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VDZ

Feedback comments for LD33

Timestamp	Since previous	Game	VDZ's comment
Aug 24 13:02:00		Last Chance For Bernie	I quite like the idea, but with the current implementation unfortunately it doesn't make for a very fun game. Your movement is very limited, which is understandable considering you're a Goomba, but it leads to complete dependence on initial positioning. If you don't get Mario immediately, it's an instant game over as the game gives you no chance to recover. The allowed margin for error feels way too small for how long the game takes to play (you can be playing for a minute [most of which is spent waiting for Mario to arrive] and then lose the entire game due to being half a second late), a situation which is worsened by the fact there is no way to reliably predict where Mario will land other than guesswork. <br/> <br/>Still, the idea was amusing, and the music was great. My best run was 6 points, but the game isn't replayable enough for me to improve that score.
Aug 24 13:39:00	37m 00s	Carewolf	Interesting game, I had fun trying to figure out the perfect set of choices. Towards the end (after repeated playthroughs to figure everything out) it did start to get boring, though, as certain choices lock you out of winning the game entirely and you have to do everything all over again to be able to pick the right choices. After that, I was disappointed not to see a special 'you win' screen for getting 0 kills.
Aug 24 18:03:00	4h 24m	Gelan's Quest	There's not really much I can say other than that it's an excellent story game. I would have preferred clicking to advance the text instead of auto-advancing text, but that's a matter of personal preference.
Aug 24 18:24:00	21m 00s	Celeste	I will have to disagree with the players who liked the movement. It feels very chaotic and hard to control. Although the sense of speed is great, I can't say I ever felt really felt in control; I can tell it roughly where to head towards, but actually moving the way you want seems impossible. <br/> <br/>The dogfighting aspect feels unimpressive and unbalanced. It plays way too fast; by the time you see where to aim the fight is already over. The fact that the moments you're actually close enough to really fight are so short (and you simply can't see your enemy outside of those moments) and the lack of sound effects (pew pew pew, the sound of your ship flying and the sound of the incoming enemy ship would be great to hear) don't do it any favors either. Firing is effective only at close range, and the specific range depends on your movement, giving a huge edge to ships moving backwards (as you're firing long-range against a ship that can only fire short-range). <br/> <br/>I did like the graphical style. In contrast, the music got repetitive rather quickly. <br/> <br/> (I realize there is no sound in space, but surely your ship's instruments would at least give sounds to indicate these things? For example, in World of Warships you obviously can't hear the torpedoes moving towards your ship, but the sonar ping still gives an unrivaled sense of impending dread.)
Aug 24 20:21:00	1h 57m	You are the Monsieur	A solid (though short) platformer. Not very original, and the link with the theme is rather weak, but it does what it tries to do exactly right.
Aug 24 20:49:00	28m 00s	Golbertz Party Sing-A-Long	This game just felt like nonsense to me. While I like surreal stuff, surrealism is when what is depicted defies our expectations of reality or logic; none of the things in this game defy my expectations in an interesting way, they're just sorta random. The same can be said about the audio; though it doesn't fit conventional standards of music, it's not strange in an unsettling way, just random and incomprehensible (with the exception of some elements, most notably the vague voices/whispers, which were genuinely unsettling). <br/> <br/>The gameplay has no challenge and due to the random yet uninteresting nature of the events it also doesn't feel rewarding in an exploratory way. <br/> <br/>I didn't really see the link with the theme here; all of the characters are monsters but it's not even confirmed that the protagonist is a monster, let alone that the protagonist's being a monster would affect anything. The text 'you are a monster' pops up at every bad end, but I have no idea why. Maybe I just don't 'get it'.
