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Stuntddude

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game	Stuntddude's comment
Dec 14 15:47:00		Overgrow	It's not immediately clear what the criteria for death is (I had to look at the other comments before I realized it was the petals, which, while cool, could use to stand out more. It gets easily lost against everything else going on visually). It's also not entirely clear that you're growing at all until you look at the text at the top. You seem guaranteed to run into a certain percentage of the rockets by design, meaning you make it about the same distance every time you play. If you could make it more feasible to dodge the rockets, and perhaps added a way to get health back over enough time, it could be a lot of fun trying to beat your own high score, but I don't think the mechanics are there yet. <br/> <br/>On a positive note, I like the programmer art. It's oddly charming.
Dec 15 00:58:00	9h 11m	Ministry of Growth and Information	I could sit around all day just listening to this stuff. All the broadcasts talk a bit slow, which can be frustrating, but your sense of humor is great and this game as a whole is hilarious. FRUP grows ever greater!
Dec 15 01:14:00	16m 00s	Weeds	There's not a lot to this game - it sort of feels like you submitted it when it was only halfway done, as for example there are several obstacle sprites for each of the first two levels, but only some weird black noise for the third and fourth (which made it unclear what they were supposed to be - I didn't know they were ice and a pirate ship until I read the description). That may have even been a bug, but I'm not sure. <br/> <br/>Getting to see the different worlds is interesting, but there's just not enough gameplay to justify it.
Dec 15 01:41:00	27m 00s	Walden: Thoreau It All Away	This game comes close to being interesting and meaningful, but falls short because the gameplay is woefully lacking. I can walk back and forth and do some things, sure, and it's really a beautiful little world to walk back and forth and do things in, for sure, but there's no coherency. Why do things have the effects on your health bar that they do? Are the three different worlds correlated in some way? It seems like things deplete my health more quickly at some times than others, but I'm not sure, because nothing at all is made clear to me. What purpose does the workplace or the cabin serve in the gameplay? In fact, why go anywhere at all when I can alternate between the computer and my bed and have the whole thing done in a flash? It feels like there is some interesting idea struggling to be conveyed here, but I have no way of knowing what that's supposed to be. <br/> <br/>You've got the aesthetic nailed down pat. The game looks great - the art is wonderful, and the little details (from the time of day to the way that the skyline slides away as you walk to the cabin, as well as the background audio) make the whole thing fit together in a nice way. The world of the game is engaging, but the game itself just isn't.
Dec 15 01:57:00	16m 00s	Milky Way Expansion	This game is very pretty (everything from the glowing particle trails to the little details like the font choice and the game over screen overlay feel well put together, good job on that), but the gameplay is lacking. I had to read the explanatory blurb on this page before I could understand what was going on, and even then it wasn't immediately clear what was a resource and what was an asteroid, it took me a minute to figure out the difference. And the mechanics themselves feel kind of arbitrary. There's no particular challenge or intrigue, and I can't really say it's fun.
Dec 15 22:55:00	20h 58m	Stargazer	I only got a to play a few minutes before my computer flaked out on me (nothing to do with the game), but I liked what I got to see. I really like the atmosphere that you built with audio and visuals. Trekking from fire to fire, chasing the north star (it's the north star, right? I'm not good with astronomy), was immersive and evoked a real sense of wonder, which is something not many jam games achieve. Figuring out how to connect up the constellations was a surprisingly fun puzzle mechanic that I haven't seen before. <br/> <br/>I really only have three complaints: firstly, that it wasn't immediately obvious what direction I was supposed to go. I didn't realize the first time around that the opening dialog wasn't just flavor text. Secondly, the lack of an in-game menu to free my cursor and exit feels like a form of user-trapping. And third, your game runs like a pile of bricks. Maybe that's just Unity being Unity, but there's gotta be something to do about that.
