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May 1 04:28:08 The Cookie Knight ♥ 3 I think this entry has nice positive aspects, but also a couple of pain points that hurt my play experience. The graphical style was cool, and my favorite small touch was the look on the guy's face when using the trampoline! Overall a consistent theme and feel; simple in the good way. The amount of content you got in with all of the levels was great, and it was a nice touch to have the menu that let me skip around to see all the content without necessarily beating it. Great call for an LD game! Hope some feedback on the pain points is helpful: The game is all about jumping, but the game feel of the jump needed a more love. I would have traded a level or two in exchange for a somewhat better feel. I felt your game had the "ghost jump" described in this article: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkVenturelli/20140810/223001/Game_Feel_Tips_I_The_Ghost_Jump.php It was especially painful in the wood-themed level with the trampoline. Those first few disappearing sticks where you have to jump exactly and quickly, I fell off many, many times by trying to max my jump, thinking I hit it, but then not jumping. A few others: penalty for death too disheartening; re-jump from holding space rather than pressing each time felt weird; several blind jumps including one that killed me in fire; restart used mouse but game used keyboard; trampoline got weird when I hit my head on moving platforms. You have a solid entry here but maybe try just running and jumping over and over in an empty level and being really critical of the feel, you'll get less time for content but it might be a good trade. Nice work tho - having a few pain points doesn't make it a bad entry, just trying to leave helpful feedback!
May 1 04:42:49 14m 41s Lottery: you judge them I judge you ♥ 1 I liked this. Pretty simple in scope but it got me thinking, and was very well focused. It made good use of all it had, including the art and the way it just dropped me in with no explanation which I liked. A game of impossible choices... I would have enjoyed the dialog from the characters a bit more if it didn't overlap and get a bit jumbled. The zooming of the characters toward the camera when I selected them was a nice touch. Needing to select some framework for choosing, I evaluated everyone logically based on my perception of their contribution to advancing or maintaining society, until you made it personal and then my morals were no longer convenient.
May 1 05:09:42 26m 53s Snake On A Plane ♥ 2 Wow, this is an interesting twist on an old classic. I'll admit for the first couple of seconds I was skeptical, but the disorienting view and snap movement ended up really making this entry work well. I got up to 18 points before I took a risk I shouldn't have and lost it! I was like OH YEAH I DID SO GOOD THE MUSIC STOPPED, so I considered that a feature not a bug! The music was excellent for a compo and fit the game perfectly. I don't think it would have been nearly as engaging without it. All around strong offering here, very nice considering the super-tight scope. It was very focused and did what it did very well. I actually have no pain points to report in the controls. I can see why the other commenters want the higher camera angle, but my own feeling is that this is what makes this game something different. Raise the camera and it's just snake, not snake on a plane. At least not THIS snake on a plane.
May 1 05:27:57 18m 15s Afterbirth ♥ 2 Standout audio on this entry, with gross squishy sound effects, music, voiceover, and quality basic sounds for the jump, whip and that crunchy hit sound. I thought the game feel of the running and jumping was pretty nice, with responsive controls and effective animation on the main character. I had two pain points. The art of the hands and the hitbox didn't really line up, with a large visible gap between the hands where you still get hit even though it doesn't look like you ought to. Unfortunately the gameplay ultimately boiled down to judging this hit box: after failing to dodge, I eventually beat the doctor by just never moving, and timing my W keypress to just clip the hand hitbox. I never got hit that way. It was too bad that the really nice feel of the controls couldn't come through more in the best way to win. But I did play a bit with proper jump-whipping too, don't worry! My second issue was with the retry loop, which was a little bit long after I died a few times quickly in a row as I was learning the ropes. Actually, I hit alt-enter to go fullscreen, and the game registered that as skipping the intro screen, so I went in not knowing the controls. I tried arrow keys which worked, but there up is not whip, so it actually took me a while to even realize I could whip. At first I was just trying to dodge, which got me nowhere. Anyway, lots of solid aspects here and I had fun hop-whipping around, nice entry!
May 1 05:47:13 19m 16s Slightly Angry Max ♥ 5 Solid game core, and nice "director" job pulling in various assets that worked well together. I thought there was a good overall pace. The game didn't break down into a totally insane dodging/kiting fest, yet I still felt like getting hit was my own fault. Not an easy balance to strike but I think you found one. The powerup on the weapon was very satisfying to use, and it was nice to have moments like that time I blew the boss away in a ludicrous superstream of bullets. You were stingy enough with them that it felt special to use at that stacked level. If I had a pain point it was in wanting a little more feedback around two critical things: getting hit, and weapon heat status. These were indicated a bit, but I could have used more. Something about the heat to be seen right on my guy and not requiring me to look at the bar up top would have been nice... or if there already is that, then something less subtle. ;) I played several games and had fun experimenting. Great pick on the music, which really fit with your game's mood and personality. Very nice entry.
