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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | DrPetter's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 2 09:37:00 | Never Go Alone | This game might be statistically impossible to play. By the sound of things, it requires two people to download and start the game within the same 5-second period, since nothing will be going on in there if they're alone. With 299 other games to choose from, nobody is going to sit around in front of a black screen waiting. It's too bad though, networked games are definitely interesting and impressive for a short compo. Maybe there could be an IRC rally at some point to get at least 3-4 users online at once? | |
| May 2 09:48:00 | 11m 00s | Kokoriki for Ludum Dare | It's snowing, which is something even Sweden wouldn't expect in May. <br/> <br/>Uh. Regardless of that though, the game is pretty charming. Very simple and focused, which is good. Looks nice and moves quite smoothly. I have two main gripes. The scrolling is a bit sudden, so I often move too quickly towards the edge only to be surprised by a huge bees in my face. I think the screen should be more centered on the player, although not completely locked. Just give more room at the edges so you can see what's ahead. Secondly, the bees take too many hits before they die. It's more like a boss fight than a normal enemy encounter. Mainly, this discourages new players. After a while I started to doubt if they could actually be killed, but then I did manage to off one. Might be able to use weaker enemies at first, in a different color, then introduce these ones, and maybe even vary their speed to shake things up. Instant death without even an animation is harsh and also a bit discouraging. |
| May 2 09:57:00 | 9m 00s | Pathfinder | "Featuring revolutionary sword combat dynamics!" <br/> <br/>Fun twist though, no pun intended. More interesting than just clicky-clicky. Player sprite actually works out reasonably well despite being a static image with fixed view angle. Collisions are bit unpleasant, glitchy and "fat". So it's hard to move around with elegance. |
| May 2 09:59:00 | 2m 00s | Dodgeball Massacre | Does not seem to work sometimes, on Win7 :( |
| May 2 10:04:00 | 5m 00s | Ant General | I managed to beat the second level without carrying sugar, and running at 3 fps in firefox. I just zipped right past all the bugs and got the whole sugar stash for myself. Model general. Perhaps the goal should be to get N (or any) troops to the sugar, rather than just yourself? Looks pretty though. |
| May 2 10:16:00 | 12m 00s | Diagnosis | I will be WAIT watching! <br/> <br/>Gah, shieldbug. Am I supposed to get single random shots in due to collision slippage, or is there a faster way? Anyhoo, I think the bug wins. <br/> <br/>Also, are you sure you're not cactus? Or Terry Gilliam? Really cool presentation, and there is ample feeling. Good stuff. |
| May 2 10:36:00 | 20m 00s | Wurrums | Nice and rather polished. I beat the game after some time, and I think the balance was quite appropriate. Required a few attempts on some levels, but never completely frustrating or boring. Would have appreciated a variable-height jump perhaps, but there's not really a whole lot to complain about. Good game. |
| May 2 10:59:00 | 23m 00s | Heroic Cat! | Spectacular! In a way that doesn't necessarily include all the potential technical polish, but a really elaborate and full-featured game that is enjoyable and exciting to play. You really managed to focus on the relevant parts without getting distracted with "stuff". I caught myself repeatedly using imagination to fill in the missing bits while playing, which is quite easy when the graphics are just symbolic and not even particularly animated. LD champion form, harvest player brain power for content! |
| May 2 11:02:00 | 3m 00s | Grab a Jetpack or You Will Die | Dropbox link won't let me download. Says I need to log in. |
| May 2 12:24:00 | 1h 22m | OUT OF HERE | Go to bathroom while silly installer chews away. Come back and run the game. Nothing happens. I have no idea why, but I can't play or vote. My NVidia GPU is usually happy to render shaders of various kinds. |
| May 2 16:49:00 | 4h 25m | Retrace | Very pretty and clean. Didn't really notice any bugs or glitches or otherwise rushed items. Thought it would be more difficult than it ended up being, once I had hammered a bit at the last level. I wonder if it would be easy to incorporate some more dynamic elements like enemies or elevators? Should work well as long as they're reset like everything else. Might be really challenging with reactive enemy creatures. |
| May 5 10:22:00 | 65h 33m | The Legend of Mulida | I actually got pretty far before I realized there was more than a button for controls, thinking he would auto-run to the right. I got all the way to the Z-turn actually. In some ways it's easier when you don't stop and turn all the time. Presentation is neat, idea is funny, movement could have been more smooth. I would have liked a longer range of gradual speed control, so I could hover the mouse relatively close to the guy and walk slowly, or go further away to run. That way it would be more intuitive and fluid to do air control, land on platforms and dodge swords. Either that, or normal keyboard controls which are easier to "pulse" for fine adjustments. The furthest I got in the end was "NORAGA". |
| May 5 10:46:00 | 24m 00s | Rainbow_Riding_Hood | Lots of neat touches, with the extreme amount of creative graphics and animations, plus the progressive music layering. I'm having trouble enjoying the actual gameplay though, as the controls leave little room for reactive action and makes it feel a lot like a game of chance. <br/> <br/>It's very high-paced, and I think it might work well as a twitch arcade game if the framerate had been higher (60 fps), player hitbox was smaller, camera didn't swing around unexpectedly when changing direction/speed, and above all - the attack repeated much faster when you hammer the trigger. <br/> <br/>Actually I think the last two are most important. Framerate and hitbox might be fine if the camera+player movement was more consistent, so I could easily follow the paths of items on-screen, and ideally had enough air and ground agility to avoid them. I'd love jump height to be variable so I didn't have to accidentally jump into enemies that appear after I leave the ground. <br/> <br/>I just feel like I'm held back in several ways, that I need greater resources as a player to handle the oncoming enemies. <br/> <br/>Really hope you make a balanced update with some of these changes. I know how hard it is to create and tweak everything in just two days, even for a much simpler design. Could be a really fun game though, on top of being a nice art gallery :) |
| May 5 11:02:00 | 16m 00s | Entity | I'm quite confused. Both failed and "won", but I'm not sure what separates the two. Apparently it's good to make a few auras while you go collect the pictures/things, but I don't know the mechanical or story reasons behind this. Graphics are nice, there's a pretty cohesive "weird" atmosphere with the audio as well. Player animation is very good as long as it works, but apparently it glitches out in some situations/directions. So yeah... I'm stupid, and/or this game needs a better explanation. Or maybe it's just indeed very weird! :) |
| May 5 11:20:00 | 18m 00s | The Last Survivor | Simple and clean. Could do with some fun feedback and dynamics to make it more enjoyable, like lasers (and other items?) updating in realtime as you move the boxes, so you can sort of play around with them instead of just arranging to solve the puzzle. There were a few moderately challenging parts, but overall it was pretty easy to get through. No game-breaking bugs that I could find, so props for that. Seems like a scenario where those could easily pop up. |
| May 5 17:47:00 | 6h 27m | Curse Of The Golden Pearl | Addictive but slightly tedious. I wasted a few gold pearls before I realized they were useful for something other than exchanging and buying stuff. Collecting got a lot quicker when all the stuff was equipped, but it also got less exciting since the whole ocean was relatively harmless and not scary anymore. In the beginning I had hoped that there would be increasingly large and spooky things below. Would have been nice if there were at least angler fish and other creatures that you only saw beneath a certain level, in the dark. Maybe they could flee your light as you approached. The light could also get dimmer the further down you go, so maybe you have to upgrade the flashlight a few times to reach bottom. Anyhoo, fun and casual. |
| May 5 17:51:00 | 4m 00s | Laser cats VS Zombie rats | I am completely useless at this. Attempted the first level five times and I didn't get to see a single laser. Lots of clicking and very little zapping. Interesting idea though, could be implemented as a board game. Reminds me a bit of the medusa heads in Lolo 2 on the NES. |
| May 5 18:10:00 | 19m 00s | VIGILANCE | Funny, and it sort of works rather well. I have some trouble with the fighting though, it gets "sticky" later in the game and I have a hard time getting further. Lots of safe students gang up on me and won't let me maneuver. I guess I'm just not very good. There's probably some strategy and timing with the blocking and counter-moves that I don't manage to see yet. Background scenery is creative :) |
| May 5 18:17:00 | 7m 00s | The Legend of Old Man | Har. Funny, plays rather well, is very short. Would be a lot of fun to see more of these "behind the scenes" games based on NPCs from famous titles. That could be a compo theme in itself, so many silly possibilities :) |
| May 13 09:50:00 | 183h 33m | L-Porter | 1443 is my record. The concept is novel and refreshing, although game itself feels a little bit glitchy and not fully polished. I would perhaps have liked the rotation to be more regular, either a continuous circular motion or at least slowly wiggling back and forth, so you have a greater chance of predicting it instead of reacting to relatively sudden changes and hoping you won't get stuck with no chance of escape. To that end, maybe it could also show more of the oncoming obstacles (keep the player further back). Visually, it's pretty clean but I don't quite see the attraction of downscaled pixel resolution when it's all blurry and antialiased. If you give this whole package some design scrutiny and tweak the balancing, it might turn out rather elegant overall. Bonus points for having minimal graphics inside a circle. |
| May 13 10:22:00 | 32m 00s | Myrktorch | Pretty, with a nice knytt-like mood. I had trouble accepting the inevitability of being hit by the death poop of flying water demons. Would have been nice if I could maneuver around for a few seconds before losing them permanently, assuming I find a safe place to do so. Also, there's quite a large delay on the inputs. Triple buffering? Worse? It's not bad enough to ruin the gameplay, but it does get distracting when timing jumps. The thing that prevents me from finishing the game right now though is the complete reset on death. Still, cool and fun game. I'll try the jam version. |
| May 13 10:52:00 | 30m 00s | Grave Robbers | Argh, splitting my brain once they get beyond FJUSK. Also doesn't completely fit into my laptop browser, perhaps needlessly large window? I would have played this for days on end at age 14, and weeks if it had lemmingsesque animations and gore. Would have been a classic. Could be made into something really worthwhile in many ways, with gradually more complex levels to avoid instant failure. What about co-op? I suppose it's already prepared for that if you operate different regions or plug in multiple USB keyboards (I have to try that!) - networked or split-screen with a narrow scrolling view might also be exciting if there's a radar map or clever audio cues to know where stealage is imminent. For large-display touch devices, the interface would be obvious and open for countless players. Perhaps even with more user-demanding traps, if a player could be assumed to focus their attention on a handful of them. Sliding spiked platforms into different positions, collecting stones and arrows for reuse as projectiles, feeding deceased adventurers to the fire-breathing dragon which fuels your flame-thrower traps. A full-on collaborative sim treasure dungeon? |
