Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD24 → Feedback comment stats → hgcummings
Feedback comments for LD24
hgcummings's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | hgcummings's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 27 14:46:00 | Geomelution | Great, fun, and pretty challenging games. Graphics and sound were high-quality too. | |
| Aug 27 18:54:00 | 4h 08m | deevo | Really nice artwork. Some similarly quirky music & SFX would have been good. Obviously a very simple game at the moment, but it's a great start. |
| Aug 27 19:16:00 | 22m 00s | Oh my, a shooter with blocks! | I like the retro graphics. Reminded me of the old Micro Machines games a bite. The upgrade & damage model is good too (actually losing bits of your ship when you're hit). I did seem to encounter a bug where my ship started constantly trying to move right. |
| Aug 27 20:41:00 | 1h 25m | Darwin Skirmish | Nice. Disorienting at first but quite fun when I got into it. Definitely a good innovation over the usual RTS resource gathering & construction model. I agree with kyyrma that selecting units is quite difficult (even when not zoomed out) as they tend to bobble about a bit even when not running around. The units also had a tendency to get stuck behind things (although I wouldn't expect amazing pathfinding in an LD entry). |
| Aug 27 20:47:00 | 6m 00s | Biotic | Five stars for mood. Lovely graphics and complementary audio. I managed to 'win' by getting the green critters to kill all of the red ones on the screen, and having a group camping out in each corner to eat newcomers (it's easy enough to split up the group by placing food in opposite directions.) <br/> <br/>Maybe the lack of win/lose condition makes it more of a toy than a game? Still a great start for a game though: Arcade-style games are usually a fun toy plus some kind of challenge. |
| Aug 27 20:58:00 | 11m 00s | Panspermia | Great game. Exactly the sort of thing LD should be about IMHO. I like the graphics, the simple intuitive controls but varied gameplay, the Angry Birds style scoring and the overall mood a lot. Agree with other commenters that the meteors could be faster (i.e. faster speed for a given trajectory). Some audio would be nice too. Finally, I'd like to be able to pick up the game where I left off before after quitting and returning. |
| Aug 29 22:23:00 | 49h 25m | ContraEvolution | Wonderful graphics and sound, giving it a great overall mood. The core mechanic is quite cool, but the setup felt a bit futile from the player's PoV: Would be good to have a bit more variation or development in the gameplay (e.g. the player getting stronger over time, or occasional powerups). |
| Aug 29 22:43:00 | 20m 00s | Robo Rancher | Innovative idea and nice graphics. Some sound would make a big difference I think. The gameplay got a little bit repetitive: Perhaps the test chamber could be made more exciting/challenging. |
| Aug 29 22:55:00 | 12m 00s | Pincers | Nice graphics and I loved the size and complexity of the game world. It felt quite like flOw. I found the controls slightly tricky (especially using the keyboard) and ended up pointlessly circling bits of food initially, but getting more adept at controlling the creature is quite rewarding. Might have been good to have more goals than just wandering around eating & leveling up, to give the game a bit more purpose (but then again, that's all that snake is and it's one of the most popular games ever). |
| Aug 29 23:04:00 | 9m 00s | Pursuit Of True Self | This was quite fun and a bit bizarre (in a good way, reminds me of various crazy Japanese console games). I found the phrases floating around a bit weird, although occasionally quite funny (like a blue 'Never give up' immediately followed by a barrage of red 'GIVE UP's). The graphics were quite endearing and the bounciness of the controls felt good too. I think I agree with aschearer's comments about the gameplay. |
| Aug 31 22:54:00 | 47h 50m | No Tap Enis | Good use of canvas. I actually like that the stick gets harder to manoeuver as it gets bigger, although there should be some corresponding advantage as well. Maybe the other sticks that get created should damage you if you hit them, and perhaps even start chasing you? - Then being bigger could allow you to take more damage, and it would give the game an end condition. |
| Aug 31 23:05:00 | 11m 00s | Lamarck's Theory of Evolution | Graphics were minimalist but (I thought) effective. I found it odd that you had to collide with other critters in order to upgrade, but that you also seemed to be supposed to avoid it... I liked the way they chased you and you had to time it carefully to fire at them. I didn't mind the controls, except that only being able to face in eight directions was a bit frustrating. |
| Sep 1 11:22:00 | 12h 17m | One Day To Breed | This was really fun. I really liked the combination of game elements: Frantically trying to find a mate, while avoiding the spikes, and attempting to follow the 'nearest mate' indicator in the bottom left (which I guess actually makes sense, since pheremones or whatever would tell you proximity but not direction). I thought the controls were fine and I liked the movement of the cat, although the camera angle was occasionally a bit awkward. I couldn't tell what the little cubes that you could eat were for; they didn't seem to increase my score or anything else. I thought the graphics and sound worked really well. |
