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Shinmera

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game	Shinmera's comment
Aug 24 12:13:00		Insurgency Strike	When I first started the game I almost immediately ended it again, because I flew directly into the exit zone again by accident. By having a designated exit zone somewhere else on the map that could've been easily avoided. <br/> <br/>While the helicopter itself controls just fine, it is incredibly hard to hit anything in this. I'm very confused as to why I have to shoot by clicking, yet can't aim to where my cursor is pointing. <br/> <br/>The graphics themselves are very minimalistic, and while that can work just fine, in this it looks extremely bleak. I understand that that is probably done intentionally, but it still doesn't rectify the fact that from a game quality point of view, it is a detriment. Having things stand out more by adding colour, as well as adding a few effects here and there, would spice things up a lot and help make the game more engaging. <br/> <br/>The additional camera view at the top right is probably supposed to be a major point of the game (simulating what you see on the news), but it is simply too small to be noticed while playing the game. It would've been much better if you could switch between 3rd-person view and this mounted camera view by hitting a button. <br/> <br/>Overall it plays alright. If you make the shooting easier to control, this could turn out to actually be fun.
Aug 24 12:24:00	11m 00s	Monster Jailbreak	The music is alright, but gets rather repetitive quickly. The sound effects are... voiced, I'm guessing? It sounds rather weird and jarring in combination with the music. It would probably have been better to try to make SFX in the same style. <br/> <br/>The graphics are fine. It could use some more animations to make it more interesting. <br/> <br/>Game wise it is a simple platformer, nothing new there. Sadly the controls are very heavily inertia based. While this works OK with the gigantic platforms, it would still feel a lot better if they were tighter and allowed more precise control of the character. <br/> <br/>There's a couple of oddities in the game that could be qualified as bugs. The camera is not always on point, the jump isn't always registered, and the ending screen's grammar could be improved. <br/> <br/>Overall, a nice entry, but it could be expanded in a variety of ways to make it more interesting. For example, adding in further types of platforms with different properties, or simple key/jail mechanics that would force the player to actually use the other characters, rather than having them as a sort of gimmick.
Aug 24 12:35:00	11m 00s	Monster City Rampage	A fine little physics toybox. <br/> <br/>Sadly that's pretty much all there is to it already. I'm not sure why the game switches to an almost silent ambient noise music track once you actually start it instead of remaining on the rather funky menu music. This and the complete lack of sound effects make it a rather bleak entry. <br/> <br/>Apparently the end of the world follows you as you move to the right, since as soon as you turn to the left there's a giant gap that you can fall down into and off the map. I'm guessing the world is cut off to reduce the amount of physics objects and increase performance. However, it would've been much better if the view was prevented from moving left at all, making it impossible for the player to jump off the map. <br/> <br/>The movement of the character is very constrained and most of the time you'll just find yourself mashing the left and right mouse buttons to get around. Having the buildings be harder to demolish and making the jumping actually work well would've allowed a much less linear experience by forcing players to move up and around the buildings, rather than to just stand around on the ground and wait for the bomb to recharge. <br/> <br/>Style wise the world itself looks alright, but the player character is oddly out of place in this. It would've been more fitting, and perhaps even funnier, to have a similarly block-like player, than this weird sprite form. <br/> <br/>Speaking of sprite form, generally allowing the player to move around freely rather than being constrained to a single axis could have made this a lot more engaging already and help reduce the repetitiveness of it all.
Aug 24 12:48:00	13m 00s	Crabs in da Pipe, yo!	Definitely inspired by the classic Mario Bros. title. Almost a bit too similar, it would've been nice to have some additional mechanics to mix it up. <br/> <br/>The graphics and sound are the game's biggest strengths. It is visually consistent with nice background and sprites. The music and effects are fitting and complement each other quite well. You did a really good job on that. <br/> <br/>Sadly the controls are rather weak. It is very hard to move the player around and hit the crabs on the head; given these constraints the time limit is simply way too low. However, these should be things that are easy to fix by fiddling around with the movement constants, so this could be turned into a fine game quite quickly. <br/> <br/>A bug: When the time limit is below 10 and you get hit for a 10 seconds penalty, the game locks up completely and you have to force terminate it. Oh dear!
