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VDZ

Feedback comments for LD31

Timestamp	Since previous	Game	VDZ's comment
Dec 10 01:14:00		Order Up!	A typical game of executing simple tasks on a time limit. Not very original, but it works. <br/> <br/>The game desperately needs some instructions. I was able to figure it out after some time, but people playing games for fun only rather than to rate them will give up really quickly as the controls are not easy to figure out. The game concept of cooking food to serve on plates with the fitting icons did feel intuitive, though. (For people unwilling to waste time figuring it out: You grab a plate, grab food to put on the plate, then put it on the stove, then pick it up again; all this is done by moving to the top edge and clicking just above you. The rest is obvious.) <br/> <br/>Once you get the hang of it, the game becomes too easy. There's no gradual difficulty increase, meaning that if you play well enough you'll consistently gain more money than you lose over time. There is also no score or other goal to work towards, so it feels like there's not much point to it once you get used to it. <br/> <br/>The graphics are functional, but not very pretty. The game fits the theme but does nothing impressive or innovative with it. <br/> <br/>The game suffers from some technical issues. If you try to configure the options, the game crashes. It's also possible to get stuck in the top edge of the level, no longer allowing you to move down (only left and right). The controls feel very counterintuitive (why can't we just click the drawers/stoves to interact with them?) and the necessity of quick mouse input in a windowed game results in occasionally clicking outside the screen, which can be annoying. <br/> <br/>Overall, the game just isn't very fun. With some modifications (some goal to work towards and some difficulty or other game ender) it could be somewhat fun, though it's too similar to other games to stand out even if it were to be fixed.
Dec 10 01:48:00	34m 00s	Robot Madness	This game is very unfinished. It starts with a super-long unskippable intro, crashes if you type commands wrong, if you lose it simply quits after a short cutscene (forcing you to sit through the super-long intro again), and perhaps worst of all, it is literally impossible to beat as the robot just doesn't move fast enough to get to the exit in time even if you do everything exactly right. <br/> <br/>Although not completely unique, the concept of control via code is still quite rare and it's good to see a game featuring it. The link between 'one screen' and 'terminal' is obvious but fitting; however, the actual gameplay is still multi-screen and the 'terminal' only exists for story reasons (it might as well have been a text box at the bottom of the screen instead). <br/> <br/>Unfortunately, the novel control scheme goes to waste because of utterly boring level design. Except for the literally unreachable last part of the level, you can clear the entire thing by just repeating 'r1. turn(); r1.move(20); terminal.transmit();' (without the 'turn' for the first set of commands, of course) throughout the entire game. Though likely intended as a puzzler, you hardly have to think about what to enter here. There are also only three commands, none of which takes advantage of code control's special benefit of being able to accept anything as input (such as entering the name of an object to interact with that object, and having puzzles around that); unfortunately the game offers no gameplay that couldn't be done with a more traditional control scheme. <br/> <br/>Graphics are functional but unremarkable.
Dec 10 02:19:00	31m 00s	0000 : Press Z	It's possible to get stuck in a certain level if you get there at exactly the wrong position: http://i.xomf.com/sfcdz.png <br/> <br/>Detailed feedback (and rating) later once I replayed the game.
