Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD24 → Feedback comment stats → VDZ

VDZ

Feedback comments for LD24

Timestamp	Since previous	Game	VDZ's comment
Aug 27 03:07:00		Papillon	First of all, it's quite impressive how much you've managed to do in just 48 hours. There is a lot of content in the game, and the number of different gameplay elements is also surprising for a Ludum Dare entry. (And it has FIVE freaking bosses.) <br/> <br/>However...there's a very good reason why Ludum Dare entries are never as big in scale as this game. The 'finishing touches' are more than just nice extras. The problems with this game are all minor, but all those minor problems (utter lack of sound, control issues, occasional dull moments, wildly varying difficulty) combine for a frustrating play experience. <br/> <br/>Gameplay-wise, it's a strange mix of sheer fun, utter boredom and pure frustration. Though there are very interesting parts in the game (notably the bosses, the first times you use the reflect ability and the butterfly backtracking), they are surrounded by dull platforming/backtracking parts with either no challenge or only the kind of 'challenge' that feels lame (fireballs appearing out of nowhere as you land, stray bullets requiring you to stop every second or have a small chance of suddenly dying), worsened by unresponsive controls (like the time gap after landing when you can't jump or dash for a moment). <br/>A very significant source of frustration (to the point where it felt like a chore to continue playing and I strongly considered quitting (if I were only a random player and not judging the game for LD I'd have quit at that point)) was the unresponsive dash ability during the laser boss. While the boss is awesome the first couple of times, it quickly grows beyond frustrating as you die over and over again due to your character not dashing despite having clearly double-tapped the arrow key - which instantly kills you at the boss's later stages. This single element causes all the enjoyment being had to come screeching to a halt. <br/>Another issue is the varying difficulty: it happens multiple times that a challenge later in the game is easier than challenges all the way at the start of the game, making the "challenges" more "chore" than "challenge". This is accentuated by the utterly underwhelming final boss fight, which I managed to complete on my first try with more ease than any of the other bosses. <br/> <br/>Graphics-wise, this game is amazing. Everything looks all polished and shiny, all the animations are ridiculously smooth even compared to non-LD games, and the level art gives off a nice atmosphere (which really, really should have been accompanied by background music to truly make it atmospheric). <br/> <br/>I am not entirely sure what this game has to do with the theme at all, though. If you manage to give a convincing explanation I might be able to give some more points, but right now the proper score seems to be 'utterly and completely unrelated to the theme'. <br/> <br/>As a developer, I love this game. You really did some amazing things for a 48-hour contest, and there's tons of potential in there. But as a gamer, I don't care about potential that's not realized. This game feels unfinished and has major flaws, making it simply not very fun to play.
Aug 28 03:17:00	24h 10m	The Plane of Evolution	Interesting but fairly bland game. <br/> <br/>The game is a rather standard twin stick shooter, which is pretty fun, but it does very little to make it stand out among the other twin stick shooters. The size gimmick is an interesting idea, but in practice you tend to get surrounded, pushed into a corner and then fully drained to death in one or two seconds, making HP and the gimmick that relies on it fairly meaningless. The stores in-between the levels also seem meaningless, as the pickup effects are nullified when you enter the next wave and HP is fairly useless. The variety of enemies was nice, though. <br/> <br/>Graphics-wise, the levels are ugly (just the exact same tiles repeating over and over, no other decorations) and the items are very unclear (still not sure what they represent). The enemies looked pretty okay. <br/> <br/>Audio-wise it was decent but unremarkable. There's okay background music and fairly default sounds for the things you need audio feedback for. <br/> <br/>The theme seems to only be present in the story, and neither gameplay nor graphics indicate any connection to evolution or devolution. <br/> <br/>Overall, decent but fairly standard game. <br/> <br/>P.S.: For Windows users, it might be better to have some .exe or similar runnable file to immediately start the game, as many people will probably just run love.exe, see only the piggy, and just assume it doesn't work. Also, there's a bug where points are carried on in subsequent playthroughs if playing multiple games in one session.
Aug 28 03:42:00	25m 00s	Extinction Exhibition	Hmm...I'm not sure how to comment on this. As a gimmick, this is top notch, giving pure fun for a short while. As a game, however, it kind of falls short, because after that short while you grow bored of it. <br/> <br/>While the animals are fun for a while, their survival (or lack thereof) seems rather random and not directly related to the choices you make (unless you do something specifically to kill them). I strongly get the feeling that the game will always have 6 species max because they just keep killing themselves or dying randomly and there's nothing you can do about it. As such, there's no genuine challenge in the game, and just watching the animals do stuff gets boring after a while. <br/> <br/>The wacky music is very fitting and adds a lot to the wacky atmosphere. The sounds also add a lot and makes the animals feel alive. When there a lot of animals, though, the sounds they make can become repetitive and very grating. <br/> <br/>Graphics-wise, it's simple yet charming. The simple graphics have a lot of variety which makes the spectacle fun to watch, but the evolutionary traits are very unclear, and in every case I had to see them functioning before I realized what they were supposed to represent. <br/> <br/>All in all, a fairly unique "game" that would work out better as a Flash gimmick than as actual game.