Aug 24 13:01:00	13m 00s	An usual Day In a Troll's life	There's a couple of places where you can fall off the map, in which case the game will react by simply stopping the camera and letting everything else move. There's no way to get out of it, and you won't die of it. Rather annoying! <br/> <br/>Now, on to things that aren't bugs: The music is alright and fitting to the theme of the game. However, it could loop a bit better. As it is right now it's rather noticeable where it stops and starts again. <br/> <br/>Graphics wise it's fine. Most of the game is well stylized with the exception of the random mob in the back, which for some reason is just a long, non-transparent plane of a scanned notepaper. Needless to say it feels rather jarring and out of place. Maybe having a dark dust cloud instead (I'm sure unity has something like that in stock), or at the very least making it transparent so that it doesn't look like a straight plane would be much better. <br/> <br/>There's a few places on the map that could make use of slopes quite well and instead just have abrupt height differences. I'm guessing this is because slope mechanics haven't been added to the game at all, so they were avoided altogether. This is rather sad, since allowing the player to move up or down on the map could have livened up the game play by quite a bit.
Aug 24 13:13:00	12m 00s	Meeuw	A hilarious and fun little time waster. <br/> <br/>Now, please avoid using the Z key in the future, as it is extremely awkward on non-QWERTY keyboards. Sure, it is reconfigurable, but having something else like space be the default action key in this would've been a better choice. <br/> <br/>The game overall is very well put together. By which I mean that everything (with the exception of music, which is sadly missing) fits together to form a nice whole. A Gesamtkunstwerk, as one might call it. The movement, animation, graphics, and effects all complement each other and are perfectly in theme to form a simple and clearly silly game. <br/> <br/>I'm not entirely sure what else I could say about it. Aside from the music there is scarily little that could still be improved. Perhaps having more clearly laid-out goals --I was not sure why I would be collecting these small pillars? or if that's what I was supposed to be doing-- might be better. Maybe a counter for how many things you've destroyed so far could be neat. <br/> <br/>Definitely one of the best entries I've played here. Very well done.
Aug 24 14:45:00	1h 32m	Road To Hell	A rather classic game. Unfortunately the window size feels quite awkward on a computer. I understand this was developed with mobile platforms in mind, but it would have been very nice to have a wide-view, or in the very least a square-view available. <br/> <br/>The style is probably this game's biggest strength, as it feels well put-together and doesn't clash with anything. All the parts fit and work with each other. <br/> <br/>Music wise it's a rather simple track that unfortunately gets a bit repetitive quickly. The sound effects are fine as they are. <br/> <br/>Regarding the 'rules': That hitting cars that go in your direction increases speed is pretty counter-intuitive. One would expect that any kind of collision would slow you down. Instead something like speed-panels that are obviously marked up with flashing arrows might have been a better choice. <br/> <br/>The tunnels that occasionally pop up also feel unnecessarily punishing. Since I can't see into them, I'm pretty much at the game's mercy about whether I hit a car in it or not.
Aug 24 14:54:00	9m 00s	Coconuts	A neat little entry. Reminds me of the time when I was smaller and played flash games all day. <br/> <br/>At first I wasn't quite sure whether my mouse cursor position or anything else I pressed had any influence on where the coconuts were going. A little arrow indicator that tells you where it will fly might have helped alleviate that question. <br/> <br/>Sound wise this is perfectly fine. The track and effects are nicely goofy and fit into the overall theme of the work. Perhaps the effects could have been made a bit quieter to make the music stick out better. <br/> <br/>The graphics are simple and charming. The coconuts feel a bit out of place as they are textured, whereas everything else is flat. <br/> <br/>I really liked the bounce mechanic of the coconuts as a way to create combos. I think it could've been expanded further upon, where you have special types of coconuts that bounce differently, or fly differently, etc. That would have helped improve the variety of the game and increase its replayability. <br/> <br/>Theme wise I'm sorry to say that I don't see this fitting in very well. While this palm tree is certainly a nuisance to the tourists, I wouldn't exactly call it a monster. Maybe an ape throwing around soft-drinks or something similar would have worked better.
Aug 24 15:20:00	26m 00s	Petit Monstre	I can't run it as I don't have DX10. Too bad!
Aug 24 15:23:00	3m 00s	Grouchou The Ugly	Please create a github release and upload it there. The google drive links require me to log in.
