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amras0000

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TimestampSince previousGameamras0000's comment
Aug 29 02:28:00 The Beat Device So this might be the most fun concept for a drum machine I've seen. More than anything, this is the first drum machine I've used in a while which doesn't encourage genre tropes. I clicked around, fiddled with things until they sounded nice, and suddenly found myself in the midst of a polymetric 5/8 thing that sounded weird, exciting, and great. <br/> <br/>It's not easy to predict the exact timing of the balls, and the sounds aren't intuitive and congruent, but the system manages to dodge the pitfall of confusing absurdity and get into this really nice zone that I'll probably come back to a couple more times before this LD runs its course
Aug 29 09:26:00 6h 58m Cryptoglyphics Cute concept. The glyph making works well enough, and seems to have a wide diversity of non-dick drawings in its database now :) <br/> <br/>These sort of ciphers work best for long phrases, like the quotes you have set up. Titles of games or films were a bit more frustrating since I might not recognize them. Though having a puzzle consist of about half dozen different short phrases might work too. <br/> <br/>The UI is simplistic but works. To keep with the ancient theme, you may have wanted to use a brighter and darker sandy brown. Just a personal preference though.
Aug 29 09:53:00 27m 00s An Historic Defense There's a couple really big issues that kill the game for me: <br/>First, the mouse sensitivity is insane. I can't bring my hardware down any lower and since you're in unity I can't trivially change the code to fix it, so I wasn't able to get past the first level. Aiming is just a battle to see that I don't spin out. <br/>On top of that (and more obvious because of the sensitivity), it seems that if I turn too far left or right I stop turning. In an FPS I kinda expect to be able to turn in one direction indefinitely. <br/>You may want to upload a Post-LD version with those balance changes so your game's actually playable. <br/> <br/>Those aside: sound didn't play for me and it was kinda missing since there wasn't a lot of feedback. I'd have liked to see bullets represented somehow outside of a decal on the enemy, either as a little pellet or my own laser beam. I want to know where I hit the wall when I miss. But those are all issues that require time to fix, so no biggie on not getting them this time around. <br/> <br/>And some minor nitpicks: It was a bit difficult to realize when I was in range to pick up a weapon. You may want something like a "RMB - pickup shotgun" to appear if the player's looking at a gun and in range of it, so I'm not clicking frantically from just outside the pickup range. <br/>The shotgun also feels like its range is far too small, but maybe that's just me. <br/> <br/>The inability to reload is actually kinda cute, forces the player to switch weapons frequently. And being without a weapon in the middle of combat is exciting. <br/> <br/>I've got to wonder how this all ties in to the theme though. The robots are pretty generic futuristic, not much ancient about them. I'd have liked to see spear combat, or at least an ancient-egyptian aestheti (basically just color the walls and robots yellow :P)
Aug 29 09:56:00 3m 00s Secret Balance Since you're running unity, would you mind getting a linux build up? I can't seem to run it through wine; getting stack overflow errors.
Aug 29 10:37:00 41m 00s It Started Out With A Brick Second LD entry I've seen in the first day that's not a game. <br/>Regardless, very fun to watch. Music's fabulous, graphics are clean, the carnage is beautiful <br/> <br/>If I have an issue with the mechanics, it's that the bricks the walls are made out of are far too deadly. In a couple games I ran, the algorithm was using them as weapons. As much as particle effects are fun to watch, it gets boring watching simple bricks drop from various points to optimize splash. Crossbows and cannons are far more exciting and I wish I could see more of them. <br/> <br/>As a mode of interactivity, it might be interesting to let the player upvote/downvote various ideas to discourage this sort of repetition.
Aug 29 10:53:00 16m 00s Ben'sStories: GreatGrandfather's Story Seems like the only thing I could do was whip and pet the slaves, and aside from the whipping causing my happiness to go down (or unhappiness to go up? really confused) neither option seemed to affect the game. <br/>I need more agency, more challenge, and more feedback. This is just a really long loading screen disguised as a game :T <br/>Some of the slave animations were cute. Maybe just having a couple sliders to the side to control meal rations, sleep time, etc would be a nice alternative to the whip/hand. And let me know how my actions are influencing the game.
