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Feedback comments for LD38
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | philomory's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 05:49:27 | Digital Backwater | ♥ 3 | Pretty neat! I like the idea of the persistent world. | |
| Apr 26 00:41:39 | 18h 52m | Marbleverse | ♥ 3 | Very nice! I got a 296 on my second try, which was much better than my first try but no idea if it's "good" or not. |
| Apr 26 06:13:03 | 5h 31m | Mulletman and the Molemen | ♥ 1 | I have to agree, VolemanFallToHisDeath.wav is... uh... special :-p Other than that, it's fun, but very difficult. I almost feel like the game would be fine without even _having_ the Advancing Wall of Death, since keeping the Molemen out of pits is hard enough as it is. |
| Apr 27 17:15:07 | 35h 02m | WHAT A SMALL WORLD! | ♥ 3 | Cute! But, a bit short. |
| Apr 27 17:35:48 | 20m 41s | Cowmets | ♥ 1 | I feel like I'm missing something. I lasso the cows, and then they fly around for a second, and then they go back to the cow-cloud. I tried dragging them back to the planet, but they don't seem to react to my movement, just fly around on their own a sec before returning to the cloud. Is there some control I'm missing? |
| Apr 27 17:43:17 | 7m 29s | Quantum Catburetor | ♥ 3 | This is pretty sweet, I like it a lot. My only suggestion might be to make it so that things you have seen persist a bit longer after moving out of your field of view, so you can swing back around and pick them up. Right now, I often find myself seeng a health pack or weapon upgrade appear and disappear at the edge of the world as I move by, before I can react to change direction and go grab it. |
| Apr 28 17:48:27 | 24h 05m | No Minor Task: Party of a Lifetime | ♥ 1 | Pretty amusing, and I did beat it after 3 tries, but I have to agree with the other commenters (and the author) about the scale of the level and the difficulty. My second try, I managed to collect 200 classmates and then got caught trying to figure out where my house actually was. So that was irritating. But otherwise, yes, this was quite good. |
| Apr 28 18:01:00 | 12m 33s | Icarus Isolation | ♥ 2 | @xavier-indie-gamedev @king-kujito I also use a Mac, there's a much easier way to deal with Gatekeeper than turning it off entirely, just right-click (or control-click) on the app in question and select 'Open' from the context menu instead of double-clicking. You will be presented with a dialog box asking if you are sure you want to open the game. After you say yes, it will remember that app forever and you can open it as normal. This way, you don't have to turn off your security settings system wide just to play LD games. @king-kujito As for the game itself, I have to agree that the controls are problematic, but I otherwise liked it. The ability to steer with the mouse would have been an amazing boon; partly because the mouse, as an analog input device, provides more precise control, but mostly because mouse-look has been a staple input method for 3D games for almost 20 years. |
| Apr 28 18:17:38 | 16m 38s | Flurpies | ♥ 1 | This is pretty sweet! Although once I realized it was possible to leave the house, I didn't need to spend any time at all in the house; it was just, leave, get enough xp to evolve, return, evolve, leave, get enough xp to evolve, return, evolve, leave, get enough xp to evolve, return, win the game. If you still had reasons to return to the house, that'd be good. |
| Apr 28 18:30:40 | 13m 02s | Daily Routine: the smallest worlds are the ones we get stuck in | ♥ 2 | This is really clever, and the twist is not that hard to find, the hard part is realizing there's a twist to find in the first place. |
| Apr 28 18:38:55 | 8m 15s | This World Of Mine | ♥ 1 | This is really cute! Unfortunately, at least in the WebGL version, I had a really hard time getting the cat to hide in the hiding places, so I always got caught. I'll try the download version later. |
| Apr 28 19:02:05 | 23m 10s | Super Collapse Guy | ♥ 2 | Very ambitious, and very well done. Mouse was a bit weird in WebGL, because it stops working if your mouse leaves the box, would have been nice to be able to go fullscreen. Other than that, extremely well done. The 3D/2D thing has been done before, but I don't think I've ever seen one with 360 degrees of freedom of rotation when switching back and forth. Vertical look would have been nice, though necessarily your view would have to snap back to the horizontal plane when switching perspectives, or the whole thing would break. |
| May 1 07:24:50 | 60h 22m | Rogue Basement | ♥ 3 | Always nice to see a Roguelike. My favorite part by far is the music, which is really nice and atmospheric. |
| May 1 07:55:48 | 30m 58s | Wake Up ! | ♥ 2 | The visuals are very nice (reminds me of the game Spirits), and the audio is even better. The mechanical implementation (physics, controls, etc), obviously pretty rough. I really liked the ending! Just as a tip, for games like this if you try to switch worlds while standing in what would be a wall in the target world, in my opinion it should just make a noise or display a visual effect, but not complete the switch. Getting stuck in a wall is no fun, even if you can switch right back. |
| May 1 18:52:04 | 10h 56m | Miniverse | ♥ 2 | This is pretty sweet! Unfortunately, it does seem a little bit buggy (or at least has UI problems). For example, the first time I played, when told to place my relics on the glowing squares, I placed them on the most visible squares, which were the Battle Grid. It took a few plays before I even _noticed_ the nearly-invisible squares to the left of the battle grid that are where you're actually supposed to place them. So first suggestion, it shouldn't be possible to place your relics anywhere other than in one of the three lane source squares, during battle, and those squares should be easier to see. The "This way to the other planets" arrows are also very hard to see, at least on the WebGL version. Also, when I died because I was placing my relics on the battle grid instead of target squares, the tutorial guy I was fighting seemed to just vanish, but the game didn't end (though in retrospect I suspect he just moved off-screen and if I looked around I would have found him again). After battle, you should automatically pick the relics you used back up, rather than picking them up manually. The other thing is, once I got to the fourth guy, he told me he was turning four, because it was his birthday, and then he just stopped. He never opened the battle grid, though I had defeated the previous three guys. Anyway, those points aside I really do like the look of this |
| May 2 04:33:51 | 9h 41m | D4RK and the Small Worlds | ♥ 2 | I have to agree with @AntaresValdemar, the difficulty is a bit too much, at least with a keyboard. Maybe with a controller it would have been better. I think I got killed by Saturn maybe... 20 times, before i gave up? My main problem there was the big bullets Saturn spawns, which (obviously) are the same color as Saturn (because the game is monochrome) and spawn in the same _place_ as Saturn, so you can't see them, and run into them when jumping to attack. Also, there's no reason not restore health when passing a checkpoint (since you restore health when you die), but that's a minor complaint. The music, was really really nice. SFX were pretty good too. |
| May 2 05:41:50 | 1h 07m | Corgo-a-gogo | ♥ 0 | I found 6 Corgi's and 45 treats, no idea if there is more to find or not. The controls and physics are pretty iffy, but otherwise, a cute game. Congrats! |
| May 2 17:32:33 | 11h 50m | Mind's Eye | ♥ 1 | Excellent entry, though I'll agree somewhat with the other comments about the difficulty ramp. All told I got to level 12 in the end (didn't keep track of my other stats). Unlike @drtizzle, the graphics weren't really my bag, but to each his own. My main suggestions if you plan to develop it farther are to improve the UI (make it more clear how health works, as I too initially though that a staticky screen was an unusable screen, and expected it to get un-staticky after a turn or too), add some power-ups for additional move options (temporarily turn light attack into a lunge that hits two in a row, temporarily make waiting defend, etc, and maybe a consumable board-clearing resource, like bombs in some shmups). |
| May 2 18:10:26 | 37m 53s | A Couple of Questions, Volume II: Small Business, Small World | ♥ 1 | OMG, Luke's joke about spilling his drink. Out of the whole game, definitely my favorite joke. The voicing was also a treat, even if sometimes the voicing and the text didn't keep pace with each other properly. Regarding the graphics, I've been scolded in the past for using public domain material like that in the Compo (fine in the Jam), so though I don't personally have a problem with it, I believe it's against the rules (or at least it _was_, back in LD17). My only real complaints were A) the way you got kicked out of conversation and had to restart it after each time you asked about something from the notebook, B) the way you never could ask anyone about clues, only about other people, and C) the fact that sometimes there was no "goodby" option (in this case, the fastest way to end the conversation was to exploit A). Other than that, though, great game. I played it all the way through. |
| May 2 18:20:42 | 10m 16s | Super Small-io World! | ♥ 1 | I liked it a lot, though I wasn't able to finish it after several attempts. I didn't find the wavy enemy problematic at all, it was the two enemies on the largest world that were the problem. This game would be *substantially* improved, I feel, by the addition of levels with a ramping difficulty. Each level would still have the "get all the coins before they leap out of your pocket" mechanic, but the the level the game ended up with should be one of the later ones. |
| May 3 06:04:11 | 11h 43m | Starstruck Ducky | ♥ 2 | I liked it quite a bit! Though, I think it could do with some additional levels, or a randomized duck layout, something to make it last longer than a few minutes. Also, I agree with what everyone else says: the expressions on the duck are fantastic. |
| May 3 06:47:23 | 43m 12s | Dr. M Little's Planet Mass Overdrive | ♥ 1 | A fantastic entry! I had a lot of fun, and both endings were pretty sweet. Though, you should adjust it so that, if you choose to keep playing after the normal ending, it still lets you trigger the secret ending. Though, what happens now (you just push the Sun off the map) is pretty amusing too. For my second play through, I decided to try to crash directly into the sun without having grown above size 5; for some reason, as soon as I touched the sun, my population stopped dying and I could do whatever I wanted without ever dipping below ~4 billion. Probably a bug, but I actually kind of like it if it' an easter egg. Anyway all that aside, this feels like a Jam entry from a multi-person team, not a solo Compo entry. The fact that you got this made in 48 hours is super cool. I'll echo the requests from @camilo, I'd love to see additional levels for this. EDIT: Actually I think what happened in my first play through was that I knocked some of the asteroids or moons on a trajectory out of bounds, so when I was done with the 'normal' path, collected everything left on the map and flew into the Sun, I still wasn't big enough. Might want to add a bounding box to keep things from flying off into space. Or not, maybe it's cool that that happens. |
| May 3 07:17:23 | 30m 00s | Daydreaming Island | ♥ 1 | I'm not even going to comment on the the technical issues, because I know other commenters have already covered them in depth. That said, the graphics, writing and audio definitely combined to create a really interesting experience and atmosphere. You wrote in a response to @slimabob that you spent some time on stuff you didn't end up using, I'd definitely be interested in hearing about some of that stuff, as I definitely think it'd be worth expanding this into a longer experience (though, in a game like this, when it's longer, it can be hard to strike the right balance between puzzle-y bits and story/atmosphere, still worth trying though). |
| May 3 07:37:55 | 20m 32s | Puny World | ♥ 1 | I love this, it reminds me very strongly of the game Reigns (which is a good thing, Reigns is absolutely fantastic). I'd love to see a version with more content, particularly in the form of more unrelated prayer-trees (as opposed to making the existing prayer trees longer and more complex). My new passtime is repeatedly destroying and resurrecting the world's birds. (An _exceedingly_ minor niggle, but there are _way_ more than 300 million birds on Earth. Also, the comma placement is real weird on the score screen). |
| May 3 08:03:52 | 25m 57s | Retro Rabbit | ♥ 5 | This is a very fun quick little arcade-y sort of game. I really liked the mechanical effects of the world getting smaller over time, it both makes the game easier (because it's easier to find and reach leaks) and harder (because the obstacles get more cramped). The carrot power up adding some nice touch of extra complexity, too. All in all, a good entry! If I were going to expand it, I'd add probably add levels, and introduce new mechanics like enemies or new powerups on later levels (the levels mainly serve to give you a better option than 'start over from the beginning' when you die). |
| May 3 08:19:56 | 16m 04s | An Ant World | ♥ 1 | This seems like a pretty cool entry, but I felt like I didn't have very much control over what my ants did. In particular, I had a hard time getting the sprays to work properly; sometimes the audio effect that accompanies the spraying would get stuck playing without any spray coming out. Not really sure what I was doing wrong. Regarding @davidthelazar problem, modern Macs can no longer run PowerPC applications, that capability was removed in OS X 10.7, which came out in 2011. That said, you've clearly fixed the problem by now, since I was able to run it just fine (honestly, I didn't even know that Unity was still _capable_ of exporting PowerPC applications) |
| May 3 09:05:52 | 45m 56s | Solitary Freedom | ♥ 1 | I _really really really_ like the art style. A lot. Enough that I really wish the game window could be bigger so I could see it all better π Here's my wishlist: * Fullscreen-ability (any sort of zoom, really) * More levels * More forgiving timing on the spikes * A clearer indication that it's actually possible to pass through the spikes when they are in the down position. * I initially mistook the game for turn- and grid-based, and thought the spike animation was just a visual effect. I only discovered I could pass through them by accident. My best time is 0:12.916 Addendum: I can confirm, it's a lot easier to tell what's going one when I use my OS's accessibility features to zoom my screen in on the game's window. And the graphics still look really nice π |