Aug 28 05:24:00	1h 42m	Fungus Wars with Tone Matrix	To everyone who can't run this: Install Java JRE 7. You likely have Java 6, in which case the game refuses to run without even so much as an error message. <br/> <br/>This game presents some interesting ideas, but is very flawed. <br/> <br/>The degree of customizability in this game is very interesting, giving you a motivation to gather points and a way to specialize in a specific playing style. However, the rules to this customization are very unclear (sometimes I could upgrade and other times I couldn't - I have no idea why). <br/> <br/>But most of all, customization is pointless as there is no challenge in this game. Even in the earliest stages, you have to specifically try to get yourself killed in order to lose. As you upgrade further, it only gets easier, and soon enough you get to a point where anything that gets close enough to damage you is pretty much instantly obliterated before it can touch you (if you have enough curve and spread, you don't even have to aim for it). If something does happen to you, healing is very cheap. As much as I like the customization and the pixels representing your health, all of it is pointless when there is no need to customize and nothing to really deplete your health. <br/> <br/>The graphics are basic and mostly not problematic, but the interface does have its quirks (no 'button pressed' feedback, numbers with 10 decimals, text running through other interface elements). The audio is interesting for the first couple seconds, but quickly becomes very grating.
Aug 28 05:55:00	31m 00s	Aeon	What a twist. I thought it was a basic Snake clone, but then it started transforming and became something else entirely. (Though I can't agree with the 'one level without interruptions' - the maze part felt like a clearly separate part, and until I died I didn't even realize the score was counting on from the Snake part.) <br/> <br/>The transforming level in the Snake part was a nice twist, especially visually. Then the game transformed into a completely different game, which pleasantly caught me by surprise. The invisible maze was quite interesting and challenging, with a proper increasing difficulty to kill me before I started thinking foolish thoughts like the game being too easy. A major point of criticism here, though, is that at the start of the game the difficulty increases too slowly. I'd like to play the maze game again, but I don't want to trudge through the easy Snake part again. A faster transformation of the level/gameplay or some other way to speed up things for advanced players would have been very nice. <br/> <br/>The game starts with very simple graphics (looking like a very typical basic Snake clone), then starts to look increasingly nicer, eventually getting to the maze part, which just looks neat. It would've been ever better, though, if even in the maze part the visuals would change (even if only in color), as that would provide some kind of incentive to continue scoring more and more points. <br/> <br/>The audio is lacking. Although in the Snake part the audio is sufficient, the maze is completely quiet making for a very boring auditory landscape. More importantly, there is no audio feedback to important parts of the game; mainly, there is no clear indication of when you collect the dot (a simple sound would've sufficed). Sound to indicate the blinking of the dot and sound to indicate your time was running out would also have been nice. <br/> <br/>A very nice game with some flaws.
Aug 28 06:13:00	18m 00s	Adlus: Mouse Of Truth	Bizarre, just bizarre. I love it. It's like I'm playing pictures for sad children in video game form. <br/> <br/>The gameplay is simplistic but everything just works perfectly. There's always things to do and things to see, and you never get bored while playing. The graphics look like shit - but they look the consistent, fitting kind of shit that makes the bizarreness all the more obvious. And the audio is simply amazing. It's all just weird noises and vague background noise, but it perfectly completes the bizarre atmosphere. <br/> <br/>Hats off. This game is simply art.
Aug 28 06:41:00	28m 00s	Dr. X's Rainbow Arena	Very nice twist on the twin stick shooter genre, but above all, a very well-executed one. <br/> <br/>The gameplay is simply fun. Everything just feels right (down to minor details like being able to heal by not being hit for long enough), and the randomly changing enemies add a lot of variety to the game (it strongly reminds of Warning Forever, which also has interesting changing gameplay like this). <br/> <br/>The graphics look very nice, with the clearly 2D elements fitting perfectly with the 3D elements. The whole thing looks very polished. <br/> <br/>The audio design was also well thought out, with a sound for everything I'd want a sound for. The shooting noises are a little harsh and become slightly repetitive, though. <br/> <br/>This game is simply fun to play and replay. One thing I feel that could be added is saved high scores, possibly even online high scores - it would be great if I could compare my score to my highest score, or even to other player's scores. I can now post in the comments that I hit Virus Strength 35 (with best strain 0x02E1, 16 mutations, 10 splits and 120 dead), but experience has taught me few (if any) other players will also post their scores.
Aug 28 22:30:00	15h 49m	DashDashDASH	Although I like the idea of running for survival while defending yourself against incoming enemies, I feel the execution here falls short, making the game overall not a very fun experience. <br/> <br/>The controls are very unfit for this kind of game. You'd want tight, responsive controls to run for your life, but instead this game provides a low-acceleration, slippery, hard to steer control system that makes you slide for your life and comically bump into the walls. Or at least it would be comical, if bumping into walls and a lack of acceleration didn't kill you, which it does in this game. <br/> <br/>The stars coming up to you and slowing you down if you didn't kill them in time were a neat idea. Shooting the stars feels very fake, though; you don't 'fire in a direction', you click the star to make it disappear. I'm guessing this was done through an OnClick() event rather than spawning a moving projectile with collision detection? <br/> <br/>The gaps in the floor are sudden and sometimes simply impossible to see. This makes progress more or less a lottery where if you happen to encounter an 'invisible' gap your run ends there. The jump feature is also slightly buggy, with the character sometimes refusing to jump fully, which can also lead you to fall into such a hole. <br/> <br/>The graphics don't feel very consistent. Although the background and the stars look pretty nice, the different elements (background, stars, road, walls, character) simply don't blend well together. Even if hamburgers, spaghetti and ice cream are all delicious, if you throw them all together and try to eat them as one dish it wouldn't taste very nice. Make sure the different graphical elements fit well with each other, otherwise any individual merit they might have becomes moot. <br/> <br/>There is very little audio in the game, and what little audio there is sounds rather repetitive and annoying. <br/> <br/>The concept is nice, but the game is bogged down by many flaws which ultimately make the game hardly enjoyable.
Sep 1 04:20:00	77h 50m	SUPER Levolution	Is there anywhere we can get an MP3 of the background music or something? I love it.