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Feedback comments for LD34
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | pkenney's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 14 05:11:00 | Roto | Cool use of inertia and gravity mechanics! That last level was crazy, I had these wild swings all around the level, feeling barely out of control and screwed by my mistakes 4 seconds before. <br/> <br/>I did have a technical issue with the sound. It was playing some kind of loud static and I had to mute it. I won't vote on audio since I know you did have sound effects but I didn't get to play with them. | |
| Dec 14 05:27:00 | 16m 00s | AirC.A.T | Wow a lot of control for just two buttons, and in a really original way. Nice work on the design! <br/> <br/>The art is also amazing, and changing from day to nice is a really nice touch. Sound was also good. <br/> <br/>This a great all-rounder compo entry! |
| Dec 14 05:41:00 | 14m 00s | MutiVeg Labs | Love the treatment of the double theme and the fun artwork, great job! Favorite one was hot mess but they all cracked me up. |
| Dec 14 05:53:00 | 12m 00s | ScrapFighter | These are some cool mechanics, I haven't seen something really like it before. It took me a little while to figure out, but then I got it. The instructions played only one time and I was looking at another window, so maybe that was my own fault! <br/> <br/>Fights were fun, I wish it was a little easier to force a battle, I had to track the guy down a lot. |
| Dec 14 16:33:00 | 10h 40m | Circle Defender | Cool idea, and the game looks and sounds really nice! Love the funky bass. <br/> <br/>It was interesting how I didn't just have to touch the blocks, but actually smack them hard enough to drive them off course. This made the game more unique, and the slow movement of the ball made for some OH NO moments where I was already too late but watching the disaster unfold. <br/> <br/>I think there's one design choice that hurts the experience though, so don't take this badly but I want to offer the suggestion. <br/> <br/>It needs a faster retry loop. <br/> <br/>It has three delays every time you die and want to play again: <br/> <br/>A delay before the death actually registers. <br/>A delay while you watch the score screen. <br/>A delay going back to the main title screen, which was made worse by the fact that I had some glitchy issues with the two-button combo keypress registering to start the game. Sometimes it was immediate, other times I had to jam the keys repeatedly for a few seconds first. <br/> <br/>I would prefer the game to instantly kill me and show my score with a single-key instant restart. I would have played a lot longer if it was that way. <br/> <br/>The problem with this kind of slowness in the retry loop is that it most punishes a brand new player, who is eager to experiment but likely to die quickly. The developer, who is expert enough for a long gametime, doesn't feel the pain. <br/> <br/>That's just a small thing though, nice compo entry! |
| Dec 14 16:41:00 | 8m 00s | Petal Hill | Cool combo-theme game! The soundscape is really nice, very relaxing. <br/> <br/>I wished there was a "play again" option at the end, I had to re-launch the game a few times to experiment around. <br/> <br/>I love that the game offered no explicit instructions and yet was easy to figure out. |
| Dec 14 16:50:00 | 9m 00s | Stavros the DAVROS | Ha, a Davros costume is pretty ambitious, nice work there Stavros. <br/> <br/>This game is nuts. Nice soundtrack and totally whacky controls were fun to experiment with. I made it down the stairs but wow it wasn't easy. <br/> <br/>One small note, it says press any key to retry but I think only spacebar worked for me. |
| Dec 14 17:02:00 | 12m 00s | Docker life simulator 2015 | Wow this was really fun, it was just the right amount of crazy. Nice work! <br/> <br/>The instant retry was key here, I played a bunch of times. <br/> <br/>The comments from the sky were a nice touch. I kind of wished I could see the containers plummet into the sea and that it would be hilarious, but I understand why the screen has to scroll that part down so I have room to play. <br/> <br/>Also, good job making the song for a compo! |
| Dec 14 17:36:00 | 34m 00s | Xtreme Crop Duster Simulator '82 | Right on! This is a nice all-rounder compo entry. The gameplay, graphics, and sound are all strong. <br/> <br/>I love the stall mechanic that creates this tension between wanting to fly slow to see what's coming, vs not having enough airspeed to quickly climb out of the way of trouble. <br/> <br/>The classic graphics would be good on their own but the TV effect pushes it over the top and really capitalizes. <br/> <br/>It's difficult, so good thing you had the quick retry and continues. I wouldn't have played nearly as long if it was full GAME OVER every time. <br/> <br/>My brain can't handle inverted flight controls in a non-first-person POV, so I was really hurting for the lack of a flip option. Until I realized I *did* have a flip option and turned my keyboard upside down to play. Of course, then I hit down instead of up and restarted instead of continuing, but only once or twice. ;) <br/> <br/>Nice job and congrats on making it in for the compo. I remember playing your old trench warfare game, this one is a nice step forward because it's fully realized. |
| Dec 14 18:04:00 | 28m 00s | BaseExt | Wow this is really good for that short time! <br/> <br/>I screwed myself my first few games figuring it out, for example by not building the money-generator. But I enjoyed the feeling of having to figure it out, and once I got on a roll I was having a good time. <br/> <br/>The compo version, I had some problem with the bullets, they seemed to just kind of disappear sometimes when I thought they should kill the enemy. <br/> <br/>I liked it enough that I ran the post-comp build, which was a big improvement. I see now that the enemies sometimes take more than one hit, and that was probably why the bullets "disappeared" in the first game. <br/> <br/>Very nice art style and I appreciated experimenting. <br/> <br/>My final game I thought okay now I'm gonna win this, I have a nice base established. But there is a nice design tradeoff, if you expand you need more guns but then each click costs you more. So my fatal mistake was thinking I had a good amount of ammo stockpiled and building too many guns without the supporting ammo factories. <br/> <br/>Also the art was nicely done. |
| Dec 14 18:14:00 | 10m 00s | Stardust | Cool mechanics and a nice chill vibe. Not sure I've seen a game's instructions warn "BE GENTLE" before, but I liked the careful touch required. Soundtrack really added to the feel. <br/> <br/>Nice work. My best star was Grade B. |
