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Feedback comments for LD38
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | frankiesmileshow's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2 05:54:20 | Evacuator! | ♥ 1 | Its a good start for a puzzler! I would say the main thing it needs is some camera controls. You could also consider randomizing the terrain and the citizens starting locations! Playing the game here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starting at 21:25) | |
| May 2 06:04:20 | 10m 00s | Why Go Outside? | ♥ 1 | Kind of like a room escape puzzle thing of sorts, except the malevolent entity keeping you captive is your own brain! It was fun to click on all the things and figure out what they did. Once you learn what everything does, things fell into place pretty neatly. Played it on my stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (playing at 43:40) |
| May 2 06:12:30 | 8m 10s | MicroCHIP | ♥ 1 | I love dem wiggly lil spiders, and the way the player character moves, although it could use some sort of light arrow on top of its head pointing forward, could make it more obvious where you are facing. Took me a bit to notice where the computer chips fit on the first stage, and in a later stage I couldnt always tell what parts were loose, but that could arguably be part of the game. All in all a fun lil arcadey thing! Played it on stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 57:30) |
| May 2 06:28:11 | 15m 41s | HexCity | ♥ 4 | An excellent puzzle game! I wonder if some slight visual aid on where you can build any given building in the current grid would be a good idea, or if it would make the game too easy? Like, imagine if clicking on an building in the sidebar indicated all spots where that building can be put down right now? On one hand, this would definitely make the game more accessible to learn, but on the other, maybe that would be doing too much of the players' work for them? What do you think? I feel that this could be a very solid base for a mobile game. You could make all sorts of slight variations on this, with different grids and specific goals. Some levels could be very densely designed (imagine a grid with a lot of water and a handful of pre-placed buildings in which you need to somehow fit 6 factories, or 12 windmills, or 3 rockets etc) I played the game on stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (playing at 1:05:20) (although a live stream really wasnt the best place to play a game like that, I don't exactly make a great display of it there :) ) |
| May 2 07:04:40 | 36m 29s | Nucleu | ♥ 1 | Really beautiful game, and really cute! Also, nice little surprise at the end! No criticisms come to mind at all, this was really nice. One suggestion though: before you have electrons around you, clicking should do something visual. Like maybe it should send a little pulse, even if its purely visual, so people know to try clicking again later! Played on stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 1:29:47) |
| May 2 07:08:07 | 3m 27s | Hibernaculum | ♥ 1 | A really pretty game! I love those cute little environments, really impressive to have done these two detail-filled mini sets over the course of the jam! Really amazing work here. Played this on my stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 1:38:48) |
| May 2 07:15:45 | 7m 38s | Super Collapse Guy | ♥ 2 | Very good space-warping platformer! Its a solid start, it could definitely be made into a full game. Loved that you could collapse the world from any direction. Theres a few times I forgot that I wasnt constrained by four sides! Definitely a fan of the slugs with knives strapped to their backs. Also, that final ending image was gr9 Played it on my stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (playing at 1:46:20) |
| May 2 07:29:08 | 13m 23s | Intergalactic Gold Rush | ♥ 1 | This is a very, very solid little game. It feels hectic, especially when you realize the blue coins speed up your magic regen which lets you go really fast looking for more gold. It only gets a little sluggish when you run out of mana, but I see you have updated the game since with some tweaked mana regen and with coins giving a little mana boost, so you probably have that covered. I would suggest you simplify the mana regen thing, and not have different regen speeds on different tiles, I feel thats an unecessary bit of complexity thats not obvious enough. I'd recommend trying some more obvious stuff instead: either more obvious special tiles that boost mana regen speed (like, big glowing runes or something), or maybe have mana regen faster if you don't move, and slower if you are in mid-air? That way you could end up playing chicken with some incoming monsters if you are hungry for mana and at a dead-end. That might be fun. Although, it might also slow the game down, since that would reward players for moving less... but with the game collapsing around you, I'm not sure that would be an issue! Anyway, again, this is really good! Played it on my stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (at 1:59:10) |
