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Feedback comments for LD37
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Avant-Marde's comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 14 13:08:00 | Walking Ghost | Nice! Everything comes together to set a very heavy mood. A few things were a little unclear but not frustratingly so, and perhaps that made me feel just that bit more accomplished once I figured something out! c: Would have been good to spell out what the buttons actually do tho. <br/> <br/>Bumped into two game-breaking bugs (character got stuck between two rooms once, and one time the block with people in it fell through the hole and disappeared and made progress impossible even tho I'd activated the switch) but that's LD for you~ <br/> <br/>The mechanic of having to redo everything after getting "wasted" is a bit frustrating considering how slow the character is, but the chapter was short enough that it didn't bother me too much after all. Just something to bear in mind if you keep adding chapters with longer levels, in which case you might want to add some checkpoints along the way. <br/> <br/>My only big complaint is that I don't see at all how this follows the theme of "one room", which unfortunately brings down my overall score, which would have been higher otherwise. :c <br/> <br/>Good job! | |
| Dec 14 13:39:00 | 31m 00s | Room for One | Very nice! <br/> <br/>I tried a lot of times, but I'm afraid to say I didn't finish the game. ;_; Might come back to it later, because I did feel like I was getting closer! <br/> <br/>I agree with the above poster that "death seemed to be kind of random" at the beginning, but after playing a few times I realised what was going on and was able to avoid the monster during the first two segments (segment being one set of lights to turn on), but after the third one I just couldn't manage to do it without dying. <br/> <br/>Turning on the other two lights first, the monster just about caught up with me as I was approaching the first reactor for the third light. Remembering the layout and running straight for the third light's reactor without even turning the other two lights on, the monster still managed to catch up with me as I was on my way back from the reactor. <br/> <br/>Even ignoring that reactor and just running straight for section four the monster eventually caught up with me. p: <br/> <br/>It's difficult, but in a rather good way! I just need a break before I try again. I hope I'm not being too hasty with my ratings and comment in case there is something fundamental at the end of the game that I'm missing by failing to play the whole thing! <br/> <br/>The idea with the graphics works great. The initial frustrations are quickly overcome by remembering the layout and more importantly by turning on more guiding lights. <br/> <br/>The only thing I'm really missing is some background track to increase the mood. Not necessarily music, but just some tense ambience. Perhaps some audio feedback from the monster to make it a little less difficult to keep track of? c: <br/> <br/>I liked it! Just not good enough to pass, heh. Sorry about that. Very nice minimalist approach to the graphics too. Good work! <br/> <br/>I suppose the interpretation of the theme might be considered a slight stretch. Technically it is indeed one room, but if it gets this big, isn't it more like an open outdoors environment, or a set of different rooms that happen to have no doors between them? p; I don't know. OTOH you do make the player feel confined to a small space anyway due to the monster and the limited degree of vision. |
| Dec 14 13:52:00 | 13m 00s | Blob Catcher | Wow! That's an interesting twist on what I first thought was going to be a super simple, super classic bubble popper! And then I discovered combos soon after—even better! <br/> <br/>I guess I'm not very good at it. Difficulty ramps up rather quickly. My first run was over almost immediately, and I didn't find out about combos until the second run, but the second one went better and I scored 7991 points, heh! <br/> <br/>I guess the only missing thing is some exciting music! c: |
