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Feedback comments for LD29
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | HuvaaKoodia's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 29 18:37:00 | Cases | I've played a few games like these before and they are always a nice little brain puzzle. <br/> <br/>This one is simplistic, but the only problem per se is the murder weapon. I think it's based on the type of noise and the location, but I don't think a real detective would jump to such conclusions with only hearsay. <br/> <br/>I'd like to see a more complex version with figuring out personal relationships and other connections between people as well as some crime scene investigation to fix that murder weapon problem. <br/> <br/>Some bugs/tweaks: <br/>-Skipping/FastForwarding dialogue would be ace. <br/>-Resizing the screen, while nicely rescaling the graphics, does break the gui button hitbox offsets. | |
| Apr 29 19:20:00 | 43m 00s | Water Golf | Very nice tech (physics and level generation) for 48 hours, but it's not much of a game yet. |
| May 1 13:39:00 | 42h 19m | SubFlight 2075 | The Theme, mood and audiovisuals are terrific. <br/>I really like how the sound becomes more and more intensive when accelerating. <br/> <br/>Gameplay-wise I find the standard first person shooting to be unresponsive and a bit of a bore. I would like to see a submarine game focusing on exploration of sunken ships, ancient ruins or similar. <br/> <br/>If you wish to stay on the FPS route, mouse controlled shooting would a a nice feature to have. Something similar to the control system in AquaNox 2, I seem to recall that was pretty fluid. <br/> <br/>Overall an impressive early prototype. |
| May 1 14:21:00 | 42m 00s | ScubaBear | The general level of polish and competence are worth repeating. <br/> <br/>My major gripe is the lack of a map. Going to look for the last piece of treasure really didn't entice me enough after finding all the others. <br/>Another point is separating the inventory into two parts: Items and treasure. It wasn't entirely clear to me, in the beginning, that only the first row gives me abilities. <br/> <br/>Apart from that the game is also a bit uninspired. <br/>It's a 2D Metroidvania with regenerating health out of all things! (it makes sense though, the player being a bear and all!) <br/>Nothing really made me jump out of my seat, spewing out sentences like "Wow I've never seen that before!". <br/> <br/>I'm just raining on the parade here. <br/>Overall it's an extremely well done and fun entry. |
| May 1 14:54:00 | 33m 00s | Hot Diggity | A Motherload and Captain Forever mash up on steroids, I approve. <br/> <br/>And now I've gone and player both of those splendid games again. <br/> <br/>Not much else to say. Good work! |
| May 1 22:31:00 | 7h 37m | Tentacle Rails | Well this is the most unapologetic on-rails-shooter I've ever played and it's not bad! <br/> <br/>The gameplay is hectic and fun, but I do have a few complaints. <br/> <br/>The player hitbox is a tad too big. If enemies come outside of the screen, around corners or spawn right next to you there is too little time to react before they collide into the cart. <br/> <br/>I'd prefer a secondary single shot attack which only hits levers, or something similar, as accidentally shooting a lever multiple times is annoying. <br/> <br/>Health pickups or, I can't believe I'm saying this, regenerating health might also work to reward skillful play even more. |
| May 2 10:32:00 | 12h 01m | Thirst | The premise is compelling and well realized, for the first play session as least. I took the wrong direction right away and died a slow, painful death. <br/> <br/>The unskippable dialogue and long intro started to annoy me the second time around. Now I initially went down the right path, but took a wrong turn later and died a slow, painful death. <br/> <br/>At this point a third session didn't compel me anymore. I sort of, maybe, know where the underground caverns should, probably, be but I can't stomach to go through the slow and painful intro yet again. <br/> <br/>Possible fixes: <br/>-Skippable dialogue (it's an AI, surely I can silence it somehow) <br/>-Slightly faster movement <br/>-Slower water consumption. Currently if I'm in shadow with 39 degrees heat. The hydration level decreases faster than the body temperature, meaning that staying in shadow is less useful than moving on. <br/> <br/>Technical notice: <br/>The webplayer correcly calls lockCursor when starting the game (which is more than many other first person entries do), but if the page looses focus afterwards the lock is irreversibly lost. <br/>Fix: Call lockCursor also in OnApplicationFocus. |
