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Feedback comments for LD34
Solifuge's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Solifuge's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 14 20:15:00 | Bean up | 43 minutes is my record. Great pixels, great colors, and great little touches like the coiling leaves. I love the charming art style and color-coded hazards. The controls were a bit floaty, but it felt like the beanstalk had a life of it's own, and that was a good source of challenge. <br/> <br/>Fantastic work, astonishingly so given the 3 hour time frame! | |
| Dec 14 20:38:00 | 23m 00s | Cube Wars | I like the color palette, and the The take on 2-Button, and the fact that mouse controlled movement and shooting conflicted, was frustrating at first, but it made for some interesting strategic choices. I liked how the enemies moved if they had line of sight; a nice stealth-style touch! I couldn't hear any audio, but I'll update this if that changes. <br/> <br/>Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 14 23:58:00 | 3h 20m | Micros | Beautiful art and sound design. I had a lot of fun! Brought back similar feelings to Spore and Agar.Io, while still it's own thing. <br/> <br/>Broke my heart to not be able to keep growing, and go full Katamari on the red Microbes; I'd have loved to be able to control splitting, to save it for times of distress. Only briefly made it to 4 Colony Members before getting devoured, but it was a fun challenge. Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 15 00:59:00 | 1h 01m | A Mold's Life | Pretty weird, cool strategy game. I'm curious about how you did pathfinding, and what the lines between the mold dots represented. Also, fighting other mold is pretty tough (Especially that Turkey Level); I don't know if I gather strength by growing larger, or whether I'm supposed to just click on spots and hope I can overcome them by brute force. It seems like there's some neat stuff going on under the hood, but the game doesn't provide much feedback about it to let me choose my next move, other than watching my mold grow and some very pleasant sounds. <br/> <br/>All in all, I had fun with this. Thanks for putting it together. |
| Dec 15 01:28:00 | 29m 00s | FEED ME! | It was weird when my butt got too big and just started killing people without my help, which is not a sentence I'd have expected I'd be able to write today. <br/> <br/>Feels like some distant cousin of the Snake game, with some Binding of Isaac sensibilities. I had a fun time lining up attacks and all, and bouncing off of tiny Deadpools in Chef Hats and rocketing into the air was pretty fun too. Maybe some speed control and jumping with momentum would have helped give more finesse, though that's hard to do in 2 buttons. I'd second comments that these mechanics would go well alongside some additional goals or challenges. <br/> <br/>Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 15 01:43:00 | 15m 00s | Bellows | This is absolutely a fantasy I can relate to. So cool :O <br/> <br/>That song is gorgeous, and chock full of ennui. It does a lot to build on the "escape from a dingy city" narrative. I love the second part, when the orchestra breaks into the motiff; unfortunately, I rarely last long enough to enjoy it, since it loops. Good motivation! <br/> <br/>I really dig the art style too; the monochrome background draws attention to the black and white objects standing out against it. The way all hazards are black with white outs makes for a great, easily-recognized visual cue. I knew to avoid rats the first time I saw them, without instruction. Good game design! <br/> <br/>The gameplay feels great too, and the rough steering is a new challenge my brain isn't used to. I'm glad you can recover from hits too; that makes things more forgiving. Though it's subtle, I also love the ability to spam the bellows after I run out of gas, to squeeze just a bit of air out and hover fruitlessly in the air for a few moments, before plummeting down; the way the game recognizes my desperation and characterizes it that way is adorable, and feels great. <br/> <br/>Top marks, all around. You guys did great! |
| Dec 17 05:06:00 | 51h 23m | Lands of TSR Lore | I will always love these old-school dungeon crawlers; props on making one! The music done with 4-op synthesizers was all kinds of moody and nostalgic. The fact that I could play this on my phone was an unexpected surprise! As usual, the art and character design is solid (the walls were so detailed they never got boring to see). I see "2 button controls" in the individual character controls, so the theme interpretation is there (the theme didn't say "only use 2 buttons for the whole interface" people). <br/> <br/>If you want to keep toying with the idea, a dungeon crawler with some added roguelike sensibilities, or some new mechanics could be really cool. I'd pay to play one. Heck, I'd work on one. <br/> <br/>Great work, and pretty dang impressive! |