| May 3 16:33:37 | 7h 27m | kumo. | ♥ 2 | A nice, relaxing little simulation. I would have liked if the player had more "tools" at their disposal, perhaps being able to position the sun, rain, different kinds of plant food or soil, resulting in different kinds of plants growing. Also, a way to re-trigger the audio from existing flowers would be cool, so you'd get a little tune from your garden. |
| May 3 16:38:47 | 5m 10s | Throw | ♥ 1 | Unfortunately, doesn't work for me on Mac. It runs, but I can't get past the title screen: M and E keys work to mute or exit, but clicking anywhere (such as on "start game") does nothing at all. :( I'll try again later to see if I can figure it out. EDIT: Nevermind, I feel dumb! FIgured it out. OK, now that I've played it, I love this. A lot. I want more levels. And a better title screen, the current one is actually harder than level one, even after I got over my brain-fart about how to interact with it :-p |
| May 4 05:38:00 | 12h 59m | Super Kaiju Dunk City | ♥ 3 | This game was really, really unexpected, and I just have to say, the pixel art is _astonishingly_ good. Unfortunately, I'm pretty bad at Rhythm games (I'm _ok_ at CotND and garbage at everything else), so I had to be hyper-focused on the upcoming symbols while playing, with no change to really enjoy the art going by π. While I beat level 1 on my first try, level 2 is already waaay to hard for me, and level 3 I fail within seconds. Ah, well. |
| May 4 05:58:49 | 20m 49s | King of the world | ♥ 1 | The tutorial is very nicely constructed, it's unusual for a LD entry to have a tutorial that actually teaches you anything, so that was refreshing. Personally, while I thought the timer worked _okay_, it meshed very poorly with the UI for counting units. That is, you have to mouse around and hover over things to figure out where you army is, which eats precious seconds off the timer. So, like @adhesion, I'd say you need to add a visual indicator of unit count, particularly in light of the timer. Also like @adhesion, I found islands extremely problematic. The reset-queue button didn't seem to work for me, as far as I could tell. Other than those three issues, though, I thought the game was quite fun, and not something you usually see in a Jam (strategy games just don't show up that often here). |
| May 4 07:36:33 | 1h 37m | Supernova | ♥ 1 | I have a total soft spot for games like this, exploration-platforming just scratches a bit of that Metroidvania itch, even if this game has none of the usual hallmarks of that genre. Certainly it would have been nice to have more variety (differences in kind), but in the short format I did complete it without it feeling repetitive. I always love seeing people do procedural generation during Ludum Dare (even if I didn't do any myself time around). Other than that, I can only echo what everyone else said about the aesthetics, the game looks and sounds very nice. Kudos to you. |
| May 4 07:50:42 | 14m 09s | MF100 - HACK THE JAM (old console emulator) | ♥ 2 | On the Mac, the editor doesn't work right; as you move the cursor around the file, it inserts random invisible characters into the file at the cursor point (as well as moving the cursor). The result is that the file is no longer syntactically valid. That said, this is very creative and weird. I really dig the aesthetic, even if I wasn't really able to use it. |
| May 4 16:42:35 | 8h 51m | PixelWorld | ♥ 2 | I liked this quite a bit! I always love seeing procedural generation during Ludum Dare. The visuals were nice, though it might have been good to include a few more colorful things in the sea of black. The music was great, though it might have been good to include some more SFX. Basically on both counts I'd want the world just a bit more 'populated'. Overall, it was fun! I did find the controls problematic - with they keyboard, I felt like i had a _very_ hard time controlling where I was going, in a way I don't usually feel with other 'twin stick' shooters (this didn't apply to shooting, only to movement). In particular, the way that momentum and gravity worked felt awkward. That said, I strongly suspect that it plays better with a controller, and as soon as I figure out where I put mine, I'll give that a go. |
| May 4 17:47:34 | 1h 04m | Until Tomorrow | ♥ 5 | This is fantastic, especially the art style is amazing. I would have liked a few additional puzzles in the cave, but even still, extremely well done. @fanatrick is right, the bit with the old man on the Edge is pretty fantastic. The audio was so quiet I didn't realize there _was_ any until I saw the sound icon on my Chrome tab halfway through. I had to turn the volume on my computer to maximum to really hear it. Personally, I did _not_ notice any input lag like some others did. That said, something I'm experimenting with in my own game (post jam, not uploaded yet) is, if the player has input while animating from one state to the next, just skip to the end of the animation rather than queueing the input for later. That way, if the player really wants to, they can move as fast as they're pressing keys, but if they take things at a more 'normal' pace, they still animated smoothly between squares. If a lot of people complain about input lag for you, it's a method worth considering. Anyway, that's a sidetrack; the main thing is, this game is super rad and I like it a lot. |
| May 4 18:03:34 | 16m 00s | Superbugs | ♥ 2 | This works very well, I like it a lot. The mechanic is solid, though a lot of the puzzles are pretty easy. I do disagree somewhat with @HuvaaKoodia, though; the last level is the only level where I found myself making mistakes and then having to correct them afterwards, so by that metric, it certain seems to qualify as 'harder'. While there are more constraints in the final level, which in principle directs you to the correct solution, the previous levels have so few constraints that almost anything you try will be a correct solution anyway. Threading that needle, giving enough constraints that there is only one (or a few) correct solutions, but not so many constraints that said solution is obvious, may be difficult. But, if you can do it, you've got the makings of a really sweet puzzle game here. |
| May 4 18:46:36 | 43m 02s | DELETED | ♥ 0 | You weren't kidding when you said the game would include weird things! It's a pity it's such a pain to get going, though. If nwjs weren't like 170MB, I'd suggest just bundling it with the game. |
| May 4 18:55:25 | 8m 49s | The Puzzler | ♥ 0 | I'm not really sure I understand how to play this. I was able to walk over and pick up the gun, and I can fire the gun, but nothing I shoot reacts in any way. Also, there's no way to open doors or pull the lever, that I could find. That said, even without being able to open doors, I was able to clip through some walls so I was able to explore anyway. It's an interesting space to explore, it's just a pity I couldn't figure out how the game works |
| May 4 21:17:34 | 2h 22m | Alysson | ♥ 3 | Very nicely done. Packs some punch. I could see where it was going very early on (end of chapter 2, beginning of chapter 3), and I wasn't wrong, but it went there with much more skill than I was expecting. I had what I _assume_ is the good ending, or at least, probably not the worst ending. As @remco said, could have used some audio, I think, but otherwise very good. Anyway, kudos to you! |
| May 4 21:30:28 | 12m 54s | E.(a)T. | ♥ 1 | This was cute, and fun! Also, I was too focused on the game to check for certain, but it seems like when you kick the pests 'into orbit', they really do just circle the planet a few times and then fall back to the surface, don't they? Clever, it really reinforces the "small world" feeling. Main thing I would change is an audio notification when you're close to running out of food, and _possibly_ some sort of radar for enemies. I also discovered, I really don't have what it takes to reach the high-score table on this one :-p |
| May 4 21:42:08 | 11m 40s | Arrows in Orbit | ♥ 1 | Oh my god, this works really well, and if further developed it actually feels like there's room for a fair amount of strategic gameplay here. Being able to accidentally shoot yourself in the _back_ is an unusual experience, certainly. The controls seemed OK as is, but I imagine with a controller it'd be even smoother. My main complaint would be that the arrows themselves can be kind hard to see, especially with the shadow effect. It'd be nice if they were a bit more visible, and also if the enemy arrows were visually distinct from the player's arrows. Actually, a nice touch would be a different sound effect playing when you shot yourself vs when an enemy shot you. This is _very_ good for a first entry, honestly this is pretty good even for a veteran LDer (I remember my first entry, it was almost entirely unplayable). Good work, I hope you expand it. Some of the other commenters had some good suggestions on that front. |
| May 4 22:37:30 | 55m 22s | The Last Colony | ♥ 1 | I _really_ like the concept here, but I do have to agree with the concerns other commenters expressed about the controls. Specifically, these are the three major problems I faced: * The game was so fast paced enough that I didn't feel I had time to every look away from the 'action' to check the UI and get information about how I was doing. * As a consequence, it was not obvious when I had successfully docked, what the conditions were for docking, or even if the 'dock' keys did anything. When I did glance away from the action to look at the UI below, it didn't seem to tell me one way or the other. * It was very difficult to get the ships to glide in safely rather than slamming into the station at full speed (maybe intentional?) All of those really come down to an issue of speed: in the micro, the actual gameplay moves to fast, and in the macro, the difficulty ramps up too quickly for the player to effectively learn (this second one is a pretty common problem for non-trivial Jam games, in my experience). Anyway, all those things being said, I do see a lot of promise here, it seems like this could grow into something really cool! |
| May 4 23:20:43 | 43m 13s | Small World Sim | ♥ 3 | This is very, very cool! My singular complaint is that the phrasing on the goals is hard to understand: drop _current_ funds below $20, or drop _funds per day_ bellow $20? Other than that, I kept playing well past completing all the goal, and filled up the planet with (eventually) trees, houses, hospitals, and a single remaining factory. My population had semi-stabilized around 4600 (with a slow increase as the birth rate goes up automatically once a month). I could probably have gotten it to go higher, but I liked the layout I had and didn't want to demolish everything. I could definitely see this being expanded into a more complex game. The main thing would be adding more goals, including goals with a "reach X by date Y" format. You might consider creating 'scenarios', like old Sim City games had, where you start with a certain amount of the map pre-filled in, and you have to complete a goal in X amount of time. It'd also be cool to add additional building types, possibly add some rules about what can go next to what, but I'm not sure I see that as completely essential. |
| May 4 23:35:11 | 14m 28s | My Very Own World | ♥ 2 | This is really cute, I especially liked the little people and their little dance. π Oddly, I had a hard time getting the game to run on my Mac. Something about the .app bundle is incorrect, it just won't run (even taking into account Gatekeeper). It seems to be something with the bundle itself, though, not the included binary files; usually when I have problems with a Jam game I run the binaries directly from the command line to see if I can get any error output, but this time when I ran it that way it just worked without problems. It's only trying to run the game the 'normal' way that doesn't work. |
| May 4 23:55:14 | 20m 03s | Destructo Island | ♥ 2 | I'm very bad at FPS games and generally don't enjoy them that much, but this one was pretty fun! I'm very glad you decided to include different difficulty levels, for people like me. I got 10852 on Easy. That's probably not very good, but it's a big number so I'm gong to pretend I did well π |
| May 5 00:29:22 | 34m 08s | SurviBall | ♥ 1 | This was really cute! I really, really like the look, and though it took me a few deaths to figure out the rules, I did eventually persevere: I like the ending, too. One way to expand the game would be to make it a little less brutal in terms of resources, so that you can afford to spend turns non-optimally; and then add different weird little easter eggs wherever you currently get an error sound. Maybe a 'bonus' ending if you manage to survive and build the lighthouse after discovering all of the easter eggs. Regardless, this is definitely one of the nicest-looking entries I've run into so far, and it was fun to play, too. |
| May 5 00:43:29 | 14m 07s | A world too small and no jetpack | ♥ 3 | The art is nice, particularly the 'splash' screens when you win or lose, which look very cute. The gameplay is pretty good, but I think the collision detection between the player and the enemies is pretty harsh at the moment, they are very hard to jump over successfully. My recommendations: * Tweak the hit detection (and maybe enemy behavior) to make enemies a *lot* easier to avoid * Having done that, tweak the fuel drop algorithm to make it so you have to get past more enemies for each fuel; don't allow the first fuel to spawn with a bunch of enemies, or the last fuel to spawn in a big empty area. If you do the first without the second, the game will be too easy, and if you do the second without the first, it'll be _way_ too hard, but I think if you did both, you could make this something really fun. You could expand it to include more planets, different enemy types, power ups, etc, if you wanted. Also, it'd be cool to have some safe areas to stand, so you could catch your breath and admire the art. I found not even the capsule was completely safe. |
| May 5 01:39:06 | 55m 37s | SUPER METROARIO | ♥ 4 | I played this game, for more than half an hour, and completed it. Pretty challenging, with a well-designed map (some of the stuff may have been hidden a bit _too_ well, but, I did find it, so, works for me). My only complaint is to do with the controls/physics. Even switching back and forth between wasd and arrow keys (and eventually settling on both at once, wa_d for move and down arrow for duck), my hands hurt after playing this. Probably would have been a lot easier with a controller, but the weird jump physics didn't really help - none of the jumps were impossible (obviously), but some of them were more difficult than I would have liked. That may sound like a lot of complaining, but I definitely still really like the game - almost certainly the LD38 entry I've stuck with for the longest amount of time. OH, and before I forget: The music was really good, and the premise was really amusing. I love me some Metroidvania, so even with slightly weird controls, I definitely am a fan of this game. |