Dec 15 23:18:00	23m 00s	Growing Trees!	If this game had some sound and consisted of more than indiscriminately plopping trees onto a bare planet (maybe some more scenery, or something that prevents me from spawning a tree in the middle of an ocean?), it could build a great atmosphere. What you have so far is a charming start, but there just isn't enough here to keep my attention for more than a minute.
Dec 15 23:37:00	19m 00s	Let's Poke	This game crashed on startup the first time. Not a big deal since it worked thereafter, but something to look into. <br/> <br/>The controls (rather, the control - as already pointed out, it could be achieved with just one button) are a little unwieldy, but nothing some adjustments couldn't fix. The good items and bad items frequently spawn too close together, making it very hard or even impossible to hit one but not the other. That might be an intentional part of the gameplay, but for me, it made it feel a bit less dependent on skill/strategy and a bit more on luck. <br/> <br/>Also, a very minor thing, your icon could be better - why not use the hand sprite as an icon?
Dec 16 00:01:00	24m 00s	Mowing	Note: your link says "Web" but goes to a download for a Windows executable. You might want to change the link name to make that more clear, since most people will see "Web" and expect something that runs in the browser. <br/> <br/>This is a cool idea, but the gameplay gets tedious pretty quickly. After a while the mowing starts to feel like an actual chore. Also, the collision physics are extremely janky. Being teleported to the side and having my velocity reset when I run into a rock is not a good experience, it's very jarring. I also got stuck on the rocks and couldn't move until my mower ran out of gas.
Dec 16 00:32:00	31m 00s	More.	Oh no. This game is confusing and scary and a little bit broken, and it totally messed me up. I'm so sorry. I fucked up. Oh god. <br/> <br/>more. <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/>On another note, the movement is a kinda broken (it's easy to get stuck if you run up against a wall, and it's possible to run through the house from the left). Being able to run underneath the trunks of the trees is kinda weird, as is the text appear beneath the trees as well. I'm not sure if the opening text "Z - Start \| X - Drink" showing up repeatedly near the end is intentional, but it feels like a bug. <br/> <br/>You might also want to disable the audio voting category, since it seems like your game doesn't have any (that or my setup is somehow broken). <br/> <br/>Nevertheless, I think the game delivers its point as intended, so major props for making something actually meaningful.
Dec 16 15:47:00	15h 15m	ADDA	This is a prime example of why "Two Button Controls" was a bad theme idea. These controls are horrible, and make what might otherwise have been a pretty fun game completely unplayable. I would have better feedback for the other aspects of your game if the piss-poor controls didn't completely domineer the gameplay.
Dec 16 15:57:00	10m 00s	Taylor Vance	Will play and rate this when I have access to an OS/X machine in a few days.
Dec 16 16:26:00	29m 00s	InertialGrowth	This is a fun game. The controls are touchy indeed, but I suppose that's the point. The controls are challenging, but not at all frustrating - when I lost, it was always obviously my mistake and not the game's fault, which in my opinion is exactly how controls should be. Once you get into the rhythm of quick taps, it's hard to stop playing! I enjoyed the chill space ambiance, some sound effects would be good too. <br/> <br/>And since games like this seem to invite competition, I will brag that my high score is 28 :P
Dec 16 16:34:00	8m 00s	Growing Pains	Not sure about the sound, but otherwise I like this game.
Dec 16 17:00:00	26m 00s	Apple Juice Tycoon	This game is pretty hilarious conceptually, and I'm generally a fan of idle games, but there's just too much micromanagement going on here. It's hard to grow your business when you spend 90% of your time just trying to keep poor Quentin alive! In addition, the keyboard controls are unwieldy (a proper GUI would be a huge improvement), and it's unclear how some of the mechanics work. For example, when I assign an employee to eat or drink, do they keep going for a set period of time, or until their bar is full, or until I assign them a new task, or what? At what interval does it deplete resources? When I interrupt their eating or drinking to assign them a new task, do they immediately pick up the task, or wait some predefined amount of time before doing it, or wait until they're done eating or drinking, or what? These things are obvious to you, because you programmed the game, but they're completely opaque to anyone else, and I certainly never figured them out myself because I was too busy frantically trying to micro-manage everything else to stop for long enough to pay close attention and experiment with the mechanics. <br/> <br/>I really don't dislike this game as much as it sounds like, but it does need a real GUI and some adjustments to the mechanics to make it more fun.
