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Feedback comments for LD34
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Gjarble's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 18 17:52:00 | Snakedate | The game is not loading for me on Windows 7. I downloaded and ran the DirectX Updater as recommended, already had Visual C++ 2010 installed, and restarted the computer; still nothing. I can see the Snakedate.exe process running in Task Manager- its memory usage is staying fixed at 116 K. | |
| Dec 27 01:41:00 | 199h 49m | Broken World | Very funny. I do wish there was more variety in the music, but what you have is nice (it took me a while to realize how short the loop was). By the way, there is a bug with the music, at least on the OS/X version. Once you reach the title screen after beating the game, a second instance of the music starts, so you hear it playing over itself. |
| Dec 27 02:41:00 | 1h 00m | Ball Crusher From Neptune | Nice! I like the minimalist feel, and I can definitely see this becoming addictive. I also like how both themes are mechanically important. And yes, the music is great, too. <br/> <br/>I do have one quibble with the controls. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but when I tap one direction then quickly tap the other, the ball dashes. This is not expected behavior for me- I'd rather the ball dash only when I tap the same direction twice, rather than risk accidentally dashing when I change my mind about which direction I want to move. <br/> <br/>It would also be nice to have some visual and sound effects to reinforce events like bouncing off the light beam, the appearance of a new light beam, and crashing into the planet (in other words, to be more "juicy", if you're familiar with that as a game dev term). Effects like that can subtly make these events more satisfying to the player. But overall, great job, especially considering you did this in just 10 hours. |
| Dec 27 03:00:00 | 19m 00s | Cideogen | I sympathize with your time issues- time management is always the hardest part of a game jam for me. <br/> <br/>The game is cute (the sound effects in particular are adorable), but the design could use some refining. In particular, I found that the sword soon grew so long that I was killing enemies offscreen simply by repeatedly swinging whenever I entered a new area. |
| Dec 27 03:43:00 | 43m 00s | Hey, My Name is Joe! | The visuals are quite cute. I like the idea of using sabotage as a difficulty modifier. I do wish the Sticky Keys one was explained a bit more (I get the reference, but not everyone will, and I'm not sure exactly how Sticky Keys works, because I always turn it off after I get that alert). <br/> <br/>The gameplay does get monotonous after a while, but the game is short enough that I felt motivated to keep going the whole way through (noticing how far the date was from the end of the month helped). <br/> <br/>At first I thought the protagonist's job was to simply sort the buttons by color, but based on one of the mustachioed dude's comments, I guess he's supposed to be eliminating defects from the production line? I just realized that the "'A' OK!" and "Recycle" signs are supposed to indicate that as well. Those labels might be a bit clearer if they were directly underneath their respective buttons. I do also wish the defective buttons were defective in a way other than being a different color- being cracked, having a missing hole, or stuff like that. Implementing defects that way also allows to to increase the difficulty be making the defects more subtle as you go on. |
| Dec 27 20:16:00 | 16h 33m | Bryan | Yeah, time management is always the hard part for me too. Trust me, it'll get better with practice. <br/> <br/>I like the art style, though I would like to point out that the player character appears to be drawn in a different perspective from that of the enemies and environments. If we saw a bit of the front of the character, like we do for the enemies, it'd look a bit more natural. I do understand that that can be harder to animate, though. |
| Dec 27 21:04:00 | 48m 00s | S(p)eed | Very good! The graphics are beautiful, the controls handle well, the music suits the mood perfectly, and the whole affair feels very polished. At first, I thought the plant multiplying into several stalks was going to make the game too easy (as it seems like, whenever you crash, there'll always be one surviving stalk), but I found that when the area of stalks you're concentrating on crashes, you have to quickly shift focus to another area of stalks, which makes for an interesting challenge. <br/> <br/>The one thing that feels missing is a sense of progression. In other words, it seems like the game is supposed to be about seeing how far you can go, but there's little indication of how far the player has come, nor any