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qzqxq

Feedback comments for LD39

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		qzqxq's comment
Aug 1 07:42:54		Tornado	♥ 1	Some things I liked: - The idea of the playing field being randomly generated over time is clever and interesting. - I really liked the visual polish, like the screenshake and the cows spurting blood when they die. - Refrigerators and cows falling from the sky is super funny. A few things that could be improved: - There doesn't seem to be a purpose or goal to the game. I made it to the top of the screen, but nothing happened and the game kept running, which was disappointing because all I can do now is wait to drown. At the very least, I would have liked a "You won!" popup. - The houses fall down way too slowly. You could probably speed everything up 5x, and it would be a lot more exciting and more of a challenge. - I didn't hear any sound effects. Sound effects can make a game feel much more polished because audio feedback is very important, and they're not that hard to make, so for future jams I would definitely suggest adding them in. I think this could be a really fun and exciting game if you had a greater variety of houses and increased the pace; right now it feels very slow, but I can imagine some hectic platformer where you have to plan ahead based on what's falling from the sky. Overall, nice job! Again, I really liked the visuals.
Aug 1 08:02:33	19m 39s	PlantingPower	♥ 1	I'm having trouble opening the mac version, I'm getting the error "You can't open the application "PlantingPower" because the Classic environment is no longer supported." This looks really cool though so I'll remember to try this when I have access to windows.
Aug 1 09:45:51	1h 43m	Blocks of Power	♥ 2	First off, this is jaw-droppingly impressive for a compo game. Everything looks extremely polished and you have a cool mechanic that seems really fleshed out, not to mention the enemy AIs and god knows what else is in here. I played this about 8 times and couldn't get past the third room. I might try again later, because this does seem very interesting and potentially a lot of fun, but right now I feel like there's less of a difficulty curve and more of a difficulty skydive. It's like, first you have a room with another ship that can't even shoot you, and then you have a room with 3 ships, some of which shoot really quickly, and if you lose either your turret or your thrusters, you're dead (funnily enough, I don't think I ever lost due to losing or running out of battery). Also, the instructions screen has way too much information to take in at once. I understand that this is Ludum Dare and there's limited time, but I would have found this much easier to get into if you had, say, 1/3 to 1/2 as many parts, and used the time saved to make a small tutorial on how to use build mode (a win-win in terms of accessibility). I only realized that I could rotate the building parts on my 5th playthrough or so, because the only indication of that is in small text at the very bottom of the instructions! It's also confusing which parts are allowed to go where (like you aren't allowed to place anything behind the thrusters, I think?), something a tutorial could also have helped with. Some other notes: - Sometimes when I went into the second room, I found myself unable to rotate until some parts of my ship got destroyed. I'm not sure why this happened. - I also died twice on room 2 because I didn't realize I was in build mode and couldn't figure out why my ship wasn't moving. I think right now, normal mode and build mode look very similar, which is a little confusing. And given how difficult this game seems to be, I might suggest having a complete pause in build mode to give the player time to plan. And maybe just not even have the option to manually enter build mode, and instead enter build mode automatically as soon as you finish off an enemy core. - WASD to control thrusters is very confusing, given that your ship can be in any orientation so that W isn't always up. If you're going to use that control scheme, you should really specify which direction is which key at all times (though I'm not even sure that would help). Reading back, my comment sounds more negative than I intended it to be, so I just want to say again that this is extremely, extremely impressive for 48 hours of work. The visuals and sound effects are incredibly polished, and the gameplay has so much to it; I just wish that there was a smoother introduction because of how complicated it is. Awesome job! And now I want to go play some Galaxy Trucker. :P
Aug 11 04:54:18	235h 08m	Space Whale Adventure	♥ 0	The first thing I want to say is: this game feels very polished. In particular, the sound is done really well: the music is catchy and fits well with the game, and the sound effects were very funny and also added a lot. I also liked the control scheme. Even though it's kind of difficult to get used to, it feels original and made for a fun challenge. I ended up playing for about 2 minutes and stopping after that because it seems like there wasn't any more gameplay. I guess you didn't have time to add more, but I think it would have felt a lot more satisfying if it showed your score somewhere, and/or if there was some way to win the game, so there would be some closure. Also, 250 power seems really generous, as I barely lost any while playing. You could probably lower it to 20 or something and it could be more exciting that way. Overall, even though there isn't that much gameplay, I really appreciate all the polish that went into what you do have, so great job! With some more mechanics, I could see this being a really fun arcade game.