| May 7 02:45:03 | 49h 05m | Wrong Delivery | ♥ 2 | This is well done, and even without reading the description (which I didn't actually do until after I played), it _immediately_ put me in mind of Robot Wants Kitty. The controls are smooth and the map was (for the most part) well designed. It _really_ could have done with at least some basic sound effects, though, for player feedback. Hit/death animations would have also helped. The two complaints I have in terms of the actual gameplay are: A) the enemies didn't really need to have multiple HP (especially the ceiling guys), it just makes them tedious to kill without making them difficult, and B) the room full of platforms on the way to the keycard is likewise more tedious than difficult. The rest of the map was enjoyable to play, but that room could have stood to have half as many enemies (or fewer). One other thing, neither good nor bad, but: it's entirely possible (even easy) to get the package with only the double-jump, none of the subsequent powers are necessary (even though the dash is super fun): package.png |
| May 7 03:09:02 | 23m 59s | Glade in the Sky | ♥ 0 | Some checkpointing would have been nice, since it was pretty frustrating to start from scratch after making a single mistake. That said, the game isn't so long that it's a huge problem. Oddly enough, I didn't even realize it was possible to jump until I was on the way to the final crystal and ended up stuck in a situation where without jump the game is not completable π Was kind of fun to go back and try out the "cheats" other players mentioned above, though. |
| May 7 03:21:26 | 12m 24s | Gravity Trails | ♥ 1 | This is very nice, although I feel like I failed more times getting from the 2nd-to-last checkpoint to the last one, than in the entire rest of the game. I really liked the Kirby-esque faces on some of the planets. The whole thing was just, well put together and cute. |
| May 7 04:04:39 | 43m 13s | Little Fortune Planet | ♥ 3 | I couldn't get the volcano achievement, or the skull achievement. I'd assume the skull achievement comes from killing everyone, but not matter how quickly I do they just respawn immediately (EDIT: n/m, that wast the Cure for Death's fault). Also, apologies to Troop, but, I could't understand a _word_ he was saying during the intro. Perhaps some subtitles? EDIT: Whoops, after all that, nearly forgot to mention that I really liked this! It might need some tweaks, but this is really creative and cool. |
| May 7 05:17:57 | 1h 13m | rovR | ♥ 2 | This is a great idea, though like several prior commenters I found the space baby heads a bit frustrating, they just give you _so_ little room to maneuver that I also usually found it much easier to cheat and skip as many planets as possible. That said, I really like the concept, and played all the way to the end! It's a fun experience, even if it was frustrating at times. |
| May 7 05:34:01 | 16m 04s | Glass Houses | ♥ 1 | This is a super great entry, the presentation is really tremendous. Although the current entry is pretty well self-contained, I actually feel like the style and setting would do well being expanded into a longer 'adventure' game - still without any text dialog. I feel like at the end, when the characters are presented with this whole new world they never knew, I want to explore it with them. Although they're fairly different, this actually reminds me quite a bit of LOOM. EDIT: To elaborate a little, I feel like an expanded version of this should maintain and expand on the gameplay of this version; not the walking-back-and-forth-a-lot part, mind, but the part at the end, the 'implicit' decision-making, where you choose between two paths by simple interaction, without necessarily realizing you're being presented with a choice. |
| May 7 05:46:03 | 12m 02s | House Escape | ♥ 0 | This feels like a nice _start_ to a game, but it's very, very short, completable in less than a minute. Also, it seems a bit buggy, picking things up more than once, getting messages that don't make sense (there's something behind the TV, when you've already picked up the thing behind the TV, etc). All that said, the game _looks_ really good; I like the art style quite a bit. |
| May 7 06:15:44 | 29m 41s | Protolife | ♥ 4 | This is amazing, probably my favorite game of the combo, even though I find it somewhat difficult (this mitigated _somewhat_ by the glory of R-pentomino). I've not completed it yet, but I definitely plan to. If there was a mobile/tablet version of this, I'd probably never stop playing. Seriously. I agree with @remco, additional types of proteins would be good. One that moved around during the infection phase, harvesting greens for you, but died if reds got to it, would be nice. One that automatically harvested adjacent greens would be nice an exploitable, actually :-p |
| May 7 06:27:38 | 11m 54s | Cubical | ♥ 3 | This is really nice looking, and fun to play around with. After I figured out what I was doing, it felt like the game would just go on forever, so it might be nice for there to be a score, or something, but otherwise, very nice! The only complaint I really have is that it seems it should be sufficient to click on worms to get them to board (or even have them board automatically, if they'll all fit); drag-and-drop seems a bit unnecessary. |
| May 7 23:43:48 | 17h 16m | Carefulzilla | ♥ 0 | This is really fantastic. I could actually see this being expanded slightly, in-as-much as you could add different environments to stomp through and different monsters to save the cities from. I like that there's an acknowledgement when you actually save everyone and cause no damage at all (not that I have accomplished this); is there a similar acknowledgement when you destroy every destructible thing? I tried, on one play through, and nothing in particular happened, but I may have simply missed something. |
| May 8 00:02:23 | 18m 35s | Last day of the woods | ♥ 1 | This is incredibly impressive for a 72 hour project with only one person. There's a _lot_ of mechanics and ideas in here, and, all of them are interesting. That said, I do have a few problems with the implementation of those ideas, mostly in terms of controls. I was using the keyboard (can't find my gamepad, not sure it would have worked on the web version anyway), for what that's worth. There were a few times where there seemed to be significant input lag, or just dropped inputs. I also found myself using the red orbs when I didn't mean to a _ton_ of the time. In fact, often the hardest parts of using the red orbs was in getting to where you wanted to go without triggering them by accident during normal jumps. That being the case, I'd almost suggest trying something that's _usually_ a terrible idea, and have the second jump mapped to a different button than the first (maybe optionally?). Anyway, all that said this is really cool, and I hope to come back (maybe on a Windows machine with a gamepad) and try it again. |
| May 8 16:33:14 | 16h 30m | Flerth | ♥ 2 | This was really adorable! I love the art style, the audio worked well (I know you didn't make it, but you choose well, Kevin MacLeod is a great resource), and the core gameplay idea was well-executed. I'm not exactly sure how you could expand this mechanic into a larger game, but for what you've made, it's pretty great. My only real complaint is that the difficulty scales up pretty dramatically all at once. |
| May 8 16:55:40 | 22m 26s | Petit Adventure | ♥ 1 | This is amazing! It's a genre that you don't often see in an LD entry, but you really pulled it off. The visual style is _super_ cute. I wonder if the people saying it's too hard, didn't find the Double Beam item. It's not exactly in an obvious location, and without it I'm not sure the game is completable. The early enemies need to be easier, or you need to start with more HP. Other than that, though, very nice. I will say, in the MacOS version on Google Drive, the ending still doesn't work. Also, fighting the final boss, I still took damage on rounds I was not actually attacked, and still survived with negative hit points. I may try the itch.io download later to see if I can find the fixed version. But regardless, overall a great entry. One of the nicest looking I've seen yet. Also, I know you sourced the audio from outside sources, so you don't get a rating on it, but I will say, you picked it well, it really adds to the atmosphere of the game. |
| May 8 18:55:26 | 1h 59m | Atlas | ♥ 3 | The art style here is very good, although I think if the background had moved it would have given a much better feel for swimming through space (as opposed to sitting stationary in space). Also, yes, it felt a bit too hectic, with a bit too sparse a UI - some UI showing how many rockets you had left, how much damage the individual turrets had taken, etc, would have been good. Also, your Mac download was a little messed up; there was a double-layer of .app wrapper (that is `Atlas_Mac.app/Atlas_Mac.app/Contents` instead of just `Atlas_Mac.app/Contents`, and the actual binary in the MacOS folder didn't have it's executable bit set when extracted from the RAR (this could have been an issue with the RAR extractor I used, admittedly). I was able to get the game to run without too much trouble regardless, since I'm used to this sort of thing (particularly for jam games), but other users may not have such an easy time. All in all, this feels like a great start, I would definitely play more of this. |
| May 9 17:32:16 | 22h 36m | The Robot's Trial | ♥ 2 | I like the art style (which, I normally don't like this sort of look, but in the case I did find it appealing, not sure I can put my finger on what's different). Other than that my biggest complaint is that the most interesting module, the magnet module, is really only used once; of course, in a LD context (particularly compo) there's not a lot of time for level design, so the limitation is understandable, it just would have been nice to see more of that one. Other commenters have already mentioned the usability/UI issues. For reference, I can confirm that on MacOS it's a similar situation to Windows, the camera is if anything too sensitive. Anyway, other than that, I liked the entry! |
| May 9 18:17:56 | 45m 40s | Song of Fungus | ♥ 1 | This is a _very_ well-designed puzzle game, with a _lot_ more levels than I was expecting. It's a unique mechanic, and I really liked the variations you came up with and how they inter-related. I thought that the first Scarlet Mother was going to be the "boss", but no, it was just another awesome puzzle mechanic that you used to build several levels. I spent much more time on this than I "should" have (in terms of getting to the next game on my list), but it was time well-spent. I really hope to see more of this in the future. If I had one complaint, though, I'd suggest some slight tweaks to the controls. I felt like my control over the camera was somewhat... slippery? Is the only word I can think of? Like the camera was sliding around more than I really wanted it to. It also would have been nice to be able to rotate and zoom the camera to see the scene from a different perspective. |
| May 9 18:30:40 | 12m 44s | One Push Man | ♥ 1 | This game looks and sounds really nice, on par with Jam games rather than other Compo entries. Also, it's funny that the enemies can also grab the power-ups. That said, I feel like the game was a little bit unfair in terms of the difficulty ramp; maybe I'm just bad at the game (ok, I'm definitely bad at the game), but I felt like I was dying quickly enough enough that I didn't have a chance to get any better at it. I'd suggest starting off with some easier enemies who maybe are hard to push off, but don't push you back at all, so that you have a chance to get used to pushing enemies away; I found myself, often-as-not, just walking off the edge, following the enemy I had just pushed. Actually, maybe a little waving-arms "whoa" animation and a split-second delay to recover when you're going to walk directly off the edge (obviously not triggered if you get _pushed_ off the edge). Other than that, this is pretty sweet! |
| May 9 18:56:35 | 25m 55s | SUPER Space Barrel | ♥ 0 | This is quite fun, and you pulled off the art style _really_ well. I think as a Jam entry it holds up quite well as it is, but in an expanded version I think it might require lives or HP, because at the moment it gets very difficult _quite_ quickly. I'd love to see some alternate maps, though, maybe power ups, etc. In any case, really well-constructed entry! Kudos. |
| May 10 04:38:12 | 9h 41m | LoneGalaxy | ♥ 0 | I am very bad at this game, even when playing against myself :-p It's tough making a multiplayer game for Ludum Dare, because so many people do their judging solo. That said, it seems like a cool idea, one that starts difficult but that I can imagine getting good at. |
| May 10 04:51:31 | 13m 19s | littleBLASTplanet | ♥ 1 | This is really cool, I like it a lot. I have to say, with the camera mode on follow the trajectory of your bullets while walking seemed to make _no_ sense, but once I switched the camera mode to stationary (which I understand is the default anyway), it was a lot easier to predict what was going on :-p I feel like the only thing this game really needs is to make the progression through the level more obvious to the player; some combination of enemies getting tougher or more frequent towards the end of the level, a song that is the exact length of the level, something that makes it _feel_ like you're progressing. Obviously those are hard targets to hit in a game jam, especially when you're in the Compo, but for a post-jam expansion I'd try to increase that sense of progression within the level. Even a countdown timer would help (and not just a count-up timer). For difficulty concerns, earlier levels could just be _shorter_, to combat the possibility of being bored early on. For the curving bullets, I'd actually suggest having two guns would add some neat strategy to the game. One would act as the current gun acts, the other would be affected by gravity. You'd have both options available, but maybe there's a split second animation frame to switch weapons, or just the fire rate is for either weapon, combined, so you can't just spam them both simultaneously at all times. Something like that. |
| May 10 05:15:40 | 24m 09s | Monolith | ♥ 1 | This looks really neat, it's a type of retro aesthetic that doesn't get used very often and I dig it. That said, the game is way too hard for me. In particular, I have a very hard time telling when I'm in danger of being hit, I've not managed to get a score higher than 10. |