| Dec 14 14:04:00 | 12m 00s | flwr truss plus | Interesting... <br/> <br/>Unfortunately I didn't really get anywhere. I was asked for flowers of various sizes, but I feel like there wasn't really any way to tell them apart, and I can't say I ever saw any that appeared particularly bigger. Maybe I didn't get any? :C <br/> <br/>I suspect that perhaps I was supposed to do something with the portal to fix a larger flower, but unfortunately there seems to be a game-breaking bug on the other side, because once I'd gone through the portal to the little corridor, I couldn't get back. The character simply wouldn't walk forward any further at a particular distance from the portal, as if there were an invisible wall in the way. Restarted a few times but it was the same every time. I played the OS X version in case that matters! <br/> <br/>I feel like you overcomplicated the controllers with the Q/E/space concept, when a simple mouse look would've solved the problem in a much more natural way, and actually is what most people would expect from a first person game, since it's a common controller scheme. How come you ended up solving it this way? p: <br/> <br/>Music and graphics are interesting and definitely set a peculiar mood. <br/> <br/>Theme is slightly stretched, I suppose, as the portal technically takes one to a different room, but eh. c; <br/> <br/>Would be interesting to know more about what you had in mind, as I got stuck and couldn't really get anywhere so I didn't really understand the game. :'c |
| Dec 14 14:11:00 | 7m 00s | The Wiggle Room | Not my type of humour, I'm afraid, so I won't pretend I don't find it rather distasteful, but... <br/> <br/>Technically and mechanically complete game with simple but solid controllers (tho I must admit I had to play more than once until I actually understood what I was doing because I thought the arrows were going to control the movements of the character and I didn't realise immediately what I was actually doing by pressing them, so I was just confused as to why the character wasn't going where I was pressing, heh...) and everything in place, like audio and graphics. <br/> <br/>Didn't find any bugs either, which is actually almost a first for this LD so far, heh. Well done on that! |
| Dec 15 14:23:00 | 24h 12m | Callisto | Nice! Very much like The Room, down to the music and the mood. Precisely my kind of game. <br/> <br/>I suppose it really fits the theme too, as it presented what could have been "one room" from a larger game of puzzles, with one in each room. <br/> <br/>The puzzle was a lot of fun and made me feel a bit clever once I solved it, tho of course coming in as an avid player of games like The Room, one quickly gets an idea of what to do, since the concept is so similar, haha. <br/> <br/>Wonderful entry. One of my favourites so far. High scores from me! <br/> <br/>P.S. I didn't break any collisions. c; |
| Dec 15 16:25:00 | 2h 02m | Lily's Adventure | Hey! Played on Mac and can confirm again that it works just fine. c: <br/> <br/>While I'd consider it a stretch, since technically there are lots of rooms in this game, this was a funny and creative interpretation. Definitely adds to the humour score! <br/> <br/>As you already know a few things were a bit unclear, and I actually thought I'd broken the game and gotten stuck once I got the teleporter, but luckily I went back here to read the description again before I restarted the game. <br/> <br/>Bullet hell was unexpected! I'm kind of lousy at that. So the fact that you had checkpoints before the bosses and didn't restart the entire game was a great bonus. Both of them defeated me once or twice before I won. <br/> <br/>And hey, some precision platforming too. Didn't expect that from what seemed like a full-fledged puzzler at first for some reason. That was a nice segment. c: <br/> <br/>I guess it was a bit weird that there was no music in the room, especially since that's where the game start, but then music suddenly outside. You could probably just have played the same track in both places. <br/> <br/>Found it a bit humorous how you'd animated the character's bow when walking, but not the legs. p: <br/> <br/>Nice little game! |
| Dec 15 16:33:00 | 8m 00s | Possessed Room | The web version won't load for me and it freezes up my entire browser. :C Is it just me? |
| Dec 15 16:50:00 | 17m 00s | One passage room | Unfortunately froze a lot for me. Can't try Windows version right now. <br/> <br/>But I get the idea! After a few plays, that is. p: Had no idea what I was doing the first time. The second time I think I got it, but it seemed like people were getting in even tho I hadn't pressed space. So then I concluded that I have to either accept or refuse individual guests or they'll enter anyway. Is that right? <br/> <br/>Bit sad, I guess! Such prejudiced creatures! :c <br/> <br/>I guess management games aren't really for me tho. The kind where you buy and upgrade stuff. Never really enjoyed that. But that doesn't make it inherently bad of course—just not my cup of tea—so obviously it shan't bring my score down! I'm trying to be as objective as possible. <br/> <br/>Charmingly stylised graphics and nice music. The little dance at the start is cute. The sound effects are, well, expected, like the cash-in sound. Very nice. <br/> <br/>The only thing I can objectively criticise, and I don't know if that's a web-only issue, was that the shop UI had stuff overlapping itself a lot, with buttons on top of buttons, so it was difficult to get an overview or even to click some of the buttons. <br/> <br/>Good job! c: |