May 1 06:07:22 20m 09s Tiny goes on an adventure. ♥ 2 Nice job on your first LD! Cool little fetch-quest game, I got myself king of the tiny world. The no-danger aspect made it relaxing to just kind of walk around and see the content. Lots of little interactions with a sense of progress, some cute art, and a timely end. A few sound effects on the pickups would be a nice addition.
May 1 06:31:24 24m 02s SkyWays ♥ 3 I beat the blue and the red planet but I never managed to find the other two. I think in the explore mode it's tough because the ship turns to much with each tiny keypress that it's hard to set my course deliberately. I eventually ran out of fuel before finding the other two. I came first to the red planet and wow it wrecked me hard, I tried many times but could never string together the final series of the last three or so jumps. I went back out to space and tried the blue planet, which was a nice place to learn the ropes. I came back to red, and this time after about ten tries I was finally able to just manage to snag the pill thing before I flew off the platform - satisfying! Jumping conrols felt pretty nice, which is critical in a jumping-focused game like this. The ability to only change forward speed slowly was an interesting twist that I wasn't used to, so it was fun to explore that aspect, although tough. The horizontal movement took a bit of getting used to as well, since the explore mode taught me that the ship turns when I press left and right, whereas in jumping mode it strafes. No big deal, I figured that out really quickly. I think if you added a drop shadow to the track so I can see where I'm at with precision even while jumping, I might have had a tick up in feeling under control. The game could feel more alive with some juice, of course - the jet effect was nice outside in explore mode, but things were a little sterile in the jumping mode. Jets, sound effects, and some way of showing off the speed would have spiced it up. Fun entry, the controls were interesting, the ship could run away out of control on me, but I also felt like that was my fault and not the fault of the game, which is super-important in a tough-jump challenge. Good job! EDIT: Forgot to mention, I wasn't sure what to download from google drive. There were data files so I figured the exe was not enough. So I zipped the windows release folder, but it was a 67MB download and included the pdb files.
May 1 13:48:43 7h 17m Crater Creator ♥ 2 This is a great take on the theme. It's such a smart call to be gentle here and avoid the impulse to add fuel limits or punishments for crashing into my planet or the screen edges. The fact that I could totally relax about all of that gave me the wiggle room I needed to explore what's a fairly tricky but rewarding control scheme. I definitely did not get to the deft touch you exhibit in your gif, but after a bunch of experimenting and tinkering I did get to the point where I could have a decent shot at intercepting. I had to learn the lessons of not chasing, and not hitting too hard... turning backwards on my own trajectory and jetting into a standstill in their path was my main strategy. I understood the colored trails pretty quickly, it was a clever idea to use the color to convey time. But the quick tutorial was welcome. I also liked the quick humorous intro before the game which made it feel more like a complete offering. The sound fit the mood, and although I felt kind of awkward the whole time I have no complaints about the controls. I think it's just tricky, which is as designed. Great job!
May 2 03:59:27 14h 10m Holy Shit! A Spider !!! ♥ 2 Wow, this is awesome! It's very well put together, doing everything nicely, from sound, music and graphics/animation to tight controls and wisely placed hitboxes. Best of all was the clever way the difficulty escalated and the risk/reward tradeoff that kept a very tense feeling the whole way through. My high score was 2397, and I was being SUPER greedy by the end to get there. I used two or at most three spiders to get there. There's almost nothing to complain about in this game because all the details were right. I had just one small bad moment, the first time I saved my spider, there was a spraying can and my new small spider spawned and auto-walked right into the spray and died immediately, which felt unfair. I've got to say again what a nice balance there is in the risk/reward from the multiplier vs the danger of a large size. Strong design choice that made the game. Excellent entry. EDIT: Voice lines were good but I agree w opting out of sound given music and effects were not original, but still good choice/usage.
May 2 04:31:48 32m 21s Hopper ♥ 5 Beautiful! This oozed with style. It looks and sounds great, and this all works with the gameplay to create a real sense of being in this alien reality. The controls were snappy and responsive, and the puzzles were an interesting exploration of the core mechanics. They skirted an edge, risking being simple enough to mentally solve that it might leave the execution a rote chore, but they never quite crossed over. I thought the pace was perfect, and right when I was approaching done the game beat me to the punch just a little, perfect timing to end on a high note. There's little not to like in this, it's all a real nicely made package. But in the name of feedback here were a few very minor items that I did notice: The sound effects, while beautiful, were a little bit long. The jump/landing was absolutely perfect, but the harp-based sounds dragged a little. Notable offender here was the C zoom/unzoom sound. Actually by late in the game I was simply holding C the entire time, when this problem was removed. Maybe a toggle instead of a hold? I definitely appreciated being able to play in big-looker mode. I liked the controls/mechanic enough that I experimented a lot, and I was able to get semi-stuck at the cusp between two planets a few times, where the entity I was fluttered violently this way and that without advancing. I eventually resolved and fell on way or the other. Granted, I was TRYING to do this, and it didn't cause any real harm. Certainly did not interfere with earnest play. I also created the following situation, which I am supposing you may not have intended: http://imgur.com/3dFS61n I accomplished that by abusing your somewhat generous ground-check. If you're casting a ray, you correctly give it a bit of leeway which lets me be sloppy with my input. But in this case it creates a possibility of a very slightly higher than intended jump, which I used to (I think) circumvent your intended solution. No problem, I get to feel clever, so intended or not it was okay! Very nice entry.