Aug 29 11:16:00 23m 00s USADD First off, really liking the combat. Each dinosaur type has a different strategy you have to use. The platforming isn't exceptional and didn't seem to add much at first, but it did give the combat a sense of pacing and purpose, and let me skip battles if I was quick enough. <br/> <br/>All around I enjoyed this title. It's quick enough that any issues with mechanics don't have time to get grating. There's just enough enemies that by the time I got bored of punching dinosaurs I had a gun, and by the time I got bored of shooting things I had a boss. <br/> <br/>Nice work. <br/> <br/>P.S. - The contact button doesn't work, at least through wine.
Aug 29 11:57:00 41m 00s That Maze Should be noted the Linux build breaks my DE if I extract into a directory with a space, but that's standard for unity nowadays. <br/> <br/>That aside, the game's nice enough. Finished it without too much trouble, though the last level did force me to think for a while. <br/> <br/>The one bad thing I can say about it is that neither the mechanics nor the graphics are particularly legible. It was hard to tell for instance what's a solid unbreakable wall and what's a trapdoor. And when using teleporters, it took a bit of work to actually find which one my character was on this time. The colors blended together too much. Nothing gamebreaking, but I'd have liked to have a better idea of what each tile is and how it works. <br/> <br/>Enjoyed it overall, nice work.
Aug 29 16:51:00 4h 54m Random Access Aliens Your engine's missing one very important aspect: numpad control. You don't understand how restrictive it feels to have to aim on a grid in 4 directions. <br/> <br/>Aside from that, the engine's cute, legible enough. The lack of color's a bit offputting but it's ld so I'm not expecting too much there. <br/> <br/>There's not a lot going on in the game, which is fine if you're just showing off the engine. If you'd had time to make the enemies path around the walls (and gotten more of them to spawn!) it might've been fun to clump them together and watch them all explode. Really, having enemies that are substantially faster than you, which swarm the screen uncontrollably, and which have to move around the same walls you do would've added a lot.
Aug 29 19:13:00 2h 22m Dizzy Mayan Well, this is bloody good. The game mechanics are intuitive and fun, the level design takes advantage of them without being too grating/repetitive, and the art is absolutely stunning. I had to double check the page a couple times to check that I wasn't playing a jam game with premade assets. The music's very nice to listen to as well though it did get just a tad grating at the end because it's a short loop. I liked the changing ambient backdrop depending on which loop was spinning. <br/> <br/>If there's any complaints I could level at the game: the arrows' hitbox was a bit unpredictable. I'd have liked to have, say, a section of the wall painted with a faint red color to indicate the danger zone. And at the last level, you just change up the colors of the lines without warning and scold the player for it! That's hardly fair. If you're gonna make a puzzle game you shouldn't arbitrarily punish the player for following the mechanics you've been explaining to them all this time.
Aug 29 21:28:00 2h 15m 20000 Pixels Into The Sea This is really neat. The graphics style is cute and well put together, the actual sailing mechanics are spot-on and fun to play around with, and the writing's not half bad either. <br/> <br/>I beelined straight for the kraken when I got the 5 people there. I'm guessing you expected as much from your players :P <br/> <br/>Only two minor nitpicks: if I picked up a survivor while the main story text was playing, it'd get cut off. So I missed the last couple lines after feeding the people to the kraken. I'd have preferred a buffer system, where new messages are thrown first-in-last-out and clicking cycles through them. Also, I got stuck on two occasions: <br/>first between a pair of islands, where I didn't really have room to move forward or back to build up speed, and later when I'd unanchored with the wind blowing directly into my bow and my stern pressed up against some island geometry. In both cases I couldn't get any speed up which meant I couldn't actually turn, no matter where I placed my sails and rudder. Eventually through wiggling and luck I got out of both situations and kept playing, but I'd have liked some ability to get out of those scenarios, maybe some special action available while anchored near land. <br/> <br/>Really enjoyed this game. Nice work!
Aug 29 22:08:00 40m 00s Aqueductus Cute game. The art is pleasant to look at, the sound design works well for the theme, and the puzzles are well-designed and fun to complete. I got the impression in some of the later levels that people would be much more forgiving to sliding block puzzles as a whole if they had more than the one spot open. Having a couple spaces to work with just made things so much less of a headache and so much more enjoyable. <br/> <br/>I don't know if it's a bug or intentional but the speed at which water flows seemed really inconsistent level to level and even block to block. I'm almost tempted to say that water flows /slower/ where there are a lot of paths converging? Feels like it should be the opposite. <br/> <br/>Overall, nice work. Had quite a bit of fun working these out.