| May 10 07:01:23 | 1h 45m | Miniscule Frenzy | ♥ 1 | Very very nice; the Downwell aesthetic is pulled off really well here (possibly better than it actually is in Downwell :-p ). Enemy polarity is a mechanic I've seen before, but never in a platformer that I can recall. There's a lot of potential here for both action level design and puzzle level design (though action level design may benefit from some tweaks to make mid-air flipping more of a thing). All in all, this is very cool. The difficulty curve works really well, for the most part; it felt challenging, but I was able to finish it. I will say I found level 12 to be much more challenging than any of the subsequent levels, though. |
| May 10 07:14:36 | 13m 13s | Lottery: you judge them I judge you | ♥ 1 | This is an interesting idea. I do think the implementation is _slightly_ flawed, however, in that in a sense many of the choices you make don't matter; you're only allowed to leave one person alive, and everyone else gets killed; that being the case, it's not clear how much it matters what _order_ you kill them in. I was playing the game fullscreen, so at the end I didn't even know I was being _shown_ a rating until I had already quit the game and returned the main menu. All that being said, I still think this is a really cool premise for an entry. Well done! |
| May 10 07:22:53 | 8m 17s | Small Planet | ♥ 0 | Wow, playing this is in a 1v1 fight gave me serious flashbacks to Star Control 2, one of the best games of all time (though admittedly, not specifically because of it's combat). It _is_ pretty difficult, though. I'd also suggest that, when you've died in a 2v2 or larger match, and are waiting for your team-mates to finish the match (or waiting to respawn), it'd be nice to be able to look around the map and see what's happening rather than having a fixed camera and hearing off-screen ships occasionally shoot each other. Other than that, though, this was pretty fun. I think there's a lot of room to add cool additional mechanics, too. |
| May 10 07:36:31 | 13m 38s | The Flip Lands | ♥ 0 | I have to agree with @Jordgubben, the way this works is very well thought out; I could see this working very well with a bronze/silver/gold or 1/2/3-star system, where completing the level in few enough clicks is key to higher rankings, so you can always brute-force a level to get past it, but will have to really think about it if you want a good score. The aesthetic was really nice, as well. |
| May 10 07:43:28 | 6m 57s | The world is (a) flat | ♥ 1 | I think this is probably the most creative take on the theme I've seen so far, kudos for that! It's just unfortunate the game is so short, I'd have liked to see more. |
| May 10 17:26:44 | 9h 43m | Cubic Explorer | ♥ 1 | I'm a huge fan of (and sucker for) procedural generation (most of my LD entries have used it, even if this time didn't), but procedurally generating the gameplay (rather than just e.g. the map) is a really neat concept! Full marks on innovation, and I wish you luck on your Master's thesis. |
| May 10 18:33:08 | 1h 06m | Petty Puny Planet 38 | ♥ 1 | This is rad as hell. I played for way longer than I should have (given the goal of judging lots of other games), and managed to get, I believe, 9 of the 10 endings. Overall, even though the flavor is very different, the game reminds me of Reigns (and also, appropriately, of another LD38 entry, [Puny World](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/puny-world) by @joe-cowman). I really hope you expand it in the future, I want to see more games like this out there. |
| May 11 04:43:02 | 10h 09m | Roguelike One | ♥ 6 | That was really enjoyable! I got to the very last level before I finally died; I was genuinely considering playing again immediately, but I need to judge other games too, so I'll be coming back after judging is complete to try again. I do agree that the aiming is a bit of a problem, but not a huge one. I do wish there were more upgrades available that changed the way you fought (like the multi-shot one), though. In any case, while the aiming feel a bit awkward (especially since the _enemies_ can shoot in any direction), changing it would probably involve re-balancing a lot of the game. My other two complaints are UI complaints: It's not really feasible to read the messages you get occasionally, because you're fighting while they're scrolling by. Maybe don't spawn any enemies until after the message has completed? Also, in the WebGL version (the only version I can play, since I'm on a Mac), pausing the game is pretty awkward: you have to hit escape to pause and unpause, but instead of doing what you wanted, it first kicks you out of full-screen. Then you press it again and it pauses. That means that if you want to pause, you can't safely get back into full screen until you beat the level. Anyway, I hope you expand this further, I really like it! |
| May 11 04:55:34 | 12m 32s | Ark Initiative | ♥ 1 | I really like the presentation here, as others have said. It's unfortunate you weren't able to add more gameplay during the jam, but thats how game jams go sometimes. Also, animals are *really* expensive compared to the speed at which you gain currency. In the beginning it's very hard to get started, you need to work on the cost curve some, I think. Speaking of curves, the one presentational thing I really missed was the ability to rotate the camera. I realize it doesn't matter much with the zoom options available, but it would have been nice none-the-less. I also discovered an undocumented feature: if you use the arrow keys, for some reason you can make the food items run and jump around the map as if they were platformer characters. Which I can't imagine being useful, but it was pretty amusing anyway :-p |
| May 11 05:21:16 | 25m 42s | ATLANTIS | ♥ 2 | This was amazingly well thought-out and put together; I'm definitely going to give the updated version a try, considering how good the jam version was. There were some UI problems, but I feel like those have been adequately addressed by other commenters. My main problem was really just that it wasn't always clear ahead of time that there were problems impending. For example, when my Scout died for no readily apparent reason. I assume he drowned, but the tile he was in wasn't all the way sunk, and anyway the mage could stand on similar tiles just fine. That said, this is just superb, big props for getting this made in just 72 hours! |
| May 11 17:12:45 | 11h 51m | You Dig-It | ♥ 1 | This game is very fun! I do agree about the difficulty. I think one of two things would have reduced the frustration level Either: 1. Give HP or Lives 2. Make crabs stun you when hit, and kill you if hit again while stunned 3. Make crabs harmless for the first second or so after revealing them so if you reveal a crab it doesn't immediately kill you, OR 4. Allow swinging your pickaxe to temporarily stun crabs, and touching a stunned crab (by failing to jump over it, say) is harmless. Any one of those would drop the frustration level (for me, at least) a great deal; if you did more than one, it might make the game a bit too easy, but that could be compensated for by adding additional challenges, or simply adding additional content to work towards. Regardless, this is pulled off quite well for a compo entry, as @rplnt said it feels very complete. I know you had mechanics you wanted to include that you didn't get around to, but it doesn't show - with some compo games, you can 'see' the holes left by the missing mechanics, but that's not the case here. Good job! |
| May 11 17:36:01 | 23m 16s | Obelisk | ♥ 1 | This is a really lovely game, and the puzzles are quite well designed! There are a few bugs I noticed, but nothing too terrible. My main complaints were: * Occasionally activating the sensors (with Q/E) just stopped working, so it was impossible to rotate the connected platform. It's possible there was a mechanic behind this, but if so it wasn't explained. * Once, a bridge that as far as I could tell, was lined up perfectly, didn't descend. It's possible they weren't really lined up, but they sure looked like it. * I don't think being able to fall off the edges adds anything to game, it shouldn't be possible at all; if it's a bug that's hard to fix, make it so that if you fall off, you respawn on the platform you fell off of, rather than restarting the level. When this happened at the very end of a long level (combined with the previous item), that's where I ended up stopping playing. Anyway, those three things aside I think you have something really awesome here. The aesthetic is great (reminds me of a more muted Monument Valley), the audio is nice and atmospheric, and the mechanics are interesting, and they're used to build well-designed puzzles. Very good job, I'd love to see more of this. |
| May 12 19:18:46 | 25h 42m | King Of The Seals | ♥ 1 | This is really good for a quick amusement, and very funny. I'm not really sure what you could to to expand it into more than two-minute experience, really, but for what it is, it's quite good! Actually, no, I take that back. Semi-cooperative, semi-competitive, local multiplayer! That is, all players on the same team, trying to keep peasants off the island together, but each getting scored for their own 'kills'. If you can't work together as a team, you all lose, but you're still trying to beat your friends' scores. "This is a cooperative game, but I'm winning!" _That_ is what could take this beyond a two minute "Hah, that was silly" into something you'd play repeatedly. Also at that point you could add different royal seals (King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Vizier, whatever) who had different abilities. I take it back, this could be awesome π Although admittedly, adding all of that would be a ton of extra work. |
| May 12 19:27:57 | 9m 11s | Protoware Planet | ♥ 2 | I'm not really good at FPS games, and don't play them often, so I found this pretty difficult (I didn't even clear the first wave of enemies). For me, it would have helped to have more prominent feedback that I was being hurt (I think some FPSes show an indicator to tell you what direction you're being attacked from? As I said, I don't play these often). That said, I imagine someone who actually plays this type of game regularly would not have the same problems. On the parts I am equipped to judge properly, I think you did a pretty good job, especially for a compo entry! The art style is unusual but pulled off very well, and the music works well. I think some additional sound effects might have been called for, though; possibly one to tell your you're being hurt, or that there's an enemy right behind you, something like that. |
| May 12 19:50:01 | 22m 04s | Polyville | ♥ 1 | First off, congratulations on your first entry; my own first entry was not nearly as nice. A few comments: * I actually quite like the low-poly look of most things. You might want to change the main character, though; the player spends the whole game looking at the character's back, and yet almost every other model is more interesting to look at. * I understand very well how hard it is to get any audio into a compo entry, that said, this really could have used some sort of background audio. For future compos, I'd recommend finding some music-generating software and spending just a couple of minutes with it, so at least you have _something_ to put in. I've had some success with [Autotracker-BU](https://github.com/wibblymat/ld24/blob/master/autotracker.py), but other people seem to like [Wolfram Tones](http://tones.wolfram.com/) and [BeepBox](http://www.beepbox.co/) * For an ostensibly "small world", the map is actually pretty big! I'd suggest making the main character walk a little faster, or making the map a little smaller, so it doesn't take as long to get from place to place. Moving the Fog in closer would help reinforce the "trapped" atmosphere you've got going, too. * A minor point, but if you pick up an item before you get a quest, when you meet the person who gives you the quest you complete it without really finding out what it was you were doing. For example, I found the mushroom before I met the Wizard, so when I did meet him, he never got to give whatever his shpiel was about why he needed it. * At one point, my guy tripped on a rock (more or less) and tipped over. After that, it was not possible for me to turn upright anymore; the camera tilted too, and all of the controls were now relative to my horizontal position. I could scooch along the floor in the direction I was facing, but trying to turn left or right just pointed me at the sky or the dirt. Anyway, all that aside, this is a promising start! In particular, it looks like you scoped pretty well, which is hard to do for your first compo; many first time entrants plan out something that's way too ambitious for 48 hours and end up with a game that doesn't even work (coughmecough). I hope to see you again in future jams! |
| May 12 19:59:35 | 9m 34s | Destroy Blocks | ♥ 1 | Unfortunately, as others have commented, the lag makes the game very difficult to play. The controls also seem a bit weird, mostly in that I occasionally sank into the floor. Despite all of that, it's a promising start, and I hope you come back for future LDs. EDIT: Also, even though there were some problems with the playback, I like that you actually recorded real audio for the music. I've never done anything other than procedurally-generated music, so kudos to you for making it yourself. |
| May 12 20:16:42 | 17m 07s | Planet Domination | ♥ 1 | This seems pretty neat, but I have to agree that it's hard to hold the planets in any meaningful way. With the current scoring system, it feels like only the last 30 seconds or so of gameplay matters; I'd suggest that instead of who has the most planets at the 2-minute mark, each team gets 1 point per planet they hold per second, and at the end of 2 minutes whoever had the most points wins; that way, it's more about who can hold the planets the longest, rather than who can snatch the planets right at the last second. Some further comments: * The graphics are very nice! Simple, but effective. Audio isn't bad either. * There should not be the same number of teams as planets, makes it too easy to tie (with the current scoring system, anyway). * Player movement seems pretty slow. * Is it just me, or do the Blue and Green teams get multiple ships at once while the Red team gets only one? That seems a bit unfair. * I think a cool way to improve the gameplay loop here would be to have the planets actually in motion relative to the spawn points, maybe orbiting a star or something; if you're near enough to a planet, you automatically move with it, otherwise you retain your fixed frame of reference. No idea how feasible that is to implement, though. * It'd be neat to have different kind of ships to choose from, maybe one moves faster but has less shields, one fires missiles, I dunno. A lot of ways you could go with that if you decided to expand it post-Jam. In any case, congratulations on finishing, hope to see you back in a future Jam! |