| Sep 1 12:45:00 | 1h 23m | Aggrandize | I liked the fairly sinister mood of the game and can see what you were going for with the gameplay you didn't manage to complete. I also don't think there's anything wrong with making an Android game if that's what you wanted to do (Ludum Dare is about individuality, IMO). The graphics were slightly confusing initially (it took me a while to realize which terrain was passable and which wasn't), although once I'd got used to it I started seeing it in terms of buildings with rooms. Was the map procedurally generated? - Would be neat if so, although I did spot one NPC in a room with no entry points. I agree with elbowroom that the controls could do with a bit more work. If you are making an Android game then you might as well take advantage of the touch screen, rather than sticking with the idea of pressing keys/buttons. |
| Sep 1 12:56:00 | 11m 00s | Neural Nodes | Excellent game with a simple but very effective mechanic. The different unit types really worked and it was good using them to different effect. I'd be interested to see how you could develop the game further post-compo: I completed it first time but would consider it a great first level of a bigger game. I suppose you could have different maps and starting configurations (fewer players, or more spread out). Also might be interesting to allow the slugs to re-capture nodes. I really like the graphics and mood too - some sound would have been good though. |
| Sep 1 13:03:00 | 7m 00s | Super-Human | This was really fun to play. Got a bit easy when I realised you could shoot backwards while running away from things. Good game mechanic though and (intentionally?) hilarious sound effects. |
| Sep 1 13:12:00 | 9m 00s | Complexitivity | Excellent game. It feels really polished, and the mechanic is very fun (frantically search for and running after repair nodes while carefully avoiding gaps). I love the use of the theme (the *terrain* evolves - making the game different each time). I found it quite hard at first until I had a repair node spawn somewhere I thought was unreachable, and realised that you could jump. Still nicely challenging though. Might be nice to make it slightly more tactical (e.g. choosing where to deploy each repair node rather than it just taking effect wherever you pick it up, or having multiple repair nodes appear at a time and having to choose which one to go for). |
| Sep 1 13:26:00 | 14m 00s | Epocalypse | Excellent mood, graphics and sound. The gameplay seemed really polished too, although it felt like a little bit of a grind at times. The increasingly aggressive zombies each time you leveled up, and the use of 'nighttime' were great. |
| Sep 1 13:32:00 | 6m 00s | "Natural" Selection | I like the idea for the use of the theme, although it was hard to tell how effective it was. Was the group behaviour of ships part of their evolution? They tended to cluster in unassailable groups at the top of the screen, which meant they survived, but didn't pose much threat either. Agree with others that the controls felt a bit sluggish - the turbo version was definitely an improvement. |
| Sep 1 16:17:00 | 2h 45m | Species:Chappy | It's a neat idea, and I liked that each level was different and that it wasn't immediately obvious what you had to do (made each level a unique puzzle). Would be good to have had some more levels, but I guess you ran out of time. |
| Sep 1 16:26:00 | 9m 00s | TONE | This was quite fun: Simple but effective mechanic, and the visuals were great. I don't mind about the music, but it would have been awesome to make better use of sound effects instead. Nicely challenging too, although I think I did pretty well (about 1.2M points). |
| Sep 1 16:43:00 | 17m 00s | Warspace | Would benefit from some polish, but the levels were quite varied and presented interesting puzzles/challenges. Never worked out how to use the circular units - were they just big heavy blockers that couldn't shoot at all? |
| Sep 1 22:43:00 | 6h 00m | Block Shoot | This was quite a lot of fun - fast paced and frenetic. I enjoyed the retro sound effects too. I'm not sure I buy the evolution gimmick, but I did notice the blocks becoming more advanced after playing for a while (firing more complex patterns of buttons and moving more evasively). |
| Sep 1 22:50:00 | 7m 00s | The Fromagist | Nice. Tenuous link to the theme, but this was really fun and quite unique. |
| Sep 1 23:20:00 | 30m 00s | Omega Architecture | This felt like quite a well-polished game, great sound and graphics (and quite amusing audio). The R&D screens could have done with some more polish a bit more explanation: I managed to start making progress and could just about see how it all fit together, but there was generally a lot of information without much explanation. Also, at the rate the counter was going down, the game would have taken hours to complete. |
| Sep 1 23:32:00 | 12m 00s | The Evolution of Time | There are some really cool ideas in here. The controls are weird and could be a little bit frustrating, but allowed for some neat gameplay once you got used to them. I liked the way you could stick to surfaces, and being able to 'ride' a trail of positive particles, or use negative particles to your advantage. The game was fiendishly difficult, and I couldn't get past the tumbling white platforms on the first semi-3D level. I agree the English could do with checking over, but it's not a big deal and I got the idea. Would love to see this game developed further and polished up a bit. |
