Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD35 → Feedback comment stats → pkenney
Feedback comments for LD35
pkenney's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | pkenney's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 18 23:44:00 | Slithering | Nice job finishing on your first Ludum Dare! A shame you didn't get the multiple arm types idea in time, but impressive that you had art with animations, sound effects, and music... plus a final boss fight! <br/> <br/>Two tiny points I'll mention about small design choices: Consider going for more color contrast between enemy and background, here you have green on green. It wasn't a real problem though. Second, the regenerating health seems to "encourage boring" because it rewards me for standing and waiting to fill back up before I move forward. | |
| Apr 18 23:56:00 | 12m 00s | Scevus | Wow great job! This was a lot of fun, and it was well-built. <br/> <br/>I tested several scenarios to see if I could cheap the game out, but you had it covered. I tried just parking in a corner forever, but no dice. I also tested what happens if I stand on a spawning brick, but you thought of that too! <br/> <br/>I liked the idea and I liked the pace. The graphical style was really cool too, the variations of block appearance was a really nice touch. <br/> <br/>If could change just one thing I would look at making the collider into a slippery collider instead of a frictiony one. My main trouble was zipping around a corner of a block and I'd get a bit stuck. It was totally not a huge deal, it just threw a kink in that prevent the control from being A+ buttery smooth. <br/> <br/>Great work, I liked this one. |
| Apr 19 00:12:00 | 16m 00s | Space Shifters | Cool game, plays smooth. It took me a little while to figure out what buttons to press and what to do, and then there was a bit of time until I had memorized what color was which button until I could do it fast enough. <br/> <br/>Then of course I hit level 10 and had some more learning to do! <br/> <br/>I think my top score was 16. <br/> <br/>If I could make a few small changes I would put the controls on the start screen, have someplace that the red/blue/green order someplace to help new players. Something simple, like where your background has the one red light, have three lights in the right order to remind me. <br/> <br/>Also since the game controls with keyboard and has a lot of death/restart, it's a constant small friction that I have to take my hand and put it on the mouse to click restart, I would prefer a keyboard command since my hand is already there. <br/> <br/>Looks good and plays smooth though, nice one! It was satisfying to get a run in a row, and the little sound effect was a good touch. |
| Apr 19 00:26:00 | 14m 00s | March of the Wizards | Slick graphics and a nice theme to have the group of wizards get knocked away instead of having game over right away! My high score was 1657 but I kind of lost it all in a row at the end. |
| Apr 19 00:35:00 | 9m 00s | Stellar Pendulum | Love it - high score was 2274 but I bet you could get really good at this. <br/> <br/>I like the simple graphics and the unassuming sound effects, the mood is right. <br/> <br/>I love that it doesn't instruct you, and lets you figure it out. <br/> <br/>The only problem I had after getting over the hump is the way things go from totally fine to game over instantly, so there's not so much tension building as I see things spiraling out of control... it's just already over before I know there's a problem. |
| Apr 19 00:44:00 | 9m 00s | Tetrik's Cube | Nice graphics and feel for a cool idea, well done! <br/> <br/>Minor, but if I could change one thing I would make the restart command be on the keyboard like the gameplay instead of changing to the mouse. |
| Apr 19 01:07:00 | 23m 00s | MoveARound | Excellent first compo entry. Cool concept and great look. <br/> <br/>The controls could be smoother, I had a lot of frustrating deaths where I meant to do one thing, but another thing happened. <br/> <br/>However, the positives of game made up for that! <br/> <br/>I did hit a difficulty bump in the second level another commenter said, but I pushed past that and got to the last level. I nearly beat it, but I couldn't quite get there. <br/> <br/>Well done! |
| Apr 19 01:19:00 | 12m 00s | Stretch Runner | Tight controls and a nice look made this fun to play! I got 300, which I know isn't great, but I couldn't help taking those risks and squeezing through the tight spots to grab the orbs. <br/> <br/>Nice job with your first leap into 3D, too. |
| Apr 19 01:37:00 | 18m 00s | Geometry Shift | Love the music, it was a great vibe so probably worth going for the jam just for that! <br/> <br/>I thought this was a really cool mechanic, and I had a good time playing. My high score was 104, which is all right. <br/> <br/>If you're open to a suggestion, I think I could have got deeper in the groove if you make just two small changes to the game: <br/> <br/>1) the collider is currently larger than the players graphics. Once I understood this it wasn't too bad, but I had a fistful of moments during the learning phase where I was confused why I died. I tested by just not doing anything after a restart and for me the player dies before he is really "hit" by the other shape. <br/> <br/>2) I like the mechanic of changing to a shape to become immune to them. It's tough to really nail it under pressure, but I think I could get there if you changed it so that my "allies" didn't block my bullets. When I change to square, the squares stop killing me, but they still stop my shots from hitting enemy triangles, yet the triangles can come through the other squares to get me. The problem here is that I was "clever" and changed to the right shape, but I get killed anyway because now I can't blast my way out. <br/> <br/>Overall I had the most luck with the shape-changing when I was moving around a lot, so it ended up being fine. <br/> <br/>I like it - interesting mechanics with smooth controls and a nice vibe especially with the music. Nice entry! |
| Apr 19 01:44:00 | 7m 00s | Shape Shooter | Wow, is that stereo panning I hear?! And those explosions are great, I love the effect from blowing up the ships. <br/> <br/>This was fun, I didn't get quite to the point where I was effectively hot-swapping weapons when I faced mixed waves, but I was doing pretty good with the basic swaps. I liked that it was a little more than I could handle with the tougher stuff. <br/> <br/>Nice entry! |
