Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Feedback comment stats → FireSlash

FireSlash

Feedback comments for LD38

FireSlash's games and stats for all events →

Timestamp	Since previous	Game		FireSlash's comment
May 2 04:40:48		Going Home	♥ 3	There are lots of long, meandering dead ends. It's a bit frustrating from a player perspective, and typically something you'd solve during level design. Jumping is very floaty, which leads to frustration when you miss a jump slightly and have to wait to fall before you can jump again. I suspect this was an intentional choice (low gravity) but when you have ambiguous levels like this, it can be frustrating unfortunately. The ladder ability is a nice touch, but it should probably be given initially, or made much more obvious. I tried every possible route before finding it, which almost made me quit before digging deeper. You might want to add some tile variations to your map. A common trick here to salt large maps like this is to just create a pool of "alternative" tiles and pepper them via RNG. Create some rare tiles too that stand out to give your level that extra bit of zest! You also may wish to consider looking at angled tiles to spice up the level geometry a bit. Flat surfaces get boring quickly. I got stuck after the second ladder powerup. I could get out of the pit, but couldn't figure out where to go. Overall an interesting idea. I'd love to see more life added to the world, as it's a bit bland as others have stated. I think the mechanic itself has some potential if there's just more of a carrot to keep players hooked
May 2 04:50:29	9m 41s	Ellipticats	♥ 2	Woa! I was not expecting this when I first loaded the game. I was a bit ham fisted with the controls at first; it wasn't super obvious what I needed to do. But once I got a feel for it I really enjoyed it! The music really helps build the mood, and the gravity mechanics are weirdly fun for such a simple idea. I did find certain planets a bit tricky to escape; such as the grey metal one. The "double jump" mechanic wasn't super clear to me for a while, so it was a bit frustrating until I figured it out. You should telegraph this better so it's more clear to the player when they are executing one. It was also pretty tricky to land certain shots as a result; but it was challenging in a fun way.
May 2 04:57:24	6m 55s	Cell Wars	♥ 2	The "invulnerable cells" were a neat telegraphing idea. I found it pretty fun to eliminate clusters by monitoring the state of cells and exterminating them to the last cell, then moving on to the next section. As djfariel mentioned, the powerups really don't make a lot of sense to me. I get the multishot; that's about it. The others have confusing telegraphs that you might want to reconsider. Overall a fairly straightforward "twin stick" shooter, though I found it a bit frustrating when large new colonies spawned out of nowhere. I would have much preferred to have a level system, as it rewards the player better than just endless impossible to clear waves.
May 2 05:02:57	5m 33s	Fancy meeting you here	♥ 0	This was... strange. The first "minigame" was confusing and I never quite figured it out, though I had better luck with the others.
May 2 05:07:27	4m 30s	Hamster, RUN!	♥ 1	It wasn't immediately clear what the exits were. I also wasted time trying to use wasd. Whoops! On the second level I somehow managed to fall through the bottom of the cage, thus ending my run.
May 2 05:12:04	4m 37s	Giant Friend	♥ 0	Super neat idea! I would have liked to see more, but for a LD entry one can only ask for so much. I felt a bit cheated when I got property damage because a car ran into my already-planted foot, but I'm actually not sure if I'm supposed to be aiming for a low or high score? I suppose it's up to the player.
May 2 05:18:16	6m 12s	Attack of the Planetary-Vampires	♥ 3	Wonderful art and music! The pixels bleed character. Gameplay wise I found it quickly becomes unfair (as in, reaching the limits of your move speed) which ruins it for me. Mouse input might have been more to my taste, but there are still some optimization strategies around re-centering. I would have liked to see something done with the "Money" you earn, as it seems to just be a fancy score indicator currently.
May 2 05:23:53	5m 37s	The Shrinkifier	♥ 0	The first page explaining the controls was welcome, but it still wasn't particularly clear what was going on until I experimented a lot. Like some others, I would have liked to see a bit less RNG involved. As it is, even the first planet with one cow is quite hard as you're basically relying on luck and a small set of tools to stack the odds a bit.
May 2 05:43:24	19m 31s	Last Bloom	♥ 1	Neat idea! The punching physics were kind of weird, sometimes enemies got rocketed out, other times they just slide a bit. Art and sound were good, though I would have liked to hear some SFX in there to make punching a bit more satisfying. I also felt it was kind of annoying I couldn't punch up (to deal with the ones stuck against walls), and i would have liked to see the world tilt a bit based on which side the load was on (maybe it could fall over if there was too heavy a load on one side specifically?)
May 17 05:56:12	360h 12m	Destroy Small Worlds	♥ 0	Loved how planets had their own local gravity. Things progress a bit slow, and I would have liked to see gravity exploited a bit more vs planet movement and rocket speed. Collisions also felt weird; I often got core hits when I didn't feel like I should have.
May 17 06:04:49	8m 37s	Trees	♥ 1	Cool little clicker/automation game! I love that building houses actually spawns units, vs the usual "Automagic numbers" approach clicker games usually go for. It took me a while to figure out what to do though. A quick "How to play" or "controls" section in your description would be helpful!
May 17 06:09:09	4m 20s	Stellar Swarm	♥ 2	Neat idea with turret placement. Initially I thought this was a tower defense game, so there was some confusion as to optimal placement, and why the just died the first round.
May 17 06:13:19	4m 10s	Regular Monday	♥ 0	Love the art on this! The game is a bit frustrating though, as it often feels like the obstacles are simply impossible to avoid. This might just be my shmup senses being overly annoyed at the control limitations though.