| Dec 15 16:56:00 | 6m 00s | Pixies Hide and Seek | That's so cute! Very nice little sound effects when peeking behind things (tho perhaps just a tad sharp against the background music, some of them, but eh, details!). <br/> <br/>Graphics and music are very nice. The room is a work of art, of course. Has a lot of character to it. And it was fun that I got to select a pixie! <br/> <br/>I guess the only real piece of criticism that I can offer is that it was a bit, well, easy? p: I basically just clicked everything until I found all of the pixies. But it sets a nice mood and it was a slightly "zen" experience while it lasted! |
| Dec 16 09:58:00 | 17h 02m | Sneaky Santa | Some of the totally bonkers things going on in this game are actually quite hilarious! p: <br/> <br/>The glitchy effects mostly add to the humour, but there is once place where it gets in the way of the game, and that's when holding the mouse button down and the character is at the center of the pointer, and starts glitching around. Should've had a tolerance value there. Ended up with me either having to be on the move constantly or just not using the hold feature, which was a bit sad since I preferred it. <br/> <br/>Audio is fun too, and the music is nice. The graphics fit nicely with the weirdness. Might have not worked out as well with a different style. Simple, but no problem seeing what anything is, except perhaps for one thing—I wasn't sure whether the pillow on the armchair was a present that I was supposed to pick up, which got a bit scary since it was on a piece of furniture! <br/> <br/>Good ramping up of difficulty tho eventually I got stuck and just couldn't clear the "prayer" level even after several replays. Sorry to disappoint you in case there's some fancy ending I'm missing. p: I hope I'm still eligible to rate and comment! <br/> <br/>Funny entry. c: |
| Dec 16 10:15:00 | 17m 00s | One Room's Story | Heyyy, how come you turned of ratings for the humour category? This entry is full of it! <br/> <br/>The reload mechanic was really cool! I suppose it could've been made clearer, but since I read the description here before I played, I don't know how confused I would've actually gotten if I didn't. <br/> <br/>The graphics and the palette do a relatively good job of setting the mood, but I really would've liked some music and perhaps even sounds. Would've added a lot. c: <br/> <br/>Funny little game! Good job! |
| Dec 16 10:45:00 | 30m 00s | Elevator staff simulator 1932 | Really cool concept! c: And one that works really well with the text-based format. Text based games where there are many directions to go can make me a tad confused, but this one-dimensional approach worked great for me after the initial threshold of getting used to the game. <br/> <br/>Were the elevator controllers supposed to be clickable? Nothing happened when I pressed them (and the cursor didn't change like it usually does over links) nor the big versions that popped up. On Chrome, if that matters. <br/> <br/>Nothing that really bothers me, but I suppose I should point out there's a fair amount of typos in case you want to correct those. p: <br/> <br/>Not sure I fully understood the story, or why the young person at the end who seemed to be doing well would be going to the floor with the supplies. Could you clarify? o: <br/> <br/>I guess the only thing I'm missing is a bit of audio feedback. Some elevator pings would've been cool! <br/> <br/>It's a bit short, of course, but that's LD for you. Great concept and would be really cool to see an expanded version! |
| Dec 16 11:49:00 | 1h 04m | SPAB | Very cool! I enjoyed it. <br/> <br/>I suppose technically the end of each section could count as a door and every new section a different room, but eh. c; <br/> <br/>The animation between sections is really slick! Good job! Nice audio too. <br/> <br/>Maybe I'm just not used to isometric games, but do they usually control like this with the arrow keys? I could never really get used to it and kept falling down. Wasn't really a problem at first since I could take it easy but then came the timed segments where I needed to go faster. Probably just my inexperience tho! <br/> <br/>I guess it was a bit awkward that the keys I had to press were all over my QWERTY keyboard, but maybe this is adapted to DVORAK or something? Wasn't too much of a hassle anyway, but I felt like I had to locate the keys sometimes before I could move on. That may or may not be what you intended. p: <br/> <br/>Overall very nice! <br/> <br/>P.S. I played the web version and experienced none of the issues you mentioned in the description, so yay for that. c: Chrome on OS X, if that matters. |
| Dec 16 15:25:00 | 3h 36m | Cross The Room | Neat. c: <br/> <br/>Dunno if the issue is web only, but I had a very consistent bug where at the final segment (K) the ball would often get stuck and neither fall down / enter the door or jump up to finish the level. Another ball would roll in at the beginning of the level, but once I got that one to the stuck one, the stuck one was in the way and the new ball just fell down and couldn't get up, so it basically broke the game until the next reset. :c <br/> <br/>Was a little scared that I'd have to keep track of some wonky figuration at first, but once I saw the level and found out that DFJK matched up with the things on the screen, I was relieved. c: |
| Dec 16 15:42:00 | 17m 00s | One rum, please | Hah, sure had some similarities to the story of our game! <br/> <br/>I think it was completely broken on the first run tho. Got stuck at some point, and when I restarted to try again I got a very different series of events, so something must've gone wrong the first time... But second time went fine and I reached the end! <br/> <br/>One thing that happened the first time was that when the raft had escaped the screen the game just got stuck and didn't move on to the ship and I couldn't click it either, so the second time I panicked a bit about clicking it at the right times to have that not happen again. Is that a recurring bug? <br/> <br/>Not sure how liberal to consider this interpretation of the theme... There is only one actual room being the tavern, but multiple "game rooms" as in different places to be, tho OTOH the player is really only in one place the whole time, and OTOH your whole deal may just be your pun? :p <br/> <br/>Music was nice! Too bad I can't rate it, but I understand it has something to do with the fact that it was made post compo? <br/> <br/>The transition from the jug back to the ship is really nice! <br/> <br/>Good job! |
| Dec 16 17:20:00 | 1h 38m | What happened to Michael? | Wow! Fantastic entry. So much gameplay! Took quite a long time. Great use of mechanics to extend that one confined room. <br/> <br/>The story was quite well written. The thing about the aliens and the surrounding humour was weird, tho. I felt like it didn't fit in, kind of like you had a more light-hearted idea first but as you went along it got more and more serious, and you forgot to update those initial dialogues? But other than that, great authorship! c: <br/> <br/>I guess I'll have to echo some of the concerns throughout this comment section. Skipping would've been a very nice feature since there was always the possibility of misclicking and accidentally having to spend a long time listening to the same dialogue again. It was also a bit scary that it was possible to accidentally end the current cycle early before finishing exploring. <br/> <br/>I guess my biggest gripe in terms of pacing was the "not now" message. The pacing would've been much nicer if you'd simply disabled the useless things so that they couldn't be clicked at all, because it really only added more waiting and slowdown for no particular reason. /: <br/> <br/>The music is good and it's really nice that you have different tracks for each section. I do wonder what the voices in the background are supposed to represent in the second track. Are there other kids in the house? Or is it supposed to be coming from outside? <br/> <br/>The graphics are also neat and the animations are cool. I did read your blog post—it's actually how I found this game—and there you did express yourselves what your post mortem thoughts were, so won't say much about that. c: <br/> <br/>I understand why you did it, to keep the tension and add something new to each cycle, but it was a bit weird that some things could only be found during later cycles. But I can't think of a better way to do it either. It worked, but maybe you should've had fewer cycles in total. p: <br/> <br/>The "sometimes life doesn't give you second chances" at the end was rather powerful. IMO you should've just left the game there instead of restarting. I do wonder if there was a problem with the font on web (I did notice our own web build of our game had a different font than the standalone builds), tho, because the label didn't fit onto the screen and some of the letters were outside the edges of the screen, heh. <br/> <br/>All in all, quite possibly my absolute favourite entry so far, so I hope you're not taking my (supposed to be constructive) little criticisms too seriously! There's a lot to praise here, so I feel like I should raise the few concerns I had in case you want to build on this and make a post-jam game out of it later! c: <br/> <br/>Excellent work! |
