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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | pkenney's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 20 12:36:00 | Robowar | Hey wow, we both made shmups where you reflect the shots back with a rotatable shield! Lots of differences, but built on that same core. <br/> <br/>39,667 was my high score here but with some time I'm sure I could do better, which is a nice feeling to get from playing. <br/> <br/>I think you did a fantastic job with the bullet patterns. You really achieved that careful feel of sneaking between gaps in the pattern, where my own game ended up someplace different. I especially enjoyed that first boss fight you have. <br/> <br/>If I had to suggest something that could be improved, I would say the controls could be simpler. My strategy was to hold down the J key the entire game. I also held down the K key almost the entire game, only releasing it in tiny bursts when I wanted to reposition the shield. This created a problem that I am sure was at the keyboard hardware level about capturing too many keys: If I am hold BOTH j and k, then when I press W the guy will not walk up. So it was kind of complex to execute my wishes in the game. But it definitely has tight precise control required by the challenge, so once I got used to the buttons it was very nice. They were not sloppy, just complex and a bit unintuitive imo. <br/> <br/>I appreciated the tiny hitbox in this type of game. | |
| Apr 21 01:45:00 | 13h 09m | Nightlight | Art and sound were very nice here. The gameplay itself was also solid but needed just a few small things to give me a bit more feedback. At first I was unsure if I was damaging the enemies, for example. It also made me make a few "blind jumps" which is always concerning. Maybe I was supposed to go a different way, though. <br/> <br/>I liked the darkening of the player rather than a health bar. It did confuse me for a moment but I liked it anyway. |
| Apr 21 02:04:00 | 19m 00s | BulletRain | Cool game I played more than I thought I would after my first try! I liked the difficulty, although very challenging. I played a bunch and only got to level 2 ("They're getting stronger"). <br/> <br/>I have a few points of feedback, but don't take it as negative, overall I had good fun. <br/> <br/>- Dude what was my highscore?? <br/>- Lot to control. Maybe the wrecking ball was better cut. My strategy was to just hold down space and X for the whole entire game once I figured it out. Still not clear on what Z does after playing <br/>- On very first play, tons of text while also dodging for my life, couldn't read. This was only a problem for 2 plays or so. <br/>- Small asteroids hard to pick out and see while I'm scanning, overall maybe color contrast could be higher on threats. <br/>- Reading my special-queue on the top right was impossible while playing, I can't move my eyes over there so I never looked at it even though it has important gameplay info (this is also why I never saw my score). <br/>- I'm not sure because it was so hectic, but I might have been holding down so many keys, with space + X + 2 directions that when I hit shift to use special it only fired like half the time. Maybe there was another mechanic about why it didn't fire, but I never figured it out. <br/> <br/>So in summary lots of fun here but I feel it was a bit more confusing that the content really required. <br/> <br/>Also... I loved all the death messages, that's a great touch. <br/> <br/>Really good job. |
| Apr 21 02:17:00 | 13m 00s | Allergy Assassin | Cool idea and nice-looking art. I felt like I was walking around a little too slowly and maybe my memory is just bad but when I had to go back to re-talk to people a few times I found it too time-consuming for my taste, and that prevented me from wanting to reload a bunch of different scenarios. |
