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amras0000

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game	amras0000's comment
Apr 18 08:08:00		Barber Blues	Very silly game. Well-polished and well-balanced, too. Good work.
Apr 18 08:29:00	21m 00s	Shifters	This is one of the rare cases where I don't abandon a literary game after the first paragraph, and your writing pulled me through to the end of a couple arcs. Minor complaint is that the shapeshifters almost could've been replaced with any other monster/alien/android with a skinsuit. I feel like there's more potential in the theme. Good job, though.
Apr 18 08:39:00	10m 00s	ShapeQuest	I mean, it's a simple game, very little going on etc. <br/>I'm not entirely sure how you structured your AI, since it was very easy for me to force the red square in a position where it had a clear view of me but didn't fire (it was stuck against a wall and unable to move towards me, but I was next to it). <br/> <br/>Death is insubstantial. It doesn't reset your progress or move you back. <br/> <br/>With some fundamental pathfinding ('if player_pos is in a given rectangle of the screen, move to set position that can aim into that rect'), about a dozen more enemies, and randomly spawning objectives this might have been a bit more fun.
Apr 18 10:22:00	1h 43m	Fantastic Fight Arena	Every so often I'd get killed and not respawn. I'd be unable to move with 0HP while other players played around me. The only way to keep playing was to refresh, which wiped my progress. <br/> <br/>The single biggest issue in the game is the unlock system. While it does incentivise murder, it also means that a new player joining the server is at a severe disadvantage. There's no way to fight a zombie as a soldier. If you had made everything unlocked from the start, it'd make for much more fair and intense battles, rather than the current state of one player camping on the server with everything unlocked bringing ghosts to a mage fight and zombies to a warrior fight. <br/> <br/>Really, I think the game would've been much better with absolutely no restrictions on transformations. Focus on 3 or 4 forms which counter each other well, and force the players to think quick and switch to an appropriate form depending on the other players. <br/> <br/>Also, the mage missiles wouldn't register hits occasionally. Seems like that was related to distance between mage and target. <br/> <br/>P.S. - Jam rules do allow for premade assets, but if you use third party graphics, it's requested that you disable voting in the Graphics category.
Apr 18 10:26:00	4m 00s	Heroic Sex Bazooka	The game operates on a grid system, but the player moves fluidly. With the player being the same size as the grid, this means that it's difficult to squeeze into tight corridors, which lead to a lot of frustration, given how often they're used. Either make the player a lot smaller or lock their movement to the grid. <br/> <br/>I think the game would have also benefited from making the burgers wear off with movement rather than with time. It makes more sense thematically, and it'd allow for tighter, more intellectually challenging puzzles, rather than the current battle with the game's movement system not to push the rock too far or not far enough before the timer runs out. <br/> <br/>The level editor is a nice touch but with the mechanics as they are the platform's not really suited for a lot of good levels.
Apr 18 11:30:00	1h 04m	Shape Soup	Wow...this is...really fun and compelling. Great work. <br/>Minor gripe: at some points near the end of the game it seemed physically impossible for me to reach the target shapes without bumping into others. But that resolved itself with time and I was able to finish without an issue.
Apr 18 11:59:00	29m 00s	Agent Shift	Very nicely done. An interesting take on the theme, good execution, plenty of amusing content. <br/> <br/>Kinda surprising to use Unity with this particular art style. Don't think I've seen that done before. <br/> <br/>Initially, I was fairly confused why my cards were being reset, and often didn't notice they were. It's not obvious or stated that shifting/getting a clue ends your day. <br/> <br/>At one point I got the clue "highest point is >1000m" and then next "highest point is > 500m" - not sure if you wanted to prevent redundancy like that or not. <br/> <br/>Some potential improvements, if you ever build a post-LD version: <br/>There should really be a better indicator of when a day ends and how many cards you have left to play. Possibly some animation to show the cards being reshuffled, maybe a stopwatch with 5 states, with the end-day actions being nearby? <br/>It's also fairly difficult to read how much HP/Detection/Awareness/Progress you have, and there were many times when I thought a card would push me to 100 progress but it didn't. That may be intentional, but it'd be nice to have either a numerical indicator or some markings along the various lines every 10 points or so. <br/> <br/>The chuckle (I think?) sfx on the main menu is a nice touch.