Aug 29 22:24:00 16m 00s Archimedes' Crew For 16 hours this isn't bad. There's a nice variety of levels, decent art, and even an amusing backstory. You got a giggle out of me with the ship flying-off animation at the start. The game itself feels a bit...hard to control, in a bad sense. It was very difficult to predict my trajectory even vaguely, and you were asking the player to hit very small targets. I think a lot of the problem came down to the ship not rotating at all. It was difficult to tell which direction I'd be accelerating in. Some particle effects from behind might help for the same reason. There's probably also something you could do with the physics but I suck at movement so I can't help there. I wouldn't say the game feels bad, especially given the time constraint. But it doesn't feel as smooth as I've grown to expect from space/gravity games. <br/> <br/>P.S. - if you replace your dropbox link's "www" with "dl" you'll skip dropbox's gui
Aug 29 22:35:00 11m 00s Roma Evolution [Zen Experience Type Game] If you're running on unity, you could probably make a linux build without too much hassle. I know a lot of LD people prefer the system and wine doesn't like unity games with spaces in their titles, don't ask me why.
Aug 31 12:52:00 38h 17m ARTYS The game's very nice, and though it doesn't fit the mood much I did get a giggle from reading about how the human race collapsed from nerd glasses and a shitty taste in music. The puzzles/button clicking were well-designed, gave structure to the game, and added to the desperation and atmosphere. <br/> <br/>A slight bug to note on the linux build: The game would read my mouse position on the absolute width/height of my monitor, rather than where it was rendering (which was some 30px offset down from my actual resolution for some reason) which made clicking on things a bit difficult, though highlighting the menu options did resolve most of the actual issues there. Setting any resolution other than my monitor's resolution made the game unplayable.
Aug 31 12:59:00 7m 00s Pyramid Is What I Need! The game looks very clean and nice, functions well, and is fairly easy to understand. Very nice job all around. I especially like the ability to screw over the other player. Only complaint I might have is that the game's a bit too easy, at least using the strategy of miners to build up points and just spamming out assassins works a bit too well.
Aug 31 16:14:00 3h 15m Ｐｙｒａｍｉｄ　Ｂｕｉｌｄｅｒ　ＡＤＶ The core concept does have a lot of potential but the game just felt very frustrating all the way through. The movement felt like my first time trying on ice skates, and the blocks wobbled wildly out of control whenever I picked them up. On top of all that, my mouse got unlocked from the game window at some point which meant I kept clicking off on my other monitor. <br/> <br/>As far as I could tell, it felt like you were trying to take control away from the player, and force them to make something abstract and unintentional. And if that was your intention, here are my thoughts: to make that work you can't let the player feel like what they've ended up with is bad, or wrong. And while I can see how you tried to do that with the end screen, I consistently felt like I'd done something wrong when a block would fling itself off the specified platform, or fly off into the distance where it wouldn't be counted towards my pyramid. I had no significant control over what was happening, but I kept feeling like I didn't want what was happening to happen, I felt like the game didn't want me to let it happen. IF that makes sense in a rambly sort of way. <br/> <br/>I would've much preferred to have standard fps controls, where when I stop holding down a button I stop moving. And while I see what you were going for with the wobbling bricks I think the experience would've been more pleasant if they'd just stayed where I was looking. I'd have liked to be able to scroll my mouse wheel and have the bricks come barreling towards/away from me, and to have the z-rotation of the blocks stay constant relative to my camera rather than the world. If you'd done all that, this would've been a much more satisfying and relaxing experience for me, rather than causing the frustration it has. <br/> <br/>And hey, I don't get this harsh in a critique if you hadn't done a lot of things right. The graphics and audio are very well-designed, the end screen is highly amusing and helps the game immensely. And the core concept of the game is a really nice one that I could see myself enjoying with a couple tweaks.
