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qzqxq

Feedback comments for LD38

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		qzqxq's comment
May 2 06:30:32		D4RK and the Small Worlds	♥ 3	This was a lot of fun! The elevator part was really difficult and took me like 8 tries, but it was very satisfying when I did finish. Similarly, the final boss was very well-designed, in that it took me a few tries but I felt a big sense of accomplishment when I finally won. To be honest, the first parts of the game were kind of unmemorable since there really wasn't any challenge or ramp-up, so I'm really happy I played through to the end! To be a little more specific, it seemed like you were aiming for a platforming game when you introduced both dashing and walljumping at the beginning, but those mechanics (especially walljumping) weren't really used that much in the part before the elevator/boss, as I made it through mostly just by walking and normally jumping. I would have enjoyed it even more if you put in gradually more challenging platforming sections so there's not as much of a difficulty leap, or if the whole game was just bosses. The story was pretty silly, especially with the repeated emphasis of "SMALL WORLD", but I did laugh at points, especially the confrontation at the very end. A few nitpicks: using up to jump felt a little weird, and I would have liked some audio feedback for walljumping and for passing through a checkpoint (also as the above comment says, I didn't see any reason to not restore your health at checkpoints). The sound/music is really really good. Where can I download the soundtrack? ;) Overall, really impressive job!
May 2 07:16:04	45m 32s	Zombies In Space	♥ 2	Cool game! The first few levels were quite fun as I was trying to get the hang of it, and who doesn't enjoy blowing the heads off zombies? I think it started getting too repetitive for me around level 6 or 7 (whichever one was the second level where you had to kill 30 zombies), so I didn't really have much motivation to finish. I think I would have enjoyed a lot more it if there were more variety in the levels, and if there were fewer zombies to kill per level. 30 is a really large number and there's no reason to force the player to do the same thing over and over once they already know how to do it once. It took me a long time to figure out how to use the vending machine; I was just pointing at the objects and pressing E and didn't think to press the 0 and 1 buttons for a while. In retrospect it makes a lot of sense, but I think other people might have a similar issue. Some more nitpicks: -I appreciated the arrow, but it would also have been nice to have an arrow pointing towards the vending machine, or even just having a screen pop up to buy upgrades between rounds. I didn't like how the next round would start immediately after the current round ended, since it was difficult to go to the vending machine in between. -I was confused that zombies seemed to have wildly varying HP; some went down in two shots, while some took 6 or more. Some HP indicator might have been nice. -Similarly, some indication of exactly how much health I have left would have been nice, though that's not as big of a deal as the visual effect communicates it quite well. Overall, though, I think this is a really solid game, and it's decently polished (e.g. the press R/press E messages were very helpful, the sound effects were good). Also, I really like the "retro horror" visual style, which is really well-done. Good job!
May 3 03:40:36	20h 24m	Communitas	♥ 3	I played for about 10 minutes. This is definitely a cool idea and gets high innovation points from me, though I wish there was a more definite goal than just "make a cool city" since it feels more like a social experiment than a game right now, not that that's a bad thing of course. Right now the value of building any particular tile is pretty unclear (I can't tell the difference between churches, farms, water pumps, etc.), so I don't really feel like I'm influencing the city by building things. I think I'd feel more invested if I could tell how I'm improving the city so I could strategically think about where to place buildings, or if there were more concrete goals: for example, achievements for successfully collaborating with other people in some way could be cool. One small nitpick: I wish I could drag the screen to move it as opposed to using arrow keys, as the scrolling was very slow and the map is huge (though I was playing on Mac, so maybe it's just an issue with that). I have to say that this is really technically impressive, especially for a weekend of coding! The UI is very intuitive and organized well. Overall, good job! I think this could be really great with a few more "game-like" features.
May 3 07:16:21	3h 35m	Around The World in 80 Seconds	♥ 2	I played through this game 6 times and won twice. As other people have said, the art is really good and you made great use of the theme! Right now, I feel like whether you beat the game is somewhat luck-dependent because enemies move around and jump fairly randomly, and sometimes projectiles appear from the side of the screen without any warning and little time to react (or you're currently jumping and literally can't react). Some minor nitpicks: -If you go up to an enemy and hold right, you get stuck to them and can't get past them even if you try to jump, which feels bad because the player naturally wants to move right (I think this is some common Unity physics thing where you can get stuck to objects if you're holding left/right). I died multiple times to this, so I think it would feel better if you could pass through enemies, or jump over them if you're holding right. -The sound effects were confusing, because it seemed like you had sound effects for all of the enemies, but not for the player! It would have been nice to have audio feedback for player actions, especially for getting hit because the flashing animation isn't that clear. Overall, I had a good amount of fun, even though it is a short game. You really knocked it out of the park with the graphics, and the game is very thematic (and the title is brilliant). Good job!