| Dec 17 07:26:00 | 2h 20m | Reap | Brilliant UI Design, simple but fairly deep gameplay, inspired old-timey map design (that sun face is excellent), and overall another great experience. Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 17 08:50:00 | 1h 24m | The Great Adventure of Wania Romanow | I have no idea what is happening. I think that's the point? :3 <br/> <br/>Big fan of dadaism, so I appreciate some LoLRandom. The gameplay was pretty random too, though? There wasn't an apparent strategy other than alternating between spamming the heal combo and shooting... without any foreknowledge of what the enemy is doing, or more precise timing controls, there's no way to effectively block. Also, I seemed to have 99 Moneys from the start, so I could buy everything? Not sure if that was intended, but it sorta broke the game. <br/> <br/>Also. the game interface kinda suffered from the 2-button control scheme, rather than building on that simplicity in a positive way; especially given that I didn't see any achievements, you could probably have simplified each option to a button, like you did in combat, instead of scrolling. <br/> <br/>Anyway, thanks for putting together this bizare little trip into Post Apocalyptic Neo-Moscow, and keep at it! |
| Dec 17 09:11:00 | 21m 00s | Snakedate | I broke the hearts of nearly every horse in that club trying to wrap around the DJ with the Imgur shirt. It was worth it. <br/> <br/>Am I right in thinking the classic Snake game was an influence here? I thought it was neat that my tail ended up being an obstacle at one point, when it kept deflecting me upward mid-coil because I'd slithered around everywhere willy-nilly. <br/> <br/>I liked how you used the simple control scheme, though I swiped left on a lot of horses accidentally when steering around things; part of the challenge, but it could have gotten frustrating over time. <br/> <br/>The design on the dancing horses was really adorable; I loved the graphical style, the proportions, the animation, how round everything was, etc. The profile pictures were hilarious too; the obscenely buff horse giving me a lilting "Yoo-hoo" may very well have made my day. <br/> <br/>This was weird and cute, and a lot of fun. Great work, folks! |
| Dec 17 09:19:00 | 8m 00s | Just a fatty cat | Nice use of hand-drawn graphics. I liked the Mixed Media/Papercraft kind of feel here! Also, interesting control scheme; it took a second to get my head around steering, but made for a pretty intuitive setup in time. |
| Dec 17 09:32:00 | 13m 00s | Sonar Vision | I loved the use of interface-as-narrative; all you had was a scanner and some buttons, and the screenshake from being attacked, which left the visuals and what was going on to the imagination. It took me a while to understand how resource gathering worked, and what the purpose of the Ladel was. It was pretty hard to stay alive for long, but the challenge was fun. The resource gathering and lack of movement felt like an Idle Game, like Cookie Clicker, but much more interactive. <br/> <br/>Thanks for putting this together! I enjoyed playing it. |
| Dec 17 09:41:00 | 9m 00s | Moon defend | I was going to complain about the lack of Orbit Speed control, until I realized that you could move out to slow down, or move in to speed up. Subtle, but really effective! <br/> <br/>A fun arcade-style game, with a cute premise. I had fun playing it. Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 17 09:54:00 | 13m 00s | Secret of the Little Lamb | Really moody and simple Infinite Runner, with some neat tweaks to the forumla! Thanks for putting this together! <br/> <br/>1) I thought that making your hitbox grow when you jumped was clever; it's a punishment for unnecessary jumping, making it more tactical. Still, jumping is fun for players (it's a way to play around and "express" themselves during downtime, especially in rail-games like this), so some other way for players to express themselves would be nice. <br/> <br/>2) Moving the character to the left of the screen would help give players more advance warning; you'll notice platformers like Mario shift the camera toward where you're going, since what's behind you usually isn't as important. <br/> <br/>3) As folks said, restarting without the intro, letting players skip it, or even starting the jumping part of the level during the opening part (you can still deliver the story without slowing things down) would all help. Starting off with controls, and letting the narrative come after would probably work fine in that case. |