Sep 1 13:51:00 21h 37m DysAstrum The aesthetic is stunning, the game looks amazing. I just wish the game mechanics actually complemented the puppet theater theme. I'd like to be able to shoot the strings holding up the planets to make the swarms stop spawning, or to have a bit of a scene change in between the planets. This just feels a bit dissonant between the art style and what I'm doing in the game. <br/> <br/>The sound design is kinda cute at first but it does get grating fairly quickly. The bullet sounds are far too loud and the music lacks any real structure. The ancient grekoroman style can be really nice to listen to, but random dyssonant voice clips just get on my nerves with time. <br/> <br/>Regarding the space shooting: <br/>The UI could also use a bit of work to make it more clear when I get a powerup, and what I assume was the stamina/power bar didn't seem to go down unless I really mashed on my mouse button. Not that I had any issues with the autofire. <br/>The game feels really easy, or at least the difficulty ramp is far too shallow. Felt like if I just kept moving and kept my distance from the swarm, pointing my mouse vaguely in their direction, I could survive indefinitely. <br/> <br/>Not a bad game by any stretch, but it just lacked some cohesion for me to enjoy it much.
Sep 1 14:32:00 41m 00s Compass So I'm generally fond of the narrated gameplay genre. Gives the player something to focus on outside the game, and introduces the story without pulling the player into arduous exposition segments. <br/> <br/>The issue here is that you've added arduous exposition segments regardless :P. The intro sequence as you have it now should be no longer than 30 seconds: "Oh you shouldn't be here, I guess I'll help you find your way home, let's go. End scene." Any further storytelling should happen during the stages proper. Frontloading exposition is really unpleasant and jarring. <br/> <br/>The gameplay itself is kinda lackluster, but then you've mentioned as much already. Most importantly I'd have liked more weapons to have an autofire feature. Mashing a mouse button isn't particularly compelling and can lead to rsi if done for extended periods. On top of that, it seems like a lot of the bullet hitboxes don't line up with their models. With the automatic weapons at least I had to aim a bit to the left of the enemy to hit them (at least the crosshair worked fine). <br/> <br/>The graphics aren't all that bad. The bloom's a bit excessive but might as well be for the timetraveling atmosphere. The colors work well enough and you can easily tell what everything's supposed to be. <br/> <br/>The story concept's not amazing, admittedly, but it'd work much better given a stronger presentation. You spend far too much time repeating yourself and umming and emming. You'd probably improve both your work speed and the quality of the narration if you just write out a script of 1-3 sentence segments, then follow it to the word during recording. <br/> <br/>Oh, and unless you're being particularly innovative with your worldbuilding, or really need to fill time, don't bother explaining magic. "Get the artifact and I'll get us to the next place" is justification enough.
Sep 14 01:59:00 299h 27m HEAVEN Slime The art's awesome, the sound design is impressive, and I like the principle of the game, but it's awful at communicating...anything. I initially assumed that my boost would work as a doublejump (or triplejump when I got the first upgrade). And this worked for the most part until at random times I'd just get an error noise and the boost wouldn't work. I know there was an icon of some sort in the upper right but I couldn't figure out what it did. <br/> <br/>I couldn't get past a certain point (still at 2 squares) purely because I couldn't get the boosts to work. I'd really like to see more of the game but either I'm missing something important or the game's bugged. :( <br/> <br/>I'd like a better indication of when my boosts are available, how many I have left, and what I need to do to get them back. And I'd like a better indication of when I'm going too fast to land "softly". Other than that, nice job. <br/> <br/>Only other thing I'm confused about: how does landing a block on eyes tie into the "Ancient Technology" theme? o.o
Sep 14 02:23:00 24m 00s Soaring with the Ancients Side tangent, really wish you'd package the 32- and 64-bit builds seperately so the zip wouldn't be 200MB. <br/> <br/>The game looks very pretty (though you'd benefit a lot from cutting down on your specular values if using Unity's shaders; they tend to make things look like a magical girls transformation) but is absolutely impossible to control. <br/> <br/>To start with, the plane goes far too fast, and almost immediately exits the game world if you don't hold down the brake. The roll/yaw are far too twitchy and turn you around far too fast. The yaw actually feels really unnatural for a biplane, and should either be left out completely or very slow. <br/> <br/>What I'm assuming happened is that you set constant values per frame on your acceleration/turning, and then tested them on a slower machine/slower build. Remember, always take into account the frame length on this sort of stuff. I think Unity uses FixedUpdate for that, though my memory's hazy. <br/> <br/>There are a couple big issues that arise from the uncontrollable speed, aside from the unpleasant handling. Presumably because of either unity's default shaders or some sort of fog effect, the entire world becomes a white square if you're too high above it, so once the game launches me out of bounds it's impossible to see anything to steer by until I'm too close to avoid crashing. Second, once I do crash, half the time the game lets me fall right through the terrain. I don't remember what fix you're supposed to use for that in unity, but if you're letting the player go a million miles per hour you need to check for edge cases in your collisions. Finally, once I've exited the world and tried to come back in, most of the time the world's actually gone. I'm not entirely sure what happens but if I try to approach the white square I'm just greated with a grey screen with some particle effects on it. <br/> <br/>So...an interesting entry to be sure, but it's unplayable at the moment.
