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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Phil Strahl's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 20 18:49:00 | Chair Legacy | Can you post a compiled version please? I don't have a C++ build-system set up ;) | |
| Apr 20 18:53:00 | 4m 00s | Space wars; the banana warfare | I wish there was more to it than just 3 enemies. Ideas for improvement: Different bananas (some curve, some are just peels that are hard to control, some are just the fruit inside (faster but less damage) etc. |
| Apr 20 19:01:00 | 8m 00s | Super ZDefeat | I don't see an unconventional weapon here, it just looks like you're shooting with hotdogs? ;) The wave-mechanic is pretty interesting, however it would be nice when the zombies spawn outside of the current screen, because it happened quite often that many of them spawned right in front of me. Also, objects and enemies spawn when the game is paused and some kinf background would have been nice. I really likes it, that the screen scrolled which gives you a sense of a bigger playfield. |
| Apr 20 19:07:00 | 6m 00s | Inkpen and greens | Interesting setup (the pen is just as mighty as the sword!) but for me the Right Ctrl key did not register, hence I sucked at the game ;) Still, the need to do both platforming and spell-checking at the same time is somewhat challenging, albeit the platforming could benefit from not being as zoomed it. Nice game! |
| Apr 20 19:21:00 | 14m 00s | Egg Defender | I've never played tower-defense games so I didn't really know the convention of where the waves would come from so I placed my hens incorrectly the first time around. What would have made it a bit easier for me would have been health bars on the enemies. Also, I don't really understand how much money I get for what. Sounds are nice and fitting, but I am missing some clucking and rooster audio ;) The variety on enemies is interesting and well designed. In terms of the theme: The eggs are unconventional alright, but I have no idea what the penguin does. The egg thieves are after the eggs, right? But why do the hens also shoot with eggs? Okay, perhaps I am overthinking this... |
| Apr 20 19:30:00 | 9m 00s | Powerman | Well, stealing powers as a weapon is unconventional I guess. The game itself, esp. Jump Guy, was tedious because of the jumping always being waaay over the top and no control once you bounce off the ground again. I also don't understand the use of the laser-vision? The comic appeal of the speech bubbles was nice, but the dev-console popping up with error messages was a little distracting… |
| Apr 20 19:36:00 | 6m 00s | The Thor's weapon | Despite my best efforts, I could not attack anything, neither with X nor with any other flipping button. The game looked nice and smooth, the weapons (balloon, sausage, and rock) looked unconventional, well at least in the UI. The zombies ate my brains and all I could do was just stand there, look them in the dead eye, hitting X without any effect. But the graphics were nice and the framerate at a steady 60fps, SHIFT being the only key input that worked for me :) |
| Apr 20 19:41:00 | 5m 00s | Forest Defense | Okay, tower defense with a tree theme. It's as unconventional as it is random. The trees all look random at least, but there's no way of distinguishing between any of them. The mechanics work for themselves but I am missing a bit of fun, as in fun graphics or fun sound at least. Luckily, the game is self explanatory, I had no troubles with the interface or grasping the mechanics. |
| Apr 20 19:48:00 | 7m 00s | Crazy Dispenser | Very funny! I liked the music, the humor (don't we all know an angry vending machine such as the one in the game?) and the mechanics themselves. The music was simple but fitting with graphics and sound effects and the gameplay itself was a lot of fun. Well done! |
| Apr 20 19:57:00 | 9m 00s | Irmgard Reichts | I don't see anything much unconventional about the gun Irmgard uses to kill the pigeons with, frankly, and having to shoot 320 pigeons to whin the game seems like a bit overkill (haha pun!). To me, commuting between the 4 statues with old Irmgard was a bit tiresome and throwing bread constantly to keep the flying pests away my tactic of choice. The graphics are really nice and have a nice retro top-down-shooter appeal, also the animations of pigeons (which look a bit like ducks to me) and dogs are very fitting. Nice work! |