| May 2 07:38:39 | 9m 31s | Tiny Battle World | ♥ 1 | Had a lot of fun playing this on stream! It wasn't so bad one-on-one, but it really shined once more people joined up! This is definitely worth putting more work into. I really have no criticisms here, this works exactly as intended. More power-ups and some different levels would be where to go next, but thats pretty obvious. I'd say to be careful not to put in too much extra features though, or it could lose a bit of its charm! Also obvious addition would be bots, not only so you can play until real humans show up, but also to possibly add a bit more chaos to multiplayer games too. Could even play around with some extra game modes too, like Co-Op king of the ring where human players team up to kick off hordes of bots! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (playing it at 2:12:00) |
| May 2 07:50:31 | 11m 52s | Ascension: A God's Test | ♥ 9 | This is a very solid base for a "god game". The voice acting was an unexpected surprise! The beginning is a little slow because of how little mana you have at the beginning, it might be worth it to have an extra early objective to incite the player to have a second temple and more villages, to gently influence them towards building up mana early on. There is definitely a problem with lava though, it spreads so quickly that if you don't know how to act right away, it can just ruin your game entirely. It might be a good idea to have an in-game message warn you about how to deal with lava when a volcano first erupts, telling you to use rubble to block its way immediately. Might also be a good idea not to let lava spread diagonally, that feels very unexpected! Played it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starting at 2:33:24) |
| May 2 08:00:55 | 10m 24s | Platform Patrol! | ♥ 1 | Something feels wrong about dying from falling off the edge in this game! It doesn't really fit, it feels like it should just focus on the shootbangs and have falling off a ledge just respawn you with like 10 life lost! Put some powerups in there, slap in a few extra enemies and bam! Done. Maybe some variation on the big gray platforms too. Heck, thinking about it, you could make it into a sort of smash TV sorta thing..?? stream vod link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (played at 2:59:25) |
| May 2 08:06:32 | 5m 37s | World en abyme | ♥ 1 | That was fun! A simple little physics platformer with a fun twist on how to tie the levels together. The physics of what happened to your ball during rotation felt a bit weird though. It felt like the ball got some weird momentum that took a while to get used to, not sure how to describe it. Might be worth it to make the collisions a bit more forgiving with the lava pools! All in all it was fun though. Link to the stream where I played it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 3:10:13) |
| May 2 08:15:42 | 9m 10s | Polyorbis | ♥ 1 | Like I said on stream, I think it might be worth it to simplify the 3 gun types down to one gun and a secondary "bomb" button, and to lock the camera to point down at the player instead of letting the player spin it around. Also, make that life meter a bit more obvious, it could be like twice the size it is now I think! I like the look of the game, and I wonder if the visual idea of playing around a planet like this could inspire some stranger additions to the game, like enemies that are not on the planets surface but flying around freely? Or things orbiting the planet that might shoot lasers straight down onto the surface in regular patterns, maybe? link to the stream where I played: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (3:18:48) |
| May 2 08:30:16 | 14m 34s | Nocturne | ♥ 3 | Strong mood with the glowy lights in space. Felt very lonely at first. And at the end, with what felt like a mocking little list of what you've done during the game. It felt nihilistic. Something about how pointless and lonely life achievements are, leading up to your death. Death in this case wasn't inevitable, wasnt a some threat or danger, it was just something to get to once you've exhausted everything else, because it has to end somehow. Death as a last point on a checklist of pointless things you will have done, down there in the abyss! Stream where I played it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 3:31:31) |
| May 2 08:34:20 | 4m 04s | Little Sprout Garden | ♥ 1 | What have I done When I close my eyes all I can see is their cute little sprout faces and the branches and the stones and the fire and the fire what have I done (streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 , starts at 3:40:36) |
| May 2 08:40:35 | 6m 15s | Bureaucratic Deity Simulator 2018 | ♥ 3 | A great little puzzle game! It starts out being a bit more about experimentation as you find out how the tiles interact, and but it slowly becomes more and more of a logic puzzle as it goes. A very fun sort of transition to have in a puzzle game I think! Cant think of anything to criticize here, this is a really strong one. Played it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 3:50:40) |
