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Feedback comments for LD40
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | cerno-b's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 4 20:35:32 | The lost strawberry | ♥ 1 | Made it with 211 deaths in half an hour. Took me a while to figure it out (I didn't read the instructions). The game's difficulty is brutal. I love the graphics. Very impressive what you made out of three colors in that little resolution. It felt a bit frustrating at times because death often comes suddenly because of an unseen trampoline or missing floor. The essences served three purposes which was a bit confusing at first but I was able to figure it out. I couldn't find out what the strawberries were for though. I'm impressed how many levels you made in that short time. You even added a boss fight. I liked it overall! | |
| Dec 4 20:47:13 | 11m 41s | Sheep without Shepherd | ♥ 1 | I saved 266 sheep. I love how this turned out in the end. The sheep design and day/night cycle work very well. I'm impressed how robustly you implemented the flocking behavior. Controller support is appreciated. Unfortunately there is no sound at all. Maybe you didn't have enough time but putting together some simple sound effects in bfxr or even recording some voices yourself would have improved the experience immensely. Overall a short sweet game that feels very polished. |
| Dec 4 21:03:53 | 16m 40s | Too Many Cooks! | ♥ 2 | I love the idea of swatting away pesky cooks that try to ruin your work, and the graphics fit the concept nicely. The controls could use some work though. I played around with the game and I tried to prevent all chefs from adding stuff but some always came through no matter what I tried. This makes the game very tough to control later on when there is a lot going on. Also, color-coding the food may have helped, as sometimes it's tough to react quickly and figure out the flavor of each food at the same time. When it comes to audio, I wish you would have opted for a more crunchy slapping sound and maybe a slight screenshake. Slapping the chefs is the core mechanic around which the whole game pivots and I think it may have become much more tangible by adding some more heft to the slaps. Overall I liked the premise a lot and would return to give it another spin should decide to make a post-compo version. |
| Dec 4 21:25:21 | 21m 28s | Sofra | ♥ 1 | Great job! As always your design is outstanding. You truly have a knack for visual humor. My favorites are the the increasing strain on the bunny icon and the way you keep holding more and more rabbits and can't possibly see anything anymore. The music and sound effects created a soothing and serene atmosphere and were well-made. I assume you recorded the sfx yourself? You make a pretty good vulture impersonation ;) My main point of criticism would be the controls. It is possible to place rabbits one by one or all at once, but you can only pick up the whole bunch. Also I found it a bit frustrating that I could not put down rabbits one by one at the same location. At some points I had to struggle to fit multiple rabbits on a narrow ledge and space them out enough so I could continue. I think the following control scheme might have worked better: One button for picking up one rabbit, one button for dropping one. Want to drop off three rabbits? Press drop three times. Pick up two? Press pickup twice. It would make controlling much less tedious I think. |
| Dec 4 23:24:07 | 1h 58m | TetrisTank | ♥ 5 | Am I doing this right? tetris_tank.jpg I think I broke something. It won't let me spawn any more blocks. On the upside, I have no problems with attackers anymore. ;) This game is an outstanding achievement and I would strongly encourage you to continue working on it to make this a complete game. I'm sure there would be a lot of takers (careful though with commercialization though, I hear the Tetris Company is really restrictive about their game idea). I had a lot of fun trying to get the tower as big as possible. The attackers seemed to be more like an afterthought to justify having weapons on the tower. Maybe if the guns took a more active role (engage the enemy directly) while the attackers more aggressively go for the tower instead of just passing by, this might have given the game a little more urgency. Maybe make the attackers come in waves, like in a Tower Defense game, only that you only have limited time to prepare your tower. The physics may need a little more polish, although they are a lot of fun already. I found it difficult to predict which gun's effects would counteract my other construction. Maybe you could have each weapon fire at a fixed interval. You could mark them with numbers, so that all "1" guns fire at the same time, all "2" guns fire at a different time and so on. That way, the player would be able to counter the guns' effects, e.g. by placing a "1" gun facing left and another one facing right so that both fire at the same time in opposite directions which would give balance to the tower. Same for the morning stars. All "1" morning stars would be in the "up" position at the same time, so having too many of them on one side might imbalance the construction etc. Control-wise I felt that requesting the next block manually was unnecessary, since you could always just shove it out of the way if it didn't suit you. The drop speed of the block was alright but the manual motion was too slow for my taste. Graphics are very adequate for this type of game and it became immediately clear what was asked of the player. To sum it up, I believe this is a diamond with some rough edges that very well deserves a bit more polish. I enjoyed myself immensely and despite all the criticism I have to say this is one of the most fun and innovative games I have played so far. |