Aug 24 21:37:00	48m 00s	SnakeLike	This game is amazing. A relatively simple concept that provides immense strategic depth. Gameplay-wise, you've executed everything perfectly. It's really difficult so I couldn't get past the level with the dogs, but I really need to get back to this game later and see how far I can really get. <br/> <br/>The graphics don't look amazing, but they do a good job at depicting what they are supposed to depict. Only the exact status of your head and body parts is sometimes not entirely clear. Audio is simple sfxr sounds but they fit well and add a lot to the experience. <br/> <br/>Though it's not mindblowing, I like your take on the theme of you becoming the monsters (or perhaps, the monsters becoming you). <br/> <br/>The only big flaw of this game is the lack of instructions, making it take a while to figure out; from what I gather from the comments, not everyone had the patience to figure out how the game really works.
Aug 24 22:59:00	1h 22m	Mangiato	A nice little platformer. It doesn't really do anything special, but it's fun for a while. The controls feel a little floaty, though, which IMO doesn't really fit platformers in which you're mostly dodging things. I consider the comparison to Super Meat Boy to be preposterous as this game is rather easy. <br/> <br/>I liked the graphical style and the audio was simply excellent. I felt the link to the theme was extremely weak, present only in a tacked-on story and being hard to justify even there (they hate me -> therefore I am a monster? That's quite the leap of logic there).
Aug 24 23:54:00	55m 00s	Wumpus World - Hunting The Hunter	Others have pretty much already said what I want to say other than one thing: Minesweeper tells you HOW MANY mines are around a tile, which is a crucial element in deducing where the mines are. Unfortunately, your game doesn't distinguish between one adjacent pit and two adjacent pits, meaning you simply can't navigate from a room adjacent to a pit to a room that hasn't been confirmed safe yet. As a result, you just end up wandering through the level to discover all safe tiles until you smash the hero. <br/> <br/>It is kind of fun, but only for a short while.
Aug 25 14:57:00	15h 03m	The Chocolate Effect	I always find it difficult to judge interactive stories like this. As a game, it's very interesting; the branching is well thought out, and it's interesting to see all the possible outcomes. I have based my ratings on how the game works as a game. <br/> <br/>As a story, I see more flaws. The characters feel generic and boring, and the narrative never made me truly care about them. The writing is sometimes a little too stiff and formulaic, especially in how it describes conversations (see also http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SaidBookism). There's also a bunch of typos, spelling mistakes and similar minor errors that screw up the immersion. Still, the plot was interesting enough to follow all possible paths (I think - it's impossible to get a perfect score on the advanced test, isn't it?), so it's not bad - it just could be better in a lot of ways.
Aug 25 16:26:00	1h 29m	Monster	I felt that the game lacked originality and that its implementation of well-known elements was rather mediocre. <br/> <br/>The game consists almost entirely of avoid-the-guards (in this case monsters) stealth gameplay with no innovations. Common improvements such as showing the line of sight of the enemies, or giving you clear indicators where the checkpoints are, were not present in this game, and being caught felt very underwhelming. The movement of the enemies themselves was also really straightforward, making the stealth sequences rather boring. <br/> <br/>The other major gameplay element is Sokoban puzzles, all of which followed simple predictable Sokoban patterns and were easy to solve if you've ever played a version of (or a game inspired by) Sokoban before. The non-tile-based movement of the boxes actually allowed for alternate solutions making the puzzles even easier. (This element could have been used a new twist on Sokoban, but the game did not utilize this design space.) <br/> <br/>Between the stealth and Sokoban sequences there was a lot of walking, which felt boring as most of the world looked the same, with no interesting landmarks, patterns or variations to be seen. <br/> <br/>The music felt fitting and added to the atmosphere. The monster sounds added a lot from a functional perspective, but didn't feel fitting from an artistic perspective (I wasn't even sure the sound came from the monsters at first). I would have liked to see more audio feedback, for enhanced gameplay or increased impact of certain events, notably for being caught, shoving boxes and picking up flowers/medicine. <br/> <br/>The graphical style felt inconsistent and rough. While the individual graphics look nice in isolation, they just don't fit together. Most notably, the walls look very much like artificial barriers and out of place in an otherwise natural-looking environment, and the boxes look like small crates that were scaled up rather than genuine large crates - this may be due to them being entirely in top-down (or side view) perspective while most of the graphics look like they've viewed from an isometric perspective. <br/> <br/>The message/implementation of the theme felt predictable and forced. Why are monsters that make weird sounds and wander around mindlessly suddenly Jews? If their graphics had been the Jew image from the start I'd have felt it offensive; they sound like monsters and behave like monsters, and they stick in locations where it would make no sense for a human to stick around. (Hitler considered the Jews to not be human, but I hope you can agree with me that having them behaving in a more human-like manner would really help the delivery of the message.) <br/> <br/>Despite all of my criticism, I haven't rated the game a 1 in any category. It's not truly bad in any sense, just very mediocre. You clearly know how to make a game work; now comes the true challenge, which is making games actually fun.