Dec 16 17:06:00	6m 00s	Gravsteroid	I can tell it's a 3 hour game.
Dec 16 21:42:00	4h 36m	Colony Grow	This game might be good, but I shouldn't have to restart 5+ times to find out! Some explanation - any explanation at all - would help immensely to avoid the needless repetition required to figure out what's even going on. And once you grow the colony to a stable size (after several restarts and a lot of waiting), there's no particular reason to continue. <br/> <br/>Also, a small bug, sometimes the game places a building on a different tile than the one I clicked on, including sometimes on top of other existing buildings.
Dec 20 04:13:00	78h 31m	Hijinks High: Orientation (Ludum Dare 34 Edition)	The funniest entry I've played yet! This game took a really long time for me to complete, but it was worth it for all the flavor text. Naturally, a jam game of this scope will have several issues, some of which I noted during my playthrough as I came across them: <br/> <br/>- occasionally info text appears in the wrong order when moving to a new area <br/>- solutions to some puzzles make no sense whatsoever (esp. the waiting room one) and require either a walkthrough or a brute for exhaustion of all possible actions available to you <br/>- I got the Sid dialogue again while in the principal's office after going out and back in again (a bug) <br/>- no explanation of engine features (e.g. clicking on objects to see what you can do to them, which I found out by accident), which would help with some of the puzzles, though I would suppose this is more the engine's fault (along with several other quirks I won't mention here because they're not specific to your game) <br/>- the dialogue in many of the areas doesn't change after you escape the principal's office, even though it no longer makes any sense (for example the people in the detention room, or the food's flavor text still being about breakfast if you go back home, or being able to re-trigger the opening dialogues by interacting with the alarm clock) <br/>- The navigation can be confusing - for example, there is at least one place where going east then northwest, or west then northeast, both take you to the same place that is completely different from where you end up if you just go north, and the layout seems to make no sense physically <br/>- using anything on Sparky prints nothing (presumed bug) <br/>- I can't close the fridge in my house (presumed bug) <br/> <br/>And in general, a lot of what is or isn't implemented seems arbitrary (for example, the compass exists and can be picked up, but can't be used in any way or even looked at), which seems like the probably work of a deadline crunch. <br/> <br/>Still, I liked this one a lot! The writing was consistently fun and hilarious and it never got old trying to pick up literally everything I could see (or trying to kiss all the people, when the only one who accepts my kiss is the homeless man - bless his soul). I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with this in the post-jam days.
Dec 20 04:34:00	21m 00s	Project Sunflower	This is an excellent game concept, and I knew I was in for something charming from the title screen with the growing vine animation, but it still needs a lot of work in terms of its execution. Some things I noticed: <br/> <br/>- mirror rotation control is odd and unintuitive <br/>- using a popup to display stats is really weird <br/>- frequently, the light bounces in a blatantly wrong direction (and it isn't even consistent based on the angle!), which makes the puzzles feel frustrating and arbitrary <br/>- the wood walls don't stand out from the background, and I didn't realize they were obstacles at first (and hardly even noticed they were there) until a light ray hit them and stopped <br/>- there's no way to know what direction light is going to come in the window until you hit space to let it play <br/>- sometimes light rays fail to detect the mirrors and go straight through (a collision bug) <br/> <br/>My suggestions: <br/>- fix the collision and make light rays always follow the law of reflection <br/>- remove the needless restart-and-wait cycle by replacing it with a real-time system where updating a mirror or prism instantly updates the ray trajectory <br/>- fix the disparity in art quality where some assets look great and others look bleh <br/> <br/>You should also remove the audio voting category in accordance with the rules, since you used sound effects from pre-existing sources (as noted in the credits).