| Dec 5 00:06:26 | 42m 19s | The More You Make | ♥ 0 | A crazy achievement for sure. Vader was my favorite. I'm always amazed about your skills in getting game feel right even if the graphics are minimalistic. My pet died right in the beginning and I can't even get it back to life by restarting the game :( All in all a very unique take on the theme. I just wish the games were more than their parts. There could be something that binds them together, like an achievement you have to get in each of the subgames to finish the overall game. Or maybe I'm missing something. |
| Dec 5 00:44:17 | 37m 51s | you are the coin master | ♥ 2 | Too buggy, zero stars. No really, I appreciate what you did here and I did not stop until had all the coins. The graphics are beautiful and the glitch effect is wonderfully weird. The game seems frustrating at first but with proper planning it is absolutely doable. For a game with your unique visuals, the controls need to be a bit tighter in my opinion. Using a concept like Coyote Time might alleviate some of the more frustrating points where you keep dying after slipping off the edge again and again before an important jump. The music was a bit repetitive for my tastes. Overall a very good game, especially considering that you made it in only three hours. |
| Dec 5 08:41:21 | 7h 57m | Paint all the Colors | ♥ 1 | That was much more fun than I anticipated, good job! I actually laughed out loud at the ORANGE level. As it is, the game is pretty basic, but I could see this becoming more serious if it had community elements, where you keep all the images in a database and show the player a random image someone else did after they completed the level. Or make it a multiplayer game where two players compete and maybe a third player gets to vote on the drawing. Score given for time and quality. The music was quite nice and didn't intrude on the experience. Some sound effects might have worked well here (maybe a soft scribble sound while you draw). |
| Dec 5 09:05:44 | 24m 23s | Yuri The Greedy Spaceman | ♥ 0 | I liked your game. The background is great and the rest of the graphics are cute. I especially enjoyed the music, which gives the game a lot of character (the whistles you used are absolutely great and adds a lot of soviet cliche). A game as unforgivingly hard as yours needs tighter controls though, especially since the player starts over from scratch when they fall. For my tastes the character slides too much at low speeds, which makes the game a bit frustrating to play. I finished the first level and didn't really feel much of a difference between carrying no coins and carrying all the coins. Some additional tuning may help. If this was communicated clearer (very tight controls in the beginning, looser controls towards the end), the player might feel more motivation to plan out a path. I think https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/you-are-the-coin-master is a good inspiration for motivating the player to plan a route, although he used a completely different approach. On the other hand I appreciate the elements you did implement to make it play well. The shadow under the player helps a lot with aiming and the jump distance is quite right so that making longer jumps feels less of a risk. The fact that you gave the player about 1 pixel on top of the visual platforms (at least that's what I thought) helps as well. Overall I thought it was a charming experience and I felt motivated enough to finish the first level even though it was hard. |
| Dec 5 09:27:27 | 21m 43s | Dangle Copter | ♥ 2 | But mom... That was awesome. Nice ramp up in difficulty. I particularly like that you decided to not punish the player for crashing the helicopter (aside from making the characters sway more). The graphics are sweet and that intro sets the mood very well. Those controls with the tiny hands and the worries faces of everyone involved are very cute. Music would have been nice of course. I remember that Carefulzilla in LD38 used a random music generator to make the soundtrack, which turned out quite well. I could see something similar in your game. The last level (before the dev test one) was a bit frustrating because one mistake could cost you the full score and you had to start over again. I think the dev test level might have been better suited as an extra to be selected from the start screen or placed after the end game screen as I felt it clashed a bit with the rest of the game. Overall a very well made entry, congratulations! |