| Apr 20 20:15:00 | 18m 00s | Cluedont | Interesting concept and very nice graphics, also the music is soothing. The notepad being the weapon is such a stretch that it burns. While the graphics are really nice and fit their own style, they don't really add much to it, even text-buttons in 2D would have worked (perhaps even better, because it was not really intuitive selecting people). My suggestion: Have their names floating above their head at least and add some more dialogs, e.g. "I saw Andy hiding something under the armchair") so that the nice 3d scene can be investigated by the player. |
| Apr 20 20:29:00 | 14m 00s | noisecontroller | I wasn't able to load an mp3/flac/wav/ogg placed in the .exe folder, despite even giving it a nice name with no funky characters, so i only read the tutorial a couple of times... <br/>One thing to remind is that on a German keyboard layout the Z and Y keys are switched which would make your scheme quite taxing to press for me, so why not settle for A S D instead? ;) |
| Apr 20 20:35:00 | 6m 00s | Dr. Rampage | So the Unconventional Weapon is pills, right? But whether it's pills or bullets or baby-brontoraurs with aprons wouldn't matter to gameplay itself, unfortunately, since the only effect of the pills is the death animation of the NPC you hit. The graphics are sufficient and the death animations are cute ("oh look, a kitty!"), the sounds and enemy/level-design pretty basic. Having the player-char take a little more damage would have been nice, because I really suck at shooters ;) |
| Apr 20 20:42:00 | 7m 00s | Light'em Up | Interesting mechanic, reminded me a bit of Alan Wake. While I managed to run the game without problems (even with music), there are some design issues with the game (only in my personal opinion, of course!): First of all: Switching through the objects with Space really sucks, because you can't go back and when you're stressed and want to shoot or illuminate, your selected item is an empty slot -- not fun! how about mapping the four buttons to 1, 2, 3, 4 keys? Second, it's too dark. If course, that's what you need the lights for, but how about having the first enemies have a little red dot on them or something so that learning the controls isn't as unforgiving as it is now. Then, the energy drains way too fast for my taste, especially when you're just lighting the surroundings and nor shooting lasers. How about that taking less energy OR already hurting the monsters at least a little? Or how about emitting a small radius of light around yourself at all times so when you get attacked, you can at least tell from what direction? |
| Apr 20 20:55:00 | 13m 00s | Their Own Worst Enemies | Dude! Hats off for entering the compo with a game done in 6502 assembler! I tested your game on my NES (PAL Version) with the PowerPak to give it the proper treatment. <br/> <br/>There the screen only displays the sprites (veeery flickery) when the character is moving, so it took me a bit to figure out how to play the game and i amde it to level 2. I don't know whether it's by design or not but my character goes into one direction (very fast) until it hits a wall with no means of changing the direction mid-way. The mechanic reminds me of good NES puzzlers and the backgrounds certainly look like it (in a good way!). However, declaring the enemies' stupidity to be Unconventional Weapon is also quite a stretch. Nice little game, not quite fitting the theme. |
| Apr 20 21:07:00 | 12m 00s | Can You Reach the Sun? | Really cute art style and music. Gameplay also works nice, the kite is unconventional as a weapon (however, I am not quite convinced how that would work, but hey, that's just me). Design-wise I would have kept the player's abilities after a death because after the third time the stupid bat killed me with one hit, I was pretty much done (but hey, that's just me). Either that or some kind of a health bar, because the controls are also a little unusual, to quote the AVGN here: "Up to jump? UP TO JUMP?!". How about controlling the kite with WASD, the player with the arrowkeys (or vice versa), space to jump and left Ctrl to attack? Or at least space to attack and keep the up-to-jump-button. But again, that's just me being incapable of unfamiliar button-mappings. <br/>The music was nice too, the 8-bit sounds very fitting (haha, the dog!) but clashing a little with the CD-quality music. Overall I'd liken the mood to Rainbow Islands for some peculiar reason. Nice one! |
| Apr 20 21:16:00 | 9m 00s | Not Nice Knight | Interesting take on the theme, and interesting choice of genre. The first thing I realized was that a 40 megs download is pretty steep for a flipping text adventure, so i guess it has to do with the standalone runtime cramming ALL THE LIBRARIES into itself. But i digress. <br/>The game was a fun one and has an interesting morale. In fact, you as a player become the real monster and even redeem yourself, how nice! The graphics and music both fit the theme very much and I really enjoyed playing the game. And tears as currency/weapon? Loved it! Looking forward to the sequel :) |