Dec 10 03:15:00	56m 00s	Rome's Little Step	axe OP plz nerf axe <br/> <br/>Very nice game. Simple and fun to play. Combat is fun and challenging, and the mechanics are well thought out. Music set the mood well and the sounds were great. The graphics have a consistent style, are clear and work well. <br/> <br/>I found the difficulty ramps up a bit too quickly. With both damage being kept AND a challenger being added every round, it becomes impossible to survive round IV for a player of my skill level, and I'm sure that people better than me won't be able to survive round V. A more gradual difficulty increase would motivate players more to get further; as it stands now, I'm sure I won't get past round IV and even if I would somehow beat that, round V would be absolutely impossible for me no matter how much I practice. <br/> <br/>Shield mechanics seem inconsistent at times. Enemies can trigger your 'blocked attack stun' while you're not even attacking, and it's possible to get 'blocked attack stun' even though your attack is not blocked. (It probably hit the shield through the enemy.) Worse, when being attacked, you are occasionally damaged through the shield somehow, making shielding unreliable (and with the persistent damage, useless for anything but stunning the enemy). <br/> <br/>The enemy has no hitstun, which is hardly fair when you do have hitstun and they outnumber you. I can understand being punished for missing an attack or having an attack blocked, but being punished for hitting the enemy and not retreating IMMEDIATELY takes away a bit from the whole 'beating the shit out of your enemy' thing. <br/> <br/>The weapons are severely unbalanced. The axe is clearly superior in every way, while the trident's limited attack angle (and damage? Feels like it did less damage but that might just be me) make it very difficult to safely attack, especially in the absence of enemy hitstun. <br/> <br/>However, all of the above are minor issues that are only harmful to the experience in the long run. For the length of time LD games are usually played for, it was great fun.
Dec 10 04:54:00	1h 39m	Deicide	Finally finished the game. That was hard indeed. Overall, good game. The bosses were all different enough that it was fun to defeat them all, and most of them had that learning curve thing where at first they seem impossible yet if you play enough you'll learn to defeat them without taking any damage. Precisely as boss fights should be. The fact that they appear in random order makes gives good variety and makes retrying more fun. The game was good enough that it kept me playing until I finished it. <br/> <br/>However, I did feel the game had many flaws: <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/>- The game gives insufficient feedback to the player. It's not always clear when you're hit, and more importantly, when you're NOT hit; the effect when you're hit is so subtle (and hidden by objects being in front of the player), you don't notice when things like colliding with a boss does NOT hurt you (which can be vital, like in the battle with Whatshername, the one spamming beams on two platforms at a time). Additional feedback would be very useful for this, be it effect particles, your sprite flickering, knockback, etc. <br/> <br/>-- Also lacking is feedback of when you've successfully hit an enemy. You'd expect the enemy to flash or something when you perform an attack that deals damage; that would make bosses with more tricky vulnerable spots (like Red Eyes Pink Dragon and Narcisia Bele) far more intuitive. <br/> <br/>-- Likewise, you want some kind of feedback for when an attack is NOT successful, such as attacking Narcisia Bele's visible form, so players figure out it's useless and stop trying it. <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/>- Related to this, AUDIO is sorely missing. Even if it's really shitty audio, having some simple sounds does wonders for player feedback. Beyond the absolute necessity of feedback sounds, I feel having music would really enhance the mood of the boss battles. <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/>- The controls aren't as tight as you'd expect for a game of this kind, and some expected control features are missing. The character's movement is kind of slippery, making you fall into a hole when you expected to be able to just land and jump again. It also takes time to move between platforms due to movement starting slow; you really want to be able to do this kind of stuff IMMEDIATELY. <br/> <br/>-- As for the missing features, your jump height is always the exact same regardless of how long you press the button. This causes you to jump onto platforms when you just want to dodge a projectile or shoot a bit higher. The other big missing feature is the ability to drop through platforms, which is especially unfortunate when combined with the fixed jump height. As it stands, several attacks are very hard to dodge when on a platform because your only options are jumping and moving towards the center. <br/> <br/>-- Then there's the dash. Yeah, I'm not sure how to say this in a friendly matter, but