Apr 18 13:39:00	1h 40m	Shaze (Shape Maze)	First off, congrats on your first Ludum Dare. This isn't a bad entry. Simple enough mechanics that make sense and you've made some decent levels with them. Definitely enjoyed my time. <br/> <br/>On the critical side of things: <br/>The writing's a bit too pretentious for my taste. Doesn't add much to the game, doesn't really hold any consistent narrative arc. There's a bit of a buildup to the finale but it feels forced and coarse. The ending twist is unexpected, but not satisfying. I think I would've preferred a "Thanks for Playing!" with a drawing of a thumbs up. But that's just me. <br/> <br/>That being said, the narrative does lend the game some cohesion and encourage the player to keep going, so I've got mixed feelings on the matter. I definitely think you should have spent more time on the writing, even at the cost of one or two of the levels, to make the experience more satisfying. <br/> <br/>Regarding gameplay: the game's desperately missing an undo button. All mistakes are undoable but it can take a hell of a lot of effort to compensate for a single wrong buttonpress. Telling the player to press 'r' to restart should happen in the second or third level, not halfway through the game. I had to use that key several times before the game told me; stumbled on it by accident. <br/> <br/>In terms of presentation, the graphics are fine, really. Not beautiful, but functional. Could benefit from a stronger minimalist ethic (solid colors instead of gradients, a cleaner white background with a very subtle grid overlay, either thicker borders or no borders on the shapes, and more visible end-points), but that's just aesthetic preference. I've seen worse :P <br/>The cut between levels is a bit too abrupt imo. A fade out->fade in, or a 'good job! press any button to continue' would've given the player a second to savor the victory before throwing them back in the fray. Though I guess that doesn't fit the lore as much :P
Apr 18 14:32:00	53m 00s	Railroad Shifter	The voice-over is fairly neat, though a bit grating after a while. The animation on that train...operator...person is actually pretty fantastic <br/> <br/>Gameplay itself does have a couple issues, though, and the UI could use some extra pampering too: <br/>-In real life, trains without a complete track in front of them either don't move from their station or crash on the way. The behavior in the game isn't very obvious, and on level 2 especially if you don't touch anything when the trains depart you're unable to finish the level. <br/>It would make much more sense to either let the player choose when the trains depart, or to have them wait until a connection is established. <br/>-With how the trains operate, there's nothing stopping the player from building track as the train goes alone, removing track from behind the train and placing it in front. The levels don't seem designed with that in mind, so I'm guessing that's not intentional. <br/> <br/>The UI is a bit of a mess. It should be immediately obvious which train is heading to which station, instead of having to crossreference a schedule with info you only get by clicking on the stations, all while a timer is ticking. "Blue train goes to blue station" would've been much more clean. <br/>And having the bottom of the screen tell me to find the "Next" button in the top right corner is just confusing. Keep the 'level end' message and the 'next' button in the same area. <br/> <br/>The voice-over is neat, but you're holding the mic way too close to your face, and on top of that the sensitivity is way too high. <br/>Depending on the mic aim anywhere from 2 (headset mic) to 6 (standard handheld dynamic) inches away, and before recording watch the mic levels to make sure they're somewhere in the middle of your meter. You can always boost quiet audio, you can't fix corrupted audio. <br/> <br/>The game isn't bad overall, but there's just a lot of tiny things that grate on me far too much.
Apr 18 15:03:00	31m 00s	⬛R⬤PPING ONTO SH▲PES	technical issues first, holding space on the title screen drops the framerate and does little else. <br/> <br/>The game is absolutely beautiful.I'd want to decorate my house with this game. And the theme interpretation is pretty neat. <br/>But this is a physics puzzle game. And physics puzzle games conventionally operate on the principle of 'set stage up, play, watch what goes wrong, alter slightly, play, repeat'. And the issue with this particular title is that when something goes wrong, the entire stage resets to its original position. Initially, this isn't a huge issue since you you're only clicking one or two shapes. But later, when you get to grids of dozens of little shapes, which you have to re-click every time you lose the level, it gets unbearably frustrating. You do want a button/key which resets the stage to default (maybe keep that as [R]) but keep another button([Space] might work) for 'keep everything as I set it but reset the physics'. <br/> <br/>The music is a 4 second loop that drove me insane as well. <br/> <br/>Level design-wise, the game seems to love (pun intended) to throw new concepts at the player with no introduction in the middle of levels which claim to be introducing something else. Like the stage that explained how lines work and then arbitrarily required you to change the shape of the goal. I realize there's limited time to make levels in a compo, but tutorials are important. <br/> <br/>Still, those graphics are amazing.