| May 12 20:25:53 | 9m 11s | Djinn Duel | ♥ 1 | This is pretty interesting! There's actually a bit of strategy to it once you understand you can attack multiple tiles at once, but it is still ultimately mostly a guessing game. My recommendation would be to figure out a way to differentiate the tiles from one another, so that you can try to guess what your opponent might do based on which tiles they might find advantageous (or whether they're going to bluff you by going somewhere worthless to waste your turn). Actually, another idea (possibly a better one) is to make movement also take energy the farther you go. That way there's an inherent strategy in deciding how far to move from your present location, and how much energy you think you're opponent is willing to spend on avoiding your attacks. If you _really_ wanted to add a bunch of extra complexity (and I'm not 100% sure it's a good idea, but bear with me) you could even add a deck-of-cards mechanic, where different cards represent stronger attacks, or have limited ranges, etc. Or if not cards, just a set of abilities you choose at the beginning of the match without knowing what your opponent has chosen. |
| May 12 20:56:57 | 31m 04s | Rockpolis: Town survival | ♥ 1 | This was very nice, and I'm a huge fan of this sort of game. Some suggestions: * Blue card purchase piles should not be re-dealt each round Instead, there should be three cards available for purchase; at the end of the turn, the leftmost card disappears, the other two cards slide left, and a new card appears in the rightmost spot. If you buy a card, any cards to the right of it slide left to fill in the space and a new card is dealt immediately. This adds some strategy to purchases. * A lot of the blue cards are, unfortunately, not very good. In particular, Bribe is very weak because it's only good if you happen to draw it on the same turn as you draw enough money to buy two things (or three) things. It should have some other effect; maybe purchase +2, health +2, or purchase + 2, attack +1, anything to ensure it won't be a dead weight most of the time. * These sorts of games _need_ to have mechanics that allow you to delete things from your deck. Novice players often look at them and thing, "Why would I _ever_ do that?", but experienced players know that those are the most powerful cards in the game. Actually, that could tie in nicely to bribe: destroy a card in your hand or discard pile to get +2 purchasing power. Thematically, you're using the destroyed card as a bribe; mechanically, destroying a card actually becomes the whole point of Bribe. Might have to bump the cost, in fact. * There should be a card that kills lots of enemies but can't hurt the boss. * It'd be cool if, as the game progressed (as the turn count got higher), things escalated for your city as well as the enemy; in other words, just like the opponent automatically starts sending more enemies per turn as the game draws on, it'd be cool if you got a +Action, +CardsDrawn or +Purchase bonus after a certain number of turns. Or maybe add a new card type (green?) that could show up occasionally in the blue card row, was really expensive, and gave permanent bonuses. In that case, maybe they're eventually destroyed by damage to the city and go to your discard pile (like Stations in Star Realms). EDIT: Actually, Bribe doesn't even work, it made me draw 2 instead of buy 2, so it's not possible to buy more than one card a turn it seems, since bribe is the only card that would have done that. |
| May 12 21:18:51 | 21m 54s | Little bug | ♥ 1 | This is actually quite good for a first time entry! The level design is not bad (although obviously more levels would be awesome), and the fact that you can't move and see at the same time adds a very tense atmosphere. I like that you can see the shadow of the enemies passing over your trail, to. My main suggestion would be add some additional, fixed lights to the levels. Not very many, but a few. Just enough to tease the player, give them a chance to see an enemy as it moves past one of the built-in lights and wonder, "where is it heading next?". A clever player might pay attention to how long it takes the enemy to return to the light after leaving, giving the an idea of where it might be pathing. Then trick them, surprise, there's actually two enemies passing that light at different times! That sort of thing. Other than that, my only complaints are some user-interface ones. As @Zelos points out, the instructional text at the beginning is hard to read. Also, the next level button when you win doesn't really fit with the rest of the look of the game. |
| May 13 00:56:56 | 3h 38m | Den | ♥ 2 | The visuals and, especially, the audio, are really brilliant here. Like many others, I got stuck at the second mining site, but hey, that just gave me more time to admire the running animation of the one guy running forever across the catwalk above me (he must be _really_ tired by now π) I don't know if you plan to expand this into something larger? I'm not sure how that would actually work, honestly. I could see some really neat environmental storytelling opportunities with the environments you'd have the player move through, but I'm not sure what gameplay mechanics you could add to keep the gameplay interesting for an extended length. It doesn't really feel right to have the giant monster solving puzzles, and fighting other giant monsters (or the puny humans) would sort of spoil the mood, it seems like. Still, if you did come up with something, I'd be first in line to try it out. In any case, _as_ a Jam entry, it's really great, regardless. |
| May 13 01:41:37 | 44m 41s | Minos' Pond | ♥ 1 | This is really cool, and I'd love to see this expanded. Unfortunately, I do have to agree with what @ryte2byte said about the UI; though of course it's understandable you can't polish everything in a JAM game, if you expand this further (and I hope you do), the UI needs some serious attention. One other problem I had which prevented me from getting _super_ far is that I was able to build a Tree in front of my wood house. After that, whenever a wood Mino made a delivery, he'd get stuck and be unable to leave. Future Minos making deliveries wouldn't get stuck, they'd just drop stuff off without entering the door, but eventually the poor stuck Mino would die of hunger and thirst. Once that happened, there'd be room for another Mino to get stuck in the door and the cycle would repeat. They were dying like this as fast or faster than new ones showed up; by the time I stopped playing, I had 20-40 of all of the other Minos, but only 8 surviving wood Minos. Anyway, those issues having been noted, I think this is fun concept, and I hope you make a post-jam version. |
| May 13 04:32:23 | 2h 50m | Save the litle Planet! | ♥ 3 | This is really unusual. I'll start off with the obvious: The pixel art is really well done, and the music and sound effects are as well. The controls we a little iffy - as often as not, when I hit C, It'd just keep walking as normal rather than roll. I used it to move around the planets faster (as you do), but I never trusted it for combat. The portal/jump spots themselves were cool, but rather frustrating; sometimes, I'd stand there and jump over and over again, and on the ten or twelfth try, I'd finally hit it just right and go. Other times, I would jump, start to flip, and then inexplicably flip back. Finally, sometimes I'd hit the portal, but miss a coin on the way, only to find out it wasn't actually possible to go through the portal the other direction, so I had to take a _long_ detour (with no map) to get back to where I was (and do it again, each time I failed to get that coin). None of these are huge problems, and that last one may even be intentional (though if so, I disagree it's a good idea). Now, I'm going to level a criticism I don't think I've ever given to an LD entry before: This game... is simply... far, _far_ too long. I kept playing, thinking I was nearly at the end as I approached 50k points. Nope. I kept thinking, "Surely I'm nearly done, now. I'll give it a chance, I'd like to see the whole thing, see if there's an ending." When I finally stopped, I had more than one-hundred thousand points, and for all I know I'm still only halfway done (Of course, I could have counted planets, but I didn't realize when I started that it would be necessary). That far into the game, when you make a jump through a portal, discover that it has deposited you on one of the very first planets, turn around to go back the other way and discover you can't reach it, so you're going to have to find your way back the long way around? Let's just say it wasn't my favorite part of the game. Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly approve of games with a lot of content, if you can pull them off. But unfortunately, there just wasn't enough going on to last as long as the game does. It needs to have different kinds of enemies, power-ups, sub-goals, it needs differences in kind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBR1z-ue-I Obviously in a game jam there's not always time to add all that. And that's ok! But if that's what happened, it might have been a good idea to reduce the number of planets once you realized you couldn't enough content to sustain an hour-plus-long experience. Ok, so, now that I've got that off my chest, I do still want to reiterate: What you do have, though it has some problems, is a really good start. I would _love_ to see you build on this for a post-jam version. But unlike most post-jam games, I wouldn't focus at all on making the game bigger, just put more to do inside the game you already have. EDIT: Also, what on earth did the Z key do? It seems to do _something_, makes an arrow appear on screen, but I couldn't figure out what it was for, didn't seem to point at anything specific). |
| May 13 04:51:45 | 19m 22s | Five Minute Fire Fight | ♥ 2 | I really like this! The aesthetic is great, the music is catchy, the gameplay is fun! There's only one complaint I have, which is the speed with which the AI builds things. If you're winning, you never notice the problem, but in a tight game, or if you're losing, it's basically impossible to ever build anything, no matter how many resources you have. Even on with the Pace set to Slow and the AI set to easy, the _instant_ the AI demolishes your building, the build one of their own on top of it. The instant you demolish _their_ building, they build one in its place to replace it, as long as they have enough resources (this is why you won't notice the problem if your winning). I think the main thing is that ONE of the following needs to be true * When a player's building is demolished, there's a one or two second grace period where the only player who can build something in it's place is them, OR * When a player's building is demolished, there's a one or two second penalty period where that player can't rebuild in that spot. (These could be waved if the spot isn't contested, i.e. there's only one player with an adjacent building). Right now, because the AI reacts to available build sites instantaneously, it's like the AI gets version 1 and the player gets version 2, and that's just not fair. Other than that, I really like this! |
| May 13 05:23:11 | 31m 26s | RoboLand | ♥ 1 | So I played the Jam and Post-Jam version, and I gotta say, in both versions, the background/water effect is _really_ cool, I like it a lot. Other than that, yeah, the post-jam version looks a lot nicer of course. I look forward to seeing what other levels you can come up with, however, I have a suggestion: In my mind, the coolest thing about this kind of game is the way the player needs to figure things out in advance, before they start the robot moving. In the current game, you can keep changing arrows (and placing new ones) as long as you like. Now, for some of the puzzles, that's actually necessary with the current ruleset. Of course, if you throw out those options _entirely_ it basically becomes just a maze, which isn't quite right either. I wonder, though, if you could do something like one of the following: * Restrict the number of moves the player is allowed to make after starting the robot, * Have a special kind of tile (built into the level, not placeable) that the robot stops on; only while standing on one of these tiles can you change the robot's instructions, then start them again. * Have tiles that you can place which, when the robot passes them, cause arrow tiles to rotate clockwise. That way, instead of the player clicking to rotate the tiles already in place, they have the robot do it. I think the third one is my favorite option, but the first one would certainly be easier to implement. Either way, I look forward to seeing more content from this! Kudos! |
| May 13 22:11:19 | 16h 48m | War of Quiz! | ♥ 3 | Q: How many arms/legs/limbs/tentacles does a squid have? A: Ten B: Zombie C: Call of Duty D: Venezuela I like the concept here, but the answer pool for each question needs to be appropriate to that question. π The easiest way to do this is to just have a fixed set of four possible answers to each question. If you really want to draw them randomly from a shared pool, you're going to have to tag each answer with info like, "plural", "a number", "three nouns", "place", "person", "group of people", and then tag every question with a filter for what kinds of answers it's allowed to pull; that's a _lot_ more work. Also, questions should be drawn randomly from the pool without replacement, so that the same question never shows up twice unless the entire question pool has been exhausted. Alternatively, a question that is answered incorrectly could be re-inserted into the pool; if it comes up again, the same four options should be available, and ones already chosen noted; or, when a question is answered incorrectly, the opponent could be given a chance to answer it, as some quiz shows do. |
