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Feedback comments for LD30
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | ShaunJS's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 25 03:32:00 | Color Runner | I really enjoyed the concept! Controls were pretty hard and falling and bouncing back the way you came was a little frustrating. Didn't feel like it was actually super necessary in the end for the character/ball to automatically run. Just meant for a 'waiting' style penalty when you miss something, might have actually benefited from more regular platform controls. <br/> <br/>It's cool though! Bonus humour point for the 11/10 title screen. | |
| Aug 25 18:52:00 | 15h 20m | Shared Destiny | I like it! I think it's cool you managed to get so much content out of just a few mechanics. The difficulty ramps up very quickly, but the mechanics are very easy to get to grips with! <br/> <br/>I think gameplay wise one of my only concerns would be that some levels take a very long time, or look very intimidating from the beginning which may dissuade people from playing to completion. This is always something to be wary of in single-screen puzzles. Especially where failure resets the whole thing. My own entry is guilty of this sometimes as well. <br/> <br/>I think you focused on the right things, and 'did what you could' with the presentation to give it a neat aesthetic despite obviously being very simple. Always the wise choice if you're not artistically confident. <br/> <br/>Good stuff! |
| Aug 25 20:10:00 | 1h 18m | The Hamster Effect | I actually quite liked this but it took a bit of perseverence to get to what was cool about it. The fact that the early text auto progresses meant I ended up having to reload the game just to remember how building bridges worked before the end of the tutorial. <br/> <br/>I like the mechanics and think it was a cool and interesting take on the theme! Has a very nice mood and atmosphere and I like how it feels living. The fact that the game is moving while you're in the tutorial and 'goes on with or without you' has a really nice feel to it. And I think the presentation is generally pretty good! <br/> <br/>The UI handles a little sloppily, the controls are a little slippery and that can really let you down with a real time game. Sadly I only really got as far as trying the second objective before an enemy ship began to circle my systems blowing up all my trade ships and I couldn't work out what to do to combat this :( <br/> <br/>As much as I like the idea of a rebel faction growing along side you I think this enemy threat is too present too early when a lot of intrinsic fun is being had just from moving resources around. I think the fertile worlds vs barren worlds, food management and the way civilians slowly die in transit is all very intuitive and cool though. I think these numbers might take a lot of tweaking to get right in terms of avoiding having the feel that once you have your settings of export and import set up you just have to 'wait' and hope your ships eventually meander in the right direction. <br/> <br/>All in all, very cool! Quite a lot of potential and well presented but possibly let down a little by a lack of accessibility and sometimes awkward controls. Would love to follow how this develops if you keep working on it! <br/> <br/>Great work! |
| Aug 25 21:18:00 | 1h 08m | Four Sided Sanctuary | A good entry all round! Very well presented, slick controls and definitely an interesting challenge. I like the way you incentivised the collectables by having the character lose speed over time. It's definitely an interesting dynamic. Your level generation seems to also do a good job of spacing out / alternating obstacles early in a run to prevent too much 'do two things at once' very early on. The difficulty can ramp up very, very quickly at times though! And at other times be very easy, but it has a nice feeling to it overall. <br/> <br/>It might seem trivial but I think that tracking score/distance would have been a really simple way to 'complete' this experience. Otherwise even though I can feel like I had a particularly good run it's hard to really compare or feel like I'm definitely getting better or making more progress. I don't know if there is any more to the game after you stay alive for so long, but I did play quite a few attempts. <br/> <br/>I noticed the shmup style hitboxes too. A good touch, but until you become aware of your hitbox some of the mazes look very intimidating and you have to learn a little bit by trial and error. The other problem with these hitboxes is that being very different to the size of the player(s) it's hard to identify exactly where the hitboxes REALLY are. As in a shmup it's usually a focal point like the ship pilot or cockpit. So sometimes I expect my small collision box to save me and it doesn't, or other times I expect to die and I don't. I think you could possibly have afforded to have larger hitboxes here and perhaps smaller obstacles to compensate, but I definitely respect that you put thought into this to begin with. <br/> <br/>Very enjoyable, good work! |
| Aug 25 21:43:00 | 25m 00s | Elemental | Really well presented, very nice transition effects and very fitting colour aesthetics. <br/> <br/>I think perhaps the inclusion of lots of different minigames as a different way to play combat through different elements, while cool, makes the game feel a little less cohesive and spread a bit thin. Like it's trying to be a lot of things at once and cater to lots of players and the main thing connecting to the theme (the shifting worlds) doesn't seem like it plays massively into this. <br/> <br/>A very solid piece of work presentation wise though! |
| Aug 27 04:19:00 | 30h 36m | Starving Symbiosis | Having not read your instructions and just diving right in, it took me until my friend in the underworld died for me to realize it was two separate people and I wasn't just 'warping' between the worlds. At that point though it clicked! and I really liked this idea that the only connection you have to your 'partner' is this shared portal that items can be passed through. I think this central mechanic has a lot of interesting potential and I think the basic way in which you've explored it with money and shops demonstrates that well. <br/> <br/>I would have really liked to have actually seen no money _at all_ in the surface world to make the two worlds truely symbiotic. As in my first play it was fairly easy to keep the surface player alive, and it was only the underworld player that truly had a dependency on the other for food supplies. This sort of makes the relationship seem more parasitic than symbiotic, but the abundancy of the money underworld does make up for this well enough to still express the themes you were going for. <br/> <br/>The controls and general feel was a little slidey but they were good enough to express this key thing that you were getting at with the game which was this co-dependency and shared portal mechanic. I think however the general control experience is what I would put a lot of focus into if you do decide to take this concept further, and I hope that you do! <br/> <br/>I really really like what you're exploring with this game, and even though you say you had much more you wanted to add (didn't we all!) I think you get the essential message across reasonably well! A lot of potential and a cool use of the theme. |
| Aug 27 04:37:00 | 18m 00s | I Find Another | I enjoyed this and managed to get the end (just). I really, really like how the mechanics really slowly grow on the player. I initially assumed that the controls for these mechanics were always available and you were simply controlling when the player got access to that knowledge by showing them a sign with a thing they didn't know about yet. I was actually a little sad when I reloaded the game and found that wasn't the case and these mechanics are simply locked until you approach the sign, especially when I saw areas I couldn't reach through lack of a jump early on and wanted to go back to once I could fly. However I understand your decisions here and I think the subtle way you pace these mechanics is really good. <br/> <br/>As an aside I never particularly found a use for the second mechanic, which I first assumed from the image to be a 'glide' of sorts but it seemed to only be a tool to stop momentum which didn't seem necessary at any point. So I'm not too sure what to make of it. <br/> <br/>I was almost physically forced to stop playing this entry due to the repetitive strain that 'flapping' was putting on my fingers. I feel like the general control experience of this mechanic could have been implemented better, especially as you encounter a very long tunnel of spikes which is difficult to navigate and requires a lot of rapid button presses. I worry that you will lose a lot of players at this stage not to frustration but to simple hand strain. <br/> <br/>I liked it overall though and I think the pacing and structure was generally really strong. Congrats on making it! |