| Apr 21 02:27:00 | 10m 00s | Tanks vs. Bicycle | Aw man as soon as I saw the title, I was like this better be good because there will only be one tanks vs bicycle game in the world and you better not waste it. <br/> <br/>Fortunately you delivered! Lots of things come together right here to make the fun, but most especially the kinda-tight-but-kinda-crazy controls on the bike. This is also a really nice use of 3D in a jam game and looks nice. <br/> <br/>But it was all about the way a big swerve was an overcommit, that's what all the panicky fun was coming from, so nice fine-tuning there. <br/> <br/>Two flaws I would point out: first I shouldn't have to take my hands off the keyboard to click the mouse to restart. This game needs an ultra-super-tight retry loop and the mouse was a real source of friction for me playing just one more time. Second, is there a way to quit? It went fullscreen when I launched and I couldn't find any way to quit. Easy enough to alt+tab out and kill it from windows though. <br/> <br/>Nice work, particularly for the 8 hours on a plane that you put into it. |
| Apr 21 02:44:00 | 17m 00s | Killer Librarian | Haha I didn't even notice "I am death" playing, not until I saw the screenshot. <br/> <br/>I beat the game. My favorite part was your way of introducing mechanics through a simple level rather than a wordy tutorial... show don't tell, definitely appreciate that! Another wise choice was the ultrafast retry that didn't even wait for animations to complete. <br/> <br/>There was one level that was pretty darn tricky and it took me a while to figure it out. Other than that I felt maybe it was a bit too easy for most levels. <br/> <br/>However I think you did a great job, it's an interesting original mechanic and I liked the presentation. I was skeptical of the screen shot at first but I gotta say the game made good on the style. Screenshake also a nice touch. <br/> <br/>Well done! |
| Apr 21 02:51:00 | 7m 00s | Smileraser | Cool original idea, but it just took too much out of my wrist to do all that erasing at panic speeds! <br/> <br/>Also, the sound effect of blowing the residue off the page plays very often in this game. But it's exactly the same sound every time, maybe would be great to have two or four versions of the sound and/or modulate the pitch by 1-3% randomly on each play of the sound effect. This will prevent it from feeling repetitive to the player. |
| Apr 21 12:48:00 | 9h 57m | carena | Very cool entry! I love the style of the art, the sound, and the menus/title text. It really has an identity and it fits with the fast wrecking theme of the gameplay. <br/> <br/>I had fun blasting around in the car, and getting run over and smashed. The action is a little on the frantic side so it's hard to track and think about but it was still fun. I wish the car drifted just slightly. It was fun to boost around and the difficulty was about right for the size of the game because I played about 8 times and learned the ropes and then won. The game thought I was all done but I did come back for a little more. <br/> <br/>Also, I found a weird bug. You can reproduce it like this: <br/>- Start game, play once and lose. When instructed, press R. <br/>- On the "You are a guy" screen, instead of pressing space to play, press R. Notice it plays a sound and makes the text leap but keeps you on the screen, this is fine. <br/>- Because you like watching the text dance and hearing the crazy sound, press r about fifty times as fast as you can. Use multiple fingers on the key and play it like drums! <br/>- Now press space to play <br/> <br/>BUG: When you play now, the white flashes will not be tiny split second effect any more. Now they will last much longer and dominate the experience by blinding you for most of the game. So weird! |
| Apr 21 12:53:00 | 5m 00s | Baba Yaga | Always like seeing Baba Yaga around. <br/> <br/>Sorry, I tried for a while but every time it just kind of randomly said "game over, rekt" and I couldn't figure out why or whether it was something I did. <br/> <br/>I liked that the skull didn't move exactly with the mouse, but was instead pulled toward it, it made it more interesting than if it was just a "ram mouse pointer into shape" type game. |
| Apr 21 13:20:00 | 27m 00s | Parasite | Cool idea and style. This was interesting to play around with. <br/> <br/>One problem I had when playing is learning about how the meter works. I must move quickly. The effect on the ant that I control is visually subtle, so my eyes are busy constantly scanning, and because I move down they are looking on the bottom half of the screen. But the timer is a thin strip of pixels near the top of the screen. I really was unaware of the value of the timer while playing, and as a result it took me a while to learn that changing hosts only filled it a little. I originally assumed it was a host-death timer that fully reset each time I changed, and didn't know why I was dying. <br/> <br/>A few ways to fix that would be moving the meter down, making it bigger, or even better having an effect on my character itself instead of a meter. There could also be a warning as I approach death such as a sound or visual effect. Also making the one ant I control more visually distinct from the rest would help me. <br/> <br/>Overall this was fun, you have an interesting system to explore and the challenge level is right. Nice work! |