why is it even here? It's hard to predict (likely due to the lack of animation; made worse by the presence of bottomless pits), short, and worst of all, unusable when you're in a pinch due to the stamina requirement. Furthermore, it's completely unnecessary; though I've tried it in some of my other runs, I didn't use it once in my winning run and never felt like there was a situation where it would be useful. <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/>- Finally, some boss-specific feedback: <br/> <br/>-- GOD OF THE BATTLE CRY: No issues with this one, actually. It's a really good boss, and fun to fight. <br/> <br/>-- Hand Maiden: In general a good boss, but it can be a bit tedious waiting for the eye hand to appear on your side; moments where it repeatedly appears on the other side are frustrating. Also, due to lack of feedback, it is initially unclear whether you need to hit the eye itself or if any part of the hand will do. This boss is made more difficult by the lack of short hop and platform fall. <br/> <br/>-- Narcisia Bele: It was really unclear at first what to do against this boss or how she worked. This is partially due to lack of feedback, but even with feedback I'm sure I'd be confused. It might be a good idea to have the invisible form visible as a shadow or something until she gets hit for the first time, then make it fade away, hinting the player at the way to damage her. I understand the intro animation is supposed to hint at this, but it doesn't succeed at it, likely because it's not visible when you're wondering how to hit her. <br/> <br/>-- Pink Eyes Red Dragon: This boss is a tad boring; it poses little threat, but you have to wait for it to land and charge its laser to damage it. This makes the battle tedious on repeat attempts. <br/> <br/>-- Runner Up: This boss is a lot of fun to fight, but a bit too easy. <br/> <br/>-- Sorrow Phantom: This battle is made FAR more difficult by the lack of platform fall. It's quite manageable if you stay around the center, though, but it involves a lot of movement and highlights the slipperiness of the controls. <br/> <br/>-- Unspeakable Starfish: This one is extremely difficult the first couple times you fight it. The lack of platform drop means you're entirely screwed if it charges at you from the center while you're on the platform; you'll take damage and there's no escape. Once you get more used to the Starfish and stop getting on platforms, the 'spreading out' attack still seems impossible to dodge. Either I'm missing something here, or this is a source of guaranteed damage in a game where all damage is persistent (aka 'wtf bullshit'). <br/> <br/>-- Whatshername: Speaking of bullshit, that's precisely what it feels like when you first die to her. It's not obvious that you can just stand where she is without taking damage (see: lack of feedback, sprite being hidden. In addition to this, with her being a big scary boss it does not feel intuitive that you can just collide with her without consequences). Once you understand that you can, however, this becomes underwhelmingly easy, even easier than Runner Up. <br/> <br/>-- God of Nightmare: I'm conflicted on this one. On the one hand, he's underwhelming for a final boss. On the other hand, I don't want to be cheesed to death after 8 battles by a boss I can't practice against without surviving 8 straight battles. <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/>Despite the wall of text above with what I perceive to be flaws, I enjoyed the game enough to keep trying and retrying until I beat it. It says a lot when a game is enjoyable even if it has many flaws.
Dec 10 08:37:00	3h 43m	Harmonic Umbra	My computer doesn't support pressing '1', '2' and '3' at the same time so I am unable to play your game.
Dec 10 08:58:00	21m 00s	SideLands	Though it seems wildly innovative at first, digging a bit beyond the surface reveals that the innovation mainly consists of gimmicks that actually detract from the experience. <br/> <br/>We'll start with a positive point: having movement consist entirely of jumps is indeed innovative and it gives a nice twist to what would otherwise be an unremarkable platformer. <br/> <br/>However, having gravity run sideways adds nothing to the gameplay. You could just rotate your screen and have exactly the same game except without the 'sideways' gimmick. The 'zooming out' gimmick likewise adds nothing of note (beyond making your game fit the theme), and in fact detracts from the experience as things would look a lot nicer and clearer if it were visible from up close. <br/> <br/>And that's a shame, because the graphics are very nice. Though the gameplay wasn't very interesting, it was still interesting to go through the game to see what the levels look like. <br/> <br/>The game is far too easy for its short length. With how easily you can get past what little dangers there are, you'll beat the game in significantly less time than it takes me to type up this feedback. <br/> <br/>The sound was a tad repetitive and annoying, but it was okay enough to not detract much from the experience. Functionally it was fine.
