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Feedback comments for LD40

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		almost's comment
Dec 4 05:35:03		Infestus	♥ 2	Leading the larva around was cool, but collecting goo makes you move so slowly that it's kind of painful to play. I'm not sure that I understand the computer things.
Dec 4 05:37:33	2m 30s	Cool Hat Mr. Hat	♥ 2	~~There are filenames but no download links~~
Dec 4 05:42:52	5m 19s	Cardhoard	♥ 2	As a tip for anyone else playing: you can wall-jump on boxes and also on the outer wall. I liked this. It's cute and feels quite polished. There's even a special effect for when you die (the room goes dark except for a spotlight pointed at the player)
Dec 4 06:13:51	30m 59s	The Precarious Balance	♥ 1	I really like the concept. Each week it feels like I'm running out of personal joy, and looking forward to the weekend when I can hang out with Mark and procrastinate. The number of available events is usually pretty small (around 6), so I feel like they could be larger and always show the +- icons. Mr. Schneider gives a lot of homework! I didn't notice the 3 buttons at the bottom for a long time. It seems that they cannot be 'undone' and I think it would be nicer if they used the same control scheme as normal events (drag an event onto school or onto sleep). I couldn't tell whether or not the difficulty was increasing, but I stopped after day 41 with a score of 6-5-9-10-10-5. Joy and homework seemed like the most limiting factors.
Dec 4 06:25:34	11m 43s	Necromancer	♥ 2	The art style is cute. I don't like that I need 3 hands (WASD, Arrows, and Mouse). I found it difficult to click on the right object when things overlap. I also don't see any reason to ever not take something or to not awaken a skeleton, so I feel like the mouse input could be removed completely if things were 'clicked automatically'. I don't know why there are so many more skeletons and lamps than I need. I'm a bit sad that my skeletons seem to be pacifists, I would have liked to see them do some fighting.
Dec 4 06:38:23	12m 49s	Operator	♥ 0	The concept is pretty unique. It would be pretty cool if this game had voice acting, but I guess that might get repetitive too. If I have 10$ or more I cant see my balance because the text would be too wide. I assume it's a resolution and text overflow thing. It seems that the calls have no duration. The first time that somebody wanted a line that was already in use I wasn't sure what to do.
Dec 4 06:46:37	8m 14s	MAGNETOGRABBER 2000	♥ 3	The visual effects are kind of interesting, but the low-acceleration makes it tedious to control the ship. I figured out that the wrench repairs me. I don't know what the golden circle object does. I assume that there is no win condition (just get a high score) but I didn't play for very long.
Dec 4 08:06:39	1h 20m	Voiid	♥ 0	I agree that jumping up ramps is awkward. The atmosphere was kind of creepy, but it didn't seem to actually have any impact on the gameplay. The ramp level seemed to require a tricky jump close to the end, but I might have jumped in the wrong place. Clicking on 'fullscreen' did fix the mouse-locking issue for me as well.
Dec 4 08:30:43	24m 04s	Asteroid gravity	♥ 1	I found the small asteroids pretty much impossible to dodge, but it seems that those collisions don't hurt very much and I can usually out-heal the damage. Later on the larger asteroids swing at you and those seem to hurt more. I don't know what healed me though.
Dec 5 07:43:20	23h 12m	Librood	♥ 1	To anyone else who is confused at the start: an indicator appears when you can interact with something. At that time you can press space. I assume that the black screen is the end of the game. The art, audio, and atmosphere are all super impressive. It plays a bit like a short story. Unfortunately it seems that she doesn't have many happy dreams :(
Dec 5 07:52:54	9m 34s	Wisp	♥ 1	(Windows) I received an error: 'The program can't start because UnityPlayer.dll is missing from your computer.' I don't know where the file comes from but it seems that it should be included with the exe and data folder.
Dec 5 08:04:01	11m 07s	Lava Cave	♥ 4	I like the idea of trying to decide whether or not to be greedy and take multiple artifacts, but the platforming is tricky enough that even trying to take 2 artifacts seems really difficult. Sometimes when climbing onto a ledge there is a bug and the player ends up hanging from the ledge again. Additionally, I would prefer if I could climb up ledges automatically by just pushing right or left, and jump off by pushing down. Needing to use the mouse to jump a tiny bit higher seemed weird to me, so I often forgot to use the mouse.