| Apr 22 00:56:00 | 11h 36m | A Windy Climb | Wow, really cool main character with original-feeling controls and some nice animations. You skated the edge of floaty jumps and inertia that was just enough to feel good without making it unresponsive. Nice job! <br/> <br/>I want to describe a little quirk to the controls that was my #1 execution mistake. <br/> <br/>When I wanted to do the critical down+x jump to hover, the order I pressed the keys mattered and I kept doing it wrong. <br/> <br/>I would press the keys in this order: run (D) then jump (Z) then (X) followed immediately by (DOWN). But this won't get me the combo, it only triggers if I hit down before hitting X. <br/> <br/>If I hit X first I go into the forward-gust state, and pressing down from there does not transition to downward-gust. If that state transition existed I think the controls would smooth out a rough edge that kept scraping me. <br/> <br/>I enjoyed playing and I definitely would have played more if there were a checkpoint system. I eventually got discouraged at repeating the old parts again to maybe see more. |
| Apr 22 01:38:00 | 42m 00s | What Lurks in the Dark | Wow this game was awesome! I won with a deathcount of 52. <br/> <br/>The theme mechanic was fun to use, and the monsters created a lot of moments of panic. It was really well balanced. The game combined the puzzle of figuring out how to approach the level with the tactics of dodge-fighting the monsters really smoothly. <br/> <br/>Controls were problem-free, critical for a game like this. |
| Apr 22 01:47:00 | 9m 00s | Radisheriff | Cool dodge-n-shoot game! I like the random generation to keep it fresh, and the art and sound was nice. Duels and upgrades, too, nice scope! <br/> <br/>It seemed to be best to just play with right-click down the whole time, but no big deal. |
| Apr 22 02:15:00 | 28m 00s | Long Live The Great Leader! | Cool game, the lighting and LOS effect were very effective at making a mood. Combat was maybe a little too simple or slow but the setting was great. Also liked the main character and the way he moved and looked around. |
| Apr 22 02:24:00 | 9m 00s | Latvian Milk | Wow, a lot of fun!! The constant weapon switches were great, they made me play against the simple enemies in different ways. It was even more fun once I started using the barrels more. <br/> <br/>Looks, sounds, and feels really good. Nice work! |
| Apr 22 02:35:00 | 11m 00s | Roombacalypse | Super-slick art and interesting dodging - nice work! |
| Apr 22 02:46:00 | 11m 00s | Bloomp Purple | Cool game! The hint to use the numbers to fire was key. Great mix between puzzle and action, and a good length - I beat it before I got discouraged with any repetition. |
| Apr 23 01:43:00 | 22h 57m | L.O.V.E | Damn this game is good! The controls are super-tight and the art and sound really make it come alive. The level layouts are great, too. So many nice touches, like the room transitions, the varying sizes, and the way you bring us back through the same room three times on our journey to give a sense of continuity. <br/> <br/>The first time I played I skipped the first powerup, thinking it was a hazard. I got all the way to the long jump that requires kissing (the room with text) before I couldn't proceed. I also couldn't backtrack. <br/> <br/>It was super-tricky to get there in that state because I couldn't kill enemies so I had to lure them onto all the triggers alive, and prop doors open with my head to make the timing. I guess you could say I got the extra-tough puzzle version! <br/> <br/>Normally I would call it a session at that point rather than repeat, but the game was so good I wanted to see more so I restarted and beat the game. |
| Apr 23 02:07:00 | 24m 00s | Lickitank | Cool physics-based exploration of an unusual ability! Controls a little floaty for my taste but I can see why you went that way. |