| Dec 14 18:29:00 | 15m 00s | Eldritch Trance | Cool, I don't usually go for rhythm games but the Lovecraft theme and graphics sucked me in. The creepy vibe is there, with the arcane symbols, the slowly growing monster/portal approaching in space, and the music. <br/> <br/>Also you had me restart on the current monster in a failure rather than crushing my soul by sending me back to the start of the game, which would have been a ragequit moment. <br/> <br/>At first I was sad that I had to focus on the symbols instead of watching the growing monster, but eventually I learned to unfocus my gaze and accept both into my mind simultaneously. <br/> <br/>Well done! |
| Dec 14 18:41:00 | 12m 00s | Speed | Game was fun, and it was clear how to play and what to do. <br/> <br/>My best score was 26,243, which is staying alive quite some time. Unfortunately the winning strategy, at least the one that worked for me, was to get fuel and then spend it driving in circles by holding down the arrow key. This was the only time I felt safe, and I broke out of that to go find fuel only. <br/> <br/>When I didn't do that, I did have fun screaming around the city at 80mph in a twitchy bus! <br/> <br/>I would recommend that this game is so fast paced that the restart should skip going back to the title screen and just INSTANTLY replay, although it's a tiny thing. <br/> <br/>Nice work for your first LD compo and on such a short time budget. <br/> <br/>If I were to work on this some more I would experiment with two changes. First some camera work. I might zoom out at higher speed, and I would definitely at least try offsetting the center so the player sees more of what's ahead than behind. Second I would experiment with a ramp-up time on the responsiveness of the steering control. So like it starts 20% as responsive, say, and then over the course of 250ms it ramps from 20 to 100% responsiveness. This can be a good compromise where it feels fast but takes the edge off the twitchiness. |
| Dec 14 19:27:00 | 46m 00s | Laser Jump FTW | YES!! TOTAL VICTORY!! <br/> <br/>--- <br/> <br/>pkenney's tips for beating Laser Jump FTW, to be read only after you've played a bit already: <br/> <br/>Tip 1: The platform is not your friend. It is your own weakness. Tough up and get used to owning in the sky because otherwise you are doomed. <br/> <br/>Tip 2: Immediately and always right click every time you play to zoom out. You need the info. <br/> <br/>Tip 3: Remember those thousands of hours you logged playing Tribes video games where you fly around with a jetpack and shoot stuff? <br/> <br/>Tip 4: Notice the linear non-accelerating nature of your falling. Notice the falloff in horizontal momentum. Relax! These gentle physics mean you don't need to stay in front of ever-escalating falling speeds nor do you have to counter-act any sideways motion you give yourself. You have more time to think than you might think. <br/> <br/>Tip 5: It is critical that you actually aim at stuff WHILE shooting to control your movement. Sometimes you panic shoot to kill and don't control movement. And then you panic shoot to recover your position and don't kill stuff. And then you lose. The way to victory is multi-purpose shooting. As it should be. <br/> <br/>Tip 6: Get up near the ceiling but not too close. Learn the rate at which you can fire without hitting the boundary. What is the steady state? Get the feel for shooting at a 45 angle, which allows you to move comfortably left/right while maintaining a relatively stable height and lets you shoot toward enemies. <br/> <br/>Tip 6.5: Now that you are near the top and a sky warrior, let the enemies amass into a single blob and kite them left and right. Pass over the horde, carefully aim-steer-shooting to kill the top enemies while controlling your height and passing sideways over them. GOT IT? As long as you have your basics down you should only have real trouble from newly spawning enemies. <br/> <br/>Tip 7: OH MY GOD THEY CHANGED ALL THE PHYSICS AND THE RULES EXACTLY COUNTER TO MY STRATEGY!$?? <br/> <br/>Tip 8: OK I'm'a leave this to you to figure out, but it can be done. I beat both modes. (It does not include standing on the platform, even though you'll want to all over again.) <br/> <br/>Only change I would make is to add time survived to post-match screen. I agree w/ tutorial after death and not before, rather strongly in fact, but I also would like to see my score there. <br/> <br/>The only other friction point was that early on while I was still acclimating I was surprised that I'd hit the ceiling when I thought I had it under control. My eyes weren't on my head, they were on my target, so it was just a feel thing. I kind of wished there was like a warning track like the baseball guys have that would maybe play some subtle yet not annoying audio cue that impact was imminent but while I still had time to react. I guess that this risks becoming super-repetitive and thus annoying, though. <br/> <br/>Fantastic all-around package here, congrats to you and your team. <br/> <br/>And sorry about your job, Rich. |
| Dec 14 19:51:00 | 24m 00s | Slash to Victory | Got to the final boss but didn't quite have the chops to take him down. Interesting upgrade system! <br/> <br/>There's a lot here to this entry, with nice art, sound effects, music, and game mechanics w/ upgrades. Well done getting all that done! <br/> <br/>The only criticisms I have are that I don't see a connection to the themes, and I felt like maybe the double-jump let me just run past a lot of the dangers and shouldn't be an option. <br/> <br/>(Note: I see another commenter saying the art was taken from Rogue Legacy, but a google image search shows that game has different art so I am voting assuming he's incorrect.) |
| Dec 14 20:07:00 | 16m 00s | 33 grams | Wonderful, clean simplicity. The art and sound work well together to really nail the mood, and the relaxed pace of the gameplay adds to it. I had to deliberately walk my moths into the spike thing just to hear the soundscape's reaction. <br/> <br/>It was such a nice environment that I felt bad having it running in a window on my computer and wanted to go into full screen. <br/> <br/>Great job. |
| Dec 14 20:17:00 | 10m 00s | Circle Strafe | Intense! This thing punches you straight in the face and doesn't relent. <br/> <br/>There are a number of strong game design and aesthetic choices here. I love the lack of any instructions, I love the instant restart with zero user action, I love that your previous score is durably shown large for you to see even while playing the next time. <br/> <br/>My top score was 28.93 seconds. <br/> <br/>This is a very tight package and I approve! If I could change anything it would be to apply a ramp-up to the responsiveness of the movement keys. The speed is correct but it feels like it instantly starts at max speed, so the controls are twitchy, and unfortunately this was a primary aspect of the challenge. <br/> <br/>The game wants to be more smooth, I think. If the speed of the movement ramped from 10% to Max over the course of 200ms or so I think it would take the edge off the jerkiness of tiny taps and help. <br/> <br/>Awesome entry, though. The graphics and sound really added to the feel. |