| Apr 20 21:35:00 | 19m 00s | Color Elementals | Interesting concept! Since I work as a colorist on my day job, I didn't have much trouble figuring it out, but I think the complexity involved is a little too steep for newcomers. I mean, switching your own color correctly can be quite stressful, but then also thinking of how to mix the complementary color of a foe to make it white can be a little too much, in my opinion. <br/>How about instead of having to turn enemies white, having to turn them black. The first wave could be composed of just enemies in primary colors in order to get a hang of switching on and off, and then mixed colors in the higher levels. And only THEN having players to bring an enemy's color to a certain value. But that's just me. <br/> <br/>Sound would have been nice (I'm thinking something alon the lines of REZ ;) and the background-animation is trippy. Overall a very nice and interesting concept, keep it up! |
| Apr 20 21:44:00 | 9m 00s | Savior | Lovely art style, looks very pleasing and funny, also the silent movie soundtrack adds to the charm. Personally, I found the controls (as usual) a little unconventional, I'd be happier with Space = Jump, up = hide, ctrl = use cure, but again that's my usual inability to go with something out of the ordinary I guess. <br/>The jumping physics felt a little mushy to me, like moon gravity with icy platforms. Also, the room with the SOS/BBQ (hah!) people was too hard for me, the zombie always got me, despite me having the cure pointed at it. The sound effects clash a little with the silent-movie atmosphere, it would have been fun, if they were also piano-notes or something. |
| Apr 20 21:52:00 | 8m 00s | Rough Day At The Office | While I have to agree that a stapler *is* unconventional, there's nothing about it's characteristics in the game mechanics, perhaps only that it takes quite a number of hits for the aliens to die. The music look is simple but, suprisingly!, not annoying, the different enemies I encountered so far are nice and varied (the UFO being quite interesting!). Health pickups would have been nice, also some kind of mini-map would have helped me (personally) because I think I just went around in circles not quite knowing where to go or what to do. <br/>Overall a nice little top-down shooter with the usual mechanics, but still fun for a while :) |
| Apr 20 21:59:00 | 7m 00s | Avian Days | Too hard for me, but really interesting theme. The graphics are confidently stylish and the overall mood reminds me of walking through a futuristic version of Arstotzka from "Papers, Please". The music and sound effects are also fitting and the atmosphere. To players who suck (like myself), a health bar would have been nice to help you progress through the first part (I never made it to another checkpoint), because I am sure there's an interesting game waiting for me, but I'll never know because after my first 50 deaths I pretty much gave up. |
| Apr 20 22:18:00 | 19m 00s | Kids These Days | Interesting take on the theme. I was having quite a bit of troubles because to insult the kids i really need to be really close and/or the insults don't work fast enough, so no matter what I do, I always take damage :( The cooldown for lecturing is also a bit too long, or its effect too short, in any case I hardy could use it (mostly because I was losing health so fast. I was really looking forward to read the funny texts and pop-cultural references but instead I hardly hat the opportunity to: It all went by too fast and I was struggling to stay alive anyway. The only ones I remember were "You fight like a cow!" and "Who unloaded the dishwasher". Also, the collisions were a bit clunky. But that game has potential, I am sure there are more ways of how "words can inflict damage" instead of just the gaming-equivalent of meleé combat. |
| Apr 20 22:28:00 | 10m 00s | SLICK LICKER | Omg! Why? What? How? Seeing the game in action as like licking a toad while tripping bad on mescaline, but I digress. The control scheme is something new (dragging mouse to jump, sticking to the walls) but most of the time I had no Idea what was going on, everything trying to kill me (or not), colors, lightning, rockets, lasers, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together -- mass hysteria. <br/> <br/>The soundtrack is a mix of Doom on the Super Nintendo and funky Bach ambience, and I frankly have no idea what the Unconventional Weapon is or how it works, everything's unconventional! <br/> <br/>Also I had a lot of framerate fluctuation but I can't be sure whether that's intentional. So overall: A memorable experience :) |