Dec 5 08:19:37	15m 36s	Litter Burg	♥ 3	There's so much going on, that it's pretty confusing for me. I had to do a lot of trial and error to figure out the following: * Between days buildings generate money and trash. * To build something: click the wrench, click a tile, choose a building. You start with 1 dump to build and can buy more stuff later. * To set a route for a truck: click the R, click on a truck, click on a building, click on a dump * Each truck will deliver trash for 1 building per day. * Buying additional trucks is probably a high priority. * There are trash can icons with numbers to indicate how much trash has accumulated at a building As feedback: I think that some of the interface flows could be simpler. For example, I could be allowed to highlight k buildings whose trash will be taken to the dump where k is the number of trucks that I have. I could also drag buildings onto tiles. (Also: the picture of a dog shows up as the 'main' image for the game, which is misleading)
Dec 5 08:44:11	24m 34s	Shall they up?	♥ 2	This was pretty cool after I figured out what was going on. Switching weapons based on what enemies your facing while also trying to aim and dodge projectiles is hectic but fun. At first I thought that I had lost every time that it showed my score and asked me if I wanted to use a new weapon. The preview for the missile confused me (it orbited me so I thought it was like a shield). The spread shot seems really strong, but the enemy spread shot is hard to dodge because of how large the player's hitbox is.
Dec 6 05:23:21	20h 39m	The Will of the Wisps	♥ 3	Very pretty and nice atmosphere. I like the way that the music made it clear to me that the shadowy figure was not friendly.
Dec 6 05:27:56	4m 35s	Endless runner	♥ 0	Yea, select the .exe, _Data folder, and UnityPlayer.dll togther and add them to a zip file.
Dec 6 08:53:45	3h 25m	Survival Christmas Madness	♥ 2	On my resolution (1920x1080) some of the interface is offscreen (including the area where I can feed people). I just restarted at a different ratio and then it's fine. The game is funny, and the mechanic of trying to figure out how many mouths you can feed is pretty cool. I ended with 5 elves, and I fired Winorse Opensale at a Yeti :)
Dec 6 09:05:30	11m 45s	Work Master	♥ 0	I get that I'm supposed to split my time between the two, but because clicking A is randomly more or less effective and the blue sometimes increases, I have no idea what percentage of my time I'm supposed to assign to each. Losing progress is really frustrating.
Dec 6 09:29:44	24m 14s	Rabbit Farmer!!!	♥ 1	This game is hilarious. I look at the meat grinder for 2 seconds and rabbits are suddenly overflowing my whole screen. It seems like after you max out on upgrades there isn't much left to do, but the rabbits still reproduce like crazy so I guess you can see how long you survive.
Dec 7 07:32:52	22h 03m	Power Play	♥ 1	I spent some time trying to find myself but decided that I don't actually exist. With more experience doing game jams you can become more efficient, but one thing that might have saved time would be to have fewer art variants (you have 2 building images, 3 tree images, and around 4 people variants. I think a manager role where you can force people that report to you to overwork and receive income based on their productivity would be interesting. PS: when editing the game you can opt-out of audio/humor if you don't want to be rated in those categories.
Dec 7 07:58:39	25m 47s	I'm Over Encumbered!	♥ 1	I liked swinging the sword and dodging, though I would have preferred if the middle of the swing was in the direction of my mouse instead of the end of the swing. Since I aim with the mouse I think left-click to attack would make sense (and deposit could also be left-click but conditional on having the inventory open) I understand why you wanted the bank to move, but it's a pretty confusing mechanic. I thought at first that I had lost my money. It's also easy to lose track of where the bank is, but some sort of indicator would help for that. Since there is no sound when you take damage and enemy shots disappear after a short distance even when they miss, I found it hard to tell whether or not I was getting hit. It would be nice to have some indication that an enemy is about to attack (since you don't have custom models, you could have them jump or change vertical scale slightly right before they attack. It would also be cool if some of the enemies used a sword like me.
Dec 7 08:21:55	23m 16s	Maze Trudger!	♥ 1	Congrats on a first gamejam and a playable game! I liked trying to decide how to use the flares efficiently and trying to remember the shape of the path after it fades away. I found that if a rat and I swap tiles I would sometimes be able to take no damage (though perhaps the rat was not hungry). I could also hide in a dead-end and hope the rat would go in a different direction. I'm a fan of voice-acting in game-jam games, and you added a few variations so it wasn't too repetitive (though I found it funny when I sprinted through large areas of muck). The maze is pretty huge! I explored something like 4 screens worth of tiles without finding any exits. Backtracking on a large and complicated maze is a bit frustrating because of how much time it takes. I think it would be ok to allow a few cycles in the maze so that you can have more than 1 route between some areas. Since you are basically blind it should still be challenging.
Dec 7 08:34:39	12m 44s	Crazy Snake	♥ 0	Interesting idea. I died on the 4th level because I was way too greedy and turned into hyperspeed snake. The mechanics were pretty well explained by instructions and the UI. The eat animation is sweet too.