| Dec 14 20:23:00 | 6m 00s | Ep | Cool little game - I like the idea that your own attack can kill you if you fall behind too much! Also has a nice simple graphical style that works. |
| Dec 14 20:33:00 | 10m 00s | The Cube of Zanigriv | The art style is a highlight here, I love the shadows with monsters lurking at the edge and it works with the dark theme of a strange cube absorbing souls. <br/> <br/>I had a hard time really getting the mechanics down. I would charge, and absorb. And that would go okay. But then it wouldn't, and something different would happen, and it would be game over. I absorbed 45 souls, and it seemed like I was making progress around the circle underlying the cube... but I don't really understand even after playing and dying several times. |
| Dec 14 20:44:00 | 11m 00s | Dwarf's Rage | I got 5558. <br/> <br/>I am embarrassed to admit the first five or so games I played completely backwards, dodging the goblins and smashing open crates (since that's the usual way to go!) and felt reassured that my character was not getting angry. <br/> <br/>After suddenly dying a few times I started to realize I had it all backwards, and that crates are bad, goblin impacts good, and rage desirable! <br/> <br/>Also, I learned that goblins sound kind of like cats. <br/> <br/>Oh, and the song! Almost forgot to say that it's awesome you recorded a live song on acoustic guitar, nice work. |
| Dec 14 20:56:00 | 12m 00s | FEED ME! | I like this. I've experimented with this kind of left/right directional control before, and what to do about hitting the ground is a design challenge. You flipped that around and used it as an asset - I like how there's no control in the above-ground mode. <br/> <br/>I think where this game could use a little tuning is in the feedback to the player. I was a bit confused, is it bad to hit the enemies with my body instead of my mouth, or is that just as good? I didn't notice a difference but it seemed weird to wrap them up rather than eat them. It also created the problem that I couldn't really always see myself score. <br/> <br/>So some great mechanics but the way they come together as a game isn't quite tight. <br/> <br/>Also, I found a bug. If you go way down to the bottom of the earth, most of the time your face will bounce off the bottom and you're good. However if you fiddle around down there and try to go in a straight line along the bottom, it is possible to get the snake stuck where his head is vibrating wildly and you can no longer steer and have to quit the game. Did it once by accident but then was able to rep. |
| Dec 14 21:20:00 | 24m 00s | There's No Going Back | Nice work, I played through the entire game! Art style is strong, the music is good, and the puzzle platformer mechanics are new and interesting. Great all-around compo entry that hits all the aspects! <br/> <br/>If I were to tweak anything, I guess I thought level 3 had a touch too much repetition, and in a few places there were blind jumps required that were okay but other times it was spikesrestartomg what just happened? <br/> <br/>Not that I'd remove the instant restart of course - that's always a key aspect in LD games! |
| Dec 15 00:59:00 | 3h 39m | Bouncing Knight | Wow this game is pretty awesome, I was having a lot of fun playing, but every time I die I have to restart all the way from the beginning! :( <br/> <br/>Good implementation of a fun mechanic, with nice enemy design and art style. If I could have seen new content by restarting from the level instead of going all the way back to the story I would definitely have played a lot more. <br/> <br/>It's nice work though, and I understanding wanting people to face the challenge of beating the whole thing in one go. |
| Dec 15 01:20:00 | 21m 00s | This Little Piggy | Cute game, and a cool idea to have it so things get harder as you get larger. At first I was sad the pig didn't gradually enlarge, but I liked that you had different sprites for the larger sizes rather than just scaling the pig. <br/> <br/>I played to about 1600 pounds to see if I could balloon so large I'd eclipse the kitchen and not be able to avoid the chefs, but I think I was at max size. One fine pig. <br/> <br/>I did notice a weird thing with the animations. If I walk into a wall and press both directions so I'm walking along it and trying to go diagonally into it, then the pig's animation frames stop cycling and it kind of slides along. I discovered this while checking out th-- well, never mind. |
| Dec 15 02:28:00 | 1h 08m | Wellspring Wanderer | I remember your previous game, Derelict... you've got a great way of creating these moods that make want to dig into the slower-paced games with nice slow tension. <br/> <br/>Although I never got off the Derelict (so close!) in this one I got through a bunch of worlds, maybe 6 or 7. Although I started the game terrible and crashed pod after pod, by the end I was getting pretty good. I think I got through one world without losing a single pod, and I definitely got at least four in a row. <br/> <br/>World two was the hump for me, I almost didn't get past it. <br/> <br/>The style of the art, sound, and even the text really work together with the mechanics here, it's great design. <br/> <br/>I feel all my crashes were fair in terms of physics, I never felt cheated that way, or at least not once I knew how it worked. One thing that kept getting me about the controls was the turning... once you start turning you can pretty easily stop with a tap of the opposite direction. But I think I would have preferred to have it stop on button release instead, so that no keypress expresses a command to stop rotating. I feel like the handling would be more intuitive that way, but I can't be sure. <br/> <br/>The other thing I would say is early on while I was still crashing a TON, I felt frustrated the retry didn't start faster once I was past the special text ones. Once I was a good pilot it didn't matter as much, and in a way it may have forced me to slow down and relax so maybe you did that on purpose! <br/> <br/>Great compo entry across the board. |
| Dec 15 02:48:00 | 20m 00s | GrowSeedPinball | Nice frantic game, I made it to the top and shot it into the bonus hole a few times. The weird shape of the ball made this play different and the jarring screenshake and sharp sound effects all kind of worked together as a style. <br/> <br/>Nice work. |
| Dec 15 04:35:00 | 1h 47m | Seedball | Cool little puzzle game, very original! Nice progression of difficulty that let me learn the rules without much instruction. |