| Dec 5 10:16:36 | 49m 09s | Apocalypse Corp | ♥ 4 | An impressive result for a first game. I enjoyed it a lot. apocorp.PNG There are a number of things to like. Maybe it wasn't that strictly intended, but there is a socio-economic commentary in that the player gets the feeling that at one point all the money you earn is eaten up by countermeasures against the natural disasters you create. On a less serious note, the game is quite fun to play. Using number hotkeys was a great idea which improved playability a lot. **Some room for improvement:** I don't think the Surgers were very useful. They automate your cash flow for sure, but you can never really get rid of the clicking because the Surger reload for the Heat Lasers was too slow. And when you have to click anyway, you can simply go without the Surgers, which I quite successfully did. Instead of manually destroying the buildings, it should be possible to sell them to earn a bit of cash back (based on the damage of course). It would be neat if there was a repair button, either as an on/off switch or as a second clicker. Either have each repair action cost money or add a repair building type (or both). The most problematic issue though is that the Heat Lasers' range seems to be computed based on the center of the storm which not only makes little sense in the logic of the world, but it also makes the game unplayable later on because the storms get so large that you can't even hit them anymore. Overall I think you can be proud of what you made and I would encourage you to continue working on the idea, maybe by adding more building types. Should you keep working on the game to fix the range issue, let me know. I would like to test how far I can take the strategy I've come up with. |
| Dec 5 10:25:31 | 8m 55s | Lava Run | ♥ 0 | Nice idea. I love the graphics and atmosphere, I just wish there was some music to go with it. The click zones could be bit larger as I found it hard to hit the lamps. Also I didn't get the connection to the theme. I saw that the lava rises over time, but is that tied to the number of lamps you have collected? Also I didn't get the concept of the danger zone and how that would help me win the game. Overall I would say the graphics are definitely your strongest suit, but the gameplay itself might need some polish, especially communicating better how to be good at the game. |
| Dec 5 11:41:18 | 1h 15m | The Crushed Sky | ♥ 0 | I liked the visuals and the premise, but it was just too hard for me. Couldn't finish the boss although I gave it my best. I usually like challenging games, but in this one, the challenge feels a bit unfair, especially on the boss level. In general I think you have the right amount of things the player has to keep track of. The droppers fire at a fixed interval that is predictable, and lasers have wind up frames. There are some aspects that make these elements a bit frustrating though. First of all, the droppers will keep following you after they've seen you once, so that often an important jump is made unnecessarily hard because the dropper is still in its position but off screen so you can't predict the shot anymore. Then there is the most problematic aspect to my mind. Would it take anything from the game if you got a full charge on landing? Keeping an eye on the charge meter while dodging the challenging enemy patterns is just too much to handle. Finally, I couldn't find out much to do with the charge, except that one time where it's the only way to get a crystal. Usually I used up most of my energy getting up in the air that in most cases there was not enough left to do the charge, so I skipped that mechanic altogether. On the upside, graphics and atmosphere are top notch. The fact that you even managed to put a boss fight in is awesome! |
| Dec 5 11:52:07 | 10m 49s | Infectious Void | ♥ 1 | Full marks on mood! Unfortunately it looks you ran out of time. I would have loved to see more. The visual effects and animation are very beautiful. I think some visual and auditive feedback would have given your attacks a little more heft, but I can see how that might have worked against the solemn atmosphere. |
| Dec 5 12:05:15 | 13m 08s | Behemoth | ♥ 2 | I love it! Being conservative with your shots goes against years of muscle memory so this took some time to get used to. However once I figured it out it wasn't too hard. I absolutely love your graphics and I am super jealous of your chiptune soundtrack. I was aiming for something similar but struggled a lot and in the end I'm not really happy with the results. What tool did you use? **Some areas for improvement:** You provide little visual feedback when enemies are hit. A little screenshake can go a long way in my experience. I'd recommend watching *The Art of Screenshake* for inspiration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U It's not a big issue as you are doing a lot right already, but a little bit more "crunch" might have been nice. The heat meter takes up valuable space. I see that it's crucial in the game's design, but maybe a bit smaller and in the upper corner might have been possible. Making the screen wider might have been an option but from a purist standpoint I can understand why you didn't want to do that. The boss fight was pretty awesome, but the laser went right through it, so I was confused whether I needed to hit a specific part. But when I saw the score go up, I realized that I was actually dishing out damage. Oh and controller support would have been really neat. All in all I very much enjoyed the game, thanks for making it. |
| Dec 5 12:26:33 | 21m 18s | LD40 - SirPumpy | