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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | TheMonsterFromTheDeep's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 1 04:05:10 | WRAP | ♥ 2 | Very nicely done. Game plays well; as a puzzle game would probably be enhanced with a few extra puzzle mechanics. Graphics are mostly pretty good - except for the bright red background color, which is a bit hard to look at. | |
| May 1 04:50:05 | 44m 55s | World Destroyer | ♥ 1 | I like the raw mechanics of this game, including the fact that bullets go around the globe to kill you. That particular mechanic contributes a sort of puzzle mechanic to the game, which is nice. My main concern is a lot of frustration with the game - most of this comes with control problems and glitches, but some of it comes from unfair level design. Part of the problem with the controls is due to the basic game design - the arrows control angular direction, which is basically the only option, but I often found myself using the spacial direction I wanted to go, which happened to be the wrong way. Perhaps this could be fixed by keeping the player still at the top of the screen, and having the world rotate...? The other problem was that jumping did not seem to respond correctly - the first level with the jump boost I lost several times because I went up against the wall, and tried to jump, and couldn't maneuver past the wall, even while in air. There were also several glitches. I got stuck in walls multiple times. One time an enemy started flying where I couldn't shoot it. In all cases I had to restart the level, which often meant re-doing difficult things for no reason - in a game with difficulty like this one, restarting better be due to player error and not due to the game being broken - because otherwise it's simply not fun to play. Finally, although I think most of the difficult is at an acceptable level, the cyclops spawners level is, I think, simply unfair - for me it might well be impossible, as I can seriously see no way to beat it. If some of these issues were fixed, I believe I would enjoy this game several times better. |
| May 1 05:23:17 | 33m 12s | ＲＥＴＲＯＨＡＣＫＥＲ １９９３ | ♥ 2 | This looks like a really solid start to a game! My main feedback is that I can't really tell what any of the tiles in the interface levels are, so I don't know if they are floors or walls or death traps, which makes it kind of hard to play. Small unimplemented feature: commands longer than the screen don't wrap or scroll. Finally, I have this to say: "If you're happy and you know it, illegal command if!" :) |
| May 1 13:33:35 | 8h 10m | The Inner Lock | ♥ 1 | That was quite the experience. The noise effect is a bit irritating, but I found that it became less bothersome after I got the audio working. The audio itself was really well put together, I think. The abrupt ending was also a nice touch. |
| May 1 13:49:56 | 16m 21s | Small World Fighters | ♥ 2 | I think this game could be pretty fun! In its current state, however, it is too easy - I haven't played against humans, but against the AI, the strategy is basically to hold down one directional key and spam the spacebar, and I imagine a similar tactic will work in real multiplayer as well. I think to remedy this there should probably be some sort of limitation on ranged attacks, so they can be dodged more easily. The only other problem I saw was a control issue that arises from the circular nature of the game - when the player is on the bottom of the world, sometimes I press the wrong key because I'm thinking of the spatial direction I want to move while the keys control the angular direction. I'm not sure if there's a good way to fix this, but it might be worth looking into. |
| May 3 06:14:50 | 40h 24m | Blocknauts! | ♥ 1 | My basic opinion of this game is that the goal is rather boring, but flying through space is kind of fun, so it doesn't necessarily matter that the goal is so mundane. I have some other feedback though, namely: - I don't understand the combination of voxel models and non-voxel models - perhaps it's simply a graphical style I dislike; not really sure - Gravity does not appear to actually be gravity - from what I could tell, the character is just linearly pulled to a planet, but gravity is meant to be a force, which makes this game feel rather wonky. For me, this problem seriously detracts from the fun of the aforementioned flying through space, and is probably one of the reasons I didn't enjoy this game as much as I could have. - The rope is a bit glitchy; I know other people have mentioned this but it just makes the game feel less complete/professional/something - The controls. Other people have mentioned this as well, but the controls also cause serious problems with how much I enjoy this game - sometimes I couldn't get off of a planet because the character would not aim the right direction. Perhaps simple third-person camera controls would be better...? - This is an insignificant issue, but it is possible to fly through the sphere surrounding the game world. The fact that the sky is a sphere also means that the stars don't necessarily move how you would expect - they basically shouldn't move at all with regards to the player's position, only their direction. As it were, while I was playing, I also developed this (highly subjective) opinion: I believe this game could be incredibly effective as a puzzle / horror (?) game - basically, confronting the player with being truly lost in space - disconnected from the rest of all humankind. This would mean changing the music and graphical style to be much less cheerful - this thought, in fact, is probably one of the reasons I disliked the voxel graphics. But flying through space and staring at the stars off in the distance did create this sort of feeling of isolation, and I think if the game was specifically constructed to do that, it would be a really cool experience. Of course, that would be completely changing your game from what it is; just something to think about. In its current state, it's not at all bad; there's just a few small things holding it back from being truly enjoyable. I think the most important changes would be fixing the controls / mechanics (including gravity) and giving it a slightly less trudging goal; perhaps just a bit more open-world-ness would be good. |