Dec 20 05:19:00	45m 00s	Auxochrome	Nowhere near as good as the art makes it look at a glance. I'm not one to mince words, and this game is really, truly terrible. I mean it. <br/> <br/>Firstly, the font is horribly broken, and it makes the "options" screen (actually a tutorial screen, there are no options at all) virtually impossible to read. <br/> <br/>As for the actual gameplay, there's not a lot to like here. The audio is too abrasive and all but gives me a headache, the 800% screenshake takes about a whole second to become really obnoxious, the controls feel horribly janky and oversensitive/undersensitive depending on your upgrade level, the collision is inconsistent (am I supposed to be able to walk up the ramps or are they just poorly conveyed half-height platforms? Who the hell knows!), there are doors that you can't actually go through (why are they even there???), the absurd amount of repetitive spam-clicking and kiting it takes to kill a single enemy makes my wrist hurt, and being constantly swarmed by those tiny little buggers that get stuck in walls and become increasingly frustrating to hit as you "upgrade" (a.k.a. become larger and slower and get a shorter jump - exactly the opposite of what I wanted) is the opposite of fun no matter how you look at it. It is supremely annoying. <br/> <br/>Add to all that the fact that nothing in this game really seems to make any sense (why am I collecting the blood of these blasted zergs? What is going on with my health bar? why does my upgrade counter seem to go down to 1 and then back up to 4 if I don't collect enough blood in time? Why does the boss register damage at some times but not others? It all feels like an unpleasant fever dream), and you get a wholly sub-par experience. Maybe if you had more time to flesh this out into a fuller game, explain what's going on better, and fix what's broken, it could be something truly fun, because the core mood isn't bad in and of itself, but as it stands, the execution fails on almost every level. The only thing I can really praise about this is the art, and even that is betrayed to a degree by the overzealous screenshake and the constant motion-sickness-inducing tilting.
Dec 31 10:14:00	268h 55m	GrownCuber	I'm not sure what it is, but something about screwing up and watching my little cube get a layer of dirt thrown on top of him (and sometimes the physics glitch out and the cube flies of the screen when it happens) made me laugh out loud every time I lost. Not many games can do that, I think! I like how the dirt bounces at each level, and I think some cheeky sound effects would go great with that. <br/> <br/>It's actually rather cool that you can move around on the title screen, because it gives you time to figure out how to move before you start, although it's not very obvious that you have to click "PLAY!" to start, because it doesn't look like a clickable button. It's also cool that the high score persists between play sessions, not a lot of jam games do that. <br/> <br/>The movement mechanic is surprisingly fun at first, but gets boring pretty quickly because once you figure out how it works well enough, you can pretty much keep going indefinitely. I think making the game gradually speed up or adding some kind of obstacle would turn it into a much more fun challenge.
Dec 31 10:43:00	29m 00s	Grow	This is a cool concept, having to balance your growth rate with the time you have remaining and the cost to add lice, and it's straightforward enough to figure out, but after a few rounds I'm still not sure if the strategy makes itself clear. Is it just a matter of growing as much as you can, figuring out the optimal time to start placing lice, and then placing lice until the game ends, or is there something more to the strategy that I'm missing? An interesting challenge, none the less. <br/> <br/>Also, a small thing, I'm not sure why anyone would play without fast-forward, so it would make more sense to me for that to be the default.
Dec 31 11:00:00	17m 00s	Cube Jump	The "Web" and "Windows" link both point to a download for a Windows exe, so you should consolidate them into one link that says "Windows". <br/> <br/>The points counter is pretty pointless (pun intended), since it both resets in the middle of the game after losing a level, and also carries over between playthroughs (so you can rack up points by playing the first level over and over again). Also, the audio plays over itself every time you restart, which is hilarious, but also really loud after several resets. <br/> <br/>Other than that, it's a fairly well-made platformer, with nice minimalistic graphics. A good entry for just 5 hours!