May 8 06:58:04	119h 41m	Alysson	♥ 3	I played through the game once and got the "good ending." The story was quite good; it was pretty short, but you did a very good job gradually introducing the more sinister elements as the game went on (I only began to realize what was going on in the supermarket the second time). The plot did feel a little rushed, so it didn't have as big of an emotional impact on me as it could potentially have (the lack of music/sound might have also contributed to this), but it was excellent given the time constraints, especially the part near the end. From what I saw, it seems like you're quite talented at writing, and if you expanded this a bit I think it could be a great game! In addition to the lack of sound, there were also several typos (e.g. "halway", "dissapeared"). Normally I wouldn't comment on typos, but in a game focused on narrative, I do think it takes a little away from the immersion when you encounter these minor mistakes. This is still really minor, though, and I wouldn't take it into account when rating. Overall, this was quite engaging and thought-provoking. Nice job!
May 9 08:07:58	25h 09m	Ant Runner	♥ 2	I played for about 100 seconds before getting bored and stopping. The graphics look very nice and the polish is pretty good (e.g. I really appreciated the x-ray vision if the ant was covered by a leaf), but there isn't much in the way of gameplay right now. As others have already mentioned, the shooting mechanic might as well not be in the game: if you added some more complexity to it, such as manual aiming or limited ammo or switching between different kinds of bullets for different enemies, I think this would have been a lot of fun. One mechanic I really like in games is multitasking, so avoiding obstacles while dealing with enemies flying at you has the potential to be great. There are lots of directions you could take this in and plenty of possible additional mechanics (as @slowian has already pointed out). I think this is a very promising idea, and could be a lot of fun with a few minor changes. Nice job!
May 9 08:32:38	24m 40s	I Just Wanted Groceries	♥ 2	I played through 3 times, finally winning on the last try. Right now the game is quite short, but I had quite a bit of fun nonetheless! The fact that people would walk towards you if they have line-of-sight made for lots of interesting situations, since you had to quickly find the nearest corner to turn around, all while trying to keep track of everyone. There was also a surprising amount of strategy: I found myself constantly trying to plan which item to get and what routes to take to avoid getting caught. I loved the amount of detail you put into this, like the ending dialogue, the randomly generated items and recipes, and the music. One suggestion: indicate the other shoppers' lines of sights somehow. Sometimes I found it unclear whether someone was going to chase me since I wasn't sure where exactly they were looking, which wasn't a good feeling. Overall, I had a lot of fun and also laughed quite a bit; I can only wish there was more. Nice work!
May 10 06:37:34	22h 04m	ChronoCombat	♥ 2	I played this with a friend several times. This idea has a lot of potential, though it is a bit rough around the edges right now. I especially liked the mindgames of trying to predict where my opponent would go. A few suggestions: - It's kind of weird how when you shoot, the bullet just flies off immediately. I think it would make more sense if the bullets moved as you were moving (sort of like in Superhot, if you've seen that game before). - Similar to the above, I didn't know which directions the bullets were moving in because they stay completely still, which made it harder to plan. Having the bullets move while you move would also fix this. - The replay is kind of weird, because you can only view it once and it goes by very quickly; when the game ended, I often couldn't see how I won/lost since the camera was in the wrong position in the replay. I would have liked the ability to slow down the replays, or the ability to play them multiple times. - Right now the map is really big, so you can continually run away from your opponent if you wanted (the fact that the replays are difficult to parse also contributes to this, since it's harder to tell where the other player is). I'd suggest having a really small playing field or a field that shrinks over time so that players are always in the action. - One small nitpick I have is that you can walk through trees and rocks, which was weird. Anyways, I don't want to be too negative, those were just a few thoughts I had. Overall, I had quite a bit of fun, and I could see myself playing this a lot if it were more polished/balanced (also, this gets 5 stars for innovation; the idea is really cool). Nice job!