| May 15 17:24:00 | 54h 32m | Diamond Hollow | Mmm. Quite slick-looking, and with all the right bells and whistles. Addictive too. I think the mouse aiming is unsuitable though, makes it hard to shoot straight when you need to - which is most of the time. A simple left/right/up firing scheme using buttons would probably have been easier on the player. Hit kickback was the biggest thing that kept annoying me though, and eventually made me stop playing. It's not as bad as in Castlevania, but almost... in a slightly different way. Would have been nice if the upgrades allowed me to actually decrease the bounce strength there, by a significant amount. I thought that would happen, but doesn't seem like it. I still fly all over the place directly on impact, and usually end up in a hole. Also the music gets tiring with all the slowly decaying notes blending into each other. Tiny tweaks, but they would make it a lot more enjoyable. Very nice effort for a 48h compo, definitely. |
| May 15 17:51:00 | 27m 00s | SINGLEHANDEDLY | Awesome use of sound, I must say. Lots of neat details with different character effects. The bleeping legged robots are cool for instance. Gameplay is tough but fair, although I still had to quit my first session before beating the red guy. Seems like the save carries between runs though, which is very great. A few more attempts and I would surely have made it, but... I wimp out for now. The gun mechanic is unusual and works very well. Game world seems quite large too, feels like I've only seen a small part. One extra cheap touch you could have added though is color variation, or something else to signify "different locations". Just swapping out the base grey color of tiles to make 3-4 different atmospheres. Tends to give a nice feeling of progress and discovery. Overall though, very nice one indeed. I've wanted to make an honest metroid game myself at some point in these compos, but nope... never happened yet. Shame. |
| May 21 21:16:00 | 147h 25m | Don't Go Alone | Ape head guardian statues are awesome. So is the presentation overall. Like it when there's a hint of tension in the relationship between player and companion, getting hit by friendly fire. I half expected that to escalate into some kind of showdown, but it was still enjoyable. Length is just right, doesn't drag on too much before it ends and has enough exploration and discovery to be interesting all the way. Gameplay itself is very minimal though, of course. If one were to expand on the game, I'd look into more actions for the player. Like maybe luring creatures in a more elaborate way. Or trying to pick a bouquet of Grandmother's favorite flowers/mushrooms while being harassed by all these spiders and snakes. |
| May 21 21:40:00 | 24m 00s | Appy 1000mg | Weird. Pretty cool, but hard to really follow along with what is going on. Kind of as if the game itself doesn't actually care if it makes sense or not, just... adding some twists here and there, and an analogy layer in the end. Makes it genuine, I guess. True surrealism. A bit like some of my games, although seemingly with a design plan somewhere inside it all. I like the tree gfx most. Jumping/flying around wasn't always smooth and comfortable, but ok. |
| May 21 21:59:00 | 19m 00s | Take This | Uh oh. Lacks game, has cubes! The voxel sprite look actually works surprisingly well. Movement and mechanics are really glitchy though. I accidentally entered the right cave without even knowing about it, then I stumbled into the others a number of times while trying to walk around the place. FPS mode always just got me the sand color, but I see now from your video that there's a mouselook with really original default direction, so my bad there. Framerate was very weak on my Win7 system, possibly due to Intel gpu? I could switch over to nvidia on the same box, but I'm actually too lazy to even do that! It's frightening. Anyway, looks like the game is supposed to move rather smoothly then, not be semi-step/tile based like I suspected. I wonder if it would be interesting to try some kind of rasterized 3D model animation inside this voxel space? Like a proper mesh that is rendered into a voxel block as it moves and deforms... results in sort of a volumetric sprite animation with infinite number of frames. Weird. Might be more voxel retro than smooth transformations though, and still a step up from 2-3 hand-drawn voxel frames. |
| May 27 17:17:00 | 139h 18m | The Legend Of Super Grapple! | Ah, I thought this would be pretty dull until the third level. Jumping and walking isn't particularly smooth, but the grapple is wonderful. Somehow it just works better than expected and allows these amazing aerobatics. Swinging back and forth and around, catching a nearby node below you and using that to change direction. Very cool. I sometimes fumbled a bit when the movement got unpredictable though, and ended up holding the button without grappling. I guess I tapped once too many. Happened a few times. |
| May 27 17:29:00 | 12m 00s | Take This | "turn back time" :) |
| May 27 17:46:00 | 17m 00s | Fiat Lux | I agree with everyone, it's a great idea and has nice atmosphere. Some gameplay details aren't quite elegant and polished though, like the player zooming around at 50 kph while being barely able to jump. Also getting stuck is annoying. Great concept prototype though, I'm sure you'll be able to make a neat package out of it if you want to. |