Sep 14 02:47:00 24m 00s Mik N Odi Great job on the art, the sound design's not bad, and the dialogue gave off a nice scent of rick and morty. <br/>The controls were intuitive and well-communicated, and the game has a nice variety of traps to avoid. <br/> <br/>I did have an issue with the speed of the game though. If I just ran to the left I'd have no time at all to respond to incoming threats, but if I took things even slightly slower than full-blast the snakes would have no problem catching up. I think the game would've worked better if the snakes were just a bit slower, so the player wouldn't have time to think about incoming obstacles as much but could actually stop for half a second without taking damage. And if you feel that'd make the game too easy, maybe just have a stereotypical wall chasing the player slowly? <br/> <br/>Would have also helped to have a more zoomed out view, higher resolution, or at least for Odi to sit further to the right of the screen. <br/> <br/>One final complaint is that it took a bit long to get back into the game, for the genre. A game with frequent deaths gets irritating fast if you're not back in the action within a second or two, and having to go through two loading screens and even a brief intro room each time I died didn't make for a pleasant experience. Just throw up a "you died, press r to retry" text and respawn me soon as you can.
Sep 14 03:06:00 19m 00s Into The Universe Game was easy enough to get into, even without reading the instructions. And I commend you for that, since making a strategy game clear during a LD is something I very rarely see. <br/> <br/>For a strategy game though, I feel like this doesn't offer any real choices to the player. You send out scouts to the nearest planets, if you can, then select the nearest enemy and target them, rinse and repeat. Selecting an upgrade every minute doesn't really add much to the enjoyment. <br/> <br/>A lot of the actions you're having the player do could easily be automated, and -in other games- often are. I think the game ought to have these sort of mechanics running in the background (send scouts out to nearest planet, target nearest enemy) and focus on something else for the player interaction. <br/> <br/>Maybe it could've helped to be able to move around the mothership, either to dodge enemy attacks or pickup scouts about to get left behind. Or to be able to use the resources gathered to launch fighters or shields. Plenty of things you could do with this format, just a matter of being a bit more engaging and giving the player a bit more agency.
Sep 14 22:16:00 19h 10m EverDown The game's fairly compelling and fun. The graphics are clear, the sound design works, the mechanics are clear and well communicated. Great job all around. <br/> <br/>I've got a couple nitpicks: <br/>The sound for picking up artifacts is a tiny bit earpiercing, but I know I'm more sensitive to high frequency beeps than most. <br/>I'd have much preferred to be able to hold down the dig key instead of having to mash it. I might run a script to automate the mashing if I was playing this for longer, but it's always nicer when a game just lets me hold down the key. <br/>It might also be that I only played near the surface, but the Pan-Terra mining beam felt far too slow to pose much of a challenge. It might get more difficult further down. <br/>And as a potential improvement, I'd normally expect the mining beam to only start going once I start digging. <br/> <br/>None of that affected my enjoyment of the game though. Nice work.
Sep 14 22:34:00 18m 00s Ancient Ruins Had a lot of fun with this one. The graphics are smooth, the traps are amusing, and I'm quite a fan of the destruction on the trees and signs early on. The ending boulder chase was predictable but still cute. <br/>I liked that you added checkpoints, and the corpses piling up added to the charm quite a bit. All around, a very polished and well-designed experience, caught me off guard a lot and I had a lot of fun. <br/> <br/>A couple minor concerns: the most striking flaw of the game (outside of the lack of sound) is the really tight view angle. In the arrow stage especially it was really hard to see anything not directly in front of me, which meant dodging the arrows had to come down to pure luck. I'd have liked a much wider fov or a third person perspective, just to see what's going on around me better. <br/>A couple times I ran into glitches to do with the triggers, where the arrows started firing 2 or 3 times as often as they should making that section impossible until I died and restarted. And the controls felt like I got stuck on the terrain a couple times, but only very slightly and not enough to cause an issue. <br/>A very minor nitpick, the checkpoint just after the bridge starts you off facing the wrong way. <br/> <br/>Very nice work though, keep it up.