| May 13 23:52:28 | 1h 41m | Escape The World | ♥ 1 | I like the general design of this, however I have a few suggestions: * It might be more engaging if you were tasked with completing the level in a certain number of moves (not the minimum possible number of moves, that would probably be too difficult, but close to it). Or, you were ranked with a gold (minimum number of moves), silver (something close to minimal number of moves), bronze (completed it at all) Or, you got badges, 1 for completing the level, one for solving it quickly, one for solving it optimally. * If you do that, though (and maybe even if you don't), you'll want to introduce some easier levels to start off with. Neither of these suggestions are strictly necessary; they would have increased _my_ enjoyment of the game, but I'm not sure they would actually make it a _better_ game in any broad sense. My specific problem was that in many levels, solving the level (in the sense of just clearing all the squares) was trivially easy, and could be accomplished more or less by just dicking around, but I often had the sense that I was missing some more elegant, clever, "correct" way to solve the level, and that the 'real' puzzle would have been finding _that_. Of course, in the later levels, actually clearing the cubes at all became a significant puzzle, but I still felt like I had probably missed the 'real' solution. To a certain extent, you've already addressed this with the move counter and timer. My suggestion is basically, "emphasize that more", but if you have a different direction in mind (for example, if you prefer the at-your-own-pace, any-solution-that-works sort of puzzle game), then that's also cool. Anyway, whichever way you choose to go with this, I'd love to see more levels. My turn move count was 300-something? I don't remember exactly. Time take was 84 minutes, 'cause I went to go eat lunch in the middle π |
| May 14 00:15:29 | 23m 01s | Pod2000 | ♥ 1 | Maybe it was just me, but I experienced a bunch of technical issues with the game, in three different browsers. It looks really cool, though so far. * In Chrome, it loaded, but there was a big white box covering about 40% of the canvas; it soon became apparent that it was the text entry area, but it's obviously not supposed to be a visible white box. * In Safari, it wouldn't start. Console complained that "const" declarations aren't allowed in strict mode. * In Firefox, the game actually loaded, and I was able to play. It was pretty cool, but I was only able to do the exploration portion of the game. When I tried to run `archive ls` or `inventory`, instead of listing all the things I had available, it would list one thing I had available (I think the most recent thing), repeatedly (as many times as there should have been things to list). So I couldn't tell what was in my inventory :( I looked at other player's comments, and I seem to be the only person who's encountered these problems. Not sure what I've done wrong. |
| May 14 00:38:48 | 23m 19s | Blomst π» | ♥ 1 | This is really relaxing and atmospheric. I don't necessarily have a lot to add (though I suppose I can echo the interface concerns of @seconddimension), just really enjoyed it! |
| May 14 00:45:31 | 6m 43s | Fog and Glass | ♥ 1 | It's an interesting entry, though I'm not sure I have a lot to say about it; certainly it looks very nice. Actually, my one complaint: when the game loads up, there is no text at first; for me, it took almost 30 seconds for any text to appear. I was pressing right and left as the instructions said, trying to figure out if I was having any effect on the displayed graphics (it didn't seem like it). If that's intentional, I'd recommend against it. If it's not, and it's not just some weird issue with my browser (which it most certainly could be), then you might want to start with some sort of "loading" message; I almost quit before it even actually started. That said, it's entirely possible it's a problem on my end that no one else run into, in which case, please ignore the preceding paragraph. |
| May 14 00:53:15 | 7m 44s | Little Sprout Garden | ♥ 0 | This is super cute, but, of course, doesn't really have anything to hold the player's attention for very long. I love the aesthetic, and would love to see it used as the launching point for some sort of village sim / strategy game. |
| May 14 01:37:02 | 43m 47s | Arindama | ♥ 1 | This is really neat! I like it a lot, and finally, after 95-ish days, made the statue. My only real complaint is, it's _reeaaaal_ easy to run out of grass, and there is _very_ little to do with leaves (and fruit, eventually). My final board had so many leaves and fruit, I had to rebuild the floor using leaves, and ended up dropping so many fruit off the edge they got stuck on the sky and built a stack on nothingness. Which was actually pretty cool, but probably wasn't intended. Anyway, this is great! Kudos to you! skyfruit.png |
| May 14 07:18:14 | 5h 41m | It Shakes the World Apart | ♥ 1 | This was very well done, I like it quite a bit. Obviously several people have commented on the slow movement, but other than that I really have no complaints. <3 Angie. |
| May 14 07:28:23 | 10m 09s | Becky's very very Small and TOTALLY not mundane World | ♥ 1 | The art style in this super good good, five stars on that front. The gameplay, of course, is extremely limited, though I guess that's somewhat the point. Only other complaint was that eventually the music just... stopped. (WebGL, for reference). |
| May 14 07:34:46 | 6m 23s | Planet CLTV-8 | ♥ 0 | It's very pretty, and the core mechanic is pretty interesting. I think there's a lot of different ways you could build on this, if you were of a mind to. |
| May 14 07:46:23 | 11m 37s | Planet Desumaton | ♥ 1 | Wow, that was _tough_, took several tries. I did beat it, though. It looks really good, too. Some audio would have been really nice, but other than that, good job! I could see this being a cool game to play on a tablet, if it was built out some. |
| May 14 08:04:08 | 17m 45s | Cartography | ♥ 1 | Congratulations on completing your first LD! It's amazing how much work it takes to build even a small game, isn't it? I like the overall design, even if it did feel a bit empty. A small bit of additional environment to look at (grass and trees, cryptic drawings on the walls, etc) would have gone a long way, as would some audio, but obviously there's a limit to how much time you have in a Jam. Hope to see you again next time around! |
| May 15 16:50:40 | 32h 46m | Earth Quest | ♥ 0 | This feels like a good start, though there's very little content as yet (of course, it can be hard to fit everything in during the compo). Other commenters have already explained the UI issues, and as @candlesan mentioned, the music loop is a bit short. All that said, I like the look of this, and although too short a loop, the music is nice. Congratulations on completing in time for the compo, as well! |
| May 15 17:01:25 | 10m 45s | Not Enough Room | ♥ 1 | This is simple, and well executed, but I did feel like I wasn't in as close control of my square as I would have liked, with the controls a bit unresponsive. The design itself is really good, though, and I think with a bit of polish this would be a _lot_ of fun, like mini Meat Boy. |
| May 15 17:31:52 | 30m 27s | FoodCo | ♥ 0 | When I downloaded the mac version it also wouldn't launch, because the executable permission bit was not set on the contained binary. After setting it, the game ran, but I had other problems; specifically, right-click does nothing, so it's impossible to plant seeds. The only mechanic I could engage with was dropping rocks on things. All that said, from the other comments it sounds like a pretty cool game. I hope you do a bugfix release in the future! EDIT: Also, I really like the graphics! |
| May 15 17:42:45 | 10m 53s | Dr. Zorongo | ♥ 1 | An interesting game, but as previously noted, pretty buggy; there's not actually any reason to fight enemies, ever, as you can travel through closed toilets as easily as open ones. It feels like, with enough polish and extra content, this could become like a sort of mini-Binding of Isaac. I hope you decide to polish it up a bit. |
| May 15 17:58:22 | 15m 37s | More than a Pixel | ♥ 1 | To start off, this feels like it has _nothing_ to do with the theme, but once you beat the first boss and see the transition between areas, it makes sense, and I actually really like it. I'd love to see an expanded version! |
| May 15 18:23:57 | 25m 35s | Plutiny | ♥ 1 | This was very good! I loved the art style and the music, and the gameplay was fun, too; I love me some upgrades. Story was funny. My only real complaint is that the main waves of enemies are all, essentially, the same. Until you reach the boss, there's not a lot that differentiates each level from the previous. I'd aim to add new enemies, new patterns, some sort of Differences in Kind to punch up the gameplay a bit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBR1z-ue-I (Obviously, that can be real hard to do in a game jam context, but I hope you add some of that if you expand this post-jam; maybe you already did, I haven't checked out the post-jam version yet) In any case, kudos to you! |
| May 15 18:31:19 | 7m 22s | Planetary Defense | ♥ 1 | This is clever, but even with the ability to pick up the towers and move them, I feel like it's still too hard. As @terrabalt mentioned, a mini-map, radar, or some other indicator of where asteroids were approaching would have helped. I also feel like the controls could have been better - in fact, a single change would have made the game waaay friendlier: if you have an unplaced tower, and you right-click somewhere that there isn't a tower already, it should place a tower for you. Or, make left click place towers, right click remove them, and use A/D to rotate the planet. Anyway, those complaints aside I really think this has a lot of promise! Kudos for finishing it under Compo constraints, as well! |
| May 15 18:42:57 | 11m 38s | Afterbirth | ♥ 1 | Nice and ridiculous use of the theme. The "Stop that baby!" voice is pretty great, too. I have to agree, though, this needs to be quite a bit longer; I'd suggest making the doctor take fewer hits to drop, but then having more enemies/obstacles as you escape through the hospital; as it is, there's not even any reason to jump, ever. That said, yes, this is pretty cute and silly, and I like that. Music was good, too. |
| May 15 18:56:51 | 13m 54s | You Are World. | ♥ 0 | This is a fantastic interpretation of the theme, and the music really adds to the mood. I like the core gameplay concept a lot, too. While it's appropriate that the game moves a little slower than average, if I had to level a complaint I'd say it's a bit _too_ slow; specifically, not the pace of improvement (which is fine), but the actual pace of your movement through space; it takes a long time to get anywhere. Also, I wish there was a button that caused the text to advance more quickly, because I was often sitting there waiting for it to fade so I could see the next message. Those things aside, I _love_ this entry, especially as a compo entry. I'm not 100% sure (I've not been keeping careful track) but this is probably the highest rating I've given to a Compo entry this LD. Also, the first volcano I picked up was named "Fires of Armok", love that reference. All in all, great job! |
| May 16 00:07:24 | 5h 10m | One Giant Leap | ♥ 1 | This is pretty difficult, also the controls are not _super_ intuitive; it took me a while to figure out that you only went left or right for as long as you held the button, for example. That said, it's a cool idea, and the aesthetic is very funny. |
| May 16 00:20:16 | 12m 52s | Warpy's World | ♥ 1 | Wow, that was an interesting puzzle game! Like a weird variation on Braid, really. I like the aesthetic, as well, though for me the audio just came out as a sort of hissing sound. My main complaints would be: * The basic concepts were not particularly well explained. I had to stumble around and die a lot before I figured out what you're supposed to do; specifcially, it's not at all clear when you first start the game that the world map wraps, or that you can sink blocks. Once I figured those things out, though, it was mostly smooth sailing. * The controls seem a little jumpy/jerky, like, you don't always seem to be moving exactly as you meant to. This could be fixed with just time and testing and iterating, I suspect. * There aren't enough levels, I want more :-p Anyway, good job so far, and I hope you build on it further! |
| May 16 04:28:34 | 4h 08m | World Collector | ♥ 1 | I think it's an interesting and pretty unique set of mechanics. There are some problems with controls and difficulty, but it seems like you're already well aware of those. For me, I found it problematic that the action controls were mapped to traditionally directional buttons; I'd start off ok pressing left to shoot while moving left, but then when I wanted to shoot right I'd instinctively press right on the keyboard, which sends down your army instead. All that said, I did did like the concept a lot and would love to see it polished more. |
| May 16 04:48:02 | 19m 28s | Little Remains | ♥ 1 | This is probably the nicest looking game in the entire Jam, at least that I have encountered. However, the nice looks came at a price, it seems, because it can be hard to tell where it is possible to walk and where it is not. The changing camera angles on the same scene didn't really help, either. Other than that, though, it's hard to find anything to complain about here. The story is good, the graphics are good, the music is good, the fetch quest is not too bad (which is praise, for a fetch quest π), it fits the theme well. Great job. In a way, I'm glad you don't have to make the final choice, because I suspect what I view as the 'correct' answer would not be an option: take the Discarded with you in your ship! π |
| May 16 05:06:23 | 18m 21s | GALAXEN | ♥ 0 | This is very nice! I think other people have already commented adequately on the way messages disappear (especially when two bodies are near each other). Other than that there's not really a lot to complain about. I guess I can complain about this, if I have to about something: Quotes that have a hyphen in them, the stuff after the hyphen never shows. Presumably this is because you're splitting on the hyphen to hide the attribution, but it also affects "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagineβit is stranger than we can imagine.", you just get "Not only it the universe stranger than we imagine". Anyway, all in all, a neat experience! |
| May 16 05:27:36 | 21m 13s | Asteroid Hopper | ♥ 1 | The puzzle design here is very cool. My only complaint, and it's a pretty minor one, is that with all the clean pixel art, having anti-aliasing on the text made my eyes leak blood. Just a little bit. I'm joking, of course (though if you can turn of the text anti-aliasing, please do!). Kudos on a well-constructed game! |