Dec 12 17:10:00	56h 12m	Neural Connectivity	I'm afraid I can't say anything positive about this game. It's just bad. The entire game exists solely of arbitrary tasks that make little sense and don't give any emotional reward to the player. <br/> <br/>The main problem is that this game is an adventure game that A) doesn't make any sense; and B) does not give the player any reason to care about solving the puzzles. In a good adventure game, you don't just want to 'get to the next task', you want to help the protagonist escape from his situation, or discover what's beyond that one mysterious door, or something similar. <br/> <br/>Here, you're just dropped into a nonsensical world and there's no reason to want to solve puzzles. You could at least give the player a bare minimum of interest in solving puzzles by, for example, leaving a part of the world locked away, so the player will want to solve puzzles to see what else there is to see in this world. Or you could add some kind of story; why is the player in the world, and why does he want to see the screen? Maybe the protagonist suddenly woke up in this strange world, and the whatever-it-is tells him the screen will reveal the reason he's in this world; it would make the reader slightly curious as to what's on the screen and give him a reason to go through all the steps to see it. <br/> <br/>The nonsensicality of the puzzles is what kills whatever fun may be left in a puzzle game without any reason to solve the puzzles. In a typical adventure game, you find an item that you can pick up, say for example a screwdriver. If the puzzles are logical, this makes the player assume 'hey, there must be something for me to do with the screwdriver', and he'll start looking for things that might contain screws. If he then attempts to use the item on something that looks screwdriverable and something happens, this gives the player a sense of accomplishment; he figured out that the screwdriver works on the other item and the game rewards him for being smart enough to figure that out. <br/> <br/>This game completely lacks such logic, however. If you find the teddy bear first, there's no reason whatsoever to assume the tall man needs it. If you find the tall man first, he immediately gives away the answer to the puzzle ('he needs a teddy bear'), leaving only the tedious part (finding the item, and it's not hidden in a way that makes the player feel smart for finding it). Had instead the tall man been a lonely-looking fellow that just said "I'm so lonely...", remedying his loneliness by giving him the teddy bear would greatly increase the player's satisfaction upon completing the puzzle, especially if he had to manually give the teddy bear rather than automatically clearing the puzzle when approaching the lonely fellow. <br/> <br/>In addition to not having any puzzles solvable by logic, there are also useless elements further denying players any challenge of figuring things out. What are the houses for? What's with the giant teddy bear? What do I do with the potion of strength? The complete lack of answers to these questions leaves the player further discouraged from attempting to solve anything. Furthermore, in this specific game it works against the experience further by causing disappointment; I had to double-check with you on IRC whether the game really was over because I'd expected to do something with the potion of strength and all the other unnecessary elements in the game. You know how sometimes a story ends and leaves major plot points unanswered? It's exactly like that, except almost EVERYTHING remains unanswered in this story. <br/> <br/>All that leaves is a game in which you can walk around the world and look at stuff. The complete lack of music (aside from the radio) and sound really hurts the atmosphere which usually makes exploration interesting. As others have pointed out, the movement sucks and camera has issues (as well as the terrain hiding things in such a way you think it's not there; I didn't notice the radio until after I finished and replayed the game for the sidequest), rendering exploration not only not fun, but actively unpleasant. When exploring in this tiring way, the only things to see are a couple random objects that seem to be rather roughly modeled, mostly untextured and lacking in any consistent style. The text is the only somewhat interesting thing to see. <br/> <br/>Two minor further remarks: The radio puzzle requiring music is inconsistent with the rest of the game having no audio. Hearing no audio after playing the game for a minute makes players conclude there's no audio at all, and they may turn off their sound altogether or turn on music of their own, leaving them unable to hear the music when it does arrive. The other remark is also about that same sidequest; as with the main game, there is no reward (emotional or otherwise) or any specific reason for the player to do it. It is literally a waste of time. You should've implemented it in the main quest so it could piggyback on the emotional payoff of solving the main quest (had there been any) or given some kind of reward to the player for solving it.
Dec 12 21:14:00	4h 04m	Rude Bear Ride	I think the inclusion of single-player likely has a detrimental effect on your ratings, as the singleplayer isn't very interesting while this seems like the kind of game that could be a lot of fun in multiplayer...but not having anyone to play it with nor Xbox controllers, I'm rating it having only played the singleplayer, and I expect many others will do the same. <br/> <br/>For singleplayer, I thought Onslaught wasn't very fun, being just dodging balls with the option to slap them away with the somewhat awkward slapping controls (you have to actually slap to get them away instead of just pushing them, which is fun in theory but just awkward in practice). (It must be noted that I'm also not very fond of twin stick shooters, so maybe it just isn't my kind of game.) <br/> <br/>Battle mode is something that would appeal to me a lot more...except the enemy literally doesn't do anything in singleplayer. I'm very sure I'd have a lot more fun with this game in multiplayer.