| Dec 15 04:52:00 | 17m 00s | Midnight Rendezvous | I managed only four babies. Challenging to look at all the details on a timer! |
| Dec 15 05:18:00 | 26m 00s | The Village | I liked the look of this game, the textured ground was striking and the shapes were nice. I got four people but couldn't see how to get more. I didn't recall getting gold, but first the banker didn't like, then he said something about having coins, yet didn't follow me back to town like the others. So I wandered a while with the farmer feeling tied down and the banker not talking at all. <br/> <br/>Cool concept but I think the slow calm movement speed eventually made it too ponderous to keep searching yet again. <br/> <br/>Nice work though, it looks good and the camera's mechanics are interesting. |
| Dec 15 05:27:00 | 9m 00s | McBitey | This was pretty tough, but it was fun to experiment around and see how everything worked, nice job! |
| Dec 16 03:53:00 | 22h 26m | Block Buster | It was a cool feeling to be falling endlessly down that tunnel- I got to 1570 before a run of bad moves got me killed. Nice touch making the square get smaller to indicate health. Good job! |
| Dec 16 04:47:00 | 54m 00s | Pandora | This was a fun game and a I played a bunch, but I eventually decided I had a beef with the control scheme. <br/> <br/>Can I share my thoughts on the problem/solution? <br/> <br/>In my opinion, too much of my thought process while playing was around micromanaging the input steps to change guns: see enemy, then right click, text pops up, move exactly to target gun, then left click. That's two clicks, a precise mouse point, and some text. I even started early right clicking and just watching for enemies with the text still showing. <br/> <br/>I think you could smooth out the controls with a couple of small changes, and if you did you could then justify throwing even harder challenges at the player. <br/> <br/>Here are the hypothetical changes I was thinking of: <br/> <br/>1. Enlarge the selection radius on the gun enormously. Like you can click anywhere on the screen and it will select the nearest gun. <br/> <br/>2. Make right click immediately select. No two clicks, no text. <br/> <br/>In other words, at any time I can right click anywhere and my selection will immediately move to the nearest gun. <br/> <br/>So now I can flip between guns extremely rapidly. When I see a new monster, I navigate the mouse there, right click as I approach to change guns, and left click as the mouse arrives to start shooting. So the mouse moves in a straight line to the target, there is only one click to change, and then I can fire. <br/> <br/>Once the player can juggle guns much more quickly, you can start sending more multi-pronged attacks. You could even try to change the enemies so the player wants/needs to switch even during a firefight. Currently once I had aim on a target I always shot it to death. But can you introduce a design element where it becomes worth it to sometimes switch away from a big fight to put two bullets into a monster coming at another gun, then cut back to the main battle? That would be a cool feeling I think. <br/> <br/>There's definitely some physical and mental challenge aspect to your current controls that is lacking in what I propose, but I'm a strong believer in making the controls as smoothly powerful as possible and then balancing in-game challenges around that. <br/> <br/>Anyway that's a long ramble but hope you found it interesting. <br/> <br/>Nice entry, looks and sounds great, and obviously the design got me thinking. ;) |
| Dec 16 05:53:00 | 1h 06m | Chompatron Saves The World | Hahaha was that a backpack jar filling with blood? <br/> <br/>That was some crazy action, nice work. Sound effects and splatter were great. |
| Dec 17 02:49:00 | 20h 56m | Cant Stop Moving | Nice implementation skills with the file upload feature, the scores and the chat! I didn't notice the score ticking up at the bottom the first time I played so that did confuse me, but then I played again. |
| Dec 17 03:02:00 | 13m 00s | Zen Jen | Didn't manage to get to the ending but I did meditate several times and I felt myself get better! The atmospheric soundscape and graphics were a real strong point, they made a compelling mood. <br/> <br/>Regarding the controls I had some trouble understanding when I could quickly re-press to expand the square again, and when I would have a cooldown. So I wasn't sure how to plan when I saw multiple waves coming. At first I thought I always had the cooldown and some of the patterns were just impossible... but by the end I knew I could often press z rapidly if I was on target. <br/> <br/>Still I never got through a meditation without missing at least a couple of those really fast sets. <br/> <br/>It was a nice relaxing atmosphere though, and I liked that the patterns were pretty well mixed up. |
| Dec 17 03:16:00 | 14m 00s | Retro Rebound Challenge! | Cool idea for a variant on the bouncing ball vs paddle genre. It was an interesting twist that you included gravity in your simulation. <br/> <br/>I loved the near-miss sound effect, but I could have done with a little less text. You could definitely remove some, for example I don't need text to tell me "ball speed increased" because that's going to be something I'll notice. <br/> <br/>If you continue development I think you could stand to add a little juice, go watch that famous "juice it or lose it" video on youtube for many fine ideas! Since there were very few interactive feedback points it felt a little bit sterile to knock the ball around, but that's easily fixed. |
| Dec 17 03:49:00 | 33m 00s | Backwards and Bonkers! | Well this game was definitely titled correctly! I had this great "OH GAWD" moment in the first two seconds while my brain realized what was going on. <br/> <br/>The compo version was like "oh ha that was cute, interesting, and short." <br/> <br/>The post-compo version was like, "OH NO GET OUT OF MY WAY, PRESENTS!" I swear I had a defective jack in the box that wasn't moving any faster than the monster at all and my fate was sealed from the start although I didn't know it. <br/> <br/>Really nice look boosted up an interesting inversion of a genre, and the it didn't overstay its welcome, it quit while I was still having fun. <br/> <br/>Nice work. I think adding some hilarious feedback when hitting the various presents would push the fun up a notch. |
| Dec 19 19:36:00 | 63h 47m | PinFootBall | Great idea and fantastic use of the crowd sounds to create excitement! <br/> <br/>I definitely enjoyed it but wow it was pretty hard. I kept wishing that the ball wasn't stopped by my team's feet on the way up, but maybe that's my being a wimp. <br/> <br/>I lost every game but enjoyed myself. <br/> <br/>Maybe a few tweens and timeslows on the ball getting kicked would add to the feel in a nice way. |