May 2 05:11:16 39m 28s Starstruck Ducky ♥ 2 That darn duck! He promised me that if I just got him a conversation with the celebrity that he would take care of the rest. But I got him into a party, and then on the phone-pond with the big man but it still all came to tears in the end. Join the tour indeed... This was clever, fun, and funny. I played through maybe five times before getting close but not clinching stardom. No pain points here, everything went smoothly, even if not as Ducky hoped. Cool offbeat entry, nice work!
May 2 05:33:49 22m 33s Dinonaut: Defender of Celestial Dwarves ♥ 4 This is a fun little game. Cute effective graphics and a nice song choice even if it's not original content it's a good fit. I enjoyed the frantic pace of it. The controls had to be very fast as they were, but I felt pretty awkward trying to do the small adjustments. I wonder whether a ramp-up or acceleration period that was extremely tiny but not quite zero would have helped with fine-tune positioning. It can be tough though to get the controls speedy enough for what this game requires but still have finesse. It was a great choice that you were a bit generous with the defense hitbox, as this definitely made the trickiness of slight adjustment not feel so bad. Good call! One other really tiny thing: I wish the restart was a keypress, since the gameplay is all keyboard and I restarted a lot it was a shame to have to move my hand over to the mouse and back each time. So that's some feedback but nothing that hurt the enjoyment. Nice work!
May 2 05:53:59 20m 10s Theatre Throw-Down ♥ 3 Well done - at a glance this seems like a simple combat system, but really there are some nice choices making it work. I think you've realized a very nice level of risk to the enemies, where they are always a threat but I have to make a mistake to get hit. The knockback is also just right. I clear good space and the way the enemies rattle away through boxes and still don't stop is so important to giving me my rightful breathing room. It's super-critical to balance a game like this on the edge of dangerous but fair, and it's easy to slip. You held the line, and that's a job well done! The only aspect that threatens the balance imo is the spawnrushdowndead. Even when I was waiting ready to screenscanATTACK the *instant* the level loaded I could still get swarmed by a gang of four and be unable to swing a second time before taking damage. Occasionally I would have a good run but they would nearly all end this way sooner or later. Actually maybe I wasn't very good - I only got through 7 battles, and that time I did die to an honest timing mistake. If you removed that one aspect disturbing the balance you could really get me thinking, wow if I'm careful and fast I could never lose, and that's a great feeling. The random generation keeps this fresh, too. Also very nice art and music, with a good hit sound effect, too. If it got two more sprinkles of juice, I would put one on the player getting hit, and a second by making the corpses rotate 90 degrees to be clearly dead. The color shift was adequate though. Overall nice entry, again nice work on the combat balance.
May 3 01:23:36 19h 29m Little Space ♥ 0 The music is just awesome! Really top-notch for a compo, it sets a great mood for building under pressure. My first colonies were 3 buildings wide but WOWZERS I could not stand up to the asteroids. Panning the camera up and down to scan for them was a little rough, and I wasn't sure what determined when I would click whether a blue thing would launch. But I did stop a bunch of them eventually, and when I built my colony straight up in one column I was able to get a solid stream of income and win. I was mixing trying to stop asteroid with simply ignoring them and out-building the destruction. So a bit of clunk around asteroid fighting but otherwise good look and feel! Nice entry.
May 3 01:39:43 16m 07s Small Obstacles ♥ 3 Nice consistent art and sound coming together to get a good aesthetic feel here. The main character felt alive, the little sound effect and the size wobble give the simple square good character. I played to the end of this, some nice ideas about simple physical puzzles. I have a few pain points I hit that I'll go over - I hope this is helpful feedback: - The sliding after I let go of the button was tough. It was the first thing I noticed and it felt like my control was loose and sloppy, but then combined with the lack of walls and the pit deaths this became the primary challenge of the game. I think it's not a great feel to have the challenge come from the controls, but maybe that's just taste? - I didn't care for having to use the mouse to click the buttons. I never figured it out ingame, and had to ESC out of full screen to read the instructions. A button press, or even just bumping into a switch to activate might be worth considering. The mouse served no other purpose. You could also have been more generous on the mouse hitbox, I often clicked, thought I hit the switch, but it didn't register. - The full restart from the beginning may have been okay because the game was short. But it takes time to operate the elevator and having to do it many times worse me down a little. None of this means it's bad, it's a solid entry that felt really complete! Just sharing my pain points.
May 3 01:53:09 13m 26s A Bombtastic World ♥ 1 Nailed the feel on this - all those tiny touches were much appreciated! The way the character gets thinner when it hops, the way the blocks depress underneath, even the text at the bottom tween-overshoots into position! The sound was on point, too, and really made the space feel real. And of course the puzzles and lack of explicit tutorial were well designed. Very strong all-around entry! I hammered on the controls after beating it and tried to find some awkward corner case, but everything felt slick. Great job.
May 3 02:25:59 32m 50s World en abyme ♥ 2 This is very cool! My favorite part of course is when the camera zooms in and you find that the next level is inside the ball. The turn to purple theme just before the end is a nice touch as well, which built anticipation. This is actually a really strong entry with innovative gameplay, clever puzzles, and a strong aesthetic. So while my pain points were minor and I might not mention them for a lesser game, I want to list them even though they're small: I think there was a slight bit more finesse that could be applied to the physics and the hitboxes. A few times I hit the underside of some lava when I thought I had not. When turning the world, the initial inertia of the ball caused the ball to move in a way that was a little startling and made me not feel as smooth as perhaps I could have. The sounds were nice, and the ambient ones helped the mood, but I think you lose some feel by not including sounds on the core interactive actions. A small subtle grinding sound for rotating the world, and a bumping sound for when the ball hits things would have made the game feel more alive and real to me. Anyway, those are tiny things, this is a great entry. Very nice work!
May 3 02:42:46 16m 47s Stable Orbit ♥ 1 Nice tight rage-inducing but rewarding game here. The contrast between the sublime background music when I finally got to float a moment in space, versus the aggressive slamming sound of the game over was on point. All the deaths were my fault. I was EXTREMELY glad I could hit space and skip the bit-too-slow natural retry loop.
May 3 02:50:15 7m 29s Smoke, the machine keeper ☁ ♥ 1 Great job on your first game - it's very charming and made the most of its content. The sense of chaos and not being able to stop to think about my real goal because one more thing was going wrong was nicely achieved. The ladders were a bit wonky, but I got used to them pretty quickly. It was mainly dismounting them that was awkward. Although I assume you used outside music, it was used effectively. Nice work!
May 3 03:09:33 19m 18s World Keep-Away ♥ 2 This was really simple, but I just kept playing! I think you might have some objects you aren't cleaning up, because after I played for long enough the game bogged wayyyyyy down to like 1fps. The slow fall was fun to play with. I found a secret tactic to abuse: the jumps can be stacked. You can stand touching a 1-high block, and jump but hold the jump key down. You will do your normal jump from the ground, but then as your feet pass the height of the 1-block, you get a second impulse applied, and you rocket upward. Kind of cool, I definitely used this. If I could change something here it would be the bullets. They are very small and when they touch you there's not a real big effect, so they kind of feel wimpy. I wish they were bigger and nastier.
May 3 03:38:00 28m 27s The Last Colony ♥ 1 This was nice - a cool original idea with a lot of character. There were some rough spots though, the 12 keys was overwhelming at the start. Even after I learned the basics I still was hitting the wrong keys, unfortunately. I wonder if there was some way to simplify the inputs. Eventually I got the hang of it. First time I had four docked ships I thought I was doing well, but then I realized you have to undock them and get news ones coming in! After I had that down too I was able to get to 53 days. I'm not sure if that's any good. Tough controls and learning curve aside though, this was cool. The station's movement gave it a feeling like it really was in space, and the ambient sound and thrust sound were really great. The mood was a cool mix of calm and panic! Nice entry.
May 3 03:51:47 13m 47s Rock my Ship ♥ 2 Nice work with the terrain generation! I think I see how you implemented it... a clever way to create a nice effect with a simple approach if I'm right. Throwing the stones was another highlight, and I also liked the way the ammo came from the asteroids. I managed to get the hang of it, and build a bit of my ship. But I never got all the way. I agree with the other commenter above about it feeling a bit cheap that I can't get around the planet to make a shot. But still, there were shots on the edge of gettable and it was fun to try to sprint over, leap into the air, and still get the shot. In my final life I had some nice moments of just getting a rock off in time to save my ship and myself. A game like the that's all about things crashing into each other, it would really benefit a lot from some sound to bring the impacts to life. Nice entry.
May 3 04:05:07 13m 20s Starbob ♥ 2 Nice little physics sandbox. I never quite got into orbit but I had some wild rides! Good job on your first compo.
May 3 04:26:53 21m 46s Incidental Dimension ♥ 1 The spherical presentation is immediately attention-grabbing. A really nice implementation with the 2D/3D mix creating a world right on the cusp of jarring and consistent. The soundscape added to the nice sense of unease. I got to this point and then I got stuck... I had already turned two push-tiles into boxes and there was one more magnet to fill but I didn't seem to have one more push-tile. http://imgur.com/Y1v2Nxs Maybe I misunderstood the whole thing! Were the magnets bad? I hit R to restart but it sent me back to the beginning of the entire game, and that was a bit too much to repeat for me. The push-tile was interesting. Because you could drag it against a wall or set it halfway between spaces, the usual rules of sokoban did not apply. All around strong entry that hits a lot of points, nicely done!