Sep 14 23:58:00 1h 24m Hero's Robot First off, love the tiny one-file executable. Always nice not to have to download 100MB of random libs that aren't even used. <br/>I briefly entertained the idea of using Hero's robot as a basis for the game, but couldn't think of anything interesting to do with it, so I'm glad someone else has picked up the baton. <br/>The tutorial scrolls past a bit too quickly, I'd have liked to click through it instead but it's fine otherwise. <br/> <br/>Regarding the meat of the game: Often with robot-programming games the appeal comes from having to install a number of instructions before they're executed, forcing the player to conceptualize the worldstate in a number of turns. And I think you lost a great opportunity here. I would have loved to see a game where I had to push around blocks, or navigate mazes by individually controlling when each wheel is turning forwards and back. As it stands it's just a bit frustrating to navigate since I have to re-input the same mouseclicks over and over to run down a longer corridor. <br/> <br/>I wasn't able to get past the second level. I got to the exit and the game wouldn't let me progress. I imagine I had to get all the coins but I couldn't get past the gears without dying and being sent to the main menu. <br/> <br/>A couple things I'd have liked fixed, from what I've seen of the game: <br/>Death should restart me at the current level, rather than the main menu. <br/>The rotation animation could be smoother <br/>Fixing the ending of the second stage, and ensuring the player can't walk through the walls there <br/>Hotkeys for all the buttons (!!) - clicking in the same positions over and over cramps my hand a bit <br/>Being able to buffer more complex instructions <br/> <br/>Not a bad concept, just wish it'd received more polish and care than it did.
Sep 15 00:00:00 2m 00s Guild Inc I'm with the others here. The screenshots look really nice but I'd like either a desktop build (linux or windows) or at least webgl.
Sep 15 00:16:00 16m 00s GRAVIQUATRO Though I only played it on my own I would love to give this one a go with another player. The game feels like it'd offer a lot of strategic depth and was already wrecking my brain in the dummy games. <br/> <br/>The art and sound design definitely work for the theme. I wonder that a more minimalistic approach wouldn't have worked better but in the end it still looks relatively nice and suits the Ancient Tech theme. Aside from the buttons to rotate not being particularly pretty (I'd have preferred arrow-like triangles in place of the rectangles) my main complaint would just be the delay between inputs. It takes too long for the pieces to fall into place, it takes too long for the buttons to pop up on screen, it takes too long for the board to turn, the animation to play out, and the next turn to start. But in the end it doesn't hurt the game too much, just might get irritating after a dozen games or so. <br/> <br/>Very nice work.
Sep 18 12:54:00 84h 38m Most Ancient of Technologies - Catapult That got quite a giggle out of me when the game started past the intro screen. Wasn't expecting what I saw. I couldn't figure out how to defeat the knights for love nor money though. I know my catapult turned into a swordsman if I got to the furthest square, but slashing didn't seem to have any effect no matter how much I mashed the spacebar, whether the knight was right next to me or in the castle. <br/>Aside from that slight issue the game's fairly self-explanatory, so good job there. The format you've chosen is notoriously hard to communicate anything in. <br/> <br/>Graphics-wise the colors you've chosen don't really fit together too well. You've got a mostly blue theme with the background, the buttons, and the name, but then a very brown/reddish overlay and bright red button names. I can't actually read what the red letters are saying on that background and that whole region of the screen clashes horribly with the rest of the colors. Generally try to stick to colors closer together on the color wheel; when you do have to use reds in a blue scene make sure to make them desaturated. <br/> <br/>Had some fun with this one though, nice work.