| May 2 10:59:00 | 27m 00s | COVERUP | A solid turn based framework for a compelling game, but i's not there yet. <br/> <br/>There is no interesting payoff linked to the original premise. The aliens just don't do anything for you to have a sense of urgency or danger. <br/> <br/>The aliens could do any of the following things, if you let them out of your sight or don't reveal and terminate them fast enough. <br/>-Kill civilians <br/>-Kill agents if threatened enough <br/>-Convert civilians to aliens <br/>-Shapeshift into things (both inanimate and animate objects) <br/>-Destroy/steal property (depending on their precise goals) <br/> <br/>These changes would require a bigger map with building and other objects with additional mechanics in order to be effective though. |
| May 3 12:08:00 | 25h 09m | Prison Digger | Nice idea and solid execution, but one little change would make the game more bearable to me. <br/>Instead of having to spam j to listen through walls the character could listen automatically when pressing/walking towards a wall. |
| May 3 12:33:00 | 25m 00s | Moletube | A solid proof of concept with a lot of potential. <br/> <br/>Consider the following, if you decide to build an extended edition: <br/>-Ability to remove stations and lines. <br/>-Ability to see worker traffic paths, either by clicking on a building to see all in&out traffic (as in SimCity4) or by showing the paths of all current workers. <br/>-Another possibility is to show average in&out amounts based on city blocks/areas on the map as an overlay of sorts (0 apartments, 25 workplaces in this area) <br/>-Workers should seek nearby stations on a known radius (they might already do this but it's not explained/show anywhere) <br/>-Ability to pause the game (just to be able to click on those bloody moles!) <br/> <br/>Basically more useful and easy to understand information for the player as well as interface improvements. |
| May 3 13:25:00 | 52m 00s | ResourceDivers | Disclaimer: <br/>Cookie Clicker and its ilk really aren't my thing and if that's exactly the genre you aimed for feel free to disregard the following. <br/> <br/>The moment-to-moment gameplay, that is everything between the upgrade screens, is overly simplistic and without challenge hence a bore. <br/> <br/>Luckily there is a game already from which to draw inspiration out of called Motherload. If you haven't played it before, do so now! <br/> <br/>In Motherload every time you go drilling there are a lot of things to think and worry about. Is the path up clear? Do I have enough fuel, cargo space and one-use items? Hopefully I don't accidentally run into lava! <br/>Basically rather than being a mechanical exercise of grinding more materials it's compelling as you never quite know what to expect. <br/> <br/>The good news is many of those features translate nicely to an underwater setting. <br/>- Air acts as a fuel (not getting back to the surface before air runs out should have consequences) <br/>-Pressure is like heat (you can go deeper if you want but it's super risky without quality equipment) <br/>-Underwater creatures are the environmental hazards (Sharks... SHARKS EVERYWHERE!) <br/> <br/>The upgrade system is rather neat already, with some unlocks hidden behind others, but they are mostly passive though. Some active abilities would freshen up the gameplay as well. |
| May 5 19:59:00 | 54h 34m | Nothing to Declare | The base gameplay is similar to FTL, so let's look at other things worth lending from it: <br/> <br/>-Pausing and giving commands. This is a must. Currently the most effective strategy is to pick one item of the best yielding sort and move it around. Multitasking will constantly end in failure without liberal use of pause as shown by FTL. <br/>-Race differences (faster/but weaker, slow/more menacing, etc.) also for the inspectors (using race weaknesses to your advantage [if the inspector is hydrophobic, put your stuff in a room with water. {your spaceship has a jacuzzi right?}]) <br/>-An outside world. It doesn't need to be a complex one. Just a node based map, where you move between planets, buy cheap, sell at a premium and try to avoid inspections, taxes and other such government meddling. <br/> <br/>You have a good amount of additional features already lined up, but a few more won't hurt. <br/> <br/>-Legit goods. Less profit, less risk of confiscation. Hiding illegal material withing them and other similar actions. <br/>-Interactions with the inspectors. An inspector might call out and interview with the ship medic concerning hygiene, too bad she is currently trying to relocate some hidden goods. Maybe you don't even have a medic on board. Try to fake it or just pay the fine? <br/>-Goods based on planets. Poor planets require basic goods and supply emigrants. Rich planets take in quality goods and drugs while supplying tourists as well as other shady characters. <br/>-Moral decisions. Do you want to profit from selling guns to a war zone with high risk or do you rather haul in medical supplies for less income? |
| May 6 20:19:00 | 24h 20m | TIT for TAT | The concept has potential, but the gameplay is sloppy and not challenging. <br/> <br/>There is one surefire way to beat the game with minimal input. <br/>Increase the fire rate of both of your towers to the max and collect money until your armour is nearly gone. <br/>Then just spam the everliving crap out of the alien mother ship. <br/> <br/>Why is this so? Let's have a look. <br/> <br/>-The tower upgrades aren't well designed or balanced. <br/>The most potent upgrade, that being fire rate, is also the cheapest! <br/>Power is a nice bonus, but as it's quite expensive there is no reason to take it over fire rate. <br/>Range on the other hand is completely useless as the weapons already fire far enough. <br/>Accuracy would have been a better fit for that slot as the turrets seem to miss a lot. <br/> <br/>-The economy is borked! <br/>The shooting cost increases to a cap of 200, but the upgrade costs don't. <br/>Especially fire rate should have a cost increase or other limitations. <br/> <br/>-Too few gameplay decisions. <br/>The only input turrets need is upgrading and as revealed before there really isn't any meaningful choices in it. <br/>Shooting down enemy projectiles is only required if your armour is down and at that point <br/>you have enough money to defeat the alien anyways so there is no decisions there either. <br/> <br/> <br/>Those things said. Here are some possible venues of development: <br/> <br/>-More in depth turret management as in many tower defence games. <br/>The ability to build and repair the towers and turrets myself alongside upgrading them would go a long way in ensuring tactile gameplay. <br/>This also mitigates the cascading failure effect caused by losing too many turrets on one tower allowing the enemy swarm to completely overtake it. <br/> <br/>-More active abilities. <br/>For instance shields and different bullet types and patterns. <br/>The powerful single shot weapon is fine on taking down the mother ship, <br/>but other offensive abilities would allow sending smaller enemies against the player base as well. <br/> <br/>-No health bar only the eye, or vice versa. <br/>Currently the health bar is quite unnecessary because completely losing a tower is basically a gameover as you profit is effectively halved. <br/>I would argue getting rid of the eye instead. <br/>This would allow for the whole ground to be filled with towers and remove the need for specific enemy lanes. <br/>The alien could also attack other targets and send enemies in every direction. <br/> <br/>Other possibilities include: <br/>-Only the eye no hp bar. Defend and build around it. <br/>-The alien only sends enemies or only attacks with projectiles. <br/>-Different victory states altogether. Time limit, kill count, money amount, you name it. |
| May 8 19:34:00 | 47h 15m | Depths Beneath | There are many similar entries in this genre, unsurprisingly taken the theme of the jam, and thus far this is my favorite. <br/> <br/>Top reason: It's not just a grind, there is legit challenging gameplay in here! <br/> <br/>The good and the bad: <br/> <br/>The quick diver skill is a great boost to cut down the early level grind time. I haven't seen something like it before in games like these. <br/> <br/>I hoped the hook would be an active ability, but alas that was not to be. Some active abilities would keep the gameplay fresh once the upgrade system settles down to just offering plain passive buffs. <br/> <br/>The upgrade system in itself is