Dec 7 08:47:19	12m 40s	Vice Life	♥ 1	If I click outside of the game and then click on the game again I seem to be unable to perform actions (move or 1-3). This happens consistently (on Chrome). The game is pretty depressing, but I guess that's intentional. I didn't really understand how the vices affected me. I think I ended up choosing a little of everything. Did I get an illness because of smoking? Did my character feel depressed because I lost a lot of money?
Dec 7 08:58:49	11m 30s	The more you baby...	♥ 1	Whether or not the sound is accurate, it's definitely an annoying sound so I turned my volume way down. I like the concept, and I liked trying to click frantically, but the scroll mechanic is slow and awkward. One alternative would be to zoom out as the number of babies increases. Another option would be to have a swipe mechanic (like a mobile game), or to have the camera move faster the closer your mouse is to the edge of the screen.
Dec 8 06:48:58	21h 50m	Orbits	♥ 1	(I played the Compo version, and had a score of 6) I'm glad to hear that your post-compo version removes planet collision. It was really annoying to have all of the planets in loops that will miss me but then two of them collide and I basically have to start over. I found that they would ocllide less often if they all orbit in the same direction (clockwise). Another thing that bothered me was that planets can go offscreen. One option would be to zoom out, and another would be to add some sort of indicator for the direction and distance to them.
Dec 8 07:02:57	13m 59s	(MAAB) Mistakes Are Actually Bad	♥ 1	The visual effects are extremely cool. The laser, the sparks, the partial cut, and the molten rock that cools quickly all made cutting very satisfying. I played solo but was still able to control both ships without too much trouble by moving slowly. I didn't see any obvious objective so I just cut rocks at random. Some of the map boundaries look like shadows which caused a couple deaths.. Are the people and ships meant to look like Lego? I also don't really know how the theme fits in. My guess was that it was trying to say that the more rocks you cut the more crowded the bottom area gets, or maybe something bad happens if you cut too much.
Dec 8 07:19:00	16m 03s	Greedy Dungeon	♥ 2	Stab Stab Stab Stab Stab Stab!
Dec 9 08:01:37	24h 42m	Boiler Room Defense	♥ 1	Cool game! I saw that there was a leaderboard full of totally reasonable scores so I played again in order to add myself to it. I didn't read the description, so the first time that I died I didn't know what had killed me. I experimented in my second run (standing still and getting hit) to figure out that enemy shots make the ice larger and touching ice instantly kills me. Firing the 360 degree gun seems really bad for the player, and I accidentally picked it up a couple of times. Luckily it goes away if I find an alternative weapon. I liked that the other powerups were helpful but still came at a cost. I didn't figure out what occasionally thaws the ice, but my guess is that it's either timed or after killing some number of enemies. I think an interesting variant would be if instead of instantly killing me, the ice was just a solid object that I can collide with (but enemies can still go through it) and I lose if I get squished between two pieces of ice. Basically that would prevent accidental deaths but still kill you once the majority of the screen is ice. Another thing that felt weird was that when the ice is large enough, a wave of spread shot bullets can freeze on each other as soon as one of them hits a wall. I think that it might be better if shots that are fired at the same time cannot hit each other.
Dec 9 09:17:24	1h 15m	Tiny Empires	♥ 1	You should probably disable the itch.io fullscreen button and change the size of the iframe (to 960 x 660) so that the blue fullscreen button is visible. To make the UI scale with resolution instead of having stuff move around, select the canvas and choose UI Scale Mode: Scale With Screen Size. This should make it work in smaller resolutions. These sort of changes are allowed even now because they are bug-fixes and not gameplay features. As for the game itself: * Building stuff is fun, and having more stuff to defend with slow-moving soldiers is a nice interpretation of the theme * The enemies weren't actually very threatening and I became quite wealthy by building a few buildings and then spamming 'end turn'. * Nothing costs Iron? * Some colored icons for the resources and resource costs would be more readable. * Being able to buy and sell resources at the same prices means that all resources are equivalent (except some are twice as good as the others) * Opening the shop should hide the building-info popup * Placing a building on a tile that has units should not count as clicking on the units * The wind sound gets old pretty quickly
Dec 9 23:17:29	14h 00m	ESCAPE KEY	♥ 1	Its an interesting control scheme. I feel like I should be able to type a non-adjacent tile and walk to it over time. The sounds for death and victory are the same, which can be confusing.
Dec 11 20:33:26	45h 15m	Catch the bomb	♥ 1	Some of the mechanics and controls confused me, but I like the art style and concept. There were a lot of mines! I was able to determine that a few directions were solid walls of mines, and I didn't have enough mine-kits to defuse them. I couldn't figure out how to flag known mines.
