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Feedback comments for LD23
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Gjarble's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 24 03:48:00 | Intertubes | I had a lot of fun with this one. The action's nice and frantic without ever feeling hopeless. I got some false deaths in the compo version, but I also played the post-compo version and did not get any false deaths; I'm assuming that was one of the bugs you fixed for the latter. Some recommendations, if you want to keep building on this demo: <br/>- Diagonal shooting. I know that's easier said than done, depending on how your current implementation of shooting works. I can also appreciate it if you think that'd take away from the strategy of the game. <br/>- Perhaps you could randomize a new level after every death, instead of just on startup. | |
| Apr 24 04:16:00 | 28m 00s | Crater | Since you say "game ends when you die by hunger", I assume it's impossible to take the meat from the oven? Too bad you didn't have time to implement most of the story- seems like it could be intriguing. Nice job on the animation. <br/> <br/>Yeah, LD's always hardest the first time around. Don't worry, it gets better with experience. It's especially tough when you're doing an adventure-type game like this, and each object's behavior has to be coded individually. I'd recommend looking for an engine built for games that does some of the dirty work for you - there's a lot out there for free. For action games, FlashPunk and Flixel are immensely helpful- all the stuff that would normally take hours, (like tilemaps, animation, camera scrolling, and collision detection) can be done with a single line of code. If you want to do another story-based game next time, I've never used it, but Adventure Game Studio might be worth a look. Just, whatever you do, make sure to keep the idea small- even with a good engine, everything takes longer than you think it does (I'm using the general "you" here, not just you personally). |
| May 9 07:32:00 | 363h 16m | Particulate Planet | The shooting is very difficult without depth perception; the player has no way to tell exactly where (along the Z axis) a bullet will go (the cursor may change size with depth, but that only tells the player a given cursor depth's *relative* position to another cursor depth, without showing how close/far the cursor is to the pills). This might be better as a 3D game, if you can figure out a simple enough way to implement that- perhaps two side-by-side views where the player has to cross their eyes? Also, as far as the control scheme is concerned, make sure to have alternate controls for people playing on more limited systems (like laptops)- for instance, not everyone has a mouse wheel. <br/> <br/>That said, I like the artsy/eerie aesthetic this game has. Some of the graphics (the people in the intro, the buildings you defend) are a bit too messy to tell what they are/what's going on, but I definitely wouldn't take out the "messy" aspect wholesale; that's one of the game's strengths. I applaud the decision in the post-compo version to keep that high-pitched drone confined to the opening cutscene, but the new gameplay sounds sound more whimsical than eerie. Even so, some audio feedback for the player's actions is better than no audio feedback, and I don't know if you plan on swapping those sounds. |
| May 9 07:47:00 | 15m 00s | tiny hostile world | I like how, unlike most dodging games, the player's surface isn't just a flat plane. Also, I notice that, unlike what some commenters have said, the difficulty DOES ramp up. If you've edited the game after the competition was over, for future reference, you're not supposed to do that- if you want to release an improved version of your game after the one that you submitted to the compo, you can add a link to a "post-compo version" (so people know to rate only what you did in 48 hours). That said, I doubt you did anything like that. I'm betting a more likely explanation is that it takes a minute or two for the difficulty to ramp up enough for the player to notice, and most people died or stopped playing by then. <br/> <br/>Like everybody else has said, the best thing to do from here is add features to make it more interesting. The highest priority should be either a score or a win condition; something for the player to work towards. If you're having trouble getting stuff done within a short timeframe, I'd recommend looking for a free game engine- they can do a lot of the tedious dirty work for you. <br/> <br/>By the way, I noticed the game can also be played by dragging the mouse. Is this intentional? If so, you should note it in the instructions. |
| May 9 07:53:00 | 6m 00s | Bombs World | Interesting idea- it's kinda like Bomberman, but the blocks are your opponent. |
| May 9 08:16:00 | 23m 00s | AquaWars | Seeing as it's a Unity game, it wouldn't be too difficult (a few clicks, IIRC) to release a Mac version. <br/> <br/>As for the game itself, I really like the concept, and it's a lot of fun to play. I can't play the post-jam version because I don't have an Android, but here's how I think the game could be improved: <br/>- A counter to show how many enemies are onscreen. When I lost, I thought about 6 enemies, though some may have been obscured by the upgrade menu. I'm pretty sure some worms were blocking the view of other worms, too. <br/>- Speaking of the upgrade menu, I had the upgrade menu open for the majority of the game, as I often quickly alternated between attacking and buying. Perhaps it should be moved to a spot where it does not partially block the player's view (such as the top or bottom of the screen) and not need to be "opened". |
| May 14 00:46:00 | 112h 30m | Memento XII | The story was excellent. I disagree with some of the other commenters that said there wasn't enough closure- I like that you leave the backstory sort of open-ended, but give just enough information for the player to figure out the mystery he's trying to solve. Still, some of the puzzles were very unintuitive, and after being told what the solution was, I felt like I wouldn't have had enough information to figure it out on my own. There's an interesting contrast there: there's neither much story information nor much puzzle information, but one of those helps the game, while the other harms it. |
| May 14 01:04:00 | 18m 00s | Pond: The Strider | Love the idea, and a water strider is a perfect choice for the movement system you came up with (or vice versa, I don't know which idea came first). My only complaint is with the green squares (are they the pond scum?)- it's a bit steep of a difficulty curve when they first appear, transitioning the player from being under a mild threat to being under constant threat (by a rather large homing enemy at that). Also, the fact that they are abstract enemies, and that the majority of the other enemies (the bugs and arguably the eggs/larvae) are representational, can lead to some confusion regarding what is and isn't an enemy. The first time I died by the green squares, I wasn't sure whether or not they were in the background. Also, it was very useful to figure out that the small, unmoving fadey circles were not just more background but actually denoting enemy spawn points- you may want to put it somewhere in the instructions. |