| Apr 20 22:34:00 | 6m 00s | Out Shooting Boxes | First of all: Congrats on both succeeding in the 48-hrs *and* less than 48 kB compo ;) <br/> <br/>I also really liked that your worst nightmare are your own projectiles coming to bite you in the ass, when you plaster everything to get that frenetic cyan box out of the way. It's a bullet hell of your own making... <br/> <br/>So it's simple, it's fun and the controls are intuitive, even for me. But I guess that's what comes after many many hours of Binding of Isaac. |
| Apr 20 22:40:00 | 6m 00s | Hugline Miami | VERY high production value, I give you that! Kudos!! The graphics have a nice "Minecraft meets CGA"-feeling (looks like I am not the only one who went with a CGA palette then!) and the filters and effects look (in my opinion) nicer and more fitting the established style than in Hotline Miami itself. <br/> <br/>The gameplay is fastpaced and fun, the sound and music also closely paying homage to the frenetic pixel frenzy but, alas, the game mechanics do too. To the game it absolutely doesn't matter whether you're shooting hearts ("hugs") or projectiles. If you want to pursue that theme further, I suggest you find some mechanic that can't be switched for guns and bullets but is inherent to only hugs & kisses. |
| Apr 20 22:58:00 | 18m 00s | You Only Dare Thrice | Very interesting concept, it reminds me a little of games like Uplink or Hacker (on the C64). Personally, I was having some troubles with the 3D map because there's not really a benefit of it being 3d. Identifying certain buildings that are mentioned are not really tagged or marked, I always had to move my mouse over every single node until I found the right one... <br/> <br/>The handler only being able to take care of one request at a time is realistic, however the time it takes for her/him to get back to you is largely spent waiting for the info (unless I required to travel around the city all the time). This gives an interesting faux real-time feeling to the game (after all, you're not the only one searching for the components), but (to me personally!) having a button to skip to the next event would have helped. Have you thought about a round-based version of the game so far? <br/> <br/>So my criticism boils down to me feeling constrained by the UI, that I want to see the whole map at once, something else to do while waiting for the handler, and some way that the information I gathered would be reflected in the game, e.g. every time an occupant mentions a certain building, it would get a little brighter than the rest and accumulated mentions would have it light up, or something. <br/> <br/>Sorry, for the wall of text! I know, it's only 48 hrs but please keep working on it. The genre of cyberpunk detective thriller is so terribly neglected these days... |
| Apr 20 23:11:00 | 13m 00s | Radisheriff | Very easy to get into and a very nice, cartoony style. The sounds are fitting and the graphics very nice and fir the style very well, enemy types are varied and boss battles and duels breaking up the standard gameplay. Also items are nice! <br/> <br/>Of course, switching bullets with radishes, eraser-top pencils or rubber duckies pretty much won't affect the gameplay at all, it's just a random substitute for slow moving bullets. That said, it still is a very fun entry and I enjoyed the Binding of Isaac meets Zelda gameplay quite a bit. Sadly, there's no music. <br/> <br/>Still a solid entry! |
| Apr 20 23:31:00 | 20m 00s | Thanatos and the Cat God | Ha, that's an interesting take on the Greek myths. I see it as a clever commentary on how much Sony has defecated over the original mythology after the first God of War :) <br/> <br/>The gameplay itself is nice and fun and the different enemy types breaking it up quite nicely, also the color change helps in understanding that I progress because I couldn't quite tell otherwise. <br/> <br/>I answered the first question wrong (yellow instead of blue), but luckily that slipped by. |
| Apr 20 23:40:00 | 9m 00s | Weight | Momentum and mass as weapons, I haven't seen that quite like Gish. Unfortunately the game was a little glitchy (in Firefox, Chrome worked fine) and when I fell off a platform I didn't respawn on top (oh well, good old F5 it is). <br/> <br/>I didn't understand the color change in the ball, it didn't seem to affect anything in the game, however. Apart from the barriers it would have been interesting to have enemies that can be squished only with a certain mass/force applied to them or some kind of see-saw contraption. So there's quite some potential there :) |