Aug 11 05:28:30	34m 12s	Displaced	♥ 1	Some things I liked: - There was some good visual polish, like the ceilings of houses disappearing when you entered, and the sand effects. Also the dialogue boxes. - Like others have said, the sandstorm was interesting. Overall, though, there doesn't seem to be much to this game other than walking around and trying to find things, which is not that fun, especially with a giant desert and no mini-map or indication of where to go (disclaimer: I only played for around 10 minutes before stopping). Also, this could really have used some sound effects. Overall, it seems like you aimed for something really big, and it's pretty hard to do something of this scale in a short game jam. The story was decent, though (at least what I saw of it), and I did like the Firefly references. :P I also have some minor nitpicks: the walking animation looks a little weird, and sometimes I would stop holding down WASD but the character would continue walking for half a second. I don't want to be too negative, so let me say that I am very impressed by the amount of content in this game (like the amount of dialogue, and things like the psychological experiment), and this could be something really awesome with more work. Good job!
Aug 11 05:53:35	25m 05s	Dance On The Wire	♥ 1	This is a really cool idea! As you mention, there isn't much to the game, but what I've seen so far is quite promising. The visual style is neat and the music is nice to listen to, and with some more mechanics/levels this could be a really fun, innovative game. Some feedback: - The tutorial is a little confusing, especially with the "different square junctions behave differently" part at the end. In fact, I beat the game without realizing that the red/green switched if you moved along the red area, and only just figured it out after going through the tutorial a second time. - The second level is really long. I died close to the end, on the second set of brown circles moving in a circle, and I was pretty frustrated to have to start at the beginning of the level, especially because you don't move so fast. I'd suggest putting in checkpoints for long levels, or just having a series of short challenging levels. - In general, I think the red/green/blue areas are sort of small and a little difficult to make out (this also ties into me not realizing how the colors worked at first). If you made that more visible somehow, I think it would really help with making the game more clear. Also, some indication of the timing to press the keys would be nice (maybe just in the tutorial?), since I also had trouble with that at first. Again, I really like the idea, and I'm very interested in seeing where you go with this. One random thought I had was that this might be cool as a competitive multiplayer game, where you have to keep track of where you opponent is going, but I don't have any specific ideas on how it would work. Anyways, nice job! And sorry to hear about the AC, that really sucks :( Hope everything's better now, though.
Aug 11 06:36:33	42m 58s	The Crown Prince	♥ 0	Nice! This is a really creative way to approach the theme, and I feel like I should give this bonus points because I'm a math major. :P I had a lot of fun trying to put the coins together, especially with the exact change in the 3rd level. The guillotine chasing behind you certainly made for a very exciting experience. I also really liked the polish in this game: the music and sound effects were effective, and all the information was presented in a very clear way, with pretty but not overwhelming graphics. Some suggestions: - The bronze and gold coins look really similar. I think I failed the first level like 3 times because I kept accidentally clicking gold coins instead of bronze. Also, the bronze coin looks copper and the copper coin looks bronze. I would suggest just putting the numerical value of the coins on them directly, or if you still want to keep the color recognition part, I would probably suggest something like brown/bronze-1, silver-5, gold-25, green-100 (green can be platinum or something). - The slowing down/taking your highest coin as tribute mechanism was somewhat interesting, especially when you had to make use of it to speed up in the last level. However, I don't think it's interesting enough to justify the added complexity, because it is quite confusing and non-intuitive at first. Overall, this was a very creative idea and a lot of fun, so great job! I'd be interested if worked more on this, since I imagine there are a lot of possible things you could do with the core gameplay.