May 12 04:06:08	45h 28m	Power Department	♥ 1	I'll start off by echoing some others: I really liked the intro and cutscenes! I assume that you filmed and edited everything, which must have been a lot of work, and I think it's really cool that you decided to do this. The writing could have used a little polish, but I appreciated the story that you were going for, and it was quite refreshing to encounter live-action video while playing through Ludum Dare games. Now, as for the gameplay, I'll say that I only played the first level and got quite bored, so I looked through the javascript to find and watch the rest of the cutscenes. :P The idea of trying to power cities is interesting, but right now there really isn't that much gameplay to keep one's interest after the first few minutes. Essentially, I mindlessly clicked through the first level without much thought or strategy, and the rest of the levels look like the first except N times as large. I think my biggest complaint is that there isn't much variety or strategy involved right now: for example, I might have found gameplay more interesting if there were more possible random events, if there were more strategy in where to place stations, if the map changed over time, if you had a time limit, etc. Here are a few specific nitpicks: - The grid was very small, which made clicking on cells to make power lines somewhat finicky. - When you have >20 powerlines and you're told that one of them went down, it was really hard to find the one that disappeared. The fact that the powerlines are the same color as the city borders did not help. Also, there is no strategy involved in rebuilding the powerline, because you just click two squares, so this random event doesn't really add much to the game in the first place. - I had no clue how the numbers (revenue, electricity costs, etc.) or the "popular opinion" were determined. Some indication of that would have been nice, and might have also added to the strategy. - Also, a more specific final goal other than "reach some %" would have been nice. Sorry if this comes off as too negative; I hope that all this can be taken as constructive criticism, and I do think you have an interesting idea here and the gameplay could have been awesome with a few more mechanics. Oh, in addition to the cutscenes, I also loved the soundtrack, and I might need to go download it from your Github now... All in all, nice job!
May 12 04:53:17	47m 09s	Escape The World	♥ 1	This was pretty fun! Agreed with the others on showing active color, it made the 3-color levels quite a bit more annoying. Another thing that was confusing was that blocks of one color could "push" blocks of another color, but the animation when that happened had both blocks moving at the same time. For example, if you start the first level and press A, then one of the blue blocks moves with the red blocks, which confused me at first. I think it would have been more natural to have the red block move first, hit the blue block, and then both of them move together. One small nitpick is that you didn't need so many colored blocks in each of your levels: I think all of them could have been made with 1-3 blocks of each color while keeping the main logical ideas. This is mostly personal preference, though - I feel that puzzles are more "elegant" if they express their ideas without any extraneous information, but maybe I'm just being snobby lol. To be more specific, on several levels, I felt like I got the "aha" of where to place some blocks so that everything worked out, but I then had to get 5 more blocks to the end in identical ways, which isn't the fun part. Overall, I thought the puzzles were quite good (extraneous blocks notwithstanding) and the difficulty curve was perfect. If you added some more mechanics and levels, I could see this being a really great game. Nice job!
May 12 08:05:58	3h 12m	Giant Steps	♥ 0	(I suppose I've already played your game, but might as well leave some comments here now that judging has actually started. :P) I think the puzzles are brilliantly designed, hands-down. You do a great job at introducing the mechanics one by one, like basic movement, picking up hexes, stacking hexes, etc., and pretty much every level has a reason for being in the game, either because it introduces a new concept or because it communicates a really neat idea. This is not something you can say for many puzzle games! (even some of my favorites, like The Talos Principle) I want to give a specific shout out to level 11. I was making my way through the game fairly quickly, but then I got completely stuck on that one, making no progress for at least 15 minutes. After finally figuring out what I had to do, my mind was completely blown and I could only stare speechless at the genius of it all. Levels 15 and 16 also stood out to me as levels that really stretched your mind. In terms of user experience, I have a few suggestions: - The controls were somewhat difficult to manage; I would keep pressing wrong directions unless I took it really slowly. Though to be honest, I can't think of a better key mapping since 6 directions will always be difficult to manage (some people suggested using the mouse, which might work though it would certainly be slower). Perhaps touch controls on mobile are the best option. - Like many others have said, I think an undo button is absolutely necessary for games like this, where one wrong move can get you stuck and force you to redo all of your work. This was exacerbated by the difficult controls, especially on level 16 where there are tons of places you can screw up. On one level I made it to the very end, only to mess up the final placement, which was especially irritating. - Some way to indicate the relative heights of columns would have been nice. It was a little annoying taking the time to build an N stack, only to realize that I needed an N+1 stack since I misjudged the height. - This has also been mentioned already, but I would have liked some audio feedback when moving around and stacking things. I feel like even mediocre sound effects are better than none, and you could always give players a mute option if you think they might dislike them. Some of these points, especially the lack of undo button, did make playing the game more frustrating, but none of this takes away from the great level design. You really pushed the basic mechanics to their limits, which I feel is an important part of all great puzzles (this contrasts heavily with our LD game, where we threw in a bunch of mechanics without exploring them much). As someone who loves puzzle games, the level design alone basically forces me to give this 5 stars.