| May 2 08:52:07 | 11m 32s | Angry Worlds | ♥ 1 | This is a good start, but it needs some tweaking and polishing! A difficult platformer is very hard to pull off well in a jam, because those games need a lot of tweaking to get the difficulty just right. I'd really recommend making things more forgiving as a rule, especially if you have some really impressive stuff later on in the game that you want people to see! You can always go back to it after the jam to make it more difficult, because then you have all the time in the world to tweak that difficulty carefully! Things I recommend: 1- Add one of the star enemies to the very beginning of the level, or place a checkpoint just before you first see them, so that the player feels safe enough to experiment with them and realize they can be crushed by jumping on their heads. 2-Add more checkpoints overall! 3-Spikes seem to have very wide hitboxes. I got hit a few times when it felt like I shouldn't have. Considering they kill you in one hit, its really important to make their hitbox forgiving! Stream where I played the game: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 4:17:12) |
| May 2 09:01:12 | 9m 05s | My Purpose | ♥ 3 | This is one of the stronger entries I played so far on this LD, though I couldn't beat that final boss!! Great simple but stylish visuals, gameplay is suitably hectic and stressful, feels satisfying to blow up those ships (though maybe that could use a bit extra oomph?). I would recommend a more obnoxious effect to warn you when your little ship gets hit, and to warn you when the planet is getting shot at. Maybe even having arrows appear on the edges of the screen pointing you towards the ship currently shooting at the planet? It often felt a bit of a surprise when I noticed my ship was in the red, or that my planet was severely hurt, it easily gets lost in the action. Played it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starts at 4:39:03) |
| May 4 06:55:54 | 45h 54m | Space Travel 15 | ♥ 2 | A solid little puzzler! It becomes very interesting after a few minutes, but the beginning feels really silly in its simplicity. I think the game should probably start with 3 airports right away, since there is more or less no decision-making before that point. Also, I would definitely recommend a longer background music track, or several tracks that change randomly over time, it must have looped fourty times during my game! Very strong entry overall, great work. I played the game on my stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139989925 (at 1:36:21) |
| May 4 07:11:53 | 15m 59s | Walkabout | ♥ 1 | Not sure if thats a bug, but I couldnt keep walking by holding the up key, I had to tap it? And tapping it repeatedly seemed to do something to the sound. It looks neat, I like the visuals of the outlines. Its unfortunate that the "joke" of the game is kind of ruined by knowing the theme of the jam! As soon as I saw the same guy show up again, I knew this was gonna be it, ha. It might be a cool starting point for a bigger kind of game that sticks to the same visual idea. Maybe you encounter different people, maybe some walk with you, and the environment changes as you travel between different kinds of places, maybe generated from random images and color schemes. Thats the kind of game I imagined I was playing at the start! I mean, obviously, the point of this game here Played the game on stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139989925 (starts at 1:26:13) |
| May 4 07:21:38 | 9m 45s | GALAXEN | ♥ 2 | Some sweet-ass parallaxin' going on here! Gotta love that parallax. I narrowly escaped death that one time, barely grazing the event horizon of the black hole as I slingshotted past, that was cool! I ended my journey between a rock and a hard place, squeezed between two planets caught in a compromising position. Trapped in double gravity well hell! Great atmosphere and beautiful look, I had a good time :D Played the game here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139989925 (starts at 1:09:00) |
| May 4 07:41:46 | 20m 08s | For The Love Of Money | ♥ 2 | That was a fun little platformer, a good start! Reminds a bit of old DOS platformers. Its a bit on the simple side though, might be worth thinking of a little twist or two. Here's a simple idea: how about, instead of having to take all of the treasure on every room, you had to reach a cash amount, like say a thousand dollars, and different items in a level had different values? So the player could look around the map and decide whether to try getting that really tricky but high-value item, or to get more lower value ones instead. That could add a bit of fun decision-making for the player to think about over the course of a level. Just an idea, do with it as you please! I played the game here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139989925 (starts at 00:54:50) |