| Dec 17 10:15:00 | 21m 00s | Behind the Mask | ** Note for folks who are confused; Maj is Shift, Espace is Space. <br/> <br/>Some great pixel art, and solid music choices; they really set the tone. I liked the character design too; that's a pretty neat hat, and I loved the claw they used to grip into wood and crumbling stone. <br/> <br/>The platforming was indeed quite hard, but I managed to beat it; if you had more time, some easier levels to get the player familiar with the controls would be good. I liked the growing platforms, and how all the different blocks interacted; very good design there, and some well-crafted puzzles! I may have cheated, since I avoided the first green trigger in order to finish the last level; I couldn't jump up the thorny wall before the floor caught up with me. <br/> <br/>For criticism, the controls seemed to not respond some times, especially Jump; many times, I'd hit Jump, but just walk off the edge of a platform, which was frustrating in such a precise game like this. <br/> <br/>Thanks very much for putting this together; it was a lot of fun, and a well made platformer! |
| Dec 17 10:36:00 | 21m 00s | MaskGarden | What a strange, surreal environmental game. I like exploring what's there so far, especially the creepy minimalist visual design. I'd love to see more of this setting you've made, and know several other folks who would enjoy this too. <br/> <br/>It ran a bit slowly on my computer, and the contact detection let me walljump out of bounds (If you're doing what I think you're doing, maybe try doing a downward Raycast from the player to check for ground, instead of enabling jump doing OnCollision?) <br/> <br/>I'm sorry you didn't get to submit what you wanted in time, but good luck fleshing it out further! |
| Dec 17 10:41:00 | 5m 00s | Family Board Game Night: The Board Game | I'll try to tackle this when boardgame-loving family are over for the Holidays. I'll withhold judging until then. >_o <br/> <br/>Thanks for taking a risk and trying something different here, and sorry for any toxic feedback you get because of it. Looking forward to checking it out! |
| Dec 17 12:29:00 | 1h 48m | Wild Growth | Short, sweet, and challenging puzzle game. The minimal controls worked beautifully here. I really liked the presentation as well; the lights, the simple shapes, the trailing leaves and small blooms you leave behind... the whole thing. Thanks for putting this together for us to play; it's an excellent game, and would be worth porting to mobile, I think. <br/> <br/>Little nit pick: I liked how the notes were pitch-bent to match the chord progression in the background, but some of the notes when collecting sparks seemed out of tune by half a pitch or so, though, which made them sound sour and dissonant. If it wasn't intended, maybe consider separate sound effects for each note for a later build? |
| Dec 17 15:32:00 | 3h 03m | Zyx's Adventure | Loved the complexity of platformer behavior you got out of 2 buttons, even if it was pretty confusing for me to get the hang of. Simple as the game itself was, I had a lot of fun with this! Thanks for putting this together. |
| Dec 17 15:32:00 | 0s | RitualCraft | Nice art, and fun item-combination puzzles. The Wrecking Ball reference made me grin. The items and rituals really set the tone, and some of the descriptions were pretty entertaining. Odd's "Eyeballs In Hands" design and color scheme gave me some nostalgia for "Ahh! Real Monsters." <br/> <br/>This gets me thinking... this kind of Gather Resources Then Craft Items formula could make a pretty cool Idle Game ala Cookie Clicker etc. A string of Eldtritch dudes to defeat could act as a gating mechanism that open up new mechanics or areas, resources could be generated by selecting a place to explore, and you could come back and make them into things to strengthen your Monster when actively playing? <br/> <br/>Anyway, thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 21 03:14:00 | 83h 42m | QATERPILLAR | What a unique puzzle game! I've never been more glad that I only have 2 legs to worry about. <br/> <br/>Loved the tone the art and music set; fit the awkward controls and goofy movements perfectly. I loved how you curved up the difficulty gradually by adding more parts too. I didn't really grok the controls until the ladybugs and challenge poses at the end, and had a lot of fun failing to move myself properly. <br/> <br/>This was a simple, clever, and really solidly-made game; sorry you didn't make it in time for the Compo, but I'm sure you'll do fine! |
