images are supposed to be captured during the 48 hours, for the compo.
Jan 1 03:09:00	1h 40m	discovery . Palpable Heroic Perception	Pretty good game, with some flaws. First, it's crazy hard. I only got through it because of my LD OCD. Some of the early stages were hard, but it took me like 45 minutes to get through the gauntlet of green plasma and bullets at the end (mainly the final very narrow maze). I totally didn't understand that the blue wall was blocking me because I hadn't picked up the crosses; I thought maybe I was supposed to be shooting it or looking for a secret passage or something. I didn't solve any acronymic puzzles; did that have to do with the letters and numbers that appeared at the bottom as I collected numbers? On the other hand, I liked the controls of my dude. It was very unusual and difficult to move around--the biggest danger were walls, since it would send me into irrecoverable bounces. I think with some polish on balance (e.g. bullets should do more damage since they are almost harmless currently, at least the orthogonal ones, gauntlet at the end should be less cruel or have more save points, or just make it possible to steady my ship so it has no velocity along one of the axes) that it would be completely enjoyable.
Jan 1 22:18:00	19h 09m	Grand Mystic Quest of Discovery	Excellent game! What sticks out here for me is the quality of the level design. I played all the way through and there were some pretty good tricks, and very little waste. Graphics are quite good; wish there was music too. Definitely some bugs: When you're dead you still exist and can keep casting spells; if you die in the air your sprite is not actually removed, so you momentarily appear on the ground before it resets (especially if you're on the platform as it descends into water), ladders frequently fall into the ground beneath them (harmlessly), it's possible to get pushed off the screen by moving platforms (in the room with two of them and the ladders on the ceiling) combined with the Q spell. The hardest thing for me to figure out was that you can remove the Q blocks after placing them. <br/> <br/>There are a couple of breakable blocks that appear to be unreachable (like in the room with the fast drip, and off to the right by some water in one place). Am I missing some super-secrets?
Jan 6 05:51:00	103h 33m	suspension of disbelief	Cool idea. The music is super, some of the best in this compo. Unfortunately it drops out for me on the Windows version (much more stable on the Mac), which is a shame because it really adds to the mood in both the hostile world and the sketchy world. I found the gameplay frustratingly difficult, and I think I have a high tolerance. The controls I could handle (though it would have been more fun if they were less cruel, particularly the ease of crashing your ship, and the slowness of pushing things around). But what drove me crazy was that the objects I pushed into place to pass the second room would just disappear while I was using them. But I did finish it, and enjoyed it. Nice.
Jan 9 17:23:00	83h 32m	Impatient Archaeologist	Nice! Excellent graphics and it's easy to pick up and play. I think the game is pretty easy, but at the same time, that encourages me to be impatient, and then I make mistakes. Dynamite drops unnaturally (arcs at first but then falls straight down), probably because dx is an integer. <br/> <br/>Hi-score: 18370
Jan 9 18:56:00	1h 33m	Dry Voices: who are you?	MONSTER REVIEW INCOMING! <br/>Loved this game. I played it longer than any other LD this contest, probably about 5 hours. What really stands out for me is the trick--which is a wonderful idea (though I think it will not play out well with the LD audience just because of the format of the contest)--and the thoughtful level design. The music is great for setting the mood; I can't believe a 45-second loop was listenable for that long. <br/> <br/>Remainder of review contains spoilers: <br/>I got all of the endings except the egg one, without spoilers or cheating (though without your hints in the comment I certainly would not have noticed that the game is different for each computer that loads it). It was fun to explore the cave, but I definitely needed to draw a map: <br/> <br/>http://discovery.spacebar.org/dry-voices.jpg <br/> <br/>I believe the underlying idea is very very good. You could make an outstanding and large game this way. There were some problems, though: First, even when you kind of figure out what's going on, it's still troubling because there is no confirmation in the game. I had figured out that there was some cookie-based state, and that some of it I could influence, and that some of it was outside my control (but if I kept reloading in incognito mode it would sometimes change). But I can't see the state without exploring the places in the game, which takes some time, and I don't know if my next step is to reload to try to initiate some new state or to explore further. (There are various jumps that are almost makable, that lead to invisible corridors, for example.) Ideally, once I've figured