Apr 18 17:35:00	2h 32m	Nightshift	First off, the graphics and general aesthetic of the game are spot-on, consistent, very well done. The various forms feel like they need a bit of balancing but that's the case with any game jam so that's mostly a nitpick. The game is super visually impressive. Like, damn. <br/> <br/>Gameplay-wise, it's mostly standard for a vertical shooter, except for a couple distinctions from the norm: <br/>The main genre-convention-defying thing here is the extremely large hitbox that the cat has, for bullet hell standards. That makes maneuvering him very difficult, especially with all the tight spaces and walls to navigate through. <br/> <br/>The second genre-convention defiance comes from damage on contact with walls. Typically if you get crushed in a v.shooter you die, but otherwise walls just push you around. With the damage as it's handled here it just seems to make navigating more frustrating without adding a whole lot of enjoyable challenge. <br/> <br/>Generally, those tropes exist for a reason and it hurts your game not to follow them. <br/> <br/>The movement also feels fairly sluggish and unresponsive. I realize that with the ninja you can't move left/right while firing, but it seemed like there was a moment after I stopped firing when I still couldn't move. <br/> <br/>The levels (at least the first few, which I was able to get to) are designed in a way that reinforces the issues with the mechanics. They're filled with tight spaces and obstacles to dodge, with heavy bulletspongey enemies that don't pop well and occupy too much of the screen. <br/> <br/>Generally, I'd like a much, much smaller hitbox, weaker enemies, and a lot fewer navigational kerfuffles. <br/> <br/>On death and restart, the background music overlaps with itself. <br/> <br/>I'll probably come back and play this some more when I'm less tired and can focus on getting further into the game. I'm curious what you put there.
Apr 18 18:04:00	29m 00s	Monstershift	Right, sorry about how harsh I'm going to be here but I'm just trying to be honest, hopefully you can take this as constructive criticism for future endeavors. <br/> <br/>The graphics are Kenney's, the music is MacLeod's. You handled the level design, and possibly the game physics/input handling and the swapping mechanic. <br/> <br/>I don't build platformers, I'm really not sure exactly how to make a character controller that feels comfortable and fluid. I know it's difficult to do so. But what you have here is just unpleasant to use. I've seen worse, to be sure, but this physics setup doesn't make for a solid platformer. I'd love to explain how to improve it but I don't really work in platformers and there's better people out there who have guides and tutorials up. <br/> <br/>Level design - wise: <br/>The very first segment of the first level is solid. It teaches the player how to move and jump, and it shows off the mechanic of jumping on red things only being available to the red character. The player tries to jump for a platform and misses, then jumps with the red character and makes it. <br/>But in the second level, things start to get messy. Yes, there are arrows but they're pointing in all sorts of different directions, contradicting each other. The other guide the player could reasonably follow is the coins, but those lead straight into spikes. The end result is that I don't know where to go or what to do in that level, and when I try to do what's suggested I'm punished. <br/> <br/>Continuing on, checkpoints. Platformers have had them since platformers existed. And not without reason. Walking into the side of a spike and being put back to the main menu is gutting and unpleasant. Mark down which level the player's in and drop them in at the start of that, rather than at the start of the game. Ideally just set their position to the level's start. <br/> <br/>Please don't take this the wrong way, I realize you're not terribly experienced and I'm not trying to put you down. Keep on trying, you'll get better with practice.
Apr 19 03:08:00	9h 04m	Geo Gearshift	Core principle is solid, and the game is pretty fun to play, even to the point that the janky don't really get in the way of enjoyment as much as they should. <br/> <br/>At one point, I got stuck in a corner of the road, but the game released me after a quick struggle. <br/>Far too many times the game didn't register me driving through the gate with the right color, and reacted as though I'd hit the wall of the gate or used the wrong shape. <br/> <br/>The input handling takes some getting used to, though it ultimately prevents fast-paced driving. After each gate, I'd have to halt, turn towards the gate, then accelerate again. The car'd be uncontrollable otherwise. I think you could resolve this by making the track radius much larger (And therefore the curve smoother) and knocking down the turning speed and linear acceleration.