| May 4 07:52:41 | 10m 55s | Agoraphobia | ♥ 1 | Good idea overall, its simple but it works! Like I said on stream, the powerups spawn a little bit too far away from one another, so you aren't likely to try and take a chance on grabbing more than one at a time. My two recommendations are, 1- double the amount your house grows when you take a powerup, so you might consider grabbing a second one to shorten the distance of your walk back to the house, 2- grabbing a powerup has a chance of immediately spawning a second one, a little bit further away, to tease the player into going further out. Played it on stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139989925 (at 34:22) |
| May 4 07:58:44 | 6m 03s | Something Something | ♥ 1 | Trying to make an RTS during a game jam is a mistake I made once, as part of a big team (that included some industry pros!) in a Global Game Jam a few years ago. We didn't end up with much more than what you have here. And we were a whole team! That game genre is a tall order for sure. I hope you keep working on this a bit, it could turn into something cool! Maybe I aughta give an RTS a shot again sometime.... somehow an RTS that doesnt need pathfinding maybe, that would already be a big help! (I notice yours does have pathfinding, that must have taken a big chunk of time all on its own!) Played the game on my stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139989925 (at 23:46) |
| May 4 08:14:17 | 15m 33s | Smallverse | ♥ 1 | That was a fun game! Funny! I like that it made me actually think about what to consider when deciding who to save and who not to save. Although I opted for a pretty boring rule, just going for largest populations, with little regard to what they are like... what does that say about me? :O Played the game here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139989925 (at 0:03:27) |
| May 16 05:26:02 | 285h 11m | TARJECTORIES | ♥ 0 | Unlocked Googly Eye Mode!! Ended with 472260 pts, 0.29% accuracy! This was really fun! A good idea, was a nice surprise when the second planet showed up. The levels where planets are further apart can be a tad frustrating since you can only have one bullet fired at a time, sometimes their trajectories just keep going for a while. Had one bullet that flew for maybe 10 seconds, making a figure 8 trajectory between the two planets for a while! |
| May 17 06:10:32 | 24h 44m | EVO | ♥ 0 | That was great! I got a ctulhu to appear in my squid-infested waters. I wonder if something special happens if you throw a meteor on the great old one... |
| May 17 06:22:33 | 12m 01s | Sticky Keys | ♥ 1 | I could not get the game to run, it remains blank at the end of the Made With Unity splash screen. I ran the Win32 build. (edit): Never mind! I ran another LD game and found it had the same problem, so figured it was on my end. I rebooted my computer and then it worked fine! The game is fun, there is something satisfying about getting a big streak without errors and typing away. You dont actually need to place the buttons in their correct place. But maybe you should? Thats an idea for a hard mode right there: if you swap two keys by mistake it actually changes their binding! |
| May 18 06:52:50 | 24h 30m | Defense of Abubu | ♥ 0 | That was very solid, I like how the shots orbit around the planet, it made the shooting way more interesting than if the shots traveled in straight lines. This seems like a great start! |
| May 18 07:00:35 | 7m 45s | King of Tiny Mountain | ♥ 1 | Really nice style, I love how that little self-contained level! |
| May 18 07:08:03 | 7m 28s | Asteroid Architect | ♥ 1 | Interesting game, I like the approach of trying out an arrangement and then seeing the result, instead of something that builds progressively, it means every attempt at a colony is part of the game's learning process. I wonder what you could do to coax players to experiment even more? |
| May 18 07:14:11 | 6m 08s | Gold N' Steam | ♥ 0 | This is an interesting game, but Im not sure the risk of running multiple trains at once is worth it? Might have to think about how to balance that trade-off a bit better. A great idea though, definitely worth putting more work into! |
| May 18 16:48:20 | 9h 34m | Desktop Adventure | ♥ 2 | Excellent game! A great idea, you could probably find a bunch more ways a desktop could contain platformer gimmicks, this seems like a well of good ideas! |
| May 19 04:42:21 | 11h 54m | Cell Wars | ♥ 0 | Satisfying little shooter! With a little extra work on making enemies burst on death and other little details and polish, this could be really solid! With a bit more variety, even better. I like the mouth noises as sound effects too. |
| May 21 17:58:48 | 61h 16m | Honey Home | ♥ 2 | Its great! Great mood, great atmosphere. But wheres the frogs?? I see a frog in the thumbnail, and some people talk about frogs in their comments, but I didn't see a single frog when I played! |