Aug 24 15:46:00	23m 00s	Detonate	A sweet little game. <br/> <br/>Generally though it could still be improved by quite a margin. First and foremost, having some kind of panel as a background to the HUD would improve readability a huge lot. As it is now, it's very hard to make out the text. The ending animation also seems to go on forever. It just left me sitting there for quite a while without me knowing whether anything more was going to happen. <br/> <br/>Controls wise, the game could've been made a lot more fun if we had some sort of jetpack that allowed at least a limited amount of control while in the air. As it is now, you can be at the mercy of gravity for a very long time. Limited air control would also have allowed you to space the planets out more liberally, and would have increased the skill required to play it, rather than the chance of knowing when to jump by trial and error. <br/> <br/>The sounds are ok. Nothing remarkable, but not altogether awful either. <br/> <br/>If you had taken more time than just ten hours a lot of the problems with this game could have been easily fixed and improved upon. Hopefully you'll have more time the next time around!
Aug 24 15:57:00	11m 00s	Eat Sheep & Die	A very neat game. The graphics are nice and consistent, charming all over. The animations and variety in the sheep add on to the effect. <br/> <br/>The music and effects work well together with the overall theme of the game. Perhaps the sound effects could have been a little bit quieter. <br/> <br/>Generally it was a bit too easy for me to gain camo, and soon I was fully camouflaged, but also so slow that I couldn't really get anywhere anymore. A way to shake off your camo would have been nice so that you could continue the game. <br/> <br/>Overall pretty nicely done, though it could use some more variety by --say-- adding more things to do with the camo. Things I can think of off the top of my head include losing it due to wind gusts, having to colour it to get to certain type of sheep, being able to hide in spots to avoid enemies, etc.
Aug 24 16:45:00	48m 00s	UFO	The OS X application won't launch for some reason.
Aug 24 16:48:00	3m 00s	The Peeler	I'm guessing this is one of those joke entries or something.
Aug 24 16:59:00	11m 00s	Monstering Monsters	What to say, what to say. <br/> <br/>The graphics are a nice beginning. It feels rather empty though. I understand the need for a large, open area in order to leave the player room to dodge, but it would have been nice if it had been integrated a bit better into the overall game. Instead of just a flat room, it could have been an entrance hall in a mansion with various things to throw in the corners. Just generally more detail in the background would have helped to make it more visually interesting. <br/> <br/>It's nice to see a game that has some semblance of a story worked into it, that was very refreshing. Reading the various blurbs at the beginning of each stage was nice. <br/> <br/>When typing things out I felt very constrained and unnecessarily stressed out rather than genuinely challenged. I can't move around while typing something or while moving the speech bubble around, so I'm completely exposed and pretty much up to the game's mercy as to whether I'll get hit in the process. A way to move both the parent and the speech bubble at the same time would have helped alleviate that problem. <br/> <br/>Otherwise the gameplay follows a nice difficulty curve, arching upwards and adding new elements to liven it up. Well done on that!
Aug 24 17:14:00	15m 00s	Itty Bitty Bites	Would have been nice to have a display for the keyboard controls as well. <br/> <br/>Otherwise, very cutesy as advertised. The music and effects are very simplistic, but they match the theme well enough. Overall from a presentation standpoint this is very well done. <br/> <br/>The movement unfortunately feels bogged-down and with the tiny playfield it is quite a bit too constrained and awkward to roam around. Sometimes physics things happen while I have no idea what caused them, which can be pretty confusing. <br/> <br/>I could see this becoming a very fun little party game to play with friends if it were made to be just a lot quicker, requiring more swift reactions and movement to compete in thrashing the buildings.
Aug 24 17:31:00	17m 00s	ORDEAL	I can't seem to run it. Once I launch the game it just freezes my screen and I have to terminate it with the ask manager.
Aug 24 17:54:00	23m 00s	Cruelty	Let's see. <br/> <br/>Primarily the problem is that the game doesn't seem to fit the theme very well. It is a neat start for a general management/building game, but other than that there isn't much to say about it. <br/> <br/>When selecting a group of people, they can become wildly out of sync in relation to where they're moving if they're hitting something and get held back because of that. It's very hard to get them to actually gather resources, it seems that it requires a very particular positioning to get the entities to actually 'get' it. When running into the building to get the spears it's all too ease to drop it again by hitting the building again. There's no way to scroll back in the message log, and the small backlog is just too small to be able to make it out properly. The enemy AI doesn't really seem to do anything beyond just hitting the trees and rocks. <br/> <br/>It's nice that you put some effort into getting a day/night cycle and making the map look appealing though. Generally the style of the game is alright, though it could have been streamlined further by making all objects very hard-edged (particularly the rocks and the surrounding terrain) to fit in with the rest of the trees and buildings. <br/> <br/>So yeah. This seems like a base to start out from. With some more time and work this could turn into a nice game.