| Apr 23 03:00:00 | 53m 00s | Sun Wukong | This is a really good metroidvania. The way the level wrapped back on itself had me doubting whether I'd done the right thing, and I was just on the edge of feeling lost but never really was. <br/> <br/>Main character was very interesting and the challenges were satisfying. I played until the fight where you have to throw 6 switches on blocks being hit by fire. I tried and tried but I couldn't get it right. It felt too much like the challenge was taking me past the limit of the looseness in the control. I know it was always my fault, but it was tough to get that level of precision out, since the guy is so stateful and the buttons move different amounts in different states. <br/> <br/>But part of the fun of it was all those different states of movement and piecing them together. It's a great game that really took me to the limits a lot! |
| Apr 23 03:21:00 | 21m 00s | Color Wars | Solid shooter but a couple of things made it tough: enemies shooting from off-screen, but even more so the fact that enemy bullets didn't stand out that much against the background. <br/> <br/>Try using lower-saturation colors for the background and higher-saturation for the threats so they visually pop. <br/> <br/>Also the controls were a little loose, I'm not sure it needed the inertia. |
| Apr 23 03:28:00 | 7m 00s | TeleMage | Interesting mechanic, I had fun learning the ropes! Nice art and sound, too. |
| Apr 23 03:34:00 | 6m 00s | Zeldish | Very interesting mechanic, but no safe place to try it out and learn. If this game ramped up slowly I bet it would be awesome but man those skeletons were right on top of me from the instant I started playing! |
| Apr 23 03:50:00 | 16m 00s | A.R.B.F. | Great music and look! If I could add one piece of polish it'd be to when you get hit so you feel more pain. |
| Apr 24 13:16:00 | 33h 26m | Smiling Rockets | Surprisingly addictive for such a small game... and it looks really nice! <br/> <br/>I think if you never jump though you can kind of rob yourself of the fun by just spamming missiles one way and then the other as the enemies come onscreen. <br/> <br/>I got the score way up there and then I started experimenting with jumping and shooting down (because the explosion upgrade seems to suggest this is the way to play, since it's no use in the non-jumping style) and suddenly the game was far, far more difficult. |
| Apr 24 22:01:00 | 8h 45m | Sleep Tight | Very nice creepy vibe. The art and sound were great. <br/> <br/>I was still reading the intro screen when monsters came at me. They looked really nice. I fired at them for a while, then went wandering around. As soon as I found my first potion my gun seemed to run out and I couldn't shoot. <br/> <br/>I picked up a few potions while dodging and used them with the number keys, but they didn't seem to do anything. I was surrounded while investigating a floating bed that I tried to use with E, but nothing happened, then I died. I would have retried but the web player crashed my browser. <br/> <br/>Despite a few rough edges on play the environment, monster, and atmosphere were memorable. <br/> <br/>Oh, and I should say there was a warning about the web player, it's on me that I just ignored it. ;) |
| Apr 24 22:30:00 | 29m 00s | Weight Lifter 2000 | Wow, crazy tight, demanding platformer. The block throws were very cool, and the mix of puzzle and execution was nice. In the end it was a bit too tough for me, I played a lot but then I gave up at the purple level where you start on the bottom right. |
| Apr 24 22:38:00 | 8m 00s | RL | Mood was great, gameplay was tense with fast careful tapping but felt a litle unfair. I played 20 times without seeing stairs, then the next time the stairs were right there. <br/> <br/>Loved the feel of just barely sneaking by, you nailed the core experience. |
| Apr 24 22:48:00 | 10m 00s | Inverse Zombies | Much cooler than I expected from the screen shot - my top score was 146. Twist was excellent, a new idea to explore. |
| Apr 24 23:12:00 | 24m 00s | The Unfortunate Demise of William | Good first time out, congrats! |
| Apr 24 23:23:00 | 11m 00s | I QUIT! | Fun core mechanic, congrats on your first LD. |
| Apr 25 03:44:00 | 4h 21m | Clumsy Crew: Incredible Tank | Tricky in a good way, played a bunch! Very nice look and sound, too. |
| Apr 25 04:19:00 | 35m 00s | Avenging My Gran, the Famed Botanist | Solid original puzzle! |