Aug 11 07:23:42	47m 09s	Fluffy Racer	♥ 1	I had a lot of trouble understanding what was going on at first, and the intro text was not nearly enough to explain how things worked. As others have said, this could really have benefited from a tutorial level. Once I started figuring out what was going on (e.g. you can attack unicorns to decrease viciousness, you can place unicorns on shields, etc.), it turned out to be pretty fun. It's a pretty interesting optimization puzzle, although right now there aren't too many options: you only have 3 possible things and there is a hard constraint on your health not going below 0, so I felt it wasn't too hard to make the "best" decision. Also, I would have liked if repairing or replacing cost some fixed amount (maybe increasing each time you used it) instead of half your current amount, because right now it almost feels like what you do in the early game doesn't matter (if you do well at the beginning, then it gets neutralized when you have to repair a few times, so whether you win somewhat depends on how lucky you get at the end). One possible suggestion: I might suggest showing the player what's coming up in the near future, so they can potentially plan better. This could also mitigate the randomness a bit and add more strategy. I also noticed some bug where if you take a unicorn and move it into multiple claws, then multiple objects end up spawning, with some overlapping each other. Hopefully this doesn't sound too negative. Overall, you have a solid, creative mechanic, and I love the visuals, which are really well-done and polished (and the unicorns are extremely cute). And the overall premise of petting unicorns is just great. Nice job!
Aug 11 08:05:14	41m 32s	Lost in Translation at Space	♥ 4	Holy shit, this game is genius. I really wish there was more, because the two minigames you had were both very solid applications of the voice controls, and I had lots of fun with both of them. The graphics were also solid and the dialogue was quite funny. Honestly, it's hard to come up with any suggestions on how to improve this. One thing: I ended up writing all the words down so I could refer back to them, but this could have pretty easily just been in the game, and I think would have made it more user-friendly. I'm also really impressed at how accurate the voice recognition was. Technology these days, man. Anyways, this was great. I had a lot of fun the whole way through, and everything was very polished. Awesome job!
Aug 12 08:49:35	24h 44m	Take Me Home	♥ 0	You have a pretty solid prototype, and I'd be interested in seeing where you go with this. I can definitely imagine some really hectic FTL-like game where you have to manage all the parts of your spaceship while dealing with various hazards. One potential idea (inspired by your lights): what if turning off the lights made the entire ship black, so you could only see in a small radius around you? Something like this could potentially make for an interesting trade-off. Running out of time sucks, but I think you have some good ideas here that could be turned into a really fun game. For future LDs, though, you should prioritize adding gameplay so it doesn't get pushed to the end.
Aug 12 09:36:55	47m 20s	Meltdown	♥ 2	I played this 3 times, losing on the third level each time. Overall, this was pretty fun! I liked how much polish you had with the graphics and sound effects, and that contributed a lot to the tense atmosphere and overall engagement of the game. A few suggestions/nitpicks: - I sometimes had trouble pressing the buttons because I wasn't sure where to aim at. Some crosshairs or other indicator would have been nice (I see from the patch notes that you added that in 1.1, which is good). - The "you're running out of power" voice effects were a nice touch, but got annoying after a while because they kept repeating. I'd suggest having a larger variety of sound effects, or just playing them less frequently. - It was a little jarring how losing took you back to the menu with nothing in between. Even a small sound effect would have been nice. - Right now, it sort of feels like beating the third level depends on getting lucky with the RNG: I thought I was pretty fast, but I kept getting buttons that were 2-3 doors away from me. Overall, great job on making a very polished, engaging game. It is a very simple mechanic (and I do wish there was a little more complexity), but you really managed to make something quite fun out of it!