May 3 04:56:23 29m 30s Asteroid Hopper ♥ 1 Very nice! Novel mechanics that made for a nice progression of just-right puzzles, plus good game feel, graphics, sound and music. It's the whole package. There's nothing to complain about, everything's on point. Maybe the level transitions didn't need the enter key, which verrrry slightly broke the flow of playing, but that's nothing. Very enjoyable, I played to the end - great job!
May 3 05:05:51 9m 28s Attack on Smolwurld ♥ 3 This was fun! It has a great light-hearted fast-paced vibe. For points of feedback, I wish my bullets were a little bigger so they had more presence. And wowzers those rockets! When I fell behind on the pink ships, I'd have to shoot low to get their rockets, and sometimes I'd fall behind and never get to shoot the ships. But on the flip side there were some great high points. I felt like a beast when I had doubleshot and automatic, and was just lighting up the sky with a crazy stream of bullets and blasting everything to pieces. The bombs that threatened the planet itself were a nice design choice, too, giving me a little something extra to worry about. Really nice job.
May 3 05:22:56 17m 05s Human Tragedy ♥ 1 Like your constraint of sticking to the compo rules except team size! That's the spirit. You created a nice vibe here in this game, the music was a great help setting the tone, and the art for the characters and different locations was nice. I enjoyed that it came full circle location-wise, and the actual ending itself was a nice touch. Controls were solid, I had a few minor things like I felt the hitbox around the bottom of trees was a little tough, and I wasn't quite sure when I was striking the bats successfully. But having perfect combat/move controls is kind of irrelevant to the game you're making here. I enjoyed playing through and I felt like the length was just about perfect. Nice work!
May 3 05:38:31 15m 35s Star Boi ♥ 0 Cool game with great art! The shift to slow down thing was an awkward solution. I guess it's tricky... you needed to let the player go really fast to get to the other side of the planet quickly, but also to move slowly to fine-tune aim. But maybe that could have been accomplished in a smoother way. Maybe a fast but non-zero rampup time on the rate of movement after I press the key, so quick taps of the key don't lurch instantly, but if I hold it I still get up to max speed really quick. Not sure, but the shift thing needs iterating imo. But I loved the upgrade aspect and the slick presentation, and I had some fun with this one for a while! My high score was something close to 600 I think. Also the earth face getting more beat up was just great. Nice entry.
May 3 06:24:43 46m 12s Sling Ship 🌏 ♥ 2 This is great, especially for a first game! The planet-slinging is a great core mechanic and you've got a pretty decent feel on it here. The puzzles that you've built on top are also very nicely done, and I appreciated that there were obviously multiple solutions, and I could feel clever if I got a cool one. I beat the whole thing, and a bunch of the levels twice. Some of them were very tricky in cool and different ways. One time I nearly beat a level by slinging around and bouncing back off my starting black hole and falling all the way to the goal, but I missed by like a centimeter! I'm a stickler for fluid controls, so I always tinker a bit in these games and try to provide a few points of feedback, here are some I noticed for your game: - I didn't discover the R key soon enough, I was getting tired of waiting for inevitable failures to play out and then clicking the button. I tried the R key at random and it was a huge improvement in my quality of life, especially as the levels got harder. (I had to retry some of them a lot.) - I would suggest one change to the way the clicking works. Right now I always must click to undo the beam. I'd suggest that while slinging, if I click a second time you check: if I clicked on empty space you release the beam. But if I click on a planet in range you cancel my old beam and immediately go into the new beam. Right now I have to double-click in that scenario and it feels less smooth. This is the ultimate moment of your core mechanic playing out, when I'm chaining slings together, and you want that apex moment to feel smooth. I think it could be polished a little, though I'm not sure my specific suggestion is the best, you'd have to experiment. Those are small items though, just trying to have feedback here! I enjoyed playing through the whole thing, it was an original experience with a cool core mechanic and it was very satisfying to solve a level. Great job!