| Apr 20 23:47:00 | 7m 00s | Burd Turd | For your next compo please do us the favor and not having us to go through an installer, when GameMaker is very good at producing stand-alone EXE files. <br/> <br/>The game itself is pretty fun and could have easily been an Atari 2600 game (just imagine the cover!). The weapon mechanic of pooping on gunmen is nothing really new, but the peculiar breakout mechanic with the colors is the core mechanic anyway. To me, the gravity is a tad too strong but, again, that's just old man Phil complaining about today's games. If you have the bird pooping at a constant interval, you could make it a single-tap mobile game, list it as "Crappy Bird" and become rich :) |
| Apr 20 23:54:00 | 7m 00s | Megane Fever | The look is really polished and the animations are a perfect fit to it (I loved the self-indulgent art class haha!) The music is a little repetitive after a while and as a person with a German keyboard layout, I am not too happy with the controls since my Z and Y keys are switched, but since it wasn't too had anyways it was okay and I could fend off the evil army of clone admirers with the broom just fine, so you might want to design another enemy type that can only be averted by throwing furniture at them? |
| Apr 21 00:17:00 | 23m 00s | Captain Farticus | Omg, I played this waaay too long ;) It's a fun little Metroidvania game with an oddly rewarding progression feel and quite thoughtful level design with a lot of verticality. The music tracks were also nice and collecting coins (especially clusters of them) elicited a very genuine greed-feeling in me. <br/>I really rejoice at the completely pointless board-meeting room where you alienate all members with your super-powered farting despite the Clark-Kent suit and glasses. <br/> <br/>I saved the day with my farts, the game told me, and until then I was convinced that fart-jokes are below me. Well played! |
| Apr 21 00:25:00 | 8m 00s | Quest For The Orb of Toz | Why does everybody make Installers from simple Game Maker games? I don't get it, a simple standalone-exe would've been peachy! Anyways: <br/> <br/>The idea of using your head (literally) is very interesting and the puzzles and gameplay challenges emerging from that feel fresh. I only made it until level 4, that's where I had to give up because once your head is too far ahead (haha!), I pretty much had to commit suicide. 8-bit graphics and sound are nice, the animations also work very well at for once I am happy with the controls (space is jump, that's how it always should be!) |
| Apr 21 00:47:00 | 22m 00s | Canker Blossom | My first thoughts on viewing the screenshot were "Defender of the Crown 4TW!", then again I am old and nobody knows that game anymore. Also, I once studies English and had a class on Shakespeare and I don't remember any of it anymore. <br/> <br/>So this was like a whole new experience for me. And after getting stabbed in the temple a couple of times in a row, i got the hang of it, and it's like Monkey Island's sword fights in a very lovely medieval setting. Bonus points for the coat of arms with a joystick :) <br/> <br/>I only wish that I had more time preparing longer replies, because the combination of the choice of font, the old language and making sense of the right order puts me under exactly the same amount of stress like I had in my English exams. Did I mention I failed the course? ;) |
| Apr 21 01:00:00 | 13m 00s | Special Agent | Okay this is something different. I liked the intro, reminiscent of spy films and when you shoot yourself on the title screen, than that's a good setup of what to expect in the game. For the record: I wasted 38 agents until I finally beat the game. <br/> <br/>The graphics are simple but recognizable, the walking animation reminded me of South Park. My only gripe with this game is that the first couple of times you are guaranteed to fail, because your weapon reacts differently in each assignment, so it's always a lot of trial and error. That's okay, because that's the game mechanic (in a way it's comparable to Spelunky in that regard), but a little faster movement would have helped me, so that I just could iterate faster on the puzzles. <br/> <br/>There's a lot of room for more puzzles in this game, you should really expand it with some more levels or combinations of different weapons but with a twist (like, literally) ;) |