| Dec 17 13:16:00 | 19h 56m | The Recursive Dollhouse | Fantastic! Another big favourite right here. <br/> <br/>The only thing that really concerns me is, well, the theme. I guess technically all the houses are in the same room since they're inside of each other, but mechanically it really does turn out to be a lot of rooms for the player to visit. I'm a bit conflicted there. <br/> <br/>The main mechanic of course is really cool! I only wish the player would've snapped automatically to land into the room after jumping close enough, kind of like how one enters Big Boo's Haunt in Super Mario 64? <br/> <br/>Would love to hear something about the technical details! Did you really just put models of increasingly smaller scale into each other, or is there some clever unloading mechanism going on? <br/> <br/>The music was nice, but I have to say the main instrument was a bit... shouty. Kind of harsh. So I had to turn the volume down. But the composition was good! Nice sound effects too. <br/> <br/>Got a little bit tedious in the third segment where I felt I was mostly just following a linear thread through the houses, but the first two segments were a lot of fun. Did the last segment perhaps suffer a bit from the deadline? <br/> <br/>You introduced new mechanics/concepts in a very good way by having the player simply do the thing to have something happen immediately, without having to think at all, just to be able to understand how it works, before you moved on to actually doing something interesting with each new mechanic. <br/> <br/>Loved the idea of having to read the numbers off of the keys after shrinking down! And a nice touch, of course, that the number cannot actually be read before the key scales up, with only some blurry glyphs to be seen on the small model. <br/> <br/>Scanning quickly through the comments, I take it you're already aware of the game-breaking bug with the interface to entering codes. Fortunately I only just about got it, but managed to pass since the buttons I needed were just slightly in frame, and after that I knew to be careful before I entered each new code. <br/> <br/>Excellent work! |
| Dec 18 13:39:00 | 24h 23m | One Room - 30 minutes earlier | Interesting, but confusing! o: <br/> <br/>I'll try to be as constructive as I can below, so I hope I don't come off as rude or anything! c: I think this it's a good game, so I just want to point out what I had a bit of trouble with. <br/> <br/>The reaction system was really interesting. I've probably just been living under a rock, not playing enough games, but I hadn't really seen anything like it before. The whole combination of selecting a way to react and then somewhere in particular to direct that reaction. An extended version of this mechanic would probably work great in a longer game! <br/> <br/>Almost failed to understand how the game worked, heh. x: Good thing I decided to give it another shot after reading the description again, because I didn't realise it mattered where I clicked after selecting a reaction at first. <br/> <br/>Even after understanding this, however, that feeling kind of remained. It would've helped a lot if there was some cursor above things I could interact with differently, and if I couldn't click at all anywhere else besides those things, because it ended up with me trying to be clever and picking different things around the room, but most of them didn't actually work differently... /: <br/> <br/>A cursor would've also helped me understand to play the game much more quickly, even without reading the description, I think! c: <br/> <br/>Was a bit difficult knowing what options to pick, and felt like some of them gave unexpected outcomes (the less angry option results in the gunfire, but the more angry one does not), so it was a bit of guesswork, but I suppose that might've been the point, so that I had to see a few different endings. <br/> <br/>After failing a lot of times and rereading the description I saw the note about it being unfinished, so I was almost about to rate it anyway and as whether that meant that there was no good ending since you didn't have time to finish it, but I stubbornly decided to try two more times, and hey, I made it! Yay! <br/> <br/>Mood