May 4 12:52:13 30h 27m Mimosa Fizz ♥ 3 What wonderful sounds! This was a real trip. I liked that the goal and control instructions were clear without being heavy-handed, but then the space itself was deliberately confusing. The disorienting geometry, the weird behavior of the shadows, and the trails left by carried instruments came together nicely. Actually I encountered a bug I rather enjoyed: I got "stuck" with the forward key always applied somehow, so that I could never stop moving. I didn't realize it wasn't supposed to be this way because it happened early, and so I spent a while circling back, trying to snatch the instrument on a fly-by, and then when I missed trying to do a tight 180 without losing my place in the world. A fun excursion but perhaps too overwhelming for the main experience - the bug was resolved when I hit A or D, the strafe cancelled the perpetual forward motion. I definitely followed my own trail at least once, thinking, "surely this will return me to that eye I seem to serve" but alas only led to folly. LAter, I followed my on carried instrument's shadow, even after I ought to have known better! All to the better. The only confusion that didn't add value was the specificity of where I had to deposit the instruments - I had placed them TOO close to the eye and they didn't count. Fortunately, there was an extremely clear scoreboard and so my mistake was quickly rectified. Overall I think you've got about the right length of game for the bizarre experiential content here. Finally, the eye itself was a nice touch, kicked things in an occult direction and made think of being in some alternate Lovecraftian dimension that doesn't make human sense. I only wished the eye responded to my completion in a compelling way. You've successfully created mind-bender - nice work!!
May 5 03:53:53 15h 01m Slice of Life ♥ 2 This was fun! The music sets a great mood, and the art and sound are cool too. Snappy controls with no issues in game, so a very good feel. I could have used a faster retry loop, as I retried a bunch of times and my first few runs were over very quickly so I ate a lot of the retry early. Made me want to play one more time to try another combo of shrooms - nice work!
May 5 04:28:26 34m 33s Mouse and Blade ♥ 1 A very interesting game. The way the controls worked... normally I wouldn't like it, but in this game it works. Inputs were a large commitment and you had to get it right. At first and for a while I felt like the feel was too stiff, but over time I came into the spirit of the game, which is not a fluid flow but rather short punchy high-stakes do or die moments with a breather in between. It does not tolerate button mashing! Every time I got loose I died, except very rare instances where I surfed chaos for an instant. Specifically, the way the sword stopped forward movement, the short jumps, and the way most enemies would be dangerous immediately upon entering the screen all contributed to the feel I'm talking about. The "commitment-heavy" controls created a puzzle feel to the game which I found really effective and enjoyed. For example the candles... they were really hard. At first. Or actually really easy once you figured out the appropriate way to approach them: one hop over the first flame, pause, swing, you've got time. But then it was candles on stairs. And that candle on a platform you had to jump to near the end of a tough run. I died many many times, but in the end I made it to my hole I call home. Difficulty-wise I think it was on the high end of okay - tough but fair once I learned the brutality of the game. Especially brutal, and maybe going too far, was the way enemies would respawn just barely off the edge of the screen if you backtracked even a tiny bit; that one caught me hard a bunch of times. I think this was really well put together, including the nice art and sound/music too, of course. While normally my own taste goes more for a fluid flow to the controls, I felt like there was a deliberate synergy here between the design of the challenge and the nature of the controls. The game smartly took advantage of what it was, and made a very enjoyable experience. Very well done! EDIT: two other things I should mention. First the checkpoints were huge, no way I'm playing this game without them, and they were well placed. Second, with my keyboard, pressing right then jump, and while holding both of those, if I press sword I do not get a swing. Doing the same going left works, but not going right. I assume this is about the key groups on my specific keyboard but I figured I'd mention it.
May 5 05:01:39 33m 13s Tiny Terraformer ♥ 1 Great job on your first LD! This was an interesting system to tinker around with, and you had an impressive number of really solid mechanics going on! I enjoyed experimenting around, and once I'd built some stuff, running around trying to keep on top of everything. The music helped set the right mood, and the graphics were very clear - and no rough spots to report in the controls. Nice entry!
May 5 05:15:25 13m 46s My Purpose ♥ 1 I liked this! Took me a little while to figure out what was going on in terms of the controls, but once I did get it I enjoyed the fly-and-shoot feel of hunting down and destroying these ships. I had a bad moment when I pressed the mousewheel to look at my planet but the browser panned the game half off the screen and I got beat up trying to recover. Then I remembered enter was pause! Nice touch! The free-aim shooting was critical, it would have been way too tough otherwise. Nice work making a cool 3D space shooter here, and the story interludes added some nice character. The whole thing looked pretty good and the sound and music were even better. Nice entry!
May 5 05:35:24 19m 59s Little Remains ♥ 2 Beautiful mood with the art, the wonderful music and the sound effects! It really sets the tone for the story, which I enjoyed at the end. I'm not a huge fan of fetch-quest type gameplay, and I thought the main character moved a little too slow for the searching required. But the game was short enough that this wasn't a bother - so it was the right length! The townsfolk provided some nice backdrop for the decision at the end. Strong entry, and very unique!