Aug 13 20:20:08	34h 43m	Island of Revolution	♥ 1	I played through once and won, mostly thanks to one of the banks giving me an amazing deal (like $1000 for a 100% chance of getting $2500 per hour). I thought that I would lose for sure because my power was at 0 for more than a minute, but I see now that you didn't implement the rebelling, so maybe it's impossible to lose right now? I thought this was a really creative interpretation of the theme! In terms of gameplay, I enjoyed the variety of things going on, which forced me to constantly pay attention to the map while also planning on raising enough money for the flight. It's pretty hard to make an RTS-style game in such a short period of time, but I think you did a pretty good job. Some other things: - The list of 9 instructions you have is way too much to take in at once. However, the in-game help screen was extremely useful, so kudos on that. - For some reason, the police seizing assets pop-up kept appearing when I clicked on units on the map (and I think it even appeared when I clicked on the help button). I'm not sure if this was intentional (and I still don't completely understand how seizing assets works), but this was pretty distracting. - I would have liked a clearer indication of how I was losing power (like maybe having numbers periodically appear over riots/protests that indicate how much power is being lost). I think this would have added more strategy to the game, since you can plan better with more information. - Similar to the above, it was very unclear what the newspaper campaign did. You said that it slows down the decay, but it would have been nice to see some indication of that. - Sound effects would have been nice. - The forest was clearly dark green, not brown. :P Overall, this was quite solid, and if you added more mechanics/balance I could see this being a really creative strategy game. Nice job!
Aug 13 23:56:47	3h 36m	Desert Rush	♥ 0	The mac build isn't working for me, it's just showing the standard Unity blue screen.
Aug 14 00:42:23	45m 36s	Planet Nanadoo: Quest for the Powered Fruit	♥ 2	I played this twice. The first time, I got really lost after wandering too far away from the base, and ended up running out of power (I think I might have gone out of bounds or something, because the natives stopped spawning after a while). The second time, I managed to find the beacon and win. Overall, I had a good amount of fun. Here are some miscellaneous comments I wrote down while playing: - Sometimes when I was away from the base, it was difficult to tell whether I was moving (this was especially true in my first playthrough when I went very far away from the base). This was because there weren't many trees, so there was no visual indication of me moving. A minimap would have helped with this (and would have also helped with being able to navigate back to your base). - It felt inconsistent when enemies would attack me. Sometimes I would lose 25 health the frame they touched me, other times it seems like they wouldn't attack me at all. Also, if I stand completely still, enemies walk up to me and attack, but it seems like they never attack more than once; it's weird having an enemy standing next to you and you not taking any damage. - The sound effects were also inconsistent. There was a sound effect for putting down a fruit but not for picking up a fruit, for example. There was also no sound effect for getting hit by an enemy. - I would suggest directly telling the player that the beacon locator is located near the base and they should find it first. This would have saved me the frustration of my first playthrough. - Also with the beacon locator, I didn't understand how it worked at first. Originally I brought it to base and waited around for a bit, thinking something would happen. It also doesn't help that the antenna is relatively small compared to the rest of the locator; why not just display a giant arrow? - A possible bug: I died while holding the beacon, but respawned back at base, still holding the beacon. I don't know if this is intentional. - Diagonal movement seemed to have a different speed, which felt strange. For example, if you're holding a fruit and move horizontally/vertically, then you move much faster than the enemies, but if you move diagonally, then they catch up to you. - It was really difficult to aim with the zapper. Also, I wish that if you moved horizontally while being chased by enemies, then they would eventually end up on the same line as you so you could kill them with a horizontal shot, but that didn't happen. Most of these are small nitpicks that didn't detract too much from the overall game. I do want to say that I really enjoyed the art style, and that despite the aiming difficulty, combat was also fun. This is a really solid game, so great work!