| Apr 21 01:25:00 | 25m 00s | TUNDRA | Very immersive story, very vague and very well written. The map with the highlighted room was a great help and you make me feel really smart for figuring out the code of the elevator ;) <br/> <br/>very minimalist with just the right, fitting design-brushstrokes in the right moment, the use of sound background color. Also, I never thought how an expanding excited a white circle could get me. Very well done, thank you! |
| Apr 21 01:35:00 | 10m 00s | Bullet Time | Wow, okay, now that's something! It's been a while since so much much blood was splattered on my screen, that's for sure! The take of a bullet firing humans is a funny twist and the Bullet Willy's taunts are a riot. <br/> <br/>I had a couple of framerate issues, especially when a lot was going on and I have no idea why I got killed, because there's so much pixel gore going on that I couldn't make out any bullets headed my way. |
| Apr 21 01:54:00 | 19m 00s | Charged With a Mission | Okay, this one left me with a lot to ponder. As I see it, the game is a take on avatars and the agency of the people on the other side of the screen, the player, who puppeteer their avatars as they are being told by the game. In tandem, they work to fulfill a game's "quest" or "mission" but in the end the "freedom" in games is merely an illusion, the players are acting much like the developer's tools, their "free will" is to follow out of their own volition the instructions a piece of software gives them in order for their own needs of self esteem, recognition and sense of place in an unforgiving, cruel world. This game acts as a diorama of this sadomasochistic trope, it's tearing down the Fourth Wall, unmasking the hideous truth that we, the gamers "playing" games, are the very same marionettes as are our avatars. <br/> <br/>Either that or I read too much Schopenhauer. But I digress. Now, about the gameplay itself: The graphics are nice (probably due to Unity's photometric shaders), but apart from that blocky and lacking in appeal. Movement feels quite awkward, like the first Doom there's no strafing like I would have expected, the big avatar nailed to the right side of the screen can be a little obstructing at times. As I see it, the game is completely missing the theme's target, but a nice practice for a first quest implementation in Unity. |
| Apr 21 02:13:00 | 19m 00s | The Island | Okay, this is totally subjective, but I personally didn't have much fun with the game because I never was sure whether something was a glitch or supposed to be that way. I killed an animal with what looked like a fence of 10 spears at once and clicked it until it was gone. When I went into the cave (first thing to do, of course!) I found there two spears but once they glitched to the floor after first use, I pretty much had to restart the game. Also, the survival mechanics don't seem to work for me, because no matter what the values said, I didn't experience anything different about the game. <br/>The dangling vines in the scenery are real nice but I didn't find any use for them, but I am pretty sure I was missing something. <br/>So once I made it into the cave and to some black hole spewing blocky heads at me, I was stuck pretty much. I managed to get a spear from each pile of oranges on either side but I couldn't use them after just one attempt because they were on the bottom of the screen. Also the music was kinda repetitive. <br/> <br/>Again, this is just my personal opinion, and apparently i am the only one who had no fun playing the game. I respect that you put a lot of work into it, but I was just confused and annoyed by it. Also, I was missing any Unconventional Weapon, sorry. |
| Apr 21 02:30:00 | 17m 00s | The Great Debate | The concept really is a little different than the usual top-down shooter or tower-defense variant. Personally, I found 10 rounds waaay too long and not being able to skip through the same announcements "round x!", "player 2, your rebuttal!", etc. was also getting on my nerves a bit. Speaking of which, I found the music incredibly out of place, so much in fact, that I awarded you extra points on humor for it. Also the nonsensical statements are a bit like a tame Cards Against Humanity, only less fun. <br/> <br/>The graphics, however, are very fitting and nice, but why are there no female thinkers like Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Hedi Lamarr, or Sylvia Plath? |