| Sep 1 23:47:00 | 15m 00s | Outside of the Test Tube | Lovely graphics: I like how all the units looked very different, but everything worked together as a whole. The gameplay needs a bit of work as discussed above. There's a big advantage to building canon at the far left of the map, since they get more shots out before the baddies reach them. I found if I put a row of five there I didn't need to build anything else, and I couldn't come close to winning with any other strategy (it seems you have to build five canon as they can only fire in a straight line, and once you've done that you don't have any credits left over). |
| Sep 2 00:07:00 | 20m 00s | @#$% Life! I'm the god damn SUN. | Odd but entertaining game. I couldn't decide if it was better to carefully hunt down planets or just mindless race through space. Quite fun either way though. |
| Sep 2 00:43:00 | 36m 00s | DNA Wars | Great game, with a simple but very effective mechanic. I did encounter a bug on my second go (before I'd figured things out yet) where the dead mutations stopped leaving behind DNA fragments for me to collect, making the game impossible. Thought I was just really bad at it for a while before I realised something was amiss and refreshed. Afterwards got the hang of it, although it's still a well-balanced game and stays challenging throughout. |
| Sep 2 09:44:00 | 9h 01m | Trinity Labs | I played this to the end, but it became a bit of a death march in the last level. I never quite figured out the rules for things evolving: It seemed like sometimes three items would evolve if they only matched in colour, but not in type. I could reproduce this consistently, but it was really hard to experiment because you had to place items *very carefully* in the cells for them to evolve. It was also frustrating how items would occasionally bounce off each other and float into space while you were moving them. Nice graphics though and some neat ideas. Would like to see it polished up. |
| Sep 2 11:59:00 | 2h 15m | Ancestry Haters | Really nice game mechanic. I liked how you had to exploit it in different ways to solve each level, and the last two were nice little puzzles. Would be interested in seeing the game taken further with more levels. |
| Sep 2 12:10:00 | 11m 00s | Treevolution | Quirky and really nicely presented. A bit tedious having to wait a long time when you choose an incorrect combination, although some of the correct combinations are quite amusing. Reminds me a bit of the old LucasArts point-and-click adventure games, where things always made sense on some odd level of logic (e.g. you need it to rain, so you start washing a car and naturally it rains immediately afterwards). |
| Sep 2 17:33:00 | 5h 23m | Winding of Isaac | Interesting concept but needs a bit more work to be playable. Having sufficient control to aim for arrows was pretty muble. Pressing the letters H and C seemed to make a difference, but I'm assuming they're a debugging tool rather than part of the gameplay. The music was nice. |
| Sep 2 18:24:00 | 51m 00s | Firefly | Felt very polished. A rather slow-paced game, but I was playing it on the train with nothing else to do, and the music made it really relaxing. A perfect low-stress time-filler. |
| Sep 7 16:26:00 | 118h 02m | Super Genome: Hyper Evolution Turbo Edition | Nice concept. I'd like to play it after a little more polish. I couldn't really work out what determined how much health you gainwhich made it difficult to progress or decide what to do tactically. |
| Sep 7 16:33:00 | 7m 00s | ProtoZoo | I like the retro vector graphics. Controls were a bit trickyon Android but it was still quite fun to play with. I agree with comments above that a bit more of a goal to aim for would be good. |
| Sep 7 16:58:00 | 25m 00s | ANT FIGHT CLUB | This has the potential to be a really addictive game: I like the mix of planning and battle phases. It would have been good to have a bit more guidance about the effects of the different coloured chemicals, and the very passive battle screen could get a bit boring (as far as I could tell, the only thing you could do was influence the order in which your ants fought, but it didn't make much difference). |
| Sep 7 17:32:00 | 34m 00s | Chromasome | Really interesting mechanic, and quite fun to play around with, although the controls could be slightly fiddly at times (wasn't sure how to deselect anything). I liked the way the game progressed, although the layer levels were a bit of a strain on the eyes on my smartphone. |
| Sep 7 17:43:00 | 11m 00s | Temporal Agent | Awesome concept. I liked the situations that arose from the time travel mechanic. Controlling the character using the tilt was quite hard work, although kind of an enjoyable challenge in itself. The graphics and menus felt quite polished; the tutorial could have done with a bit of proof reading. |
| Sep 8 09:58:00 | 16h 15m | Nom's Evolvathlon | This was a really neat concept and it felt reasonably polished. I found the controls a little bit unintuitive with the mouse on desktop, but they were great with a touchscreen on Android. I liked that there was a puzzle element to picking the correct evolutions in the right order on each level (although it was annoying you had to completely start over if you got one wrong) and enjoyed the very different styles of play that came with each evolution. The graphics were quite cute too. |