May 5 13:45:25 8h 10m Bamboo Life ♥ 1 I enjoyed this, and I don't even play idle games! Maybe I should try some... because this was a cool experience. The controls were really tight, too, like if I hammered repeated clicks on something that kicked off a progress bar, you didn't ignore my inputs! You queued them up and I got what I asked for. Very important small touches like that count for a lot in my opinion. Also effective: the camera nudging out as I build in a nice way, and the really clear rotate-icons above the animals. This was all very smooth and well done. Even the two humble sound effects were very effective, and the rising pitch of the "grow faster" was nice. The art is simple, but I appreciated that every bit of it was focused around *transparency*. For example when I read the description of the pool I was uncertain of exactly which squares it would impact. But when I placed one to test, you delivered the goods by having a small watery particle thing float up from the affected squares. That's just one example but I think you have graphical transparency through to every single game rule as far as I can tell - which is excellent. I really have just nothing to complain about. The trophy came at the right time in the experience so I didn't feel like the game was asking too much of my time for an LD. The only thing I can even think of that stymied me slightly was my mental model of how the koala would work from reading the text. The word "travels" in the description made me think he would walk around, but this didn't matter as I knew I was unsure so I built him near a panda just in case, and it worked out. Very strong entry with craftsmanship in all the details!
May 6 03:52:57 14h 07m They Dance With Asteroids ♥ 3 Opinion time! I think this game had a lot of potential, but there were a few overlooked opportunities that made it so the potential wasn't quite capitalized. I spent longer with the game than I might have otherwise, but I wanted to try to put my finger on some specific problems and come up with a few concrete suggestions. Hope this is helpful! My first reaction was like some other commenters mentioned: omg what just happened? I felt like the elements flew at me too fast. But I played a bunch more times. The gameover screen doesn't give much info about why I failed, and the restart loop is a little slow - consider going right back into the game rather than to the main screen. I spent a few games learning which elements upgrade my core. As I watched I think I realized the biggest problem. You need more transparency in the system to the player. I want a different sound effect for when an element affects a different aspect of my planet, so that I know right away if the core was grown vs the crust, etc. I think a little pop effect with a different icon to double-convey this information would also be worth it. This is the most important info for me to learn but the game doesn't do very much to facilitate that. Outcomes of actions should be multiplex-communicated via sound and graphics. Next the controls were a little tough. After I learned to grow a large core in the initial phase, I made it quite a way with my planet, and eventually it grew to fill the whole vertical size of the screen. After this it was an EXTREMELY short time that I had to click-drag away the elements. I think that there are two problems here. First, does it have to be click-drag? What if it was just "click to bat away" instead? Second, I very often just barely missed when I flung my mouse to the opposite side of the screen to click-drag an asteroid away, and this was frustrating. You could consider being more generous with the click detection. For example I bet right now you just check whether I've clicked on the asteroid. But is the game really a dexterity test, or a decision test? Maybe you could have the game notice when I click anywhere, and if there's an asteroid within a certain generous radius, then I grab it. This way even if I miss by three pixels you can still carry out my intention. The last big point is about the colors of the elements. I didn't feel like they conveyed the information about what effect they would have, and in fact they often conveyed misinformation. For example the iron is dark and heavy looking, and increases the core. The Mg is a very different look but also increases the core. But the aluminum looks like the iron, but does not increase the core. At least that's what I came to believe, maybe I got that wrong. But generally it didn't seem like the art informed me of what the element would do. So in summary I suffered from a lack of information: opportunities were there to convey the info in advance, as well as after the fact to confirm the outcomes, but none of these channels were strongly utilized. I did enjoy playing, but I focused on the shortcomings in this feedback because I felt like I *could* have enjoyed your core idea on a whole other level if I was understanding and feeling more in control. I hope all of this is helpful, and it's not to say you have a bad entry here, on the contrary it's a cool idea which is why I spent extra time trying to get to the center of what could have been smoother. A definite highlight here was the art, and the way that the planet changed visually as the mix of things changed, I really got satisfaction when I did have an atmosphere.
May 6 04:05:08 12m 11s From Zer0 to Hero ♥ 1 Lots of charm here! The graphics had nice little touches like the moving eyes, and the comets and shield and planets all looked really nice. The dialog was fun without going too far, and the hand-drawn text fit with the irreverent content more than a real font would have. The play wasn't too complex, but the controls were good. The shield was super-easy to swing around, and the planet moved nicely. It was cool how I would get bigger and slower and things would get both more dangerous but also easier to rack up a few eats in a row. I also liked the progression through the various planets to earth. This was really only held back by missing things, rather than having anything bad about it. Sound would have really improved the experience a lot and maybe the core gameplay could have used just a bit more going on... I think this was awesome for 14hours, I'd love to see what you could do with 48!