Apr 19 13:52:00	10h 44m	Turbo/Glide	Had a lot of fun with this one. last two levels were a bit too difficult for me, but that's not a bad thing. Only complaint is that it felt like sometimes, especially right at the start of level 4, I'd lose a bunch of my speed when switching to the glider, and other times doing the same thing I'd keep a lot more. That made it a bit hard to predict when to transform into the glider or how to do the run-up, since the tiniest input change could make a huge difference over the course of the flight.
Apr 19 14:08:00	16m 00s	Delta Cubed	All the excitement and thrills of entering your credit card number :T The mechanic of right number does one thing, wrong number does another has potential. Maybe you have to fit a shape (keep it down to 6 sides or fewer) into a specific hole? Throw a timer on that and it'd be a pretty tense experience of "do I follow the orders or not"? As it stands, not a lot of game here.
Apr 19 16:27:00	2h 19m	Shifting Shapes	Regarding the control scheme, since this is a html game, you generally want to avoid using arrow keys for controls (same goes for right-click). Hitting up/down made my browser scroll and gave me horrible motion sickness after only a couple of turns. <br/> <br/>Regarding the game itself, my main complaint is just the lack of feedback. The mechanics are fine and reasonably challenging, but there's no satisfaction in making a complete row. As a simple imptovement, lerp the position of the rows over 0.3s or so to make them slide. <br/>Ultimately though, you really should've put some more effort into making the finished rows pop more. Anything would work, like adding a white rectangle over the line for a split second or giving the finished blocks some rudimentary physics and applying random forces, but with the complete lack of feedback there's not a lot keeping me going.
Apr 19 17:39:00	1h 12m	Cyan	Awesome. The dynamic of coins to purchase lives actually gives incentives to coin collection without the stressful overtness of a lives counter. And the balance is just right that I didn't have issues getting to the end once I learned the controls but also didn't feel like I wasn't challenged, and my coin count stayed within 10-40 bounds throughout most of the game. <br/> <br/>regarding XCV, I found myself consistently moving my fingers to ZXC every time I scratched my nose or stretched my hands, so while you're being more open to other keyboard layouts you're also working against hard-engrained muscle memory. <br/> <br/>Afaict after you've used up all your bat jumps you get another extra boost which transforms you back into a human, and there's one optional jump that uses that feature. Good on you for not making it mandatory to use the mechanic, but it definitely wasn't obvious or signposted well. <br/> <br/>Also, it seems like there was a slight shortcut at one point, but I just barely couldn't make the jump (3 horizontal squares, then a big rectangle to their right, then a jump from the big rectangle onto a platform to the left). Not sure if that was intentionally misleading or if I can make that jump somehow. <br/> <br/>Anyway, awesome work. As always you've managed make the rest of us look shite in comparison :P
Apr 19 19:18:00	1h 39m	Disarranged	Intro had me laughing pretty hard. The camera on the death sequence is also pretty damn effective for mood setting. <br/>I don't know that knocking everything down twice adds much to the game, just made me a bit confused (it didn't seem like things were being persistent and I initially thought I had to knock everything down twice in one go). <br/> <br/>Eventually I knocked everything down that I could and the game didn't seem to register my victory. I probably missed something, but I tried punching everywhere I could with no success.
Apr 19 20:10:00	52m 00s	Tommy is the Shapeshifter	The dialogue's hilariously voiced and generally a very pleasant dark camp thing. Main complaint is just that the dialogue implies a lot of things that don't pan out. At one point in the "Is tommy a shapeshifter?" line, it seems like there's a consensus, at least with bobby, that tommy is a shapeshifter, and this doesn't translate to his ultimate answer. It would've been much more fun to find these hidden flags in the conversation I feel, and get a more organic-feeling argument going. <br/> <br/>Still, had a very good time, especially being able to convince everyone that they're the shapeshifter after all. Nice work.
Apr 20 05:35:00	9h 25m	Facade	Solid little title, boss was actually pretty fun, you explained the mechanics well and I had a pretty good time. Good work.