Aug 25 16:51:00	25m 00s	People Can Be Monsters	A note to other users: <br/>ThomeTheMagician's comment above is slander written as revenge for the creator posting the same comment on his entry (which does genuinely use copyrighted materials). Don't pay any attention to this troll, this game is legit.
Aug 27 13:38:00	44h 47m	Eyewall	Although this game has a lot of potential, it has several major issues which detract so much from the experience that in the end, it's more frustrating than fun. <br/> <br/>Visually, I love the art style. Everything looks pretty. However, from a functional perspective, it may be the biggest weakness and the greatest source of frustration. Due to the art style, elements don't stand out as well as they should (most notably the spikes which I sometimes didn't even notice until I was on them, but also things like walls) while other elements that don't affect gameplay stand out too much (such as the rocks on the ground). <br/> <br/>A bigger issue is the fact that hitboxes are extremely unclear - due to how vague the art is, you never know for sure where spikes start and where they end. The same goes for all other objects, especially walls and trees. When those elements damage you and there's no way to heal, you really should be able to tell what exactly their hitboxes are. <br/> <br/>Because you see only a small area on a screen, and because areas don't look very visually distinct, it's hard to tell where you are. I have been going in circles for a while in level 3 and it took some time to even tell I was going in circles. <br/> <br/>The fists feel horribly cheap and unfair. There is no way to tell where they're going to strike - or even the very fact they're present somewhere near you - until they've struck for the first time, and in many case, that first strike deals damage to you. Dying this way feels incredibly cheap and seriously detracts from the fun. <br/> <br/>While I liked the sleep to heal mechanic conceptually, I feel it didn't add anything to the game. (Note: I only made it to level 3, where I kept getting lost trying to find the exit; maybe the later levels make better use of it.) As all dangers are static, there is no risk to sleeping (other than the risk of being hit by a fist, but you also have that risk when moving or standing still). This means that the only thing it does is waste your time (having to wait after moving every couple of steps) and limit how fast/much you can move at once (which can be implemented in a less obnoxious manner). <br/> <br/>Due to unclear hitboxes and the floaty movement physics, as well as how short the jump is, jumping feels very frustrating. It's hard to reliably jump over something, and there's a good chance that after you finish your jump you'll crash into something and lose health anyways. This one could be chalked up to the game just being difficult, but particularly with how unclear the hitboxes are it felt more frustrating than challenging. <br/> <br/>The game has fun elements, but with all of the issues above I don't really feel like giving level 3 another try.
Aug 27 23:51:00	10h 13m	Rude Bear Realms	It's a very cool game, but it's clearly unfinished. This was clearly too big a project for a 72 hour jam. I know the appeal of overambitious concepts better than anyone, but it clearly didn't work out here. Perhaps next time it's better to cut features as you approach the deadline (the merchant doesn't add a lot to the gameplay, the game would function almost identically without the fear mechanic [though it does admittedly add a lot to the atmosphere], guard interaction could be simplified (like just have the raiders fight guards instead of having it as spy action), and so on) and reserve more time for playtesting. <br/> <br/>Things that stood out to me in particular: <br/> <br/>- Game balance is horrible. The only challenge in winning the game is finding out how to get the Lions to the dungeons (didn't understand the exact summoning mechanics at first); they're super-cheap and money is way too easy to come by. <br/> <br/>- The game needs a lot more explanation/some kind of tutorial. I read the whole description, yet it took me quite some time to figure out most elements. This mainly includes minor elements like having descriptions for all the spy options in the menu where you're able to select them. <br/> <br/>- It needs more/clearer info on the current game state and potential consequences of your actions. Mainly, I had no idea what my units where doing exactly - where they're heading, what they're doing there and when they'll arrive/return. When they report back, they also don't even name the village they returned from. (There's also a bug in the spy menu where ETA and Risk don't update as you check/uncheck boxes until you've closed and re-opened the window.) <br/> <br/>The game was a lot of fun during the short time I played it, but its unfinishedness completely kills all replayability.