Dec 12 21:28:00	14m 00s	That Dangerous Bridge	Solid, simple game. Not much to say about it. <br/> <br/>The only thing that negatively stood out to me was the audio; the music gets very repetitive, and the sounds are kind of grating. Less harsh and/or more varied sound effects would have made it more pleasant.
Dec 12 22:01:00	33m 00s	Network Programming	Five stars for theme, that should be pretty obvious. <br/> <br/>The gameplay I'm less enthusiastic about, unfortunately. While it's hard not to do so when the level is a television program, hitboxes come out of nowhere constantly, dealing damage to you and making you inevitably lose unless you replay the game over and over again until you've learned where the hitboxes will be at which point. Making it worse is the fact that the art is not clear about which things will damage you and which won't; the only way to find out is trial and error. Then there's also several hitboxes which are plain unfair, like still being hit by the blowfish even when you're all the way in the top right of the screen. I think that, with the way your game is, you could've dialed the difficulty back a whole lot, perhaps even to the point where it's hardly any challenge at all; after all, the fun in your game doesn't come from its challenge, but rather by the fact that being in the TV levels if fun by itself. Compare to the Kirby games, which are ridiculously easy but still tons of fun because you can mess around with the abilities and because the levels are interesting. <br/> <br/>Most of the humor didn't really click with me, though there were some parts I did find funny. However, since this is Ludum Dare, the game does stand out for its humor compared to other games (which rarely try to be funny and when they do, they usually fail). <br/> <br/>I feel the audio was fitting and added a lot to the experience. The voice acting was bad which may have messed up the delivery for a lot of the jokes, but it fits well enough with the 'so bad it's good' graphical style that it works. The audio does get repetitive, though, especially on repeat plays, which reduces the replay factor of the game. <br/> <br/>Overall, it's a good game, it's just a shame the gameplay sucks so much fun out of the experience.
Dec 12 23:23:00	1h 22m	Neon Z City	The game's concept is really nice and the zombie/civilian behavior is very interesting. Unfortunately, some gameplay flaws keep the game from being much fun. <br/> <br/>The game starts with a lot of civilians, and with the limited range of your character and the slow speed of civilians, it's impossible to prevent a very rapid zombie outbreak. Normally this would be no problem, but this leads to a situation where, under the current score system, there is no reason to protect the remaining civilians. You get a point per second regardless of how many civilians are alive, so why keep all 30 civilians alive when you can more efficiently run away with one or two? When there's a hundred zombies running around, it doesn't really matter if 30 more zombies are added, and an increase in zombie numbers is the only penalty for losing civilians. In the end, you'll be losing all except a few civilians within the first minute, then surviving for the rest of the game by hiding the handful of civilians (or sometimes even single civilian), waiting for zombies to approach and trying to run past them (which depends on luck more than anything else). <br/> <br/>Eventually this means that skill and strategy don't really matter past a bare minimum of not getting yourself killed immediately, and it makes the late-game rather boring. A way to block zombie paths or some time-limited kind of invulnerability or some other meaningful interaction would allow for skill to play a much larger part. The strategy part could be enhanced by making survival of civilians actually matter, such as by having your score being dependent both on time survived and civilians being alive (such as just getting points equal to the number of civilians every second, or counting the number of civilians every X seconds and awarding a bonus for them, etc). It needs at least something to keep the end-game more interesting than 'wait for the zombie to arrive then run and pray'. <br/> <br/>The zombies/civilians look nice, and the mechanics really add to the atmosphere (it really feels like a civilian is zombified whenever he's touched by a zombie, goes gray for a moment, then becomes red as well). Unfortunately, the white blocks are too abstract and don't remind me of a city which really hinders the 'zombies in a city' atmosphere. Music would've also helped lots to make it feel more dramatic. It's rare to see mechanics fitting the atmosphere so well, but it's a shame the rest of the game does little to capitalize on this.