Apr 20 06:25:00	50m 00s	Dr. Deckenstein: An Adventure in Severed Parts	At least at one point, the stitches actually didn't let me select my wounds, they just showed an empty scrollable list. <br/>The lack of sound hurts this title a lot, I'd kill for some nice meaty orc grunts and visceral slashes. <br/>The game could benefit a hell of a lot if you let the player choose one of several body parts on battle end. As it stands getting a good deck together is very luck of the draw, and it can kill a run if you don't get the needed cards. <br/>Also, I didn't come across any cards that'd let me remove non-wounds from my deck (I'd quite like to get rid of the trip or strategize for instance). I feel like compared to the other cards in the game it wouldn't be particularly overpowered and might help in creating a good deck composition. <br/>Also, drawing cards really should be a quick action. Strategize being in the starting deck feels like wounding the player from the start :T
Apr 20 06:53:00	28m 00s	PsychoShift	The texture work here is really impressive. Solid effort there. Unfortunately the gameplay doesn't really match that quality. The sphere movement is waaaay too sensitive, and I can't tap my way along because taps don't actually move the sphere. The early levels have far too much empty space on top of that, which means that half the time I'm barelling through the level until I fall right into an obstacle and have to restart. <br/>I will say, having the player shift shapes to jump or attack does make for some really interesting platforming dynamics. If the controls were tighter I think I'd enjoy that much more, but the concept is pretty solid.
Apr 20 10:07:00	3h 14m	Amoebattles	Very nicely done. The graphics are quite pretty and smooth, the controls are relatively responsive, and there's a lot of feedback for getting exp, getting new levels. The enemies are well-communicated and consistently colored, all that's solidly built. <br/> <br/>A couple of things you could definitely improve on, though. To start with, death is far, far too punishing and far too quick. Once I'm knocked down from death machine to Kobe I can't really do much if all the enemies around me are still balanced as though I was the death machine. Sure there's more experience to pick up, but I can't get to the experience with all the overpowered enemies around me. As a simple improvement, you could make damage remove only one level, instead of dropping down to Kobe. If you do want to go down the traditional twinstick route of bringing the player down to zero, have player death cause most of the enemies around the player to be vaporized so I'm not instantly swamped with enemies while I'm trying to regain my power. <br/> <br/>I've already praised the visuals, and you do make a good effort to distinguish the enemies, but they're the same color as your shots, and as such the screen gets really busy really quickly. It's hard to make out what's enemy, what's projectile, and what's a spawnpoint. Most of my deaths in busier moments of the game were to things I didn't see coming. More color variation between projectiles/spawnpoints/enemies/enemy explosions would have helped a lot, as well as a bigger contrast between foreground and background, and smaller/less pronounced graphics for the player's projectiles. <br/> <br/>One further aspect of visual design is the point/experience popups, the +100's and such. Half the time I'd have the entire immediate area around me covered in the stuff, which made it really hard to see the enemies through the fog. I'd have much preferred a bar at the bottom of the screen, or an arc around my character, that just increased as I picked up the pellets to signify progress. Something less obtrusive. <br/> <br/>Finally, this might just be me being used to standard single-direction-pointing twinsticks, but the fire rate seemed incredibly slow and threw me off many times, where I'd be expecting a projectile to appear a lot earlier than it did and get killed because of it. <br/> <br/>Still, I had a good time with the game. Nice work.
Apr 20 10:13:00	6m 00s	Tremor	The graphics are very impressive; give me a bit of a courage the cowardly dog feel. The gameplay's simple enough, a bit generic, and not a whole lot going on. I'm not really sure what the decrepit/standard transition was supposed to be doing, and it mostly made it hard to see/dodge the obstacles, but it was definitely pretty. <br/> <br/>No clue what's going on with that description, though.
Apr 21 07:01:00	20h 48m	Starshift	Fun little game really. Especially for a one-day entry it was actually kinda satisfying. Bit of a bug after time over and restart, the shapes would dissapear permanently after they went off the right/left edge, and often one button press would cause the lines to shift twice instead of once. <br/> <br/>Didn't get a chance to play the original since my browser doesn't support Unity Web Player.