out the trick, the game would give me some indications as to what's been discovered in this particular session, or let me choose starting items, or something like that. <br/> <br/>I must admit I was led quite astray by the asterisks in the ending messages and your hint in comments. I was initially convinced that the asterisks were some kind of clue themselves about letters that needed to be anagrammed (because of hint in URL) to spell a name, once I got all of the endings. <br/> <br/>Another thing I thought I was discovering (but I don't think it's true) is that there is a single timeline, with each of the named characters existing at a certain point in time, with their actions having effects on the cave for later players. The thing that's random about the stranger is WHEN he visits the cave (between named characters), not anything else. That would have been great because the player could bound the randomly generated state to the number of named characters + 1. Kind makes me want to make a game like that. I had some other theories that turned out to be so off-base that I will save them for possible use in my own future LD entries. :) <br/> <br/>When I got really deep into the game, there are some disappointments. For example, the key is not necessary. Why isn't sisi's note up in his loft, behind the door? Why does K7 exist at all? Ron's lower jump should allow him to make it to a place where the other characters can't reach, but there doesn't seem to be any. There should be a reward for taking the long way left (sans sword), but you can get equivalent endings by exiting to the top right or just being born without a sword available. Music fades out near the edges but is always the same; why? Some bugs too: If you move quickly between rooms, the screen blanks out and you're done for. Gana can hurt herself with fire at the edges of rooms, even killing herself, a case which doesn't seem to be handled by the code. You can step on the top corners of gates and sometimes onto smooth walls in the first row or two of tiles. <br/> <br/>The cruelest part of this game in its current form is the boot, though. There are loads of things that telegraph the importance of the boot: You're likely to see it on your first playthrough with the sword, or almost certainly as ron, it sticking in your mind then as you explore. The endings all say, "... especially in another's shoes." There are several unreachable and unseeable areas that are upward (like in Sisi's place, but also to the left of Gana's home, and a few rooms up from the start), especially right above the boot itself. These lead me to believe that if I get the boot with the right character, I'll be able to jump higher (or learn its owner's name, who can jump high) and explore these places. The boot is locked on both sides from players who can't attack, so I was pretty convinced that it would be Sisi, who is looking for "something amazing." Moreover, the map for Sisi tends to guide you out to the left, unless you really know what you're doing. So I'm thinking that if I can get either Ron or the stranger with the sword drop to leave it somewhere (telegraphed by the fact that there's a body where the sword would normally be), then I can get the sword with Sisi and discover the boot. I spent a while on this, but I wanted to leave my comments for this game before the rating period was over, so I spoiled it for myself by looking through the source. Red herring boot?! ffffffuuuuu... (Too bad, because I probably would have found the egg if I hadn't been distracted by that thing.) That said, I think you actually did have something like this in mind, because it's hard to explain the level design without it. So I am quite sympathetic to running out of time in LD, especially since this game hangs together really well even as is. <br/> <br/>Summary: Great idea and execution, which really grabbed me but is unlikely to grab the LD audience because of the format and presentation, so I think this game will be underrated. Easily expandable to a large and ambitious game. In any case, I see you're quite young and have great game sense, so please carry on as you see fit!
Jan 9 19:05:00	9m 00s	Dinosaur Dance-Off	Haha!! <br/>A superb one-minute game. Very creative.
Jan 9 23:34:00	4h 29m	DirectionsTranscend	Nice! Some of the levels were pretty hard. Clever idea, and loved the ending.
Jan 10 00:47:00	1h 13m	stars	Cool effect and great music, but lacks a game (I think?).
Jan 10 05:23:00	4h 36m	terra coda	This was good. I beat it with 16 events. I didn't save the dying scientist, which I guess is done by learning the code to the door south of the start. It's a good idea and I like the story. Lots of the information I learned when restarting was just passwords to doors, which was a little bit weak. If you could have figured out how to make these parts more varied, it would have shined. Definitely could have used some intense music or sound, too. <br/> <br/>I actually made the timer stop by going into the library and into the top-left corner, under the timer itself. Dunno if that is intentional?