| Apr 21 02:38:00 | 8m 00s | Killer Librarian | Ha! A fun little puzzler with the right amount of gore and violence in the right places! The mechanic feels fresh and new, the sound emphasizes the 8-bit style and the music is repetitive, yes, but not annoying like so many others. Personally, I found the screen-shake effect a bit too strong (I got nauseated), but I also ask drivers on public transport not to drive so fast, because I'm old. <br/> <br/>Unfortunately I stuck after a couple of rooms and gave up after 20 minutes of brooding. A really fun game, keep working on it! |
| Apr 21 02:48:00 | 10m 00s | Spike Nut's Temple | The game looks like if Final Fantasy VII was for some reason a platformer and sounds like on the Sega Genesis (or Megadrive). I also agree with @Figglewatts that the movement (and gravity!) could've been faster, it feels a bit stolid at times, like a pushing wrecking ball underwater, it's hard to describe (and apparently I am having odd hobbies, but I digress). To me, the mechanic of running into enemies to get rid of them is not really new to me, it felt like I've played this so many times before for some reason. <br/> <br/>That the projectiles of the Old Ones hurt you irritated me profoundly because I was under the impression of being invincible, and my only enemy was the environment, so this kind of selective gameplay gives it more depth, but, again, the player speed, weight and momentum were cause of much frustration for me and I didn't get very far before I gave up. <br/> <br/>So the graphics are nice and consistent in style and execution, the music can't hide a certain randomness and, to me, the theme was not really a perfect match. |
| Apr 21 02:59:00 | 11m 00s | MEDIUM | A very very stylish entry. The graphics and the sound convey the dark mood perfectly, the movement is fast and precise and it evoked memories of playing Shadowrun on the SNES in me for unknown reasons. <br/> <br/>Alas, I never found any ability and grudgingly gave up after my umpteenth screen death. Everything killed me, dudes with machine guns on the gate, dudes with dons on the right and left screen, sometimes I stepped on some very hard to see booby-trap and storming past them resulted in an instant death in the following screen. <br/> <br/>And one last thing: I use a German keyboard layout and we silly German speakers have the Y and Z keys switched so you might take this into account for your next game (fun fact: The universal keybinding of "undo" to Ctrl+Z made extending my fingers awkwardly second nature over the years, but that's a while different story). <br/> <br/>In any case: Really solid entry from what I can tell, very fitting mood and style, only too hard for me to grasp. |
| Apr 21 16:19:00 | 13h 20m | Color Backfire | So the unconventional weapon is you being immune to lasers? Anyway the game is nice and clean, the sounds minimalist but fitting and the concept is new to me. The mechanic involving different colors was a bit arcane to me, I never quite knew how much life-points I had left and the movement felt too slow. Personally, I would have liked it to switch colors via keys than to go back and forth between the dots, but that's just a matter of personal opinion I guess. <br/> <br/>Overall a nice puzzler with a hint of tower defense feeling. |
| Apr 21 16:26:00 | 7m 00s | Agent B | Oh god, I don't know how many games featuring bananas I have played in this compo… I guess the rubber chickens must've caught a break this time around ;) <br/> <br/>It's a challenging puzzler, especially in hard mode. However, it shares the common issue that once you stand on something that's not a platform, you can't jump anymore (I thought piling up on bananas to get to a switch would work). |
| Apr 21 16:36:00 | 10m 00s | ClanFree | At first the input concept was unusual, but once I realized that it was like the guided tear in Binding of Isaac I got the hang of it. Nothing too innovative but implementation worked and the framerate was steady. <br/> <br/>Personally, I found the sound to be a little annoying (looping zombie-groan) and I would have enjoyed to play a little longer than just dying with the first hit, though. <br/> <br/>Also the rather close camera made every round more frenetic than tactical. Sadly, the gameplay didn't introduce any new elements such as obstacles, upgrades, or different enemy types (e.g. slower but tougher zombies, shooting foes, etc.) |
| Apr 21 20:39:00 | 4h 03m | Light Spirits | I like the mechanics but you just ask too much from your players :) I am pretty experienced when it comes to additive colors because of my day job and still I was overwhelmed shortly after the game started. <br/> <br/>As a player I had to 1) walk around the room, 2) point my gun at 3) moving colored targets while 4) mentally assembling the correct complimentary color, and 5) operating the color switches accordingly. That's very challenging and for me it was just too much. <br/> <br/>Interestingly your mechanics are similar as those of the compo entry Color Elementals which isn't a bad thing, but the freedom you give your players as compared to Color Elementals (fixed camera, only a few 'lanes' where enemies advance in a predictable fashion) works against it. <br/> <br/>I have the same advice for your game: In the first levels/stages/waves, have the player mix the color s/he sees in the enemies in order to get a hang of the concept and become somewhat skilled at it, then add some complexity, e.g. by moving targets (somewhat predictably) and have them stick around long enough before they fade out. <br/> <br/>Design-wise you can give of all the challenges for your player an individual "difficulty" level, e.g. moving around = 1, pointing & shooting = 2, switching colors = 5, thinking of the complementary color = 6 and so on. (Those values are very subjective, of course, but in general should do well). With that kind of "metric" you can design waves and levels in ascending difficulty, e.g. first level only stationary enemies (point-and-shoot difficulty of 2) of a single color (= not operating switches). The second level needs the player to move around (+ 1 difficulty), or to have targets of a second color, so the difficulty steadily increases. <br/> <br/>Sorry for the wall of text, I guess that's becoming kinda my thing here! my point is: Interesting concept, nice execution for a prototype, you should look into building upon the mechanics and having the difficulty ramp up much slower. Nice work! |
| Apr 21 20:53:00 | 14m 00s | Zombie Apocalypse | First: You really should put up a notice somewhere that double-jumping is possible/recommended, because I only learned that from skimming the other comments! <br/> <br/>That aside the game is a bit like the original Mario Bros, it really could benefit from a little more variety, e.g. a different zombie (faster, or takes more hits, shoots eyeballs at you, something along those lines) and the Unconventional Weapons feel a bit random. <br/> <br/>Throwing object wasn't really possible when the overhead platform was low and I also didn't find an indicator of how many zombies I had to kill in each level. <br/> <br/>I liked the functionality of the options menu and the popup when paused, that's a comfort I rarely had in LD compo games! <br/> <br/>About the input: For me it would have made much more sense to pick up objects with a keyboard key, because there's nothing else you can do with the mouse in the game (mouse aim would have been nice1), and it felt a bit awkward. Space to jump and E to pick up/throw object would have been nicer, but that's just my personal preference. |
| Apr 21 21:01:00 | 8m 00s | TIMEstahp! | Very nice mechanic and level progression, it's really nice seeing the Unconventional Weapon being thought about in terms of actual game mechanics instead of the abundant "switch bullets for bananas" kinda entries. <br/> <br/>Music and sound was also nice, visuals decent, only the jumping felt strange, like the gravity was a little too strong and pulling the character back down quite harshly. <br/> <br/>I had a crash after I failed the "red is bad" level the second time, so you might wanna look into your player reset-function. <br/> <br/>To me, the laser-streaks could have been a tad longer, the jumping puzzles really were grueling because of the perfect jumping and aiming I had to pull off while holding the mouse key at the same time. <br/> <br/>Nice work,, though! |
| Apr 21 21:01:00 | 0s | Magic Chopter | Trolled. |
| Apr 21 21:10:00 | 9m 00s | Hating Men(s): Chocolate Hunt | The Unconventional Weapon is only a reskin of a throw-dagger mechanic which I have seen a million times, the platforming is as average as it gets, the pixel look decent and the music incredibly random and annoying. <br/> <br/>Personally, I take offense at the game's setting ("The time of the month has come yet again for the angry feminazi), even if it was intended as a satire. <br/> <br/>That's not cool, bro! You don't wanna be like one of them GamersGaters idiots, right? |
| Apr 23 16:39:00 | 43h 29m | Joe | A very nice platformer, looks very polished! Art style and animations are very well executed and the game mechanic also works well. <br/> <br/>Personally, the noise and chromatic aberration is a little too much but if your unconventional weapon of choice is hugs, then definitely prefer this game over Hugline Miami! |