Apr 21 07:22:00	21m 00s	Cabin Reaver: Revenge of the Blood Shed	The core idea is fairly amusing, and the graphics are pretty nice. The animations feel varied, the hits make a visible impact. Unfortunately, the game does get repetitive very quickly. A log of the unlocks didn't actually change the game up much. I wasn't able to get very far playing without the starting bones, or without the chasm map, and the horrors didn't seem to do much unless the kids randomly walked onto them, which was very rare. <br/>So the only thing that could've kept me interested were secondary weapons, and those dropped far too rarely. <br/> <br/>I think the game would have benefitted from a lot more passive buffs; some to improve your basic bones/boomsticks with flames or toxins or w/e, some to provide a more ambulating alternative to the horrors - various zombies and bats walking around. That'd let the player get more powerful over time to match the increasing number of kids, and seeing your house evolve would've just been fun. <br/> <br/>A further idea that piggybacks off of that one might have been to vary the appearance of the cabin slightly with each upgrade, binding-of-isaac style.
Apr 21 07:36:00	14m 00s	Pinata Mania	The game feels awfully slow. The graphical effects of the buildings exploding are quite fun, but it just takes so much waiting around holding down a single button to get there. I'd have liked to spend the entire game as the pinata, collecting candy to keep my timer going or something of that nature. <br/>Also, with very rare exceptions, score doesn't make people want to keep playing your game. Set concrete goals, like knocking down an entire city block.
Apr 21 07:46:00	10m 00s	Rue Printemps	Are you familiar with stuff like the Humongous Entertainment games? Usually children's stuff where you'd get to click on various bits of the level and nothing much would happen but you'd get this cute animation? That's what this game is missing. I want to be able to click on a bird and have it fly away, to knock on a window and have it open/close. <br/>Obviously a bit more control over the building appearance would've been nice too, but even without that you could've made the experience a lot more dynamic with a couple of extra animations. <br/> <br/>Still, very pretty artpiece.
Apr 21 08:19:00	33m 00s	The Seasons Processor	Running on Linux my Desktop Environment ireevertably crashed when I booted the game. I didn't have anything else unusual running, so it's hard to imagine something else causing that. You'll pardon me if I don't try again.
Apr 21 08:38:00	19m 00s	Ship Shape	My main gripe is the method of generating energy. Having to mash w and s is tiring and unsatisfying. <br/>The actual wall-building wasn't particularly compelling either, mostly just grinding out enough energy, ploping down the bits the stars ripped out, rinse and repeat. <br/>Just not a lot to the gameplay to keep me interested. <br/>Also, the audio was very unpleasant and grating, especially the extremely loud end-of-game effects. <br/> <br/>The graphics are super pretty, I'll admit, but the gameplay just doesn't seem that well designed. I feel like this sort of gameplay would lend itself well to a tower defense variant of some description, or maybe something where the core will provide you energy while you control it, but you must build out with floors to move to other cores before your original one depletes.
Apr 22 06:18:00	21h 40m	Tangram Cookie Factory	Admittedly, I played on wine, which might have screwed with some things. If you throw a linux build up I'll happily take another look later. But unity tends to run fine through wine, so I'm going to assume the bugs I encountered are yours and not wine's. <br/> <br/>I started off the game trying to form the tangrams, but couldn't find any way to rotate the pieces and all but 3 of them (judging by your screenshot) were offscreen to the right, where I couldn't reach them. So I couldn't cover the entire shape. <br/> <br/>This didn't seem to matter though. Just selecting the recipe and hitting 'bake' (With no pieces on the plate) made the customer happy and satisfied. <br/> <br/>The audio clips a fuckton. If your audio guy has a preamp, use that, otherwise either find some other way to drop the sensitivity of your mic when you record, or just hold it further away from you. People notice bad audio quality sooner than bad visual quality, remember. <br/> <br/>And the animation on the recipe book, while kinda pretty, took ages. If I can only see two recipes at once, I'm gonna be trying to flip through that book pretty fast and if I have to wait a whole second between each flip that's just unpleasantly frustrating. <br/> <br/>Once my first day ended, I got a "good job you won, click here to go to the next level" screen, and when I didn't click the next level button for a couple seconds, a "you lost, click here to restart" screen was overlayed on top of the first, not letting me progress. <br/> <br/>I have to imagine this isn't your intended end user experience. Remember you're allowed to fix game-breaking bugs and reupload them, just maybe mark the new version as not the original.