May 14 07:43:02	47h 37m	Shelton's Detour	♥ 2	I'm also getting an error when I visit the site. :(
May 15 05:40:56	21h 57m	Pieni Saari	♥ 0	This was a ton of fun! The graphics and music are great, and the writing is downright hilarious, especially the chicken god level (I haven't laughed so hard in a long time). I also really liked the ending screen! The puzzle element is interesting and seems like it could make for a really entertaining game; my biggest wish is that this game had more in terms of the puzzly combat since there's lots of potential with that. There were a few polish issues, like if you die at the same time as you level up, it looks like you survive but that's not the case. Also, it would have been nice to know how much damage each enemy does without having to resort to trial-and-error. However, these issues are more than made up by the great writing and design. Overall, this really feels like a complete game that is consistently funny and charming and doesn't overstay its welcome. Great job!
May 16 03:45:17	22h 04m	Nightwards, Heartwards	♥ 1	This was quite the interesting experience! I was able to get two people together and starting receiving "quests" to go to the edges and corners of the map, but I then started getting very vague quests like "Find a home" that I couldn't interpret, so I stopped. I don't think I was the intended audience for this game; the writing was very poetic and you clearly have talent, but it was also too abstract for me to appreciate fully. It was a little weird since the characters are quite concrete (e.g. they clearly leave you for being too focused on the mind or the heart), but the location descriptions are all very vague and abstract. There was a similar weird contrast with the quests that just asked you to go to the edge of the screen vs. the more fuzzy quests; I think it would have felt more consistent if all of the quests were of the latter type and the player had to experiment to figure out what was going on. I probably would have enjoyed this game more if the story was slightly more concrete and I had some goal or narrative to hold on to, as opposed to wandering around and trying to make sense of cryptic instructions. However, all of this feedback is very subjective and pretty much a matter of taste. On the positive side, I really loved the polish you put into this. The visuals, like the background and the transitions between locations, are very pretty and fit the game well. The music and sound effects also fit in pretty well. The compass and the arrows pointing at the 4 characters are excellent additions: without them, I would have been hopelessly lost. Overall, this really feels like a complete and polished game, so nice job!
May 16 05:14:10	1h 28m	El Escubo's Key Quest	♥ 1	This was short, but quite a lot of fun! I really liked the level design and the mini-metroidvania feel, and there were some cool puzzly parts like figuring out that you could push the blocks around. The graphics were quite nice, from the terrain sprites to the cloudy background, and the music was excellent (probably the best music I've encountered so far this ludum dare). There were a few polish issues, such as: - There were no sound effects. Sound effects are a really easy way to give the player feedback and add polish, so I was kind of sad that I moved around, jumped, and swung my axe in silence. - The perspective was a little weird. For example, I didn't understand why I couldn't move down at the beginning until after I got the bridge and moved horizontally across a gap (it was kind of hard to even see the bridge in the first place since the player is pretty much right on top of it). It was also a little difficult to judge where you were to avoid landing on spikes. - The box pushing was a little wonky. If you walked next to the box without touching it, sometimes it moved a bit anyways. - The music sometimes abruptly came in and out when moving to different areas. Some sort of fade would have been nice. These are all fairly minor issues, though. My biggest wish is simply that there was more: right now you have a great starting point for a game, but the mechanics aren't really explored that much so overall it feels a little sparse. However, for a jam game made in 72 hours, this is a really good effort, and I would definitely play an expanded version of this game. Nice job!