| Apr 20 12:59:00 | 35h 15m | Shipshift Pronto | This was cool! I really liked the idea of rearranging your shape, and the way that it affected both offense and defense. Plus the graphics looked really nice, and the game had a nice feel. <br/> <br/>This is a really solid entry, so let me mention a few tiny things that dinged me while I was playing. <br/> <br/>Others mentioned the repeated tutorial but I agree that was the only really big one. I do want to say the tutorial was well designed in the way that it forced me to use the ability to start, though. <br/> <br/>Next, I really like the visual look but maybe the projectiles and the hearts could "pop" a bit more - I kind of lost them when the screen got hectic. The projectiles currently have this dark purple which is a very low contrast against the dark blue background, so they're the first thing my eye loses track of when they should be the last. The hearts are also kind of a desaturated fleshy pink and could stand a little more intensity. <br/> <br/>Lastly, I had a little trouble making heavy use of the main mechanic. I liked that I was *forced* to by the tutorial, but I would have enjoyed the game even more if I would have *wanted* to use it more. Instead, my best runs were when I used the vertical column to get past the tutorial, and then changed to the horizontal column and played the whole game that way. <br/> <br/>I am not totally certain what the main friction here was. I think it was learning... I knew I could push that button and change shape, but because there were three shapes it required a learning phase before I could internalize what shape would come out when I hit the button. There was this combination: In a firefight I was afraid to hit the button because if I did I wasn't sure what would happen, and I might lose control and die quickly and have to do the tutorial again. So I just didn't hit the button. But then I didn't learn the button. So I never got over this really. <br/> <br/>I don't know if that makes sense... And I will say that it's not only this game. A ton of shape-shifting games offered three shapes but I had this problem of learning the button 'shift-order' with every one. So maybe it's me! <br/> <br/>But I wonder if having only two shapes would let the player integrate it into their play easier. <br/> <br/>Anyway that's a lot of nitpicks but it's not to say I didn't like it! It's because I did like it that I put a bunch of feedback. |
| Apr 23 01:06:00 | 60h 07m | Shapeshift Warriors | I enjoyed this and played all the way to the end! The enemy AI behavior stood out, it was a great mix of exploitable and surprising. That plus the slightly mixed up placement kept the situation varied even when I was retrying, which is great. <br/> <br/>If you tinker with it some more, it would be helped lots by some juicy feedback, for example I couldn't feel it when I hit an enemy or took damage so the combat felt flat. Even without sound effects there could be a momentary freeze-frame, some tweened scale on the blocks, a little rumble or a quick flash to help inform me and grant weight to hits. My other nitpick is that the menu UI felt like a rough spot you could smooth out. Maybe you can even avoid the need for a menu at all somehow! Could I change shape just by grabbing the pickup, and my old shape pops out as a new pickup when I change? That way I can just walk into things to change around size/shape. <br/> <br/>Anyway, nice entry - I enjoyed it! |
| Apr 23 01:28:00 | 22m 00s | A Suttle Haze | This one sets a very cool mood - I wanted more at the end. In fact, I'm not sure if I really got to the real end or not... But for some reason that was okay. <br/> <br/>Nice work! |
| Apr 23 01:52:00 | 24m 00s | Slimon Sways | This was awesome - very creative, it looks really nice, and the sound and music are great. <br/> <br/>It was just a little too much repetition required on a retry given how much instant death there was. It made me feel like I didn't want to risk experimenting except at the very start of a level. <br/> <br/>Definitely enjoyed playing though, strong entry! |
| Apr 23 03:02:00 | 1h 10m | ShapeMagnet | Wow, the physics really work to create some interesting tactics here. There's this great satisfaction to shoving a wave of same-shapes into a crowd and watching them all blow up. Then you just change into whoever is left standing and shove them into the wall! <br/> <br/>It took me a while to get a groove because there's a lot going on. The 1/2/3 buttons were hard to instantly relate to the shape. Took me a few deaths to stabilize, but I prefer that to a slow tutorial. <br/> <br/>The nice thing is it let me play slow and careful if I was feeling awkward, or fast and aggressive if I was in the groove. Impressively balanced! <br/> <br/>Retry chunk maybe got a little too large after a few levels. A late death was disheartening. |
| Apr 23 04:25:00 | 1h 23m | Escape from the Dungeon of Snor | Very nice atmospheric story puzzle game! Looks and sounds really nice and I liked the mood. <br/> <br/>I'll report a couple of issues I saw: <br/> <br/>I got a crash when got the painting to do something, here's the error: <br/> <br/>FATAL ERROR in <br/>action number 1 <br/>of Step Event0 <br/>for object obj_painting: <br/> <br/>Variable obj_player_treasure.fall_speed_max(100025, -2147483648) not set before reading it. <br/>at gml_Object_obj_painting_Step_0 <br/> <br/> <br/>I also was able to glitch up into the bedroom from the starting room by turning into the mouse, running up the left wall, and turning into the guy then clipping through the ceiling. <br/> <br/>Issues aside, loved it! |
| Apr 23 04:44:00 | 19m 00s | Shape Factory | Cool game, and the music was great! <br/> <br/>I totally got fired though, I couldn't keep up! It was a nice touch to have the reminder on the screen. |
| Apr 23 05:01:00 | 17m 00s | Turret Arena | Very interesting concept, but because I moved so slow I didn't have much impact on the battle. I was mostly just commuting back and forth. <br/> <br/>Until I discovered a trick - you can build a turret on a wall cell and it will erase the wall. So I set up a few quick turrets where my spawn wall was that guarded my half. Then I built turrets replacing the wall between our spawn zones and my turrets opened fire on their guys coming to their door to get boxes. After that the balance tipped hard and I won. <br/> <br/>I played a while and liked it, though! Nice entry. |