is of course scary. I guess I felt like the good ending wasn't really good after all, and I would've preferred the timeout note (and an eventual breakup) to be the good ending, considering that if he has these tendencies to actually murder his partner, I can see those coming back later even if things remain good for now, and that's a really unpleasant feeling. /: <br/> <br/>Lack of audio I guess is a pity, tho if it meant I didn't have to hear graphic gunshots and screams and whatnot, that's actually kind of nice to be relieved of, heh... <br/> <br/>The graphics are very nice! Gorgeous lighting. And a very nice contrast between the lit and unlit versions of the room. Good, clear animation on the phone ringing too. And the thought bubbles were very easy to understand. <br/> <br/>I know I might sound a bit negative, but I really think this is overall very good work, and I'm only trying to be as constructive and helpful as I can! c: <br/> <br/>The only really big issue (besides lack of cursor) that I feel like I might have is the inability to skip text, since there's a lot of repetition involved after failing a few times. <br/> <br/>Nice work! |
| Dec 18 13:54:00 | 15m 00s | Loop Hell | Funny little game! I actually played through the whole second loop just to make sure I wasn't missing anything on that run, haha. I've seen enough LD games this time that have had some sort of mechanic like that, so had to make sure~ <br/> <br/>Gets a bit too easy once one has figured out what to do the first time, I suppose, but it was a nice little puzzle! The note that changed with each thing was funny. <br/> <br/>The walking animation was rather humorous! Felt like the character was bobbing along to the music (good music, for that matter!), and of course the idle animation did too. Was also quite wonky how no matter what I melted it turned into the same kind of thing, hah! <br/> <br/>Nice! c: |
| Dec 18 15:07:00 | 1h 13m | TISIC IZIEB | Wow! Everything is so polished. I played the web version, but even without the extra bling it looked so incredibly stylised and coherent and good. The particles are gorgeous. <br/> <br/>The music fits nicely too. Only complaint with regards to audio is that the overall volume was very low, so even at the highest settings it was a bit quiet on my speakers. <br/> <br/>I got a little confused on the level after the tutorial level about pulling things, because I hadn't realised that the little arrow on the floor on the tutorial level was just to explain the mechanic, and thought that all things that could be pulled would have arrows under them, and didn't realise I could pull everything on the next level, which had me stuck for a little while. <br/> <br/>I suppose the interpretation of the theme is more like "one room at a time" rather than "one room only", but that's perfectly fine, and a good way to ensure we're not flooded with hundreds of identical entries! c: <br/> <br/>Levels are nicely designed. I'd definitely play this as an extended mobile gamer with lots and lots of rooms with even more difficult puzzles! <br/> <br/>All in all, fantastic work, the most polished entry I've seen, which is incredibly impressive, and a sure favourite from LD37. Many gold stars! |
| Dec 18 15:27:00 | 20m 00s | The One Room Experiment | Really cool! Very stylised and nice. It's a very nice detail how the arm comes not only to pick up the character, but also the hearts and the lanterns! Very clever. c: <br/> <br/>Like so many entries, I suppose the interpretation of the theme is rather liberal and stretched, but in a good way, and one that ensure that not too many entries are alike. Appreciated! <br/> <br/>I guess I feel like the game was a bit too difficult not to have at least one extra heart to pick up somewhere, but I also get how the brevity of the game might have necessitated a bit of extra difficulty to make it last longer—and I sometimes do this too when it comes to LD games—but I just hope you're not losing any impatient players because of it. p: <br/> <br/>The whole core mechanic and the animations that come with it are very polished and nice. Too bad you didn't have the time to add some music as well, but at least there are those nice and fitting sound effects. <br/> <br/>Also good how the collision on the spikes and enemies is relatively forgiving. The only issue really comes about in the rooms where you are stuck between spikes and can't really move but have to shoot a lot of enemies coming at you all at once. That's where I died most of the times. Should probably be a bit more balanced in a post jam version, if you ever make one, heh. <br/> <br/>Really neat game! Liked it a lot! |