Dec 14 21:21:00	45h 58m	2.5Dino Arena	Playing the game didn't feel very rewarding. You're running away from and shooting dinosaurs, but I never felt the excitement of running away from something threatening or the kick-ass feeling of defeating dinosaurs. Reasons for this likely include the constant stream of incoming enemies (you don't feel the accomplishment of 'surviving a wave' or anything like that, I didn't even realize there were waves until I looked around the interface elements), unsatisfying manner of enemy deaths (they just bounce off-screen), lack of visible score during gameplay (the score counter is tiny and hidden away from where the player is looking, which removed the potential satisfaction of seeing it go up with every kill), and the lack of any indication of progress (again, enemy waves are unclear; no new enemies, level changes, bossfights or other content to reach by killing enough enemies). Because of the lack of emotional reward, dodging and killing the dinosaurs just felt like a chore. <br/> <br/>I feel the 2.5D gimmick does not anything to the gameplay and in fact actually distracts from it. The lack of any same-level areas of significant size other than the bottom level at the front means you'll mainly be fighting at the front and/or that you'll mainly be shooting enemies from close up. Which would be great if I had a melee weapon, but with a gun I'd really want to be able to pick off enemies at some distance. <br/> <br/>The enemies felt far too similar, and during gameplay I didn't notice any difference between the different types of enemies I killed. They're all rushing at me mindlessly and get killed by shooting at them for a bit. The fact that they all share the same color-swapped sprite definitely didn't help matters; maybe I would've noticed the yellow enemy's higher health better if he'd been larger than the others, for example. <br/> <br/>Graphics were unclear and lacked any kind of atmosphere. The 'dinosaurs' didn't look anything like dinosaurs (not helped by them moving nothing like dinosaurs), the level's graphical design seems completely arbitrary (it's...grass hills in a mud field with random barrels stacked on each other for some reason?). The character's sci-fi/diver look didn't have anything to do with dinosaurs or mud-grass-and-barrel fields either. Some consistency in what situation is supposed to be represented here could've made fighting dinosaurs actually exciting. <br/> <br/>As others have mentioned, it's hard to distinguish player, enemy and level, and it's impossible to tell visually whether the player or an enemy is standing on the ground at a certain level or jumping at a location more towards the screen. I also feel the powerups didn't really give me any idea of what they're for with their graphics (nor with their pickup sound or any kind of effect or message upon picking them up). Yes, you've listed that in the description, but I won't be remembering the specifics once I start playing. (Furthermore, having to read up on game mechanics shouldn't be a requirement for casual playing of a twin stick shooter.) <br/> <br/>The interface elements were too far away from where you're looking during gameplay, and the action keeps you too occupied to check things like your health or ammo (and, considering the kind of game it is, it punishes you for looking away if you do check your status). I was unaware of my current health for most of the game, and I was never sure when I was running low on ammo. Though not a replacement for proper health/ammo visibility, a sound effect or other form of feedback to let you know when your health/ammo is low would really help as well. <br/> <br/>The difficulty curve makes no sense. For most of the game, you're just shooting dinosaurs, rarely getting hit, and collecting more than enough health to fully heal when you do get hit. Then suddenly, within the span of a single minute, it suddenly becomes difficult enough to be a challenge, and within that same minute increases to the point where you keep dying every couple seconds because there's enemies everywhere and there's simply no escape. I'm not sure if it's because of ridiculous spawn rate increases or because death/not shooting for a couple seconds causes dinosaur numbers to increase beyond manageable levels, but either way I felt cheated. I was never offered any genuine challenge except for less than half a minute, and then the game got so unreasonably difficult I kept dying without even being able to kill anything. It really killed my motivation to replay the game. A proper difficulty curve increasingly challenges the player and makes him lose when it becomes too much for him to handle and lets him get a bit further every time as he gets more skilled, but a difficulty curve that goes straight from "snoozefest" to "the developer decided you lose the game right here" is extremely discouraging. <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/>I subtracted a point from both Overall and Fun because you have updated the game beyond bugfixes (especially rebalancing the game) after the jam without leaving the original version up to judge, which is against the rules. Part of the difficulty in game jams is having enough of your game finished in time that you can do some polishing; otherwise, everybody could just submit their game in an unfinished state and do all polishing post-compo/jam. While improving your game post-jam is a good thing, the version of the game we are supposed to judge is the one you made during the jam.