Sep 18 13:58:00 1h 04m Modus Catapultus I'm playing on the Post-LD version. <br/> <br/>This is certainly something new. <br/>The graphics are clean, with a very pleasing color pallate. So great job there. I'm not sure that tanks fit in with the "ancient technology" theme but I get what you're going for. <br/> <br/>I like the integration of the healthbars and charge meters into the designs of the catapults, adds to the cleanliness of the whole game. <br/> <br/>The gameplay itself has a large number of issues but at its core it's very well designed. I really like the idea that a lot of the time you have to aim in a way that you'll miss the enemies to get your walls and allies in. I like that the more allies you have the harder it is to place anything down. I like that the game forces you to account for every shot and every improvement you build because there's a very real chance it'll screw you over more than it'll help if you don't get it right. All this came together to make me want to keep playing for far too long. It's a fabulously addicting game, despite what at first glance seems like repetitive gameplay. <br/> <br/>But it does have issues. The first thing that becomes obvious is that the movement is extremely floaty. This is supposed to be a piece of heavy machinery, but it behaves like I'm on an ice rink. In almost every scenario you want to have the player character stop moving the instant the player releases the movement button, and this is no exception. <br/>It also would have been helpful to have a very basic background so I could see where I was moving when there wasn't anything else on screen. But that's just a nitpick. <br/> <br/>The actual shooting arcs felt very unpredictable at the start of the game. Over time I realized that the direction I was moving influenced the velocity of the shot. This did lead to some nice moments where I can move back and forth to make my shots go further, but with the movement controls gets a bit irritating and hard to understand. I do like the mechanic, quite a bit, but it should be better communicated. Also, it felt like I could influence the shot by moving after I'd fired it. Don't know if that's part of the mechanics or I was imagining it, but it's something that didn't feel right. <br/>I would have liked to see some sort of aiming hint, a dotted curve to show where I'd be launching. I realize it might be out of the scope of an LD, but it would have helped a lot. If you only showed the start of the arc it'd still leave a lot of challenge without obscuring the mechanics. <br/> <br/>The damage model I've got very mixed feelings on. It didn't take too long to understand that only rocks travelling downward interacted with anything, and that they'd interact with /anything/. And more often than not this just got me frustrated since I'd be sitting in my wall trying to fire at something close to me, and the rocks would just get stuck in the wall I was occupying. There was a deadzone in front of me where I couldn't hit any enemies that got too close because the arc would end up peaking while still in the wall. But at the same time, the friendly fire mechanics added a lot to the game. I couldn't tell you how you could improve this system to make it less irritating, without losing the challenge and artism of the friendly fire aspect. But it could use a bit of touching up. <br/> <br/>Something that's /definitely/ out of the scope of the LD, but which did get me a bit annoyed, is the AI, especially of the friendly units. I'd have 20 of the buggers out and about, but only 2-3 were actually helping me fire at the enemies. The rest would be holed up two towers behind me taking care to rip apart the wall I was standing in. The firing mechanics of the game require careful control and a lot of thought, and the AI just wasn't up to the challenge. I'd have honestly liked them to just stand in front of my furthest tower, tank hits for me, and fire without an obstruction. <br/> <br/>Do note, I only get this in-depth on the issues of games I really enjoyed. So please take this rant in the best way possible, I had a ton of fun playing this title. Keep up the good work!
Sep 18 16:02:00 2h 04m Stone Age Clicker Very nice game. Doesn't do a whole lot different from the whole candy box genre but the aesthetic's very pleasant and there's a fair bit of content and balancing for a ld game. <br/> <br/>I got a slight graphical issue when I placed down my first town center. Both my coal and iron "production per second" values started jumping frame to frame between some really low negative number and a high positive one. This made those two values a very illegible flashing thing. I think this was caused by the fact I was trying to produce iron without a stockpile of iron ore/coal. The values would drop because my smelter was using them, then rise again when it couldn't. <br/> <br/>A couple minor balance things: the gift from the gods was only really helpful at the start of the game and got in the way later on when I was trying to fine tune my population and worker distribution. Because the buildings never really got all too insane on production values a lot of the game was spent placing down rows of buildings. I'd have preferred a power-up to let me place 3x3 grids of buildings to the gift of the gods thing. <br/> <br/>It was a bit dissapointing that gold mines only required wood and stone. I'd spent the entire game building up ever more complex production chains and then had to shut them down to get the ending. Would have preferred that the gold mines required stone bricks, clay bricks, and iron. <br/> <br/>The 1% improvements didn't seem effective enough for their cost. The farm houses and town centers ought to bring in 5%, maybe with a cheaper 1% version of both. <br/> <br/>Most importantly, I built the golden statue and there was no ending! Give me a paragraph of story, fade to white, anything! The whole game I'd been working towards this achievement and nothing happened :( <br/> <br/>Still, had a fair bit of fun with this one. Nice work.