| May 16 05:36:01 | 8m 25s | LD38 - Big Dreams | ♥ 1 | So, I never was able to get the browser version to load, using multiple browsers on different computers with different operating systems. Some of the linked resource files just give 403 errors. That said, the Download version worked fine. I think the main problem, as you've already alluded to, is that the power-ups spawn _really_ infrequently. I never saw one until the second I was finally overwhelmed, when two appeared at once (one health, one a weapon change, I believe). Honestly the player should _start_ with a random power-up available, because they're a big part of what makes the game fun. Other than that, though there's not a lot to complain about. The graphics are cute and the audio is fun. I guess overall the difficulty is too high, at least for me, but fixing the power-up problem would probably also fix that. |
| May 17 17:29:52 | 35h 53m | ANTIVIRUS | ♥ 1 | This is very well put together, and a lot of fun to play. I'm not sure I like the huge difficulty spike partway through the third section; I've no problem with difficult games, but prefer a smoother difficulty curve, whereas this went from "pretty easy" to "omg you're dead" in a blink. I think the solution there would be to add at least a *few* frames of invincibility when hit, so you can't be taken from full health to dead in a single go. Other than that, this is very good! Kudos to you! |
| May 17 17:45:24 | 15m 32s | Headspace | ♥ 1 | This is really interesting. I think it's a pity it's so short, because it doesn't really develop very much. From a gameplay perspective, the ants bit is the most engaging, but the earlier portion is much better in every other way that matters. In terms of establishing a mood, though, Headspace does a very good job, especially given Compo constraints. The music is very appropriate. Also, the aesthetic initially reminded me of the XKCD strips [Time](https://xkcd.com/1190/) and [Click and Drag](https://xkcd.com/1110/). Which is cool, even if it's not really _that_ similar (I think it's the trees). Also, everything @takusan said. I try to find meaningful, helpful things to say about every entry, but, damn. Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're planning on developing it further! |
| May 17 18:16:36 | 31m 12s | Super Smash Globes | ♥ 1 | This was a pretty sweet puzzle game, though after you get the hang of it, the campaign is pretty easy. Survival has the potential to be much harder though; sometimes it is _very_ easy (maybe don't start adjacent to the enemy when the player makes the first move), but for non-trivial cases you have to think on your feet a lot more since you only get once chance and can't memorize the enemy's pattern. Two touches I liked a lot were the character customization, and the fact that there was a 'map' so you knew how many levels there were left. All in all, a very cool game. Good job, especially as a compo entry! |
| May 17 18:26:20 | 9m 44s | Classical Conditioning Cooperation - [CCC] | ♥ 1 | This is outstanding, especially the graphics. The controls could use a bit of polish, I think (specifically, It's a pain that you have to click on the mice with pixel-perfect accuracy; it should be enough to click the the tile the mouse is in). Also, explaining that you can pause (and still instruct mice while paused) _within_ the game would have been a good idea. But these are all minor complaints. I agree with @richard-michael-smith; with enough polish, this could be a commercial game. |
| May 17 18:36:44 | 10m 24s | U-Turn | ♥ 0 | This is amazingly good. On the first playthrough, I just thought it was "pretty good", but as soon as I got my first flag on my second play-through I knew I was in for a treat. Any game that uses procedural generation gets points in my book, but this game used it particularly well. Add to that the excellent pixel art, solid controls, and catchy music; this game is the full package. I would love to see this expanded into a larger game in some manner. Maybe different environments, each with their own pool of effects to draw from, a la Spelunky? Just, excellent, excellent job. |
| May 17 23:00:11 | 4h 23m | Barbuglio | ♥ 2 | This is pretty entertaining, though it feels like the balance is a little off. If you click on the wrong task, it takes you long enough to get back that you almost certainly miss the one you meant to click on; it'd be nice to have a way to cancel so you don't have to go all the way there and back, if you realize what you did in time. My top score was 41717! EDIT: Music, of course, was great! Also, one way you could expand the game would be to make the time demands a less intense, but eventually add additional demons you have to feed. |
| May 17 23:08:33 | 8m 22s | Every World Has a Pizzeria | ♥ 3 | This is pretty great from an aesthetic point of view, but I feel like it's a bit too hard. I'd suggest giving just a *little* bit more time than you are now for each delivery. Also, it's not super intuitive that you start the game without any pizzas (though I suppose it helps teach the player how to get more, right away). You might want to have some text say "Return to the pizzeria!" when you run out of pizzas, though. |
| May 17 23:16:21 | 7m 48s | Blobbery | ♥ 2 | The aesthetics of this game are absolutely awesome, I love the look especially. The controls could use a little polish, but after you get used to it it's not too bad. Like @karln, I have mixed feelings about the size of the map; it's cool that there's a lot of content, but it's hard to know what to do or where to go. That's not a huge problem, as long as there's something to find in every direction, but as far as I can tell this game only had two pickups, so most directions seem like they'd be dead ends. I may be wrong, however, I didn't complete it yet. Overall, this is a great start to a platformer, I'd love to see it polished up further! |
| May 18 17:37:21 | 18h 21m | Sunken Mystery | ♥ 0 | This is pretty good entry, though it's in need of some polish. Specific thoughts: * The music was very nice, but if you didn't create it yourself you should opt out of the music category for voting. * The controls/physics could use some tweaking. It's easy to get stuck on things. * There should probably be an oxygen count-down or bar telling you how long you have left before you lose * There should be pickups that restore some oxygen. * Running out of lives should not be a thing; starting over from level 1 is ok in games making use of procedurally-generated content, but otherwise, it doesn't add to the game in most cases. In any case, kudos to you guys for this, good job! |
| May 18 18:48:51 | 1h 11m | World Keep-Away | ♥ 1 | The art style is really cute, and I love that you recorded real, actual music with a physical piano for this (even if it eventually gets repetitive; so does a _lot_ of LD game music, my own included). That said, there are some gameplay design issues here: * It's not clear to the player what the goal is (the tutorial doesn't actually have a green 'goal' area, so even the player makes use of the tutorial, they still won't know what they're trying to do) * Even once you've beat one level and have seen a goal, it's really hard to know _where_ the goal is * I played for a fair while and _never_ figured out why I could sometimes jump really high, but most of the time couldn't. * The enemies are crazy unpredictable. * The turrets don't seem to help at all, as far as I can tell; they shoot the enemies, but that never seems to actually matter. * The health meter is actually not super obvious; Besides being somewhat hard to read, the fact that it's in the lower corner and has a decimal point made me assume for a long time that it was an FPS counter. Now, of course, in a sense that's my fault for making unwarranted assumptions, but that's how it is with UI design. * The levels are _reaaaaaally_ big! Really, really, really big! Too big! Like I suspect many others did, I ended up falling for long periods of time in level 3, assuming I was falling down a bottomless pit waiting for the game to realize so I could die and restart the level. But eventually, I hit some blocks. Later, I fell again, for at least 20 seconds, and then still hit more blocks. This happened often enough that eventually I was trained to just assume there would be more blocks. That was the point I was finally wrong, and died. Good level design generally means that the player can tell what's a hazard and what's not (in most cases, there are exceptions but I don't think this is one of them). * When I died, I was returned to the main menu, instead of starting the level over. With levels as long as this, actually, even starting the level over wouldn't be that great, you'd need a checkpoint system. All that said, I do think this game has promise, and the premise is super cute. It's gonna take some time, though, if you want to polish it. |
| May 19 00:21:03 | 5h 32m | Sentai Survivor | ♥ 1 | This is an entertaining concept, and even though the current implementation is somewhat limited, I feel like there's a lot of room to expand this and take it new places. Some suggestions: * Some earlier commenters asked for a life bar, while others mentioned that you can only survive one hit; it's not actually clear to the player whether you have health that goes down every time you get hit, or if you just die immediately if you're hit *just* right, and are otherwise unharmed.. Whichever one is correct needs to be obvious. * The game's environment doesn't really change over time; something that might help maintain interest is if the rubble piled up rather than disappearing, and you had to keep climbing on top of it as more rubble fell. * If you plan to expand the game, you might consider having different stages, with the robot hero fighting various monsters in various weird locations, which the hapless player character is for some reason stuck in. All that said, I liked the visuals, the audio, and the overall concept. Good job! |
| May 19 09:31:02 | 9h 09m | Quarky Space Explorer | ♥ 0 | As previous commenters have mentioned, the controls/physics in the game make it quite difficult to play - you are constantly drifting when not pressing any buttons, and simply moving left and right (or stopping, once moving) can be a bit of a chore. It's a pity, because the game does have a fun atmosphere, some funny moments (the rabbit is called a goat, the cat is called a puppy, etc), and some really fantastic music. I think the main thing to focus on would be improving the controls; if the controls worked smoothly, any other problems would be much easier to address. |
| May 19 17:39:17 | 8h 08m | Bantam! | ♥ 1 | The pixel art on display here is really nice, and I'm a huge sucker for "multi-modal" games, so I really like that part too. As others have stated, though, the controls for the combat sections just don't work well. Personally, I think it's very rarely a good idea to use a physics simulation for platforming controls, a platformer needs to give the player much more precise control over the movements of their character than a physics simulation typically allows. Obviously, of course, compromises have to be made during a game jam, especially in a Compo entry. But if you're planning to expand the game at all, I'd recommend rethinking how player movement is handled. All that aside, I really did like this, and would love to see a more polished version! Maybe with longer, side-scrolling sections inside the castles, and things to shoot at in your ship? Or, at least, some obstacles in the overworld map that still allow you to explore, but make the obvious, easy path the one that leads to the easier levels first. |
| May 19 17:50:52 | 11m 35s | Moon Dozer | ♥ 1 | This is pretty neat, and very funny. Also while of course you didn't write or perform the music, I give you full imaginary points for your _choice_ of music, it fits _really_ well and enhances the mood a lot. The one places where it falls a bit flat, unfortunately, is the gameplay itself. This idea has a ton of potential, but it'd be a lot more fun if you were rolling over cities , bouncing off mountains, and leaving a trail of destruction in your wake; as it is, you generally bounce off the first city you hit and roll to a stop almost immediately, even if launched with full power. I'd adjust the physics so that the moon doesn't actually collide with the cities at all, it just bowls through them with a slight loss of velocity (and maybe occasionally a small direction change). Mountains should act as they do now, but volcanoes should act like pinball bumpers, bouncing you away with more velocity than you came in with. Also, I totally agree with @glitchy-pixel, if the game ended with the end of the music, that'd be pretty sweet. You could get a score based on how much you managed to destroy during the time limit. All i all, though it has some flaws, I think this idea has legs; I'd love to see a more polished version in the future! |
| May 19 18:00:03 | 9m 11s | MiniPolis | ♥ 1 | This is a really interesting concept, unfortunately it's way too hard! I think one way to balance it would be to have cities that are attacked slow down their expansion before they start shrinking, rather than just cutting straight from expansion to rapid collapse; that way, if two cities were set to overlap each other at nearly exactly the same time, they would reach a natural equilibrium of neither being able to overwhelm the other because they're both being attacked. This would eventually get disrupted by the intrusion of some third city into the mix. Another way you might tweak it is to leave the difficulty more-or-less as-is, but make levels; in each level. the cities would appear in a fixed pattern with fixed timings, and you have to keep them all alive for a particular amount of time. Then, once you accomplish that, on to the next level. It'd become a sort of puzzle game in that case. Anyway, I also have to say, I really like the aesthetic! Good job! |
| May 19 18:58:07 | 58m 04s | ARR World | ♥ 1 | This game is really something else, one of the most fun games I played all Jam, as well as having a very nice aesthetic and great music! The connection to the theme seems a little tenuous, but, ehh. I also found @killerkun's exploit, but it's sort of tedious to make use of on a large scale so I didn't make _too_ much use of it π. Really handy if most of your guys have been killed and you just need a bit of money to recover, though. I feel like this game is a really cool core for a larger experience; if this got expanded into one of those games where you sail around the world discovering new lands and sinking ships, maybe raiding harbors or whatever, I would play the shit out of that. Though, in making an expanded version you'd need to address the enemy spawning issue; it's fine for the Jam, but I think to sustain a larger experience you'd need to rebalance a lot of stuff, including the way enemy ships behave. I do think it would have been good for there to be a reason to upgrade your scouts or captain beyond level one, though. In particular, I really would have liked the be able to upgrade the maneuverability of my ship; for scouts, I don't think it'd be a good idea to have more scouts mean more vision range (you'd be nearly obliged to always have as many scouts as was necessary to see the whole screen), but if the game was expanded to include non-combat, exploration elements I could definitely see scouts helping you discover interesting new lands or hidden treasures or whatever. In any case, good job! |