| Dec 19 20:20:00 | 44m 00s | Parallax | This game looks and sounds really slick! Congratulations on a nice level of polish and presentation. <br/> <br/>I felt like something was off about the *feel* of the controls, and I found myself being surprised/frusrtated by the movements of the character. I see that other people are complaining about controls as well but not getting specific... <br/> <br/>So here goes: I took some notes while I played, about various bugs and design issues with the controls and camera, I hope that you don't take the feedback poorly as it sounds negative... but I only include these because there's a lot of potential here if you can improve the gameplay feel just a bit!! If a game is just bad I do not leave feedback like this okay? Plz don't be offended. <br/> <br/>Issue List: <br/> <br/>- Can get stuck against wall by pushing into it, this felt especially bad when i missed a jump and was stuck against the wall, not going to fall and die as long as i hold the button, but no way out. Better if character slides down wall imo. In unity change the characters Physics2DMaterial to have friction = 0 and that will do it. <br/> <br/>- Camera shift when i change facing left/right felt really severe, especially if i was moving right but wanted to just reposition slightly backwards, so i'd eat a double-shift very quickly, this didn't feel nice. better if camera shift is more gentle and starts after a short delay. You can implement this style of camera movement with a tween that has a nonlinear curve. <br/> <br/>- Parallax foreground continues to scroll when i press walk key but am pushing against wall and thus not actually moving, seems like a bug <br/> <br/>- Wished for another keyboard key to shoot besides Z, wanted one for my right hand. Used mouse which was okay though. <br/> <br/>- Felt weird that I cannot double-jump on the rising portion of my jump but have to wait for the peak. <br/> <br/>- Double-jump sometimes happens even if you don't press the button. To reproduce this, try jumping, hold down the jump button until almost the peak but not quite. Now let go. The character will keep going up, and then from the peak will do a double jump even though you didn't say to. You only pressed the button, and weren't still holding it at the peak, yet you still double jumped. This happened to me a LOT by accident. <br/> <br/>- Also was surprised to jump again off ground after holding jump key too long in air. <br/> <br/>- Also surprised to jump off pickups in the air, but did get used to this. <br/> <br/>- Overall moving speed is too slow for my personal taste, I would prefer everything to move faster. <br/> <br/>- Enemy AI is implemented to walk toward player on X axis. However this means when jumping over an enemy that it will follow and stay exactly underneath you so you land on its head. If this is intended as part of the challenge then okay, but I found it frustrating since player is not well equipped to deal with landing directly on top of an enemy. <br/> <br/>- Slow pace combined with restarting from the beginning meant a lot of repetition <br/> <br/>- When you go left the third enemy you encounter is short and totally blocked by the foreground fog. In post compo there are still several enemies hidden by the fog. Maybe intended, but felt unfair. <br/> <br/>- Game makes me jump off the top of the screen when I go to the left, that's not great imo. <br/> <br/>- Small platforms have hitboxes that extend underneath their graphics, so there is an invisible barrier. This barrier blocked my shots, and also sent me falling to my death from bumping my head unexpectedly. <br/> <br/>Anyway, again this game is a nice package and that list of items is meant to be helpful food for thought and not a negative review. <br/> <br/>I figured after that list I should get the post-comp version and try it, the addition of the jump sound is nice. It also fixed up the issue with the AI making you land on its head which is huge! Nice update. <br/> <br/>The guitar music is pretty awesome and I love the game over screen's discordant version especially, nice work! |
| Dec 19 20:28:00 | 8m 00s | Neon Abyss | Loved the graphical stylings on this one! Also the novel mechanics, I haven't seen something quite like that before. <br/> <br/>I died a lot though and wasn't a fan of having to go back through the main menu. I would have preferred an instant restart option. I am glad you didn't restart the music from the top on restart though, that was a good choice! <br/> <br/>Nice work guys, look, sound, and feel all there... and you hit the double-theme nicely. |
| Dec 19 20:43:00 | 15m 00s | Wildly Growing | Very nice game! The art is really great looking, although maybe it doesn't cleanly convey the most important game info about what is dangerous when I was a new player. But it looks fantastic. The sound is also a nice fit. <br/> <br/>But best of all the entire gameplay is an interesting idea and a fun implementation... great job! |
| Dec 19 20:53:00 | 10m 00s | Andi, You're a Star | Cool game with a simple but tough premise and clean presentation, but the new player experience is tough. <br/> <br/>I didn't read the description on this page, because I believe a game should be approachable on its own. So I was looking for a way to start, not sure if it was keys, mouse, etc... eventually I hit space bar. Then I hit it a few more times and the game started. <br/> <br/>In a few seconds I was dead, without even figuring out what the buttons to press were. I looked for a restart, but never found it. So I came back to this page and read the keys instructions. <br/> <br/>After that it went better and I started having fun... but I still died a bunch while learning and I really think it needs a restart other than refreshing the browser! <br/> <br/>What this game does well is create a sense of OH NO panic as I rush for a mass to keep from dying, and the slightly laggy controls are just about right. <br/> <br/>I also liked the game over black hole collapse when you get too large. <br/> <br/>Also, on Firefox the "don't get too large or small" text was cut off so I could only see the bottom of the letters. I tested in Chrome and it almost fit correctly but the tops were a bit clipped. |
| Dec 19 20:58:00 | 5m 00s | Pig Game | Hahah pretty basic but this cracked me up. If I could add one thing it would be some indicator of the charge-up of the shot. <br/> <br/>Nice job making something in 3D solo/compo! Most folks start with 2D so that was an interesting aspect. Keep at it. |