particular reward for getting further and further (at least, as far as I got- I got a few checkpoints in before it got too difficult, generated a new level, and found the difficulty about the same). As such, my only motivation to keep going (aside from the general quality of the game) was the implication in the description on this page that there was eventually a surface to be reached (though I have no idea how close I ever got to it). <br/> <br/>I see a couple of other people suggested including a score counter- that's one way to do it, though I think they're assuming the game is endless. Assuming I'm right that the game has an end point (reaching the surface), then a similar method of tracking the player's progress could be a slider that slowly moves up as the player gets closer to the surface. Either method would be an indicator of how well the player is doing that would motivate them to keep going. However, I think the game's lack of GUI elements is something worth holding on to (it really enhances the mood), and that you could achieve this effect a bit more subtly. Perhaps the cave should change appearance as you get closer to the surface- more sunlight gets through, moss starts to appear, that sort of thing. Maybe you could also take advantage of the parallax effect by putting large, distant objects in the background as landmarks for the player to slowly move past, such as more cave openings, underwater lakes, or even ancient underground temples and stuff. <br/> <br/> <br/>Also, a far more minor note: the instructions should mention that Esc is the pause button- I had to do a little hunting for it (I tried Enter and Space first). <br/> <br/>At any rate, I really enjoyed this. Good work! |
| Dec 27 21:52:00 | 48m 00s | Macosa and the Cave by: Stefen Menzel/Andrew Herbst | I really like how many different ways you demonstrate that the growth mechanic can be used to advance through a level- you definitely prove that this simple idea has enough flexibility to extend to a lot of different level designs. I must admit that I'm not sure why the gun makes the pig creatures explode instead of grow, though. <br/> <br/>You're right that the controls are the biggest issue- the post-jam update is definitely a step in the right direction, though I'd still like to see improvements in collision, particularly with the mushrooms and inclined surfaces in general (so you can walk up them instead of having to jump around them). <br/> <br/>One other thing: when going backwards through the entrance of a room (for example, exiting out the left side of the second room to go back into the first room), the player character appears at the beginning of the previous room instead of the end. This led me to accidentally restarting a few rooms because I backed up too much in the next room (for example, when I reached the final room with all those enemies, I backed away, accidentally going past the entrance, and thus had to do the previous room with the vertical corridors all over again). |
| Jan 1 22:04:00 | 120h 12m | Organ-izer | Great stuff! It's a wonderful take on both themes, with a really cute aesthetic and a decent amount of polish. The gameplay is easy to learn but difficult to master, which is impressive for a game that doesn't rely on familiar genre conventions. You scoped well, and it shows. <br/> <br/>I was a bit thrown off by how the controls were demonstrated before the start of the game. Since nutrient people were already spawning during the tutorial, I thought I was already required to guide them to the right body parts, and wasn't sure how to do that with large parts of my view obscured. I like how the nutrients spawn during the title screen, but I'd recommend that you temporarily turn them off during the tutorial. <br/> <br/>Also, since the bone-bridge is controlled entirely by the physics engine, it made it a bit difficult to be as precise in my movements as it felt like the game demanded of me. For example, if I have a yellow nutrient quickly followed by a red nutrient, I'd need to raise the bridge as quickly as possible after the yellow nutrient gets off, but I had trouble doing that without accidentally lifting up the yellow one or letting the red one fall before it reaches the top platform. Then again, I reached age 72 on my first try, and since that's a reasonable human lifespan, I guess the game's telling me I did alright, and the game's not too hard. I feel like it's important for the player to feel like each failure is their fault, though (it helps them feel more in control), so maybe it would be better if the bridge were easier to control, but the game was more punishing of individual failures. Then again, the way the nutrients spawn, the player is forced to sacrifice some of them at times, so maybe the higher punishment rate would just make things more frustrating. I dunno... as I can attest from my entry (which you've already played), difficulty balance is *hard* and requires a lot more playtesting with other people than a game jam typically allows. <br/> <br/>By the way: while you are allowed to make bug fixes during the rating period, I think balance tweaks are technically not allowed unless they're for a separate "post-jam version". I'm not going to take any points off my rating for that, but I figure you should know for future reference. |