Aug 24 18:09:00	15m 00s	Tales of the Underworld: Rebellion of the Souls	A nice, little, short platformer. <br/> <br/>The tileset is good and it all fits together to form a great ambiance. Sadly the levels are extremely short and the music starts anew on each stage instead of continuing on, which is pretty awkward. <br/> <br/>Overall there isn't much left to do to make this a full game except for expanding on it further. Adding more, longer stages, and perhaps a few more different block and enemy types to match it all together.
Aug 24 20:02:00	1h 53m	Island Terror	The Data folder is missing from the Windows download, making it impossible to play. The web version worked fortunately enough. <br/> <br/>Generally the game gets repetitive pretty quick. This could be fixed by adding additional elements to the game such as enemies for the monster, such as villagers with spears, change of environment by having villagers build things for you to destroy and so forth. <br/> <br/>Additionally it would be nice if you could attack the villages themselves in order to destroy them completely. That would also provide for some form of a goal, instead of just trying to chase villagers for as long as possible. <br/> <br/>The graphics are fine, though it is a bit strange that the monster and terrain has nicely textured sprites, while the villagers and villages themselves remain mere circles.
Aug 24 20:13:00	11m 00s	p good	Well. It's not much of a game, unless I'm missing something here. I tried handing things over to people but it seems I can't give things away. There's also no other interaction besides looking at people and the various advertisements, and picking up that one penny. <br/> <br/>While the flavor-text and general mood are nice, it just doesn't amount to very much. It could be expanded a lot by adding further interactions with the various objects, as well as what adventure games are known for: combinational puzzles. Perhaps even a dialogue tree to allow us to interact a bit further. <br/> <br/>I'm guessing the implication here is that we're the monster because we don't give anything to all the homeless people? In that case, why not drive the implication further by adding actual dialogue with the people that forces the player into awkward situations and so on? As it is now it doesn't feel like there is any real point to the game as the message is just too vague and there aren't any actual game play elements that could provide a point.
Aug 25 08:15:00	12h 02m	Bar the Door	A very nice, basic idea. <br/> <br/>While the core mechanic of the game is fine, it seems needlessly unforgiving and could definitely be expanded by quite a bit still. For example, it's almost completely up to the game's RNG as to whether you have any chance at barricading properly since the pieces you get are random and you need perfect timing to get it right. <br/> <br/>The game also loses its touch rather quickly. It would be nice if it were mixed up a bit further by introducing pieces with a special effect such as filling a certain hole perfectly or damaging the monster in some fashion. <br/> <br/>It could be further mixed up by, say, dropping multiple pieces on the side continuously and allowing the player to pick which ones to use. This could be made even more interesting by introducing a proper 2D physics engine that makes the pieces interact with each other, thus making things fly around if you try to barricade too hastily.
Aug 25 08:58:00	43m 00s	T.H.E.Y	I'm sorry, I couldn't get myself to finish your game. <br/> <br/>The controls are just incredibly hard to handle and very awkward. I kept turning in a direction I didn't expect and fell off the platform in the introduction part at least three times before I realized what was actually going on. The flames seem to start from the wrong end and I get hit by them even when the particles don't actually reach me yet, which is quite infuriating. <br/> <br/>The graphics are fine otherwise. Simplistic and abstract for the most part that I could see, though the particle effects don't quite fit into that. When the platforms overlap there's gross texture clipping going on. You should look into techniques to avoid that from happening. <br/> <br/>There's a spelling error in your introduction text. <br/> <br/>I don't really understand the story going on. Why are they pigs? Is it metaphorical somehow? If so, I just can't see it; sorry. <br/> <br/>Guessing by the awkwardness of the controls I would wager that this is one of your first games. If so, don't worry. Take a look at existing games and tutorials to see how they handle movement, then work on figuring out how to replicate that into a scheme that makes the player character fun to move around. Getting movement right is a core part of any game like this, and investing time into learning how to do it will definitely help you a lot in your next game. Good luck!