| Dec 19 21:09:00 | 11m 00s | Growing Pains | Wow nice work, this was surprisingly fun! I think I was pretty bad, I didn't get better than a bit over 14k points, but I enjoyed it. <br/> <br/>The cute graphics carried it a long way and the sound effects were also a nice touch. All around strong package. <br/> <br/>If I could tweak anything it would be to get back into the action just a bit faster after a death. It's great that it has the restart button there, but still the time to push it all the way to the top and wait a bit for the first waves can be longer than the time I stay alive! What's that you say? Maybe I *shouldn't* be pushing it all the way to the top?? Hrm.... |
| Dec 19 21:22:00 | 13m 00s | Frantic Farming | Wow nice design and implementation, that's a lot to get done for a jam! You had models, various systems, an economy, a shop, sounds... nice work! |
| Dec 20 16:03:00 | 18h 41m | SUPER SCIENCE CORP | Wow, seriously? This is a full-featured and very complete game for a jam, I'm impressed! <br/> <br/>The voiceover is great. The graphics are very nice, and often a true-top-down protagonist has no character but your art does a good job of avoiding that pitfall. The variety of monsters in both look and feel is great. The mop is a hilarious and fun touch. The end is very satisfying... A complete package! <br/> <br/>If I had one nitpick it would be some of the tactics I ended up choosing because of the controls. I would often, especially when walking up or down where I have less sight distance, feel the need to be ready for sudden battle. So I was constantly walking around with the charge-up going. This had a couple of downsides, such as moving slower, not having quick access to the mop, and not really learning to dodge the charging guys as much as I should. <br/> <br/>Maybe the whole "hold right click to aim" thing isn't necessary. What if the guy was aiming by default (but not moving slowly) and right click used the mop. Holding left click alone charges the shot.... I dunno, just a thought. The whole thing was great, but I have this feeling there's a slight tweak to the control scheme that unlocks a bit more fluid interaction. |
| Dec 20 16:46:00 | 43m 00s | Slum Runner | Wow, this is an excellent entry, the idea is well thought out and the implementation is very strong! I enjoyed playing all the way through to the end. <br/> <br/>The dialog screen was nice as well, the sound effect of the talking was cool and the characters were well-written. <br/> <br/>A couple of tiny things felt a bit unfair a couple of times, like teleporting into a sudden need to turn, and the way that sometimes the read laser around the outside perimeter is drawn in such a way that it looks like maybe you could run there safely. But honestly there's not much to critique here, it was very well done! <br/> <br/>Also the game length and dialog screen durations were spot on for my taste. Great job. |
| Dec 20 17:02:00 | 16m 00s | SPEED COURT! | An interesting idea well executed. First playthrough it felt a bit too arbitrary and maybe like it was just a joke, but then I read the description and I started to get better. I still didn't get the special message for being a good judge though, I always made a few mistakes and never just one. <br/> <br/>The variety of faces is great, the crimes are often funny, and the conveyor-belt court system with the hammering fist ruling in the absence of evidence was all a nice farce. <br/> <br/>Good work. |
| Dec 20 17:36:00 | 34m 00s | GURU | Impressive scope for a jam! An interesting strategy game with great graphics, nice humor, and pretty balanced systems. Great user interface with the cards, as well. <br/> <br/>If I had to pick one tiny nitpick, I think the short music clip that was cycling was eventually a bit too much given how long I could sit and play for. |
| Dec 20 17:46:00 | 10m 00s | DESEEDER | Wow, slick all-arounder here, it's got nice gameplay, plus good graphics and sound, plus a soundtrack... that's a lot for a compo entry! <br/> <br/>Great job. Only nitpick I could offer is that a few times I was confused about when I got hit, otherwise it was all clear and fun. The tutorial was well done, I usually find them intrusive but not in this case. |
| Dec 20 17:53:00 | 7m 00s | Acrodog | This was a cool idea with great graphics and sound, and some nice touches. I liked the way the music begins to fade out when you aren't in the spotlight, and the tomatoes are great. <br/> <br/>The indirect control over the dog was a cool premise, it was just enough to feel I had agency but difficult enough that I screwed up and threw myself off many times. In a good way. <br/> <br/>Well done! |
| Dec 20 18:28:00 | 35m 00s | Spread | Nice full-featured entry! The graphics look nice, the interface was clean, and the funky backing track was good without being too much. <br/> <br/>I enjoyed the puzzles, although I think the turn-the-lights-on puzzle needs more of a "you win" effect, sometimes I'd hit something and suddenly it was over. I connected least with that one. <br/> <br/>I had fun playing for a while, got through the first two complete levels but then the puzzles looked like they were going to stay the same so I called it a day. <br/> <br/>Had a good time though - nice work! |
| Dec 20 18:43:00 | 15m 00s | Armageddungeon | The sprite art for this game is awesome! I think that it makes a small mistake by having the main character not visually pop more though. The character often disappears from one place and appears someplace else on the screen so in the first few minutes of play it was super-easy to lose track. I think more contrast making the main character visually unique would have been a big help. <br/> <br/>But the art really looked awesome! <br/> <br/>Gameplay wise I had fun but I did feel like the level didn't set me up to have a ton of options about jumps. Is it even possible to make the jump at the very bottom? I always hit my head and fell in when I tried, every time. The game was also pretty tough about being over the edge... none of that forgiveness about being a bit over the edge that many platformers include these days. <br/> <br/>Because I couldn't make all the jumps I felt like I had a bit less agency. The game looked and sounded great, and felt pretty good. But in the end my most successful strategy devolved into very rarely using the jump key, and just constantly mashing the shoot button... which meant I was rarely making decisions. But that strategy was safer because I learned the loops my character would repeat, so I knew where to expect her, and the shooting would clean up most enemies if I just nonstop mashed it. Then I only jumped to avoid the occasional incoming collision, or sometimes to just mix up the action or go for a pickup. <br/> <br/>So I think this is a clever idea about how to use the two buttons, that looks and sounds fantastic, but ended up not really capitalizing on the potential of the good ideas and dev skills. <br/> <br/>Still, a solid around-entry, just a shame to see the potential not quite click for me as a player. |