| Jan 1 23:46:00 | 1h 42m | Melissa - A Game of Choice | Wow. This is deeply disturbing and thought-provoking. You truly succeeded in creating an impactful work of art. I notice you wisely opted out of the "Fun" and "Humor" categories, though I'm very curious how people would choose to rate it there- and what that would say about the people in question. <br/> <br/>After pressing each button to find out what they did, I tried advancing through the game by pressing only Z, to avoid hitting the poor guy anymore. My heart sank as I found out it only looped the same animation, and that pressing X was necessary to progress. After that, I quickly figured out that the true choice was whether or not to play. <br/> <br/>I immediately started rationalizing away my decision to continue- I had made it a personal goal today to rate back everyone who left a comment on my entry, and I can't fairly rate an entry if I quit it 10 seconds in, so dammit, I HAD to finish, whether I liked it or not. And indeed, after every single punch, I was hoping it'd be the last, staring at the bar at the bottom of the screen to try and figure out how close I was to the end. <br/> <br/>But then again, what does it say about me that I prioritized that personal goal over not subjecting myself to this imagery? What about the fact that I actually felt a wave of relief when the guy fell to the floor- the moment that in real life would likely be the worst part of all? Because I made it to the end, does that mean the artists are calling me a bad person? <br/> <br/>That last question is what always bugs me about works of art that examine the people viewing them (not just games, I've seen films and short stories that take this kind of approach too). It can feel like the artist is leading you to a certain conclusion, then judging you for reaching that conclusion. My instinct in these situation is to get bitter- to argue against the message, to call its reasoning unfair, to proclaim myself the exception to the rule- but perhaps I'm just continuing my rationalizing after it's all over. Perhaps it is as simple as saying I did a bad thing. Maybe the lesson I should take from this game is to accept the way I played as a mistake, instead of taking it an affront to my character from which I cannot redeem myself. <br/> <br/>Or perhaps I'm assuming too black-and-white an intent on your behalf. Perhaps the goal is not to pass judgment, but simply to get the player to question something to which they would ordinarily give no thought at all. And no matter how one approaches this game, I bet they'll be leaving with questions. That's what makes this game so powerful. |
| Jan 2 00:37:00 | 51m 00s | Curse of the Slime Queen | This a very unique kind of gameplay, both in controls and overall concept- I like it! I especially like the design of the last level, and how it forces you to figure out how to move to prevent the red from reaching the green before you get back to it. <br/> <br/>At first, it wasn't quite clear to me how exactly the game worked (particularly how I was supposed to become a large gold slime), but I understood eventually: getting to the goal makes the player-controlled slime gold, then it shoots out gold things that infect other green pieces, until you infect enough pieces to win. I was confused why, at some points, the gold and red pieces didn't seem to infect green pieces, but then I reread the "Known Issues" section and realized it was just a bug. <br/> <br/>It is kind of hard to tell what direction the player-controlled slime is facing, since the indicator has so much rotational symmetry. |
| Jan 4 02:34:00 | 49h 57m | Feed Me! | Interesting use of the two-button controls. I like the control scheme you chose, though I was a bit thrown off by how long you have to hold down a key before the boat moves substantially. <br/> <br/>The pattern matching mechanic to catch a fish was cool too, though a bit too forgiving to be a challenging obstacle. On the other hand, I agree that the fish were very difficult to find. Several times, I accidentally rowed into a fish without seeing the ripples in the water, and there where many long periods where I did not see a fish at all (usually ending with my fish starving). <br/> <br/>I really like the story behind the game, and the gameplay concept you've created. With some polish, I could see this being really fun. |