| May 19 19:11:24 | 13m 17s | Neon Genesis Pluto | ♥ 1 | WTF did I just play??? π This is pretty fun, although it does get frustrating to start over from the beginning when you rescue an alien only to discover he was overlaid on top of an asteroid. Other than that, though, an amusing game, I liked it! The little Japanese quips were especially funny. It _is_ a pity that collecting the AYY LMAOs didn't really seem to actually mean anything, though. |
| May 19 20:07:33 | 56m 09s | My Very Own World | ♥ 1 | This is very cool, it's not often you see a game of this sort in Ludum Dare, and I wholeheartedly approve. Unfortunately, games like this take a long time to play, so I wasn't able to finish, but I like the ideas behind it. The music was also very nice My main complaints are the following: * The UI isn't always very helpful. I'm not sure I can offer any concrete suggestions for improvement off the top of my head, but I'd definitely iterate on this some more if you wanted to expand the game further. In particular, it's not really clear what the strengths and weaknesses of each unit will be before you build one. * One thing to do would be to make it clearer how much damage your unit will take when making an attack; at the very least, make it clear to the player if they're making an attack that will get their unit killed. * The units aren't differentiated from each other enough. I feel the cavalry units should be able to move more than one square, rather than having a super-high attack power; instead the wizard should have higher attack power. Maybe not every unit should be able to build cities, maybe the shield guy should boost the defense of adjacent allies. * Consider having the "Settle" option count as a city move rather than a unit move, in terms of what you can do during a turn. I'm not saying it'd definitely be an improvement, but you might test it out to see how it plays. |
| May 19 20:20:16 | 12m 43s | Virulence | ♥ 1 | This is a very interesting idea, I'm a huge fan of games where you evolve a creature and then fight with it (like, E.V.O.-style, not Pokemon-style). Unfortunately, the controls here are problematic. My little guy is just too hard to steer; also, there's no easy well to tell which side of your guy is "forward", which makes rotation+velocity controls extremely problematic. Even just adding some indicator to the white block to show which side was the front would have been a big help in that regard. Other than that, I fee like in the build phase it would have been much cooler if you could choose what type of blocks you wanted, rather than just getting a uniform two of each; it would let the player experiment with different "builds", etc. I also think, rather than giving bonuses for having adjacent squares of the same color, there should be bonuses for building certain shapes (a simple one would be, a red, a green, and a blue, in a row, or, an L with a yellow on each side and a red in the middle). Some of these could be known to the player, and some of them could be surprises, but it would encourage experimentation more. Of course, it means you have to do shape recognition code, but for small shapes it's really not that hard (and you only need to run it when the shape changes, i.e. during build mode and when you lose a block to damage). Anyway, all in all I can see this game going places, it's got a lot of potential! But please, work on those controls. |
| May 19 20:47:18 | 27m 02s | Missing Lands | ♥ 1 | This is _very_ cool, the idea of coding a game that would actually runs on a real NES is not something I can _imagine_ taking on under LD Compo time constraints. The actual game concept and design is quite fun, too! It'd be cool to see a slightly expanded version with more levels and possibly an additional verb for the player (not sure what it would be, just, some other interaction available to create additional depth). Anyway, as I said, very, _very_ cool entry. EDIT: Actually, regarding movement and collision detection, you may want to consider looking at the way The Legend of Zelda handles the issue, given their similarities. Troy Gilbert has a [great article](http://troygilbert.com/deconstructing-zelda/movement-mechanics/) on the subject that I referenced in a few previous LDs when I made my own zelda-ish games. |
| May 19 21:03:45 | 16m 27s | TerminAnt | ♥ 0 | I like this a lot, I wish there were more of it! I usually don't like first person shooter games much, because I am very bad at them. This one, though, it more of a first-person platformer that happens to involve shooting (the same genre as Metroid Prime, basically). And I approve of that very much. _As_ a first-person platformer, though, there is at least one are where it's a bit off - some of the platforms are very small, and it can be hard to aim your jumps properly given that you can't see your feet. So I'd definitely suggest polishing that aspect more if you continue with the game. Other that that, though, it's hard to find a lot of flaws with this. I'd love to see more levels, with different powers and puzzle elements, etc. |
| May 19 21:24:09 | 20m 24s | Vegicide | ♥ 0 | This was a pretty interesting game, and fun to play. I agree that the controls felt a bit weird (specifically the fact that you had to be careful about not letting go of the directional button before you let go of space/shift/whatever), but other than that, a nice job. Also interesting to see a WebGL game that's not a Unity export. It'd be cool to see a version of thing with more levels, different attacks (or possibly different characters, each of whom has a unique attack), etc. |
| May 19 22:13:08 | 48m 59s | More Room! | ♥ 1 | This is _very_ good, it's got a great difficulty curve, and the way the situation keeps escalating is really cool. A way to pause the game might be nice, but other than that, I've really got no complaints about the Jam version. If you're looking to expand the game, one thing you might want to look at is introducing a few new elements over time, the way that @dgspitzer did with Song of Fungus (admittedly a puzzle game rather than a strategy game, but similar in some ways nonetheless). Basically, keep the players interest with some Differences in Kind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBR1z-ue-I I don't think it would take a lot of new elements (indeed, too many new elements introduced might damage the game, or at least make it a different kind of game), but I think if you introduce a new twist when every once-in-a-while (no more than one per major scale shift, I suspect, and probably fewer), it'd help maintain interest and keep the strategizing fresh. In any case, very good job, lots of fun to play, and pretty funny, too! |
| May 19 22:25:30 | 12m 22s | Krilgor | ♥ 0 | This is really entertaining, and the mechanic is really unique and interesting. It's an excellent, very well constructed compo game, hard to find particular fault with. If I had to nitpick at all, I'd say the car was harder to use than necessary - that is, it took me several times dropping the car on the giant bug before I managed to do it at the correct angle, or whatever, and the game acknowledged it. But that's a minor point. Loved the ending, as well, very funny. |
| May 19 22:44:40 | 19m 10s | Planet Rush: Save the Moiks! | ♥ 0 | This game is super cool, hard to believe it was made under Compo constraints. That said, there are still some aspects that could maybe use a little tweaking and polish. Mostly, just, game balance; figure out whether each item's cost is reasonable for the benefit you get from it, tweak spawn rates, movement speeds, etc. Maybe allow buildings to be hit multiple times before they are destroyed. Those sorts of tweaks are just about the only complaints I can level, here, the core mechanics are very cool. Also, crystal shits. π |
| May 19 22:56:59 | 12m 19s | Bitverse | ♥ 1 | It's kind of absurd how much content you were able to fit into this, given the constraints. Good job on that. It also looks and sounds pretty good. As you've noted, the controls probably need to be either rethought or better explained in-game (or both), but once you know how to play it controls smoothly enough. There are a couple of bugs (or what I presume are bugs), I found a cool laser-looking gun on the second planet, but was unable to pick it up even after dropping my own gun. Also found a shotgun and was able to pick that up just fine. I think if you get the crystal, but don't make it back to your ship afterwards, it shouldn't count :-p. But, I also think that any weapons you successfully bring back to your ship should be available as choices when starting a level, rather than forcing you to always go back to Vector. The enemies on the third level are too deadly, I think, and take too many hits to kill. Re-doing that level over and over again wasn't so much fun. All those things are polish issues, though; the core gameplay is fun, and the levels seem pretty well designed. Good job! |
| May 19 23:10:43 | 13m 44s | Pineshore Planet | ♥ 1 | This is a cute game, small in scope but entertaining. I especially like the music and the visual aesthetic. In fact, my main complaint is that it was harder to enjoy the visuals than I'd have liked, because the camera controls weren't very precise; it would have been _very_ nice to be able to rotate the camera in place, rather than trying to do a bunch of different lateral drags to force it to an appropriate angle (or just accepting that you can only see something's sideways paper-edge). Other than that, though, no complaints! Kudos to you! |
| May 20 00:20:32 | 1h 09m | Dean's World | ♥ 0 | This game looks and sounds nice, and the idea is solid, but there's some problems with the design, specifically as regards to crafting. Crafting recipes are basically impossible to discover on your own: even if you know that a pie is made from 4 berries, there are 126 different ways to arrange 4 items in a grid of 9 spaces; and that's if the four items are all the same, when there's four different items it's 3024 possible arrangements. How is the player supposed to discern which patterns make anything? This can be fine, in a way, if the player is given room to explore and experiment, but because the fatigue, hunger and warmth timers continue to tick down while you're crafting, the player will likely die before they discover a single crafting recipe. My recommendation would be to take one of two routes. Either: * *Horadric Cube Route* - Make positioning irrelevant, so that only quantity and item type matters; you already need to discover that 4 berries makes a pie, no need to exacerbate it by having it matter how you arrange the berries. * *MasterMind Route* - Have the game _inform_ you when you're partway to completing a recipe; the correct item in the correct spot should highlight in one color, while the correct item in the wrong spot highlights a different color (and an incorrect item doesn't highlight at all). Of course, unlike the game MasterMind, there's more than one possible recipe, so you'd need some way of deciding which one to display the highlighting for. Either way, time should pause while at the crafting table Beyond that, there's really nothing to complain about; as I said, the game looks and sounds nice, and the controls are mostly fine. But the crafting system is frustrating instead of engaging, because it doesn't reward experimentation. |
| May 20 05:05:31 | 4h 44m | Transistor Soup | ♥ 2 | This really, really awesome, however there's a few things I'm finding myself wanting very often (besides the "clear all button π) * Horizontal bridges * A nicer way to do one-way wires than a pair of not gates * A nicer splitter than a triplet of not gates or a full adder with the same line feeding all three inputs * Some UI improvements, regarding drag-and-drop, placing and erasing lines, etc * In particular, it'd be real nice to be able to click a start point and an end point, and have the game draw a path from A to B, _placing bridges where necessary_. Making suggestions for puzzle design is a bit trickier, but I think once you move beyond the really basic stuff, you need to start providing some constraints for the player; constraints will give the player an idea the general direction the answer is in without spelling it out for them. It might actually be good to have multiple difficulty tracks, which have the same puzzles to solve, but the easier modes impose constraints to keep you close to a sane solution. For instance, easy mode might tell you, "solve this with an XOR and an AND; intermediate mode might tell you, "Solve this with two gates", and expert mode would just tell you "Solve this". Another way to create puzzles without requiring the player to re-invent things from a blank slate, would be to present broken circuits and have the player correct them. Though, that's a much bigger change to the gameplay than the other suggestions. Anyway, all that said, this is a cool game. |
| May 20 05:12:56 | 7m 25s | All The Way Down | ♥ 1 | It's a neat concept, I'd love to see where it would go if you expanded on it. Of course, as it stands it's incomplete and so not a lot happens, but that's life in game jams sometimes. Also, I laughed at "You dead". |
| May 20 05:17:18 | 4m 22s | Bee World | ♥ 1 | It's a cute little game to pass a few minutes, but it does get dull after a while. It'd be nice if there were some way to regain health or attack enemies, though that'd have to be balanced with a more steeply ramping difficulty. I'm bad at being a bee, though, I only got 300 points :-p |
| May 20 05:26:26 | 9m 08s | Sentient Duality | ♥ 0 | This is a really interesting mechanic, I think this deserves to be built upon. To do that, though, I think you'll need to add a lot more levels. Right now it could go in a lot of different directions: * Make it arcade-y, with a time limit to complete the level and limited lives (pump in those quarters!) * Make it an endless-runner type game with a score attack and different modes * Make a level-based exploration/adventure game where you have to navigate levels, avoiding hazards and triggering sensors to open paths, etc, to reach the exit. * Make a couch multiplayer racing game, maybe! Basically, you've got a really neat, flexible mechanic here, which could go any number of places. I'd be precious to see where you might take it. If I had a complaint (besides the lack of audio), it's that when you reach the end it's not actually clear that you've reached the end. To all appearances the game may as well have soft-locked. EDIT: Also, _really_ love the game's name. Very cool. |