Dec 19 13:44:00	112h 23m	Gone	The atmosphere in this game is amazing. Lighting effects combine with audio, consistent graphics and natural-feeling level design to make it really feel like you're exploring part of an abandoned hospital. Definite 5/5 for the experience, the comments below are just nitpicking. <br/> <br/>The gameplay itself doesn't really stand out much, but it doesn't really need to as it's not really the point of the game. Going too far with gameplay might drag the narrative experience down, and I did in fact feel that this was just slightly the case for this game. While it's common in games, finding key A to enter room B to find key C to enter room D to find key E to enter room F makes little narrative sense, and if done too much breaks immersion; why the hell am I finding the Chief Physician's key in a random office? It also distracts from the narrative when there's too much of this in sequence without anything happening that adds to the narrative. <br/> <br/>The storytelling in general is very good in this game. However, I dislike how little of it all is explained at the end of the story. It's obvious that the protagonist and his wife died (perhaps a bit too obvious; a news story about kids being left behind after their parents' deaths directly followed by 'gee, I wonder how my kids are doing' could've been more subtle), but even so a more direct confirmation from the story would be nice; the mystery is built up by the hints given, then just...ignored. Even if Linda had just made a single remark about the afterlife at the end it would feel like a proper end to this mystery. What bothers me more, however, are all the details that are left unexplained: <br/> <br/>- Why is there nobody at the hospital/is the protagonist incapable of perceiving them? <br/>- What's up with that ghost in the storage room? I really liked that part (and it made me wary enough to avoid passing by the storage room until the end of the game), but it makes no narrative sense from what I can see. <br/>- Why are all of these doors locked (other than 'because it's a video game')? <br/>- Why did the protagonist not pass on to the afterlife/not realize he was dead? (Doesn't necessarily have to be answered, but it would add greatly to the story.) <br/>- What is the protagonist's relation to the hospital, if any, or otherwise, who are these people the protagonist refers to when examining random parts? Referring to them by name makes them seem relevant enough to at least deserve acknowledgement of who they are. <br/> <br/>As a story, it feels a bit incomplete even though it starts of really well. But as a game telling a story, it accomplishes its job almost perfectly.
Dec 20 19:34:00	29h 50m	Beat Bop Delicious	Mouse controls prevent this game from being as good as it could be. You're struggling too much with the controls itself (moving the mouse pointer from point A to point B) that it eclipses the real challenge (noticing things need attention and responding to that). A more direct control scheme like keyboard controls could ease this somewhat. The other big control issue is that as everything's controlled by mouse clicks, manipulating sliders and other variable state controls takes unreasonably long; it would feel more logical if you could twist knobs and drag sliders instead of clicking often enough to get them all the way to the right position (often first going in the opposite direction). <br/> <br/>I think this game would be amazing to play with touch controls, for example on a tablet. It would make all controls feel much more natural and remove the artificial delay caused by having to move the cursor from point A to point B. <br/> <br/>Otherwise, very nice game. I would definitely play more if moving the mouse around all the time wasn't so tedious. <br/> <br/>(High score: 1:53)
Dec 22 18:57:00	47h 23m	Ahoy!	Though I occasionally see people I've given 1-star ratings in the past go on to make 4- or 5-star-worthy entries, it's rare to see the opposite happening. Normally I'd offer some constructive criticism in this comment, but I'm pretty sure you already have a good idea of what's wrong with this game.