| Dec 21 04:46:00 | 1h 32m | Seeds of Sky | Very much Starseed Pilgrim, but I really enjoyed it; it's a solid mechanic for the theme! Nice platforming and puzzle combo, figuring out the seed behaviors. I liked how the objectives also gave you powerups; that helped progress feel good. <br/> <br/>Also the goats were so awful I now hate goats IRL. |
| Dec 21 05:00:00 | 14m 00s | Star Warrior | Pretty clever control scheme, there! Definitely made for some hectic dogfighting feels. Aesthetically, this felt like some kind of impossible mashup of Tron, Star Wars, and Dune, dunked in a fondue pot worth of 80's Cheese. Really dug the presentation. <br/> <br/>I'll second that it was hard to aim over terrain without being close, and hard to hit the worm when close without colliding. Maybe the ability to keep the shot charged so long as A or D was still held might allow players to aim around terrain or swerve away better, but that may complicate the controls? Hard to say. <br/> <br/>That all said, thanks for putting this together! Great work. |
| Dec 21 05:15:00 | 15m 00s | FleshTotem | Nice presentation! Very much a gorefest, but you executed it well. Pretty challenging too; I had a hard time balancing healing, firepower, and keeping corpses available for deploying, but that was the fun of it. The number of buttons took some getting used-to, but the occasional hunting and pecking was fun in it's own way. <br/> <br/>This has simple mechanics with a good amount of strategic depth. Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 21 05:25:00 | 10m 00s | Parcube | I really liked the core mechanic here! Shifting controls are a pretty cool twist for the Frustratingly Difficult Troll Platformer genre. I dig it. <br/> <br/>The LOL U Died song was a nice touch. Just rub some salt into that wound, game. Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 21 06:19:00 | 54m 00s | Sky 1513 | Remember seeing this game while doing an update post, but I forgot to save a link. Glad I stumbled on it again. Beautiful artwork, and nice use of the limited controls! <br/> <br/>The game presented some nice puzzle-style gameplay, with strategic choices, but one aspect of the design really rubbed me the wrong way; The meteors. I really like the idea of a shard that damages what it hits, and even one that nukes a whole ring if it hits the Barrier, but having it destroy a whole hex regardless of level breaks so much of the existing gameplay. It makes players helpless, and takes away a meaningful choice they could be making: "Do I have a position where it'll hit a Level 2 Hex that wouldn't be destroyed?" It also negates clever play to build up as many level 2+ Hexes as possible. Basically, if Meteors destroy rather than damage the Hex it hits, players are absolutely helpless; their only choice is how to lose, which is REALLY frustrating in a puzzle-type game. <br/> <br/>It also might be worthwhile to let you shift the island one hex Right or Left in addition to rotation (Say, hold the left or right button to shift it while held or something); there were always Shards 1 tile too far away for a given size (might be an off-by-one error in the source?), and it would also potentially enable players more flexibility in positioning their island, and less frustrating time spent waiting for just the right Shard in just the right spot. <br/> <br/>Critique aside, it's a really beautiful game, with some gameplay I've never seen before. You could expand on this; it seems like a pretty good fit for Mobile, etc. <br/> <br/>Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 28 20:47:00 | 182h 28m | spin-circle | Just hit 295, around the time I finally understood that the blue pickups clear the board: http://i.imgur.com/Dspzf7C.png <br/> <br/>Great minimalist design, nice use of a growing number of instruments and more music as a reward for progress, and a pretty fun arcade-style game overall. The growing-by-moving mechanic felt a little like an afterthought, and didn't make much difference; it'd be interesting to see see movement controlling or influencing the size of the circular path instead, though it was fine as is too. <br/> <br/>I very much enjoyed playing this. Thanks for putting it together! |