| Sep 8 10:10:00 | 12m 00s | Troll Spirit | I like the idea of a kind of 'pocket Black & White', as well as the thoughts from your trolls when you watched them (reminded me of the punters in Theme Park a bit). It ran very fast on my HTC One X though and was all a bit bewildering with trolls flying everywhere. I think it would be much more enjoyable if it was slightly slower paced and identifying your own trolls was easier. Once the basic gameplay was down, it would be good to see this developed further (e.g. with missions or simple resource management). |
| Sep 8 10:23:00 | 13m 00s | Caveman's Quest for Food | This was brilliant. Really reminiscent of lots of early nineties games in terms of graphics and difficulty, but with a uniquely simple gameplay mechanic. Everything about it, from the sound effects to the level design, was really perfectly judged. The only thing I would change would be to add more levels! |
| Sep 8 15:10:00 | 4h 47m | Survival Of The Tastiest | Completely bizarre but quite fun. As others have said, it's a bit too easy and possible to win without really knowing what you're doing. With a bit of balancing and some different levels (e.g. more varied table arrangements) it could be a quite engrossing game. |
| Sep 8 15:28:00 | 18m 00s | Happy Vegan Birthday | Similar to other commenters: Lovely graphics but I had trouble actually playing it. I couldn't even open the inventory, as the button was absurdly tiny on my screen and I don't have a hard menu button on my phone. |
| Sep 8 15:37:00 | 9m 00s | Click Red, Eat Rest | The controls were slightly confusing at first, but I actually quite like that the two actions were combined, since it forced you to think a bit more carefully about when and where you clicked. Sometimes a level seemed to end without me knowing way (still had time remaining, didn't go off the edge of the screen ie hit too many red blocks). Graphics were unapolegetically lo-fi. |
| Sep 8 15:58:00 | 21m 00s | Clever Blocks | This was quite fun to play, although it felt a bit easy and you didn't really have to think much about the different types of block. The graphics and sound werequite good and I'd be interested in playing a more challenging/balanced version. Multiplayer could be very good. |
| Sep 8 19:10:00 | 3h 12m | AGAIN Corp: Adaptive Genetic Artificially Initiated Corporation | I really enjoyed this game although it was pretty brutal. I don't think the evolution mechanism needs explaining: I started playing the game before reading the hint above, and it was quite fun working out what was happening and how to make use of it. The graphics were lovely, although as mentioned elsewhere, the controls and clipping etc. were slightly buggy. I also encountered a couple of odd one-off bugs: My avatar respawning in pitch darkness unable to move, and my avatar behaving like he was underwater after respawning (so he could 'swim' through air). The learning curve was tough in places, but generally quite well judged. However, I think the game really needed some kind of save or (probably better) checkpoint mechanism, since there were a few tricky bits that took me quite a long time to work my way back to each time I failed to get past them. |
| Sep 11 18:18:00 | 71h 08m | Game Of City Life | I definitely like the idea (kind of a stripped-down SimCity) and thought it was well executed. It's a really impressive game for 72 hours. The controls were sometimes a bit clunky (a lot of clicks to add a single building) but my main problem was that nothing 'bad' seemed to happen: I could just go on autoplay and build a load of stuff, with the interactions of pollution and luxury not really presenting me any problems. I think with a bit more challenge and a bit more feedback to the player this would be a really fun game though. |
| Sep 11 18:28:00 | 10m 00s | alteration | Quite nice graphics. In fact it felt pretty polished. The music was a bit repetitive and became slightly annoying after a while. I think the level design could do with a bit of work: It was hard to approach the third level logically since you couldn't even see the goal until you'd already spent a while flipping switches, and randomly faffing seemed to be about as effective as any systematic approach. I found the controls slightly annoying to (would have been good if just holding down an arrow key kept you moving in the same direction). The fundamentals are there for a great game though, with some more thoughtful level design. |
| Sep 11 18:52:00 | 24m 00s | 42 Stories | Brilliant game. Simple but very effective game mechanic (you have to plan ahead carefully). As others have said, the AI isn't that great, and there are a few breaking strategies. Could be a great Android/iOS game if the AI was a bit more clever, or amazing as a multiplayer game on web/desktop (please do this!). Graphics and sound were beautiful. Not sure what it has to do with the theme though... |
| Sep 11 21:08:00 | 2h 16m | HumanTECH | Nice retro-style game. I think it's a good beginning, but the gameplay maybe needs to be a bit more varied and/or challenging. It was fairly easy, and felt a little bit dull at times. I liked the use of the theme though. I found the firing controls made aiming quite difficult. Sometimes the armed NPCs, in their eagerness to chase me, got themselves stuck in a wall. Slightly disappointing ending too ("Congratulations!", exit). I like the retro graphics, and the sound worked fine for me and was really effective. |