Dec 22 19:36:00	39m 00s	Pattern Puzzle	Random guessing: the game, pretty much. <br/> <br/>A puzzle generally starts out by giving you a framework of rules to reason from: In the case of a jigsaw puzzle you know that the pieces have to fit and every piece is part of the picture, in a rebus you know that each picture represents a word or sound and the whole makes a sentence or phrase, and in the game of Set (look into it for a good reference for your game) there are four strict rules which make a pattern which allow you to reason and find the pattern without needing any confirmation. <br/> <br/>In this game, however, the only rules are <br/>1) If you hit a block that fits in the pattern at the specific spot you're at, you hear a sound and the block is lit; <br/>2) If you hit a wrong block, you hear a sound and the blocks will all be unlit (including previously lit blocks); and <br/>3) If you get the correct pattern, you hear a sound. all blocks will be unlit, and a new pattern is chosen. <br/> <br/>In the case of a jigsaw puzzle, you can reason that 'this piece doesn't fit that other piece' or 'this piece is open on three sides, so it's placed at an edge'. In this game, however, no such reasoning is possible; you can find the first block in the pattern through trial and error, but it doesn't tell you anything about the second block in the pattern. Even when you hit the second block, you still have no idea what the third block could be. It's like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle where all pieces are perfectly square and the picture is so abstract you can't tell what pieces belong next to each other (and there's no reference image). I managed to get through the game because I could guess the patterns through sheer predictability (they're not the most original patterns), but even then it was mostly just trial and error with very little reasoning. There's also very little feedback when completing the pattern (such as further highlighting the pattern for a bit, or showing a simple phrase to describe it ("COMPLETED: Looping around")), which often leaves the player unsure what precisely the pattern was even after solving it. The emotional reward for puzzle games is the feeling of accomplishment you get when you manage to solve the puzzle through reasoning (you clever person you), but this is absent when solving a puzzle through guessing. Or to put it more simply: It's no fun to solve a puzzle through sheer guesswork. <br/> <br/>The primary reason the game turns out like this is because there are too few possible solutions excluded. If, for example, you limited the possibilities to color/shape combinations (making the position of the blocks irrelevant), the player would be able to solve the puzzle through reasoning: I have a black circle with red background and a black triangle with red background; what do they have in common and how do they differ? I see they both have red backgrounds, so maybe the pattern is everything with a red background? Having too many possible solutions ruins this aspect, as the information I have (the comparison between the tiles) can be entirely irrelevant and it may instead just be a line between the top left and bottom right, or maybe it zigzags, or maybe I just need each different shape once, or who knows what else could be the pattern? There's no way to tell except to guess. Again, I strongly recommend you look into the card game Set to see how having clear rules makes pattern detection puzzles fun. <br/> <br/>As others have noted, the sound is very harsh. It's good to have auditory feedback, but the sound itself is annoying to listen to. <br/> <br/>(I beat the game in 186.089 seconds.)
Dec 22 20:33:00	57m 00s	Yuki and Snow	It's unusual for me to say this, but this game is just way too hard. I always finish games before rating them, but for this one I just have to make an exception - it's just impossible to finish without having the entire solution spoiled to me (and nobody in the comments is spoiling it). <br/> <br/>The big problem with this game is that almost the entire game is contained in one single puzzle that isn't divided into sub-puzzles. In practice this means that no matter how much you get right, you never get any confirmation you're on the right track - you just have to take the leap and reason it out using lots of assumptions and then pray you were on the right track. But you weren't, so you go back to the drawing board and have to try all over again. It would be far more doable if the game let you know when you're on the right track via sub-puzzles or clearer hints, like some kind of puzzle featuring only the relation between the watch and the clock (assuming there is some relation), and using whatever comes out of that puzzle instead of the currently unverifiable information from the clock/watch puzzle itself. <br/> <br/>I really wanted to love this game - it's highly polished, graphics are amazing, mood is great, I love the music and it does everything right for sound design. But this is a puzzle that can't reasonably be figured out except through tons of trial and error. The more steps you have to take before you get confirmation you're doing things right, the higher the chance that you're using the wrong approach to solving the puzzle, and in this case it just kills the game in my opinion.