| Dec 20 20:20:00 | 1h 37m | Colony XG-29 | This game required really sitting down with it, and boy did I ever! I got up to a bit over 500 colonists I think, and by that point I had a strong inflow of all resources. <br/> <br/>I think the enemy attackers need more noticeable graphics. I suddenly found I was out of some things and realized a wurm had destroyed all of my oil rigs and that was a big problem for me. <br/> <br/>I'm impressed by this game - it was hugely ambitious and you really did a good job achieving a ton of that vision. Of course the balance felt like it could be improved a bit but great job getting so far in the limited time. <br/> <br/>I wished I could have managed my hand a little better, by choosing what to discard rather than having a FIFO scheme. It was also tricky to pick all the cards before knowing the rules, and then I had to live with those blind choices for quite some time. However this is greatly mitigated by the ability to get more cards during the game. I overinvested in repair cards early though, and had a lot of dead draws. <br/> <br/>I also wasn't sure what happened to my security officers. I found it was better to play them in response to a threat rather than pre-emptively, but only after some experimentation. <br/> <br/>More clear enemy graphics, some kind of sound, and maybe a limited life to the pop-ups on the right would be minor improvements. <br/> <br/>Great job on such an ambitious entry. |
| Dec 22 02:38:00 | 30h 18m | Heart Murmurs | Cool twist on the classic snake, with a nice graphical aesthetic. Not sure if there's a moral message about us all being doomed from the start to die... ;) |
| Dec 22 02:53:00 | 15m 00s | Uchuusen (Spaceship!) | I liked the graphical scanline/blur effect, I thought it did a great job of evoking the old-school hardware and fit well with the level of the graphics and sound. <br/> <br/>The sound effects were well-executed technically, but from a design perspective I felt like the steady thumping of the "player shoots" sound effect was too much after a while, so I had mixed feelings about the sound. <br/> <br/>At first I didn't even realize there was a penalty to getting hit (since there isn't when you're not the smallest size). So I stopped trying not to get hit. I played a while before I realized I was getting larger/smaller depending on whether I took damage. So I think a small tweak is made to convey this, perhaps by having the player start bigger, and maybe making the transition more dramatic for example a few small pieces of debris fall off. As it stands, if you give up early enough on caring about being hit you will never learn. <br/> <br/>Nice entry. Dodging those red sideswipers when I got large was tough stuff!! |
| Dec 22 03:02:00 | 9m 00s | CyberMayan | Unique look and concept! The final puzzle was great, but kind of a tease because then I wanted to play more. But that's a good thing! <br/> <br/>I did find it a little tough with the controls. They accept an input to turn at ANY time, but the play space is broken up into these discrete blocks. I guess what I'm saying is I often turned before the corner and got stuck and died and had to retry. If the controls just "buffered" my turn command until a turn was actually possible it would have done what I meant to do automatically and maybe felt a bit smoother. <br/> <br/>The final room with all the files was kind of fun to jam out in for a minute, too, and the text being integrated into the game space was a nice touch. Nice work but of course I would have liked to see some more levels. |
| Dec 22 03:12:00 | 10m 00s | Skyway | Nice first-time entry, I liked the list of things you did for the first time. <br/> <br/>I appreciated that you checked all the boxes by including sound, although I see you didn't want to be rated on art and sound... but who cares man, just keep doing those and you'll keep improving! <br/> <br/>Gameplay was a solid idea. It was good that one hit didn't instantly send me back to the start of the game. <br/> <br/>If I could tweak just a few parameter values in this game I would speed it up... everything. The pace of moving forward, and the pace of swinging the thing there left and right. Maybe increase the gaps between meteors to compensate. <br/> <br/>As it is, when I started the game it felt very slow, and when I got my speed up but then got hit I felt really slow... like ITCHING slow, not a pleasant relief from action slow. <br/> <br/>That's just a minor tweak though! This is a solid first entry you can be proud of and build on, nice work. |
| Dec 22 03:26:00 | 14m 00s | Mutant Veggie Arena | Haha not having faith that I would restart at the same level on death rather than be sent back to the start, and noticing the modest trickle of life regen, I perverted the term "food clock" by milking the final tomato for a whole bunch of regen by just dodging its shots forever while I healed. <br/> <br/>Fortunately you made the right call on the restart going to start of level. Still... I only needed one in order to beat them all! <br/> <br/>I had fun but I felt pretty disoriented. Especially in the first three seconds while I was getting used to the high sensitivity level and carrots were already up on me. I can't exactly put my finger on quite what disoriented me, but taking the shots especially at the tomatoes I never really got a great feel for it. It could just be that the game was so fast-paced and in my face that my brain had no time to experiment, test, and observe. It was more like RUNRUNSHOOTSHOOTRUN!!! <br/> <br/>Still, I had fun and the challenge level was appropriate, which I know is tough to get right in a compo. <br/> <br/>Nice job mixing D2 and 3D, also. I liked that approach although did I see corn clipping through the fence in a weird way? |