| May 3 06:40:39 | 25m 49s | Little Mouse Planet | ♥ 1 | Nice game. Sound effects are some of the most interesting I've seen in a Ludum Dare game; I usually don't see actual recorded sounds. I think some of the animations could use extra frames - some of them look a bit choppy. In regards to the gameplay, it appears that it's basically impossible to survive if you don't immediately start watering the first cheese. This seems a bit unfair, especially for players just starting out. Past that, the main problem is that the game is very repetitive - the only way to win is to water plants, sleep, hide from cat, repeat. I'm not entirely sure what new variety could be introduced, but that's definitely the main point to improve on. Also, kudos for making successful rotary controls. Several other games have confusing controls because the player moves, not the world, but this game doesn't have that problem. |
| May 6 21:30:57 | 86h 50m | This is Cutopia | ♥ 1 | This game has a very good art style, and I think that the environment is very well put together, even without sound. However, I find it very frustrating that the main challenge of the game is literally just fighting with the controls. A bit of inertia the car is definitely good, but I feel like there is simply too much inertia, especially when combined with fixed aim. I think even a simple challenge like "the enemies shoot at you" would be better, because I did not find this game particularly fun. The controls also had some small glitches - near the beginning of the game I was for some reason unable to reverse direction. I believe it was related to the fact that I was using mouse clicking for shooting instead of space. |
| May 6 22:23:52 | 52m 55s | Little Sky Farm | ♥ 1 | Fun little game. Reminded me a bit of Harvest Moon. I really like the graphics. My main problem is that it doesn't really seem like there's a real reason to bother with anything after flour - it takes so many resources to make bread that I think it must be faster to simply sell flour (and stone and wood) then to spend lots of time and resources to figure out how to get a good price for bread before even being able to start making large profits. |
| May 6 23:33:47 | 1h 09m | Godly Corp. | ♥ 1 | Not bad. Music is pretty great. My main issue is with the controls - the planet would never rotate where I wanted it to, and every time I played I eventually lost because the planet was spinning so fast that I lost total control. The bugs did not seem to provide much of a challenge; I could mostly just wave around my mouse and be fine. |
| May 7 00:13:31 | 39m 44s | For Eternity | ♥ 0 | This is pretty cool. It really needs some sort of tutorial though, because I seriously could not figure out what to do for a long, long time. Also, for some reason early on it seemed like warehouse workers would simply stand still outside the warehouse and not move...? It didn't really make sense. I think it would be nice to be able to assign workers to jobs - right before I lost, I had built a bunch of farms and then started building more temples so that I could support a new worker population - but all the new workers were going to my farms, so my QoL continued to decrease when that wouldn't have been a problem if I had been able to assign them to the temple. |
| May 7 04:22:28 | 4h 08m | A Perfectly Lovely Expedition | ♥ 3 | Overall, I really like this game. The graphics are awesome and the music works well. The main problem was that it wasn't at all obvious what I was meant to do - I had no idea that I could actually use the shovel by pressing down, so it would be good to say that once you get it. Aside from that, though, I enjoyed this game - it's very polished. |
| May 7 04:41:24 | 18m 56s | Slice of Life | ♥ 2 | This game is very well put together. The art style is cool and the music fits really well. The mechanic of having health and currency as the same resource is unique and interesting. It seems as though weapons are not very balanced - bombs and heat-seeking missiles are both very powerful, and it's not particularly hard to win with either of them. Melee mushrooms are a bit harder to use, although I imagine that with enough spamming, it could still be relatively simple to win. I think it might be good to introduce more difficulty (as well as increasing difficulty) somehow. Side note: your 'cheat sheet', I think, is mixed up - mushroom three appears to be a missile while mushroom four appears to be a bomb, but the cheat sheet lists 3 as a bomb and 4 as a missile. |
| May 7 06:38:17 | 1h 56m | Around The World in 80 Seconds | ♥ 1 | I really like the graphics. Could do with a bit of music. The problem is that it is simply way too difficult - I couldn't beat it a single time. It seems like a lot of the time you will necessarily be hit by a particular enemy at least once, meaning that you basically have to be perfect for all the enemies that you can avoid. In particular, I have no idea how to get past the second or fourth enemies without getting hit, or in general any of the enemies that throw projectiles. |
| May 14 22:27:56 | 183h 49m | King of the world | ♥ 1 | Nice game. I can certainly see how it could result in quite a bit of strategy, but the problem is that it simply goes too quickly - if enemy countries start taking over your stuff, it is really hard to beat them back, because usually most of your troops will be dead. This, is of course, where the strategy of "centralize your troops" would come into play, but there usually isn't enough time to really analyze the situation. It just seems like strategy is overruled by being aggressive - I won in about one minute simply by attacking straight up to the enemies' generals. In any case, though, I think part of the reason it is so hard to think about strategy is because there are no real graphical representations of anything. Troops should probably have a graphical representation - this would allow the player to easily visually figure out whether they could take over another country or whether they should try to retreat. Animation of some sort would also help - troops should move and fight - but I'm not quite sure _when_ the animations would take place given that actions technically don't happen until the five seconds have passed, and at that point the player needs to be able to see the updated state - probably the best way would be to spend about three seconds or so showing what was happening during the turn. (This would also help players see what the new layout was going to be, and maybe help them develop strategy). |