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Feedback comments for LD31
Chris M's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Chris M's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 9 02:34:00 | Oi! Menu!? | Joyful, scatterbrained, teasing and ultimately satisfying- you've managed to squeeze a lot of emotions into a short experience. Great achievement for an LD first timer :D | |
| Dec 9 03:35:00 | 1h 01m | Silian Rail | Nice farcical tone, matches the irreverence of the gameplay very well. Great UI solutions (namecard) and dressing (ticker), helps a lot to add meaning to the game world. Possible extension would be to use the cliché 'a web of lies' making further use of the 2D plane. Good stuff! |
| Dec 11 11:41:00 | 56h 06m | Sliding StOnes | Very nice sliding block puzzles. I feel the difficulty ramp is a little steep after the first couple of levels, and it could do with some onboarding (how to switch stones, how to restart etc). I also wanted to know how I was doing each time- could you tell the play the optimal number of stone moves each round? |
| Dec 11 11:43:00 | 2m 00s | Rudolph | Any chance of an OSX build? |
| Dec 12 03:21:00 | 15h 38m | Walk to the door | Great work! Despite a late start you have a solid mechanic and an enjoyable experience! I ended up quitting out about level 15 or so after the mine puzzles put more emphasis on timing than routing planning, but that's just personal preference. Given the theme you've chosen I wonder what other mechanics could be derived- for instance could maximising/minimising windows be part of the puzzle? |
| Dec 17 09:17:00 | 125h 56m | Turn a cave! | Great mechanic! Loved how if you couldn't get straight to a diamond, you could try and excavate around it with diminishing returns. First feature you should add is pathfinding (and perhaps WASD movement); not being able to move more than one block at a time creates a LOT of friction. |
| Dec 17 09:27:00 | 10m 00s | Vibrant City | Very nice! Great theming and after I got the mechanics it was very engaging as I struggled to stop the entire population turning vibrant. I noticed a while in to the game I'd only play in one specific area, which means I wasn't using the cool building-switching mechanic as much as I'd have liked to. Perhaps bigger, more noticeable threats would incentivise the player to move around the map a lot more? |
| Dec 17 09:31:00 | 4m 00s | Legendary Legionnaire Winter Massacre | Nice polish here with the sfx and particle effects. |
| Dec 17 09:37:00 | 6m 00s | SnOwDuDeS | Super great arcade game, only suggestion is that the friction on stopping is less, so that you can continue along a trajectory while charging a shot. |
| Dec 17 09:39:00 | 2m 00s | Against All Odds | That was horrifying. Nice take on a classic, esp liked the effects when dying and restarting. Which happened to me a lot. |
| Dec 17 09:49:00 | 10m 00s | Drop | Love this! The music, the visuals, the mechanic, the personality leading you between the levels (which I think we could have done more with!) all work so well together. One thing- we need a reset button! Also there's a perspective problem- when I want to push in a block all the way, as it moves back it can move out from under the mouse, causing it to stop being moved. A quick fix will remove a lot of the friction here. |
| Dec 17 13:50:00 | 4h 01m | Buttfacę the Snowball Warrior: Winter Invasion | Charming graphics and super cute idea. I never felt too stressed with the oncoming hoards though, especially as when I lost I kinda just hung out with this shuffling red dude before whiteout. |
| Dec 17 13:58:00 | 8m 00s | Avoid Rage | So great. The quick restart, the two ways you communicate incoming danger, the pulsing motivating music, the refreshing colour palate, there's so much to like here. But some swipe controls on it and call it done! |
| Dec 17 14:06:00 | 8m 00s | Rainbow Maze | Very nice idea, and nice payoff as the maze literally goes rainbow. After the tutorial though, I feel the mechanics were never really relevant to the gameplay. I spent all my play through just looking at the line I was drawing rather than the magnified view. Maybe a greater disconnect between the two views, forcing the player to use both, would put the emphasis back on your cool zoom mechanics? All said, great stuff for 48hrs! |
| Dec 17 15:02:00 | 56m 00s | Tiny Bear Adventure | Nice concept, with solid art style and sfx. The random nature of the bear made me a little frustrated, and I'd err on the side of caution by surrounding him with lakes after a battle. As I wasn't penalised for the slow speed at which I was gather coins, I didn't feel there was any necessity to find the critical path. |
| Dec 17 15:03:00 | 1m 00s | TheCubeDude | Nice idea, got totally lost on moving the camera though. Also the human model didn't seem to fit the minecraft aesthetic you were going for. |
| Dec 17 15:04:00 | 1m 00s | Illuminasteroids | This gives me happy memories of Sphere of Chaos! Love the personality you've injected into it. |
| Dec 17 15:17:00 | 13m 00s | Go farm! | I think I've spent more time on this LD game than any other this time round. The atmosphere created by the music and whimsical graphics make me feel happy to pour endless time into the game. Being able to explore the all these connected islands added a great sense of mystery to the game, you managed to achieve something very close to Harvest Moon here. |
| Dec 17 15:25:00 | 8m 00s | Colosse Duty | Nice central idea which suggests puzzle elements that never arose in the game itself. I felt the combat was a little unnecessary; could the diamonds have other uses than just camera focal points? |