| Dec 28 21:07:00 | 20m 00s | Flowering Souls | The indirect control created some nice emergent moments where I would speed-boost my souls to spread them out, and then sweep across the map to gather new recruits, though I could just as soon speedboost to get away from too many shadows. <br/> <br/>I didn't understand the reason for having duplicate stones toward the end-game, beyond giving my souls more targets, and better freedom of movement. It might have been nice if the stones themselves had a longer cooldown instead of (or in addition to) the cooldown bar, so you'd have to hop around more, and maybe bide time while the Reds recharged. <br/> <br/>This game looked and sounded great, and had a good bit of strategic depth too. Excellent work! I really enjoyed the mood of this, and had a good time playing. Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 28 21:36:00 | 29m 00s | Ecosystem | I had a good time making a little hanging garden in this. It's a simple game; cute and fun to explore. It got me to thinking about all the different directions a dev could take this kind of core mechanic, too. <br/> <br/>You could make discrete plants and such into self-sustaining loops. Plants could be feeding each other or some critters, producing a balanced loop of water production and consumption, etc. They could be terraforming barren terrain too; some plants could take nutrients out of soil and make it barren/stone, while others die or enrich it. Perhaps you only have a limited number of seeds you can plant per type, and you need to keep the ecosystem stable to keep playing; new plants, critters, and tools could be given to the player over time, to expand their options, and create a sense of progression. This could move into strategy/resource management game territory with some kind of currency; maybe plants providing the player with currency to trade for new tools or seeds, or a quota of plants need to be grown before a season is up, etc. <br/> <br/>This makes me want to try building a strategy game or RPG around cellular automata. :P |
| Dec 28 23:01:00 | 1h 25m | Lifenodes. | Short and sweet. It plays a bit like a puzzle, bit like a visual novel, with a unique central mechanic. This reminds me of some of the games by EYEZMAZE, particularly Chronon; not in the derivative sense, but the time-hopping exploratory puzzle-solving feeling brought it to mind. <br/> <br/>It's a good gameplay metaphor, the way your control is limited to simple choices about what things you bring into your life, or what you bring into your child's life. You don't control what they do, and can only guess at what kind of influence it might have in the long run. I like the visual style and music; made it seem pretty bitter-sweet, but that's how life and living feels, sometimes. <br/> <br/>I can feel the heart behind this, and can sort of relate; I've got a new nephew on the way, the first child of the next generation in my family. I'm hopeful and excited to see who they are. I'm worried that I'm not ready to be a role model, and will somehow mess up their life. I'm experiencing many other complicated feelings besides. This game is a pretty good time capsule for that sort of feeling. <br/> <br/>I'm sure you'll keep doing great with your son, and hope you do well when the Ludum Dare ratings come in too. Thank you for sharing this game. |
| Dec 28 23:01:00 | 0s | Agent Hooker | Great work all around, though I particularly like the voice acting. Really solid use of two inputs to make unique mechanics and puzzles. I enjoyed this. Thanks for putting it together, and I hope you keep building on this; you've got a really solid foundation to build something on. |
| Dec 28 23:01:00 | 0s | Don't Clog the Arteries | Took me a bit to understand the shooting mechanic, but that was a failure to read on my part. I liked how you combined shooting with recovery, and used a single button movement scheme. Very nice! <br/> <br/>I can't say how, but I feel like the game's fail-state (getting too big) ought to be redesigned somehow; colliding and getting bigger made future collisions more likely, thus making it less and less easy to dodge, and making skillful play impossible; your run is as good as done once you're over 1/2 size, unless you're lucky with timing. Same goes for the finale; once you're too big to dodge, it becomes a waiting game, where you hope to be lucky enough to get no white blood cells for long enough to win. That said, it's a tough line to walk, between randomness that makes the game more exciting, and randomness that takes away meaningful choices (skillful play/dodging/etc) from players, or makes them wait on the game to flip a coin to let them lose or win. <br/> <br/>I had a good time with this one, and thought it was a clever use of both themes, with a nice presentation! Thanks for putting this together. |