Dec 17 08:10:15	131h 36m	The More You Make	♥ 0	First of all, this is extremely impressive, and you have both a lot of mechanics and a lot of polish. Most of the games felt pretty well balanced, and they had increasing difficulty so that I can't just go forever. I made sure to try every game at least once. You might want to remove the 'web' link from the entry since you removed the web version. * The time between losing and restarting is a bit long (Though I found that esc + enter is very fast) * It took me a while to figure out virtuaman (the bar on the bottom of the screen) * I didn't get any points in Take a Brick despite clearing every brick on the screen * I want to go left and right in the list of games * I tried to go off the bottom of the screen in Amok and died (I guess I was supposed to go right, but the whole screen was black)
Dec 17 08:33:44	23m 29s	Star Smugglers	♥ 2	I like the balance of trying to decide how far I should go and how risky I should play. I don't really understand how quickly the value of an artifact grows and if the number of parsecs is relevant to the value of the artifacts or only relevant to the number of encounters. Given the amount of reading required, I find normal fonts easier to read than squarish all-capital fonts. Having icons for damage, artifacts, and wanted levels would make them even easier to read more quickly. Being captured confused me. I'm not sure whether or not I'm supposed to lose my upgrades, but after being captured and then doing an additional run it referred to all of my stuff as level 1 but the upgrades all cost 500+.
Dec 21 23:52:32	111h 18m	Fleet Commander	♥ 1	Pretty cool. It's easy to understand but challenging to execute as the fleet grows. I reached 12 ships before two of my ships collided.
Dec 22 00:07:37	15m 05s	Maurim: Unepic thief	♥ 3	The art is really nice. There are a lot of different images, and they are all solid quality. The game is faithful to the theme, but I find that making the player weaker is frustrating. I found myself dying because a single blue enemy would hit me repeatedly after I had picked up the required amount of treasure. I couldn't beat the level in which there is an island in the middle and a big square of spikes around it. You should probably name the folder something other than LD40 so that players don't get games mixed up. The first level taught me that I need to get all of the treasure, and on future levels I found that I need an unknown amount of treasure, which makes it difficult to plan the order in which I should pick up treasure. An indicator of how much treasure I need would help.
Dec 22 00:17:39	10m 02s	Imbalanced	♥ 0	I had to use the sun a few times before I realized what it was doing. I think I scored around 140 and then all of my rabbits died. Trying to manage the populations is tricky. I don't think the instructions told me that WASD move the camera, but I figured it out when some animals ran offscreen.
Dec 22 00:30:39	13m 00s	Shadow and Planet	♥ 1	The game didn't explain it's mechanics very well. You steer with left and right, not L and R. The dots near the center of the ship indicate the direction toward an object (but not the distance). If you go too far in a direction the world loops, which looks like all of the dots rearranging. Red is enemy, gray is base, asteroids are white. If you shoot an asteroid around 20 times a tiny piece of ore appears. Enemies drop chests that contain missiles. I found it really hard to pick up the ore and the chests. I also initially only shot the asteroid around 10 times and nothing happened so I was confused. I recommend making ore drop sooner, and making ore and chests float toward the player when you are near them. Additionally to make movement more visible, you could make the camera slightly slower when it follows the player, or you could add something like an engine trail. You could also move the object indicators to the edge of the screens instead of the center.
Dec 22 00:39:21	8m 42s	Robot Santa	♥ 1	After I realized that I could hold shift and fly offscreen with no consequences I found this game fun. I ended with over 1000 points. I think that boost should be the default and you could allow people to hold shift when they want to be precise. If you play more games, more people will play your game. However if you're too busy to play games you could try making a post on the home page or in the discord.
Dec 27 10:03:40	129h 24m	LD40 - Snake	♥ 0	The game isn't very complicated, but it looks pretty and it's challenging once the snake starts speeding up. I epected to bounce off of trees but barely touching a tree seemed to instant kill me.
Dec 27 10:10:44	7m 04s	Working Death	♥ 1	The timing is tight but I managed to beat it. It happened several times that I only had 1 document left but I didn't know where it was and had to get lucky to find it quickly. It would be nice if an indicator told me in which directions the documents are.
Dec 27 10:22:53	12m 09s	Lava Lamp Factory	♥ 0	Resource games where you just keep building stuff and getting more money can be fun. Other than the bots colliding with each other, it didn't seem to get much worse. (Though the bots did tend to collide with each other and get stuck) The building indicators had rigidbodies, so they sometimes spun around or fell down. I also never found a use for the wall. I wanted to move the camera around with the mouse (but I eventually found that WASD works).
Dec 27 10:29:18	6m 25s	Power UP ?	♥ 0	The view seemed a bit small since enemies can fire from offscreen. My strategy was to move around the outside of the map and shoot roughly towards the center of the map. It seemed to work reasonably well but I was eventually killed from nearly full health in a single hit because I had taken a lot of the powerups. The game could use some more visual effects (trails and explosions)