May 17 04:34:23	23h 20m	The Underventure of Polin	♥ 3	I played a few times, eventually getting to the centipede enemies before giving up. The biggest complaint I have is the lack of checkpoints. It was okay when I died at the spikes near the beginning, but after getting quite far into the game, I don't want to replay through everything I already did. If you do end up making a version with checkpoints, I'd be happy to play it all the way through, but right now I have no interest in replaying the first 5 minutes of the game over and over again. Other than that, I thought it was quite nice! The visuals and music are very polished, and the player character is extremely cute. The part where I had to get past the creatures that were moving back and forth involved some nice puzzly thinking, though it would have been nice to demonstrate to the player in-game that you can click again to let go, because I had already forgotten reading that in the instructions and got stuck for a bit. I can imagine some really fun levels that could be made with this mechanic (and perhaps you did make them, since I didn't see the whole game). One more small suggestion (it looks like others have already made this point, so I'll just pile on): have a cursor on the screen, as opposed to just a white dot a fixed radius around you, since that would make positioning yourself a lot more intuitive. Right now it's pretty annoying since you have no clue where your mouse is. Honestly, the lack of checkpoints is a pretty big bummer since I really do want to see the whole game, as it looks great and has some cool mechanics. I did have a decent amount of fun, though, so nice work!
May 17 04:57:47	23m 24s	Small World	♥ 0	Congrats on your first game! It is very small, but to be honest, I had more fun playing this than quite a lot of other larger entries. Who doesn't love infinite sidescrollers? My biggest suggestion is to work on the difficulty balance. On my playthrough, I got to 17 billion years and got bored, so I stopped. Right now, it seems like there are two kinds of obstacles: - The satellite things, which move extremely fast and are very difficult to react to. - Everything else, which moves extremely slowly and is very easy to dodge. For me, the gameplay pretty much consisted of watching out for the satellites, and this did get somewhat stale after 10 billion years or so, especially because the difficulty doesn't increase over time. I'd suggest increasing either the speed or quantity (or both) of obstacles over time, and maybe introduce new obstacles every 5 billion or so to keep things fresh. My favorite parts about these sorts of games are when it gets really hectic and your abilities get pushed to their limits, so yeah. Overall, good job! I appreciated the details like the animations on the asteroids and planets; they really make the game feel much more dynamic.
May 17 06:09:09	1h 11m	All The Way Down	♥ 1	This was pretty fun! I agree with @xmatos in that I very much enjoyed how I had to think on my feet (the moving sharks contribute a lot to this), but I also died from reaching a dead end. I also feel it started off quite slow and took some time before it got interesting. I suppose there isn't that much gameplay right now to comment on, but even the idea of a grid-based side-scroller where you move one space every so often has the potential for some really fun and innovative gameplay. I'd be really interested in seeing where you take this: in particular, the simultaneous strategy game on the turtle's back seems like a brilliant idea and would have fit the theme perfectly. I completely agree that this game is better than pretty much all of Action 52, except for Cheetahmen, maybe ;) I also love the title. Nice work, and congrats on finishing!
May 18 03:14:10	21h 05m	Go with the Flow	♥ 0	This is a pretty good start for a game! The idea of controlling the water currents is really cool and has a lot of potential, although I'm not entirely sure how it relates to the theme (are you sure you weren't going for "Control the environment, not the player"? :P) My biggest suggestion right now would just be to expand the game and/or make it more challenging, since right now the levels all feel similar and it doesn't feel like there's much to it other than basic movement. Some other thoughts: - I'm not sure what's the purpose of the fish, especially because they doesn't even count towards your high score! Maybe have each fish collected decrease your total time by some amount, or give you some other bonus. - Similarly, I don't really know what the boots are for. It might be more interesting if hitting boots or walls decreased your health or something like that, since right now you can beat the game just by directly dragging from the octopus to the exit. - Some sound effects would have been nice. I feel like even low-quality sound effects are better than nothing at all, since it really improves the polish by a lot. - There was a delay between the exit fully charging up and switching to the next level, which felt unnecessary. - (very minor) It was weird how you were taken back to the intro level when you finished the game, as opposed to the title screen. I will say that your graphics are great and look very polished, so great job on that. I really liked the details like the kelp moving around in the background, as well as your ink spreading out. Again, I think there are many directions you could take this, and the core idea is super interesting. With some more mechanics, this could be a ton of fun. Overall, nice job!
May 19 05:36:41	26h 22m	Giant Robots	♥ 1	Nice! I really enjoyed the visual aesthetic of the game. Right now there isn't too much gameplay, and the gameplay that exists is somewhat confusing (what is the probability that your shots miss? what do the different guns do? does it ever end? etc.), but if you added more I could see this being really fun.