a bit basic. The items are tiered very similarly cost-wise so I mostly purchased them in sequence tier after tier. One way to change this and allow more player decisions in upgrading is requiring different mixtures of resources for every item. <br/> <br/>In other words the level has varied resources instead of only cash: gold, silver, jewels, shells, starfish, you name it. Each upgrade then demands their own resource, meaning I can prioritize collecting those resources which give me the upgrades I wish to get. <br/> <br/>Also good job on using xml files. Allowed me to decrease the hook upgrade costs to a more reasonable level. An automatic save system would be a nice addition. <br/> <br/>Bug report: Using escape to close the upgrade screen spams the launch sound rather disturbingly. |
| May 10 16:19:00 | 44h 45m | They Came For My Mushrooms | A simple and effective arcade game, I like it. <br/> <br/>The idea is that the faster you collect the shrooms the more you get as the worms gobble them up as well. It's risky though, as you become slower the more you carry. This risk versus reward gameplay is fine on paper, but falls a bit short in execution. <br/> <br/>On later levels the amount and speed of the worms as well as the small level size cause most of the mushrooms to be eaten within the first second or so. <br/> <br/>This in conjunction with the floaty, imprecise controls and the rather large player hitbox lead to levels where you only get to a few items in time before they are all taken. This is not very exiting (you still need to get to the ending door through the worm ridden land, which is kinda fun on it's own). <br/> <br/>Possible fixes to the problem: <br/> <br/>-Slower worms with a clear indication of their direction (head shape for instance). <br/> <br/>-Worms don't eat the shrooms in one go, but rather it takes multiple times for a mushroom to disappear (a mushroom might change color every time a worm touches it). This way the player can prioritize and plan routes in advance. <br/> <br/>-Worms don't eat the shroom at all. They move them from place to place. This would go well with a time limit (after which the shrooms rot and the ending door appears) and the ability to drop items you're carrying. |
| May 13 20:31:00 | 76h 12m | Operation: Adhesive Surface | Thank you. It was fun. <br/>Or at least funny! <br/> <br/>Gameplay-wise it's a point and click without any pointing or clicking. I would have preferred to use a mouse coupled with fast character walk animations as currently the keyboard movement is janky and doesn't add anything to the overall experience. <br/> <br/>The web version also seems to suffer from severe lag which further intensifies the sluggishness of the controls. <br/> <br/>The world and characters are interesting enough for future development. <br/> <br/>The big letdown for me is the strict adherence to tried and true adventure game traditions. Take the crowd in the arc for instance. You can expend every choice over and over again starting the situation from the beginning for as many times you want. The crowd disperses, gets together immediately and they don't even seem to remember you from few seconds ago. <br/> <br/>What I'd like to see, on the other hand, is interactions with consequences. In this example once the crowd has dispersed they don't come back. That was your chance to interact with them and now it's gone, hopefully you got what you needed. This way I feel like I'm an active part of the world not just a sightseer. <br/> <br/>Obviously linear adventure game logic might not work anymore, but thinking outside the box is worth it every once in a while. |
| May 13 20:43:00 | 12m 00s | Her Majesty's Royal Nautical Expedition | I took the dive down with only 36 seconds to live. <br/>I saw a huge tentacle and ran. <br/>I got lauded as a hero! <br/>Stupendous? <br/> <br/>One gripe of note: Running out of air outside the ship does not trigger a gameover screen of any sort. Inside the ship it does though. |
| May 13 21:22:00 | 39m 00s | Bouncer | Nice satire, although I do prefer the final version. <br/>Luckily, source code! <br/>If only modern AAA games gave you the privilege to change things around. |
| May 16 21:10:00 | 71h 48m | PEEL OFF THE PLANET | A neat concept. <br/>The only thing it really needs is a penalty for missing a target. Currently I managed to get a score of 52000 just by holding left and spamming up. |