Aug 14 09:13:19	8h 30m	Long Live The Pig	♥ 2	There are definitely a lot of mechanics to take in at once, but once I understood what was going on, I couldn't stop laughing the whole way through. I have to applaud the writing: everything from the campaign promises to the groups of voters was hilarious and well-written. And I can't believe that it was actually possible to win through becoming a pope-emperor! The visual design and graphics are great, and the music is nice to listen to. The only real complaint I have is that the gameplay itself feels a little lacking. It's supposed to be a strategy game, but it's hard to plan a strategy when you only have a vague idea of what some things do (like making a campaign promise or spending money on advertising). Also, there wasn't much of a challenge: once I read all the rules, I just picked the policies that workers and youngsters liked and won without having to spend any money on advertising or bribing (if only that's how elections worked in real life... :P). I feel like game balance took a back seat to humor and polish (not that that's a bad thing, given how much I liked pretty much every other part of this game). There was a small bug I encountered where if you click advertise without spending any money, the "actions planned for today" still has advertise. A few more things: - I wish there was a "back" button on the "Manage Funds" and "Campaign Promises" screens. - It's a little weird how you can't click on the phone if you select fundraising, but you can click on the typewriter. I feel like you should always be able to click anything, so you can see your options. Overall, this was absolutely hilarious, and I very much enjoyed it, even if it was a little light on the actual gameplay. Great job!
Aug 15 08:41:35	23h 28m	Encounters	♥ 1	This was pretty funny! The story felt a little nonsensical in a good way (sort of like Jazzpunk), and I really liked the graphics and music. My favorite part was definitely the ghost: it was really unexpected, and also hinted at some interesting backstory. Some minor things: - When walking, the steps sound effect would play sporadically, which was weird; I feel like it should play at regular intervals. - I won without getting the 30 credits from the person who asked me to investigate the store for ghosts: after getting the child and the fireworks and discovering the ghost, I went to the charger because I realized I didn't actually walk up to it at the beginning, and then I surprisingly won. Some indication of how many credits you have, as mentioned by @saramartins above, would have helped with this. - I also completely agree that it was weird having to get really close to someone to start talking. - There were quite a few grammar/spelling issues. I personally don't take that into account when rating, but in general I do think writing mistakes make games feel less polished. - (this is really minor) The dialogue bubbles didn't actually point to the person who was talking, so I think they were worse than plain rectangles in terms of clarity. Overall, this was a really solid entry. I enjoyed the surreal/absurd narrative, and I am very impressed with the amount of content, especially in the graphics. Nice job!
Aug 16 08:44:57	24h 03m	Shut Everything Down	♥ 1	Nice! My favorite part of this game was the design: the tutorial levels did a great job at ramping up the player, and the levels were a great mix of puzzle-solving and timing challenges. I do wish there was a little more, but what you have is already quite good, and I'd prefer a few really solid levels over a lot of mediocre/repetitive levels any day. The narrative/backstory was also solid. I did encounter a few polish issues: - Sometimes, clicking a square would not do anything, and I'd have to click on it twice to actually get the robot to move. Not only was this annoying, but in a fairly strict timing-based game this killed me quite a few times, which was really frustrating. Unfortunately, I can't seem to reproduce this issue, but I'm on Mac if it matters (I dunno if you encountered this). This is by far the most annoying thing I ran into, because it made the game feel a little unresponsive: the rest of this list is mostly minor issues. - Right now, if you click somewhere and decide you want to move in the opposite direction instead, the robot can only change directions when it's aligned with a square. It would feel more responsive if the robot immediately changed directions instead of potentially waiting a half second. - I died a few times on the second level, and whenever I did die, the tutorial text would appear saying "Good job!", which was a little unfortunate. I'd suggest only showing it once, or having a question mark that you can click on to see it again. - The WASD camera controls felt unnecessary. I kept forgetting to use them because I expected the camera to follow me by default. One possible suggestion: you could have an automatic camera following the player when the player is moving, and have WASD manually move the camera if the player is still and wants to scout ahead. This might also feel kind of weird, though; it's possible that the most user-friendly option is to remove WASD entirely and have a pure automatic camera (I doubt players will be hindered by this, since you generally only care about what's near you at any given moment). - In the last level, I missed the pop-up because I was spamming right click to get next to the moving robot. Agreed with @somnium that it was not the best place to put a pop-up. - Dying feels strange because you immediately get taken to the beginning of the level. Some sound effect and/or short animation when dying would have felt more natural. Also, I personally really appreciated the tutorial text, since it's nice to know exactly how the mechanics work, and you did a good job of explaining things. I can see why some players can find it a little too wordy or unnecessary, though. Overall, I really enjoyed going through the levels, which were all well-designed. The controls didn't feel as polished as I would've wished, but that didn't prevent this game from being a lot of fun overall. Great job!