| Dec 17 15:38:00 | 13m 00s | Screen One | We threw around an idea based in a cinema at our Beijing meetup, so glad to see not only did somebody do it, but did it so well! The art style, the sublime music, the well planned mechanics, so much of this has been knocked out the park and halfway to Jupiter. My only criticisms are around UX- sometimes it was hard to see what aisle you needed to walk down, and what creature in particular was causing a ruckus. Maybe a smaller but wider gird/ cinema would help make this clearer. Another point was that the film length was a little long. A short experience I could replay would feel more comfortable, especially while I'm trying to figure out what's going. Lastly it's hard to know how well I did with the points system. Maybe a briefing or newspaper review would add a sense of closure to the experience? Well done! |
| Dec 17 15:41:00 | 3m 00s | CUBE Clicker | You mad genius you, this is a Bogostian nightmare. Now here's the question- how much can we strip away before this stops being addictive? Cows, then cookies, now a cube. What next? |
| Dec 17 15:44:00 | 3m 00s | The Beta Bank - A Paragon Pawns Production | Goodness this is hard, some great ideas though- integrating the menu system as an the actual game mechanic has a lot of potential. The mood is well fostered too; I'm constantly on edge. |
| Dec 17 15:47:00 | 3m 00s | It's a website about video games. | Nice idea, but without anything to cover the skeleton of the idle mechanics it doesn't feel sticky to me as a player. |
| Dec 17 15:54:00 | 7m 00s | SplitScreen | Fantastic! Great idea, explored in a multitude of ways, with great personality injected throughout. I think a good sound track and sfx would go along way here- especially if you link it to the change of the 'screens'. |
| Dec 17 16:10:00 | 16m 00s | Spacebank Heist | Very nice, like Hotline Miami in Space. Esp loved the way the music picked up as you encroached on the big moneys. |
| Dec 18 07:55:00 | 15h 45m | Swat Team | Not sure how the music fitted the tongue-in-cheek theme, but it was good nevertheless. V enjoyable to have separation of concerns when playing with another player. |
| Dec 18 08:04:00 | 9m 00s | Toytown | This is quite an achievement for 48hrs! Nice visualisation of the data, and playing on a smaller world map (that can fit on one screen) took out much of the annoying camera issues that plague other games in the genre. I wish I had more of a sense what my citizens were feeling however. |
| Dec 18 08:10:00 | 6m 00s | Pixel Peon | Great concept, but found it difficult to play due to some very distressing music and floaty controls. A lighter theme and control system where I felt more in control would put focus back on your interesting core mechanics. |
| Dec 18 08:17:00 | 7m 00s | Perceptions | What a great idea! Definitely worth iterating on- suggest moving to a 2d top down view while you work on the mechanics. |
| Dec 18 08:21:00 | 4m 00s | Shroom Boom | I'm not sure what the 3D perspective adds to this, although that enemy model is pretty swish. |
| Dec 18 08:26:00 | 5m 00s | My First Dare, Complete!---Estelar | Is it just me or is this crazy difficult?? Lovely art and theme, wish I had Newton's brain. |
| Dec 19 16:47:00 | 32h 21m | Jackin | Nice interpretation of the theme, the dirt on the screen itself adds a lot to the mood. Compo version I managed to hack some random IPs, post compo version the game hangs after registering (on 'Connecting...'), then resets with without registering the login. Is there a fix? |
| Dec 23 07:45:00 | 86h 58m | Squareon | Interesting game. The point and time system create a great tension of how long you are willing to wait to work out a puzzle. I'd like to know which was the correct choice if I get it wrong. Also, the abstract nature of the puzzles is a turn off for me, would it be possible to fuse this concept with actual pictures? |
| Dec 23 08:16:00 | 31m 00s | Silk | Much to love here, most pertinent is how perfectly the elegance of the theme fits the puzzle mechanics you have created. The slow transitions and long meditative sound effects set a pace conducive to contemplating the relationships between these stones. Usually with LD submissions I'm rushing to get through all the content as quickly as possible, but you managed to slow and engage me right up to the last puzzle. <br/> <br/>The ramp in difficulty works very well, although I felt around levels 3-5 (or thereabouts) more confused than I perhaps should have been around the difference between the stones. If this is an issue other players have experienced, it might be worth looking into unconventional (i.e. asymmetrical) board designs to better teach the particulars of each stone. <br/> <br/>The last three levels I though especially well designed, concerned as they were with one core peculiarity that arises from the interaction of the stones. The first of the three I was stumped on for a good few minutes, aimlessly moving the stones around until an idea well into my lap. The next two, literally expanding the idea as they did, could be progressed through very easily, giving me the feeling that I'd actually learned something. It is the most powerful experience puzzle games can offer, and you really nail it here. <br/> <br/>Few small things that I'm sure is already on your backlog for the next version- a reset button and better handling of invalid stones (either move them to a position closer to the board, or highlight their invalidation somehow). <br/> <br/>As many others have said here this merits in a full release, and I'd personally love to see where you go with the concept. |