Sep 18 21:42:00 5h 40m The Ancient Ti-Li Island At the start area, you have the credits for art and programming, but you've left out who made your music. Haven't put that in the description either. What's going on there? <br/> <br/>I couldn't bring myself to actually finish the game. It's not that I couldn't figure out the puzzles, they were easy enough. But the controls were so horribly unpleasant I had to put the game down. In the first puzzle, with the jars of water, 4 times out of 5 the game wouldn't register I'd clicked on anything. The little animation on the jar would play out, I'd click, then click again on another jar, and nothing would happen. To get through that puzzle I had to just click until my hands got sore and my ears were buzzing with the repetitive music. <br/> <br/>The second puzzle wasn't particularly difficult either, but again arduous to complete. The combination of a tiny game window with wonky field of view, the colors which clashed horribly with each other and hurt my eyes, the droning music, and having to constantly spin around to click on the tiny paint buckets just drove me mad. <br/> <br/>I hate to be this critical, and I recognize that a lot of effort's been put into this title. There's certainly a lot of different mechanics and art assets scattered about. But it lacks focus and is just an unpleasant experience on a very base level.
Sep 18 21:55:00 13m 00s Escape from planet Earth! Short and sweet. The game didn't last long enough to make me notice any issues in the mechanics. The intro "dropping" sound is a bit high pitched and unpleasant, but that's a very slight nitpick. <br/> <br/>The graphics work stunningly well. Everything feels coherent, with a nice set of colors. The music is paced just right and works great with the atmosphere. <br/> <br/>I don't know if the "drop dead and let your corpse escape" was intentional or a bug, but I am glad you kept it in! It made for a great, silly experience. I only played through the game once, and finished as a corpse, so I didn't try out the shooting that people are talking about. But just getting blasted over buildings by enemies and rushing panicked over cars and ruins was great fun. <br/> <br/>Thanks for the experience.
Sep 18 23:18:00 1h 23m Vålnad The game's obviously beautiful. Great color choices, very soothing aesthetic, loved the tail on the white sphere. The sound design adds to the atmosphere and charm. <br/> <br/>The controls were a bit troublesome for the sole reason I had no idea which way I was facing unless I was moving. And since I could get stuck on terrain moving to check my direction wasn't always an option. The reverse did help things slightly, but I'd have liked a small arrow pointing frontwards. <br/> <br/>The first time I played through the game, either something glitched or I solved the puzzle accidentally and got the final beam stuck to me. Since the beam then rotated the rest of the mirrors, I got really frustrated trying to solve the puzzle while the beam kept screwing up my positioning. <br/> <br/>I restarted the game and played through it to realize the puzzle'd already been solved. <br/> <br/>And I realize it's LD, and the experience was enjoyable as-is, but I feel like the short length of the game harmed it for me. A slightly more complex puzzle where I'd had to get to grips with the mechanics /before/ I solve it, or a short intro sequence to make me understand what the beam's doing, would've helped a ton. <br/> <br/>Very nice game regardless.
Sep 20 00:00:00 24h 42m R. Lastey, archaeologist The game as a whole is very pretty, with a very nice aesthetic and mood. The graphics are stunning as always. <br/> <br/>Most of the time I'd criticize a ld game for feature creep, the overambition generally causing no part of the game to actually work well. You're the first case I've seen of a LD game trying to do a dozen different things and still doing them to a playable level. Each component of the game functions to a greater or lesser extent. <br/> <br/>And as much as I can criticize each puzzle for being a bit easy, repetitive, or a touch tedious, the game as a whole holds together really well. Again a first for what I've seen of these sorts of Ludum Dare entries. <br/> <br/>I liked light chess. And to an extent I'd have liked a stronger emphasis on that minigame. It's not something I'd seen before and it could probably hold an entire LD game on its own. <br/> <br/>...it feels really weird trying to criticize this game. It does have a lot of problems that arise during gameplay, like the dusting requiring far too much clicking and the vines being just a bit too simple and giving you the solution if you misclick. But the length and structure of it all makes those problems almost irrelevant in hindsight. The brushing may not have been the most engaging way of going about things, but it did get my focus on the characters I'd be using in the later puzzle, and made that one a lot more enjoyable for the extra context. And because of the variety in the puzzles I never got bored or tired of the brushing. It was over in time to keep me playing. <br/> <br/>You've basically done everything that I'd have condemned and avoided, and managed to make it into a very capable, engaging title. I'm a bit stunned. Great work.