Aug 17 06:53:26	22h 08m	Power Ring Facility	♥ 1	Nice, this is a pretty creative mechanic, and the levels displayed a variety of interesting applications of that mechanic. It was pretty fun overall, but my number one suggestion would be to add sound effects: I died a few times because I mistimed when I would collect a ring and pressed space a few frames too early, which resulted in not jumping. It's much easier to react to a sound effect than to a visual cue, so I would really have liked some beep upon picking up a ring. Also, right now this charging mechanic is pretty hard to distinguish from "standard platformer, except collecting rings gives you your jump back", so I kept trying to jump while on the ground and was surprised that I couldn't. I think sound could also have helped with this: if there was a quiet buzzing sound whenever you were powered up, it would be more clear when you could jump than with just a circle vs. pentagon indication. The levels themselves were good. There is a gigantic difficulty jump between the 1. and 2. levels, but after I died like 30 times on 2.001 I slowly got the hang of it, which felt very satisfying. Even though it was difficult, it never got too frustrating, so great job on that. I also liked the part on 2.002 where rings constantly shoot up out of the ground and you could slowly gain height: I confess that it took me about a minute to realize I could do that, so it felt like a nice little puzzle. The minimal graphics style suits the game very well, and it looks extremely nice. If you expand on this game (and I hope you will!), I'd suggest emphasizing the power mechanic more, instead of just having the difficulty coming from platforming like in 2.001. There are plenty of hard platformers out there, but I feel like you could make something really unique based on this (for example, what if there were some puzzly levels where rings don't respawn, and you have to cleverly plan out your path to finish?). All in all, this was a really solid game and I had a lot of fun playing it. Great job!
Aug 22 08:03:07	121h 09m	Jupiter II ‒ Survival	♥ 1	I played through 5 times and never found the mothership. Overall, I'd say this is a very promising game. I like how you tied both of the "special abilities" (speed boost, flashlight) to your two resources, which really reinforced the "running out of power" feeling. The graphics look great, and I love how you made easy-to-parse images for the backstory and instructions. So, the biggest issue I have with this game is that I don't feel like I'm ever making progress, and that whether you win seems to mostly depend on how lucky you are. Right now, I'm just swimming around and collecting energy and oxygen, which is reasonably fun and engaging, but I don't feel like I'm ever getting closer to finding the mothership because it could be anywhere. And if I do eventually find the mothership, it's almost certainly going to be because I randomly picked the right direction, rather than because I found a good strategy or was able to deduce where it was, which feels a little bad. Some potential suggestions: - A minimap that is gradually revealed as you move around would have been great, because it helps you plan your future route. It gives a sense of progress because you gradually eliminate where the mothership can be, and if it showed oxygen/energy pickups, then you could leave some behind to pick them up later, which increases the amount of strategy. (The player can do all of this right now, but it would require an insane amount of memory) - Some way of hinting at the location of the mothership would be great. Some possible ideas: - Increase the number of broken ship parts you see as you get closer. - Maybe have a "sonar" power that uses up a large amount of energy and tells you how close you are to the mothership, or what general direction to move in. And after writing this, I see that @elmismipancho basically said the same things oops. :P Finally, in terms of polish, I would have really liked some sound effects for moving, using a speed boost, picking up energy/oxgyen, etc. If you added some sound effects as well as some background sounds, this game would have easily been a 5/5 mood for me, because the visuals are already really good at conveying the feeling of being lost in some giant dark ocean. All in all, even though I never beat the game, I still had fun moving around and trying to survive. If you added a few more features and polished this up, I could see myself playing this a lot. Great job!