| Dec 23 20:23:00 | 40h 57m | Super Lefty Garden Fighty | This is a strong all-around game - it looks and sounds great, and I enjoyed playing. <br/> <br/>My top combo was 113x. I found that while the gameplay is relatively simple there in one critical design choice that unlocked a key bit of depth, and that's the way the character doesn't simply attack but instead leaps to meet the enemy. This means that I can reposition my character through attack timing, and that makes all the difference because now it's a game about planning and choice rather than simply reactive button pushing. <br/> <br/>The music was enjoyable. The melody was infectious but appropriately simple, and the bleak synthesizer timbre was a good fit with the art style, which I took as somewhat apocalyptic. The looping did not grate on me as it sometimes does with short songs. <br/> <br/>I also thought the sprite lighting was a nice touch! <br/> <br/>I always try to leave a few points of critique, especially for good games, so here are some thoughts on small points: <br/> <br/>- There are two sound effects when killing an enemy. I felt like the game was trying to signal some information to me but I never picked up on what it was. <br/> <br/>- I didn't really process the lightning, I just got used to the distances. <br/> <br/>- For very close range attacks my character did not turn around during an attack, which alarmed me the first few times as I thought I was missing. <br/> <br/>- The difficulty curve was nice for learning. Once I got better I enjoyed the hard challenge I had built up to, but when I finally died it was daunting to think of starting over and having to go so long to get back to the hard part. That critical "should I play once more?" moment was weighed down by this feeling and that was my eventual reason for stopping. It's possible I would have played more with some adjustment there. <br/> <br/>- There's a *slight* visual confusion that I think is due to the way that the enemies and the "near background" (ie park elements, not city backdrop) are similar in color saturation. This was not a real problem but I wished the main character and the threats visually popped just a bit more. <br/> <br/>- When I was in the zone I was in the zone and after learning phase I knew exactly what was going on. I had less experience with misses and taking hits, though... So I ended up in this scenario where I knew what was going on while I was doing well, but then once I made a mistake it would snowball and I would take two or three hits in a row and ask "What just happened?" Escalating crisis is just fine except that I was also somewhat confused. I'm not sure what the fix is or even if I can clearly articulate the specific confusion. <br/> <br/>- OK that last point was my initial impression from playing as a player. I went back into the game to specifically test the wiff/get-hit conditions over and over to see if I could get specific... my confusion is clearer now and here are a couple of more suggestions: <br/> <br/>- Wiff needs a sound effect and maybe a graphical swoosh, it's maybe the #1 critical event and needs more feedback <br/>- Wiff does not change direction to face the way I press, it should so my mistake is ultra-clear <br/>- Consider including an audible cue such a light click to signal when I am ready to re-swing after a wiff or after getting hit. Maybe a visual glint cue is another way to go. <br/>- After wiff/get-hit consider buffering the input to swing again if the key is pressed while still stunned. This could get nasty if the window is too large but right now I don't think there's any window to pre-press the button. I have to wait for the ready-to-swing state, which is not strongly telegraphed, and then press the button. <br/>- I did not have this input buffer problem with the attacks, chaining multiple attacks felt great actually and I did not feel I had to wait for one to finish before pushing the key for another. <br/>- When I get hit I could use more feedback about the fact that I got hit, who hit me, and when I'm ready to act again. The sound effect is a big start but maybe a bit more. <br/>- The issue with not turning to face the enemy you hit when they are very close was escalating some of my confusion after taking damage. I would be surrounded, push left, my character would swing right and I would go into shock. It's true the enemy on the left would die but I already lost flow with the game on the line. <br/>- It's a good design choice to have the enemy physically back away from the player on a hit rather than just having some invisible re-attack cooldown. <br/> <br/>All of that stuff is microscopic detail in case you want it, this is a strong entry and don't take the list to mean otherwise!! |
| Dec 24 03:54:00 | 7h 31m | Jetpack Every Day | There was a fun core here but I felt the lack of sound effects and a visible jetpack. I enjoyed the crazy background and the icon-style graphics, though. Nice touch clearly showing when I got hit, and the skull is a cool tradeoff. |
| Dec 24 04:07:00 | 13m 00s | Glow Run | Nice job on your first LD, you have some potential here because it's a lot of fun to build up speed. <br/> <br/>It really, really needs a restart button that is not on the mouse and can be pushed any time, not only at the end. I would have played far more than I did if I could instantly reset the game when I took a hit and lost my speed. <br/> <br/>The moment of failure for the player is that key moment where you want to think about how your game will avoid losing them. In this one I feel bad when I get stopped, and then I have to dig my way out by jumping until I get unstuck and start rolling slowly again, and then complete the whole level, then lean forward off my couch to get the mouse and push that button, then I can lean back and play some more. Sounds like I'm overstating it but it's huge imo. <br/> <br/>Restart-button rant aside, I dig this entry. The 3d perspective is cool and the difficulty kept me wanting to roll out just one more time. |
| Dec 24 04:21:00 | 14m 00s | Captain Ninjabeard | Cool graphics and an interesting idea to move around with the recoil and have some hard-to-control flying fun. <br/> <br/>One small idea - I found it hard to get away from the edges with the gun, I think maybe if the game world ended but my mouse could still go a bit into a margin so that I could aim back to the center that would really help. I know I can teleport away but it was a trap that got me all the time and broke me out of the zone. <br/> <br/>Other than that everything felt pretty smooth, and it's always interesting to see what you can do with some teleportation. <br/> <br/>Nice entry! |
| Dec 24 04:57:00 | 36m 00s | QM Snake | Wow I'll admit it, I underestimated this game in the first few moments, thinking it would be another slight variation on snake. <br/> <br/>But holy cow this thing is sinister to the core. I don't know why but I just could not get over the alien control gap, my brain insisted on misfiring constantly and sending me into a wall or something. 10 minutes in I was like, why am I not learning this? The QM is such a simple idea but holy crap my brain would not accept it even when I was really concentrating. <br/> <br/>The ludicrous, useless double vision background thing was crazy, the sneaky mines that look like the background color were nasty, and that 10 minutes left level was completely nuts. <br/> <br/>Good job making something so innocent get so weird with just a few small twists. <br/> <br/>The level select was a very nice feature to have in this game, and good on you for not locking them until I beat previous ones or something. <br/> <br/>Top score was 44 on SNAKE. <br/> <br/>If I could make one change to it, I would quicken up the retry loop. |