Aug 28 00:10:00	19m 00s	Your Friendly Neighborhood Monster	The story was interesting (the writing style appealed to me despite the large amount of typos and other errors), but it was blatantly unfinished. As is, you can barely call it a story because we pretty much only get the protagonist introduction and then it ends already. <br/> <br/>I liked the art. The protagonist's speech sound was too high-pitched and sharp and was unpleasant to listen to; the rest of the sound was okay. The take on the theme is rather straightforward, but at least a proper straightforward interpretation is better than a failed twist on the theme.
Aug 28 01:02:00	52m 00s	Lil' Drake	Excellent game. Really enjoyed it and hope you make more levels and/or add sound/music. <br/> <br/>I don't really have anything to say other than what has been said plenty of times before, other than two tiny remarks about the Android version: <br/>- The app name is 'LD33'. Might want to fix that. It also uses the default Unity icon. <br/>- On slower devices (like my phone), the blue tiles take a long time to disappear (talking about sometimes like 20 seconds here) due to them moving instead of just disappearing. This strongly affects gameplay on slower devices.
Sep 12 14:34:00	373h 32m	Hitogochi	Is it even possible to get a different good ending than the romance ending? I tried several times but couldn't get any other good ending. <br/> <br/>Anyways, I liked the game enough to try multiple times before giving up on finding different endings. It's fun trying the different options and seeing what results they bring. <br/> <br/>The art is obviously the strongest point of the game. It's very charming and works very well in the game. The only minor flaw I could find was that Nadine's death sprite didn't really have much of an impact. <br/> <br/>I disagree with most commenters on the audio. While the background tune is nice, it gets repetitive over time. More importantly, there are countless missed opportunities where the game could be enhanced with sound. Most notably, Nadine's death is soundless with the cutesy tune still playing in the background. Even just muting the sound would have made it much more dramatic, but ideally you'd want a short dramatic BGM and sound effect. Sound could also provide tons of feedback (for example to indicate Nadine's mood changes) or help immersion (eating sounds while eating, etc). The audio's not terrible, but it could have been so much better.
Sep 12 16:25:00	1h 51m	I am Death and Fire	I will be back as a Harbinger of Death and Fire! (High score: 3189 souls devoured) <br/> <br/>Excellent game. Everything about this game is done well; the gameplay provides an excellent high score challenge with plenty of variety, and the graphics and audio work together to truly make you feel like a dragon bringing about death and destruction. <br/> <br/>Because this game is good enough to replay over and over again, two balance flaws stood out to me, though: <br/>- Balloons are too difficult to destroy. They dominate the airspace, and with how hard they are to destroy it is better strategically to remain close to the ground. It would add a lot of depth if coming up to destroy them would be a viable (hell, required for a good score) tactic. <br/>- Wizards aren't effective enough. You can just fly through their barrier, and immediately start breathing fire again once you're out of the barrier. Your breath regenerates fast enough that by breathing in short bursts, you can still deal more than enough damage consistently even if your breath is reset to 0. It might be better if wizards stop or slow your breath regeneration in addition to slowing it (or if breathing in short bursts is nerfed entirely). <br/>Due to these two issues, staying close to the ground and breathing in short bursts (using continuous breath against towers) seems to be easily the dominant strategy for getting high scores, which doesn't feel like the right way to play a dragon. <br/> <br/>But that's nitpicking. For an LD game, this is beyond excellent.