May 6 05:06:42 1h 01m ATLANTIS ♥ 6 I beat the game on my third try. It's pretty tough, but things got better when I stopped using the scout to ferry the heir and used the druid instead. The ability to cross through water without a movement penalty was huge in the lategame, and since the scout's teleport was (wisely) blocked when carrying the heir, the druid was definitely the smarter call. Plus I was getting the hang of the pace, and knew how to utilize the other special abilities - for example on my first turn I teleported my mage away and then my scout, so that my team was properly spread out. I really liked how you used the theme here. Lots of us made small worlds - but your fundamental design challenge was about the small world shrinking around me, which was taking a step further and I liked that. I think there are a lot of little things that were sort of rough, but fortunately you delivered enough of an interesting experience, plus had nice graphical styles and sound/music to make up the gap. I guess that my critique portion of feedback would be that the pace of the turns was a little too slow, having to watch the sinking over and over, plus I struggled a bit with the lack of transparency in the mechanics/UI. So for example it wasn't entirely clear to me why I could or couldn't use the druids ability, and at even more basic a level it took me a while to understand the movement system, sometimes it felt like I had extra moves... but eventually I realized you can take partial moves and a "move" action really allots a set of cells you can move, that it's still one action even if you take it in two or three chunks. Once this was clear it was fine, it just threw me as I was learning. I also got a bit stymied with selecting the target for the scout's teleport, because there wasn't really a selection confirmation, so I wasn't sure what state the game was in. Eventually all that stuff became clear to me, so it was really just with the newb's eye that it confused. I bet if you watch over someone's shoulder who has never seen the game before, and say nothing but just watch them, you'll quickly be able to pin down what misunderstandings they have, though, and that could totally be cleaned up. I do think it needs a bit of love in that direction though. Anyway, once I got past that bit of confusion and got to the meat of it, I really enjoyed this. Could stand to double the pace personally, though. The procedural generation might have gotten me to play one or two more times even after I beat it, if the pace was quicker. Nice entry with cool strategy mechanics grounded well in theme and offering several different abilities, as well as cool art and sound - this is a nice entry you should be proud of!
May 6 06:19:06 1h 12m Space Cowboy's Last Stand ♥ 1 This was fun! My high score was 45, is that good? The art was charming, the sound effects lived large, and the game was simple but fun. I did have a couple of things I wished for: - Wished bullets were bigger, especially since they swing around and hit myself pretty often. They shouldn't be a dot like the stars, but like a cartoon vlambeer bullet half the size of my head, imo. - The menu interfered with the gameplay too much. This was often how I lost control of a situation. Other than that though, this was fun! Great job. My favorite part was how satisfying it felt to nail the arc shots, and I loved the way it was worth it to stop and take careful but quick aim.
May 6 06:59:43 40m 37s A Sassy Platformer ♥ 1 I beat this, I think I had to play the loop three times. Wow, the controls are really weird. The falling speed is so low that the entire game takes on an unusual feel, especially when coupled with the crazy air control. Combined with the unusual animation of the main character, I felt at first like what the heck is this?? But soon I realized that the challenges of the platform jumping and enemies are crazily well aligned with the odd controls. Throw in the sarcastic narrator, and next thing you know I'm not minding the kind of thing that normally would be worthy of complaint, like blind jumps that sometimes are what you need to do and other times are instant death. This was a silly weird good time, nice work! Heads up though, I didn't like having to run an installer and almost didn't play. Much better to just have a game exe that I can run, I think you'll lose a lot of people who refuse to install.
May 6 07:27:20 27m 37s Meteor Jam ♥ 2 Wow this was awesome! I played to the end and escaped planet X with full upgrades. I loved the sense of progression as I built up my skills, and every one of them was nice in their own way. I had a lot of fun just dashing across the landscape and doing quick dodges, so it was really nice that it looped back around. The constant danger but the fact that you had a light punishment for death was a great combo for an LD game. Instead of frustration getting in the way of the fun, the light setback of losing my carried money but keeping all upgrades and ship parts was a really smart choice for LD. There's just one nitpick I have with the controls: when I'm moving and jumping, and I come to a stop against the wall, if I then hit jump, the guy has some kind of friction with the wall and it disrupts my jumping as he presses into the wall. I wish this hitch didn't exist, because it totally takes me out of the zone of flowing fluidly across the terrain. It breaks my zen. But that's a small thing, and I still had tons of fun with this. Great entry.
May 6 07:36:36 9m 16s War ♥ 2 Nice graphics, sound, and humor! Few tiny things but nothing that got in the way: Shooting the flies felt a little stiff, maybe their hitboxes were a bit too small or something. Retry loop was a bit too long for a 1-hit death, the flies eating me was cool but I wanted to be able to skip by hitting R right away after I'd seen it a few times, and not have the title come back and cover my restart either... I like real real fast retries though, so maybe that's just taste. In the end I did beat it but I cheated: I ran up the left side and never fought anything. Cool and unusual game, though - nice work.
May 6 07:53:06 16m 30s A Small Hell ♥ 1 Awesome presentation. Along with the eerie soundscape you have a great mood feel going on here, I dug it. Reconstructing the story was an intriguing idea, but playing it out maybe was a little too straightforward. I did like that you left a sense of mystery at the start rather than a tutorial. But the missing end was a bit of a letdown -- too bad the clock ran out! If only we had all eternity to make our LD games... Very nice spooky entry.