Dec 31 11:20:00	20m 00s	Food Drop Doug	For the first minigame, the dog sprite not having crisp pixels is kind of an eyesore, and the food items frequently spawn at the exact edges of the screen (more often than would be expected from random chance if they are spawning with a randomized x-coordinate). <br/> <br/>For the other, the controls feel a bit too touchy, the explanatory text is wrong (the mouse buttons are the reverse of what it says), and I'm not sure what the powerups even do, but I'm pretty sure if I press RMB once, it exhausts all of them simultaneously. <br/> <br/>Also, if you hit the dog against the floor or ceiling enough, he starts spinning. I don't know if that's intentional, but it's hilarious, and actually kinda fun.
Dec 31 12:14:00	54m 00s	Ball Crusher From Neptune	Brutally, unforgivingly hard! I think this is the most fun entry I've played so far, and the only one I had to repeatedly tell myself to stop playing so I could rate it. It's crazy addictive trying to beat my high score, and I'm sure I'll keep coming back to this after the jam to wrestle with it. <br/> <br/>I only have two minor criticisms: first, some of the graphics are weirdly aliased, and don't look as smooth as they could, particularly the light target things. Second, some sound effects would be a nice addition to the music. <br/> <br/>Aside from that, it's just awesome. My best score currently is only 17, but I'll keep trying for a better one.
Dec 31 21:31:00	9h 17m	Empyreal Roving	Many people have pointed out that the game is too difficult, but I don't think that's really the problem. I've played a few brutally difficult games this LD that were really fun because of the challenge. This game doesn't suffer from legitimate difficulty, it suffers from poor controls. In particular, the ship turns far too slowly and with far too much momentum to be of any use trying to turn around in a tight corridor; by the time you've turned all the way back around, it's too late to avoid slamming into the far wall or into the ground. Poor physics isn't doing you any favors, either - frequently, when you land on the pad to complete the level, you don't stick, you just keep sliding right off. <br/> <br/>If you gave this game decent controls and a better level, I suppose it could be fun, but then, why would I ever play this over the hundreds of 3-button rocket control games that already exist?
Dec 31 21:37:00	6m 00s	Super Holiday Snake	I admit I turned off the audio for this one. I don't need to hear that...
Dec 31 21:48:00	11m 00s	GeoGrowth	I accidentally opened up 3 copies of the game at because it took about a minute to load and I thought it just wasn't starting. When I closed them all, the audio was still playing, and I had to go find the process in ProcExp and kill it before the audio would stop. Not a fun time.
Jan 2 21:54:00	48h 06m	Spectral Sprinter	For this Ludum Dare I've seen a lot of games that make inventive use of two-button controls, but I've also seen a lot of games that are severely hindered by it, and this is no exception. The game feels very much out of the player's control, which is never a good thing, especially for an infinite runner. In particular, phasing seemed to take a frame or two before it went into effect, which means that letting up on the J key and then quickly pressing the K key threw a dagger more often than it let me jump. The enemies also seem to enjoy popping up where it's nearly impossible to hit them or jump over them, mostly generating right on ledges that I have to jump up to, so I'd have to start dashing and then throw a dagger at the right moment in mid-air, which again is made harder by the sprint control being slightly unresponsive.
Jan 2 22:17:00	23m 00s	From the Sea, Freedom	I love that a jam game uses audio in such a wonderful way! It's a very relaxing experience, one of my favorite entries I've played. My only criticism is that one of the sound effects for discovering plants (the chiptuney one) was a lot louder than the others (the chords). It could probably use to be made a little quieter and/or the chords a little louder.
Jan 2 22:38:00	21m 00s	Soulless Capitalist Robots	So it's basically just Prisoner's Dilemma: The Game? Nevertheless it's very polished and well put together, despite being perhaps too simple. Good graphics, good sound, and functioning multiplayer is hard to pull off all in 72 hours. <br/> <br/>-1 for using javascript alert messages as a menu, though. That's a special brand of evil.