| Dec 28 23:37:00 | 36m 00s | CELL - Φ | Really liked the visual and audio design here. The gameplay felt a bit like Go, which was neat. I liked the number of different actions/strategies you can take as well; the surround-and-capture mechanic was my favorite, and I like that it differed from the Attack Cell in that it didn't weaken or destroy what it captured. <br/> <br/>The game was prone to a lot of back-and-forth, I found, which could make it slow moving. I think it'd help if energy could be transferred between cells, to help players who have a clear number advantage win more quickly, rather than drawing out the game. <br/> <br/>With the simple interface, this could be a really fun mobile board game for folks to play with friends. Thanks for putting this together! |
| Dec 28 23:47:00 | 10m 00s | Novascape | Liked the simple input, though I'll second that it was Old Nintendo Hard to dodge, shoot, and control yourself. Really impressed with the technical challenge of making a Gameboy ROM for LD. Very cool that you got audio working too! Thanks for sharing this. |
| Dec 29 00:06:00 | 19m 00s | EarthWard | I like the movement/aiming scheme; very Newtonian, how you kept drifting! Solid sprites and audio too, and some nice alien designs; did I catch a Day of the Tentacle reference in there? <br/> <br/>For gameplay nitpicks, the UFOs seemed to leave a hitbox that could damage you after they were destroyed. Also, my fuel never really seemed to go down enough to need pickups or a fuel mechanic, but I might've been lucky with item drops. <br/> <br/>This was a fun and very stylish game. Thanks for putting it together! |
| Jan 5 01:02:00 | 168h 56m | Arc | Audio was great, but kinda clashed with the mood. Did set a pretty anxious tone though! Great arcade style gameplay. Powerups were trolly, but discovering them was fun. Thanks for putting this together! |
| Jan 5 01:17:00 | 15m 00s | Sickle & Sword | I pity the poor villagers who live on/inside an onion pile, however famous said onions may be. <br/> <br/>Brilliant 2-button hands-off city manager. I loved the look, the tone, and the gameplay. Well done! |
| Jan 5 01:29:00 | 12m 00s | Disphere | Solid game! I rather preferred the pacing on Manic better than Normal; it made it feel exciting, and let you quickly put an end to the frustrations of bad RNG giving you an impossible layout (only happened a few times). No advice here, other than to consider generation algorithms that didn't make impossible levels, or hand design the layout for consistency. <br/> <br/>Thanks for putting this together! |
| Jan 5 01:40:00 | 11m 00s | PSYCHOTENNIS | Loved the frenetic breakout-platformer action combined with the sound of various bricks chiming together in little arpeggios as they get popped by your pixelated tennis ball. Excellent design, sound, graphics, all the things! |
| Jan 5 01:43:00 | 3m 00s | Kin | Interesting. Never seen a biblical-feeling God Game before, so this was pretty neat. It was tough to figure out elements of the intended order, but overall made for an interesting take on puzzle gameplay. <br/> <br/>Thanks for putting this together! |
| Jan 5 01:51:00 | 8m 00s | Auto Racer | Neat puzzle game, though it felt procedural and like the "puzzle" element of the game suffered for it; a hand-crafted set of levels that knew what cars would be where when you were passing them would make a big difference in controlling the challenge! Still, the difficulty progressed well, and presented challenges well as you went. <br/> <br/>Also, I'd have liked a visual signifier for Lane Changing Cars like a different body color, but I could also understand making them all blend in as a design choice too; this includes the visual design, where everything but the player is done in blue and white. <br/> <br/>I liked the simplistic graphical style; fun game overall! |
| Jan 5 01:56:00 | 5m 00s | Multitasking Madness | Clever mechanic, and a good take on the theme! Randomized keys were a nice touch, but them changing mid-game made this neurologically impossible to do by Muscle Memory, which is what people do to learn these kind of extremely difficult mental challenges and reflex games. Also, getting duplicate keys made some of the games impossible to succeed, just due to bad RNG, which is frustrating for players; I'd suggest unique keys. <br/> <br/>That said, I really enjoyed the visual presentation, and the gameplay was a fun challenge. Thanks for putting it together! |