Apr 22 06:50:00	32m 00s	Watery	The system you've got there definitely has a fair bit of effort behind it, but that may have been misplaced, since it really doesn't feel natural or predictable; pulling on one end of the blob affects places that really don't feel like they should be moving right now. <br/> <br/>Because of this, the game feels less like a puzzle game and more like an exercise in frustration. <br/>I think a better design philosophy here would've been to try and make a triangle grid and let the player drag their shape along that. Have a look at Mushroom 11 for a loose example of what I mean. Then you could smooth the edges a fair bit to hide the fact you're working on small triangles. I think that would've been both easier to build and more natural to play.
Apr 22 07:40:00	50m 00s	Shrine Spirit Shuffle	The herding mechanic with the green ghosts is kinda compelling, might have been nice to see a bit more of a focus on that. The purple ghosts are just a bit tedious, since there doesn't seem to be a way to lock them in. <br/> <br/>Most of the frustration I've had with the game is from the transformation mechanic, though. If I'm not standing perfectly still I can't switch forms, so half the time I'd be right next to a purple ghost and try to switch back to the maiden to catch it, but I'd be stuck mid-animation and not switch until the ghost is halfway across the map. <br/> <br/>Also, the game does get a bit repetitive over time. The levels don't seem varied enough, and it's just a lot of busywork after a while. <br/> <br/>I got through a couple levels until I got to one where there's a little 3x3 loop directly adjacent to the top edge (no grass between it and the wall - generally avoid that in block-based level design, makes it seem like a level exit). There, I caught all the green ghosts I could see, caught all the purple ghosts the fox could see, and the game claimed there was one ghost left, which I just couldn't catch no matter how hard I tried.
Apr 22 07:50:00	10m 00s	Bloody Party	The audio design is really unpleasant. Screechy noises combined with a cheap repetitive house loop don't make for a comfortable listening experience. <br/> <br/>I wasn't able to figure out how to sacrifice anyone. I brought a random guy into the room with the pentagon but nothing happened. The pentagon would glow red if I walked over it but none of the buttons seemed to make the sacrifice happen. When I changed into a bat the dude just started screaming (again, really unpleasant sfx). <br/> <br/>The guards seemed to run after me even if I was human, though very inconsistently, to the point that I could be being chased by one bouncer and run straight past another without him caring. <br/> <br/>A better tutorial would have been very welcome, I couldn't figure out what to do. <br/> <br/>On the bright side, that transitioning animation is beautiful.
Apr 25 13:26:00	77h 36m	The Mining of Life	Core mechanics are decent enough, nothing new but playable. <br/>Main complaint is with the audio design. The sound effect of shapeshifting is screechy, loud, and very unpleasant. My personal rule of thumb is not to use timbres with few overtones where I can avoid it, but if you have to aim for the old speaker vibe at least don't use such a high pitch. <br/> <br/>The writing's passable, not particularly engaging and got in the way of the puzzles more often than not. I think a lot of the jokes didn't have the proper setup, or the proper timing. The punchline is just delivered far too early. <br/> <br/>The physics doesn't feel very polished, on many occasions I was able to jump off vertical walls or pixel-width ledges, the mass of the objects is a bit unpredictable (I wasn't expecting not to be able to move as a box with another box on me), but the system works well enough to finish the game. <br/> <br/>The graphics could've used a hell of a lot more contrast. I could see what was going on well enough, but the game really didn't catch my eye. Flat squares with no normal mapping and a greyscale noise filter thrown on them don't make for particularly tasty eye-candy. I'd have liked to see some stalactites, some gemstones, anything. And the light attached to the player doesn't have the effect you're going for if you don't provide a background to light up or normal maps to make the lighting realistic. Crazybump's free and takes a couple seconds to operate. Use it people.
May 1 13:14:00	143h 48m	Stone sacrifice	The game lacks any real sense of satisfaction. The animation was nice and the texturing decent, but by the end of the level I'd hoped to see all the clay people get smushed but instead the giant rock landed first to the side of them, missing them all, and then just bounced off them on the second level :T <br/> <br/>I was able to walk off the map without a problem; you've got a square map there, just clamp the player position to the map bounds. <br/> <br/>The camera angle for the overhead view sat in an awkward position where it wasn't cinematically satisfying but also didn't give me a proper view of the entire arena. <br/> <br/>The animation's really well-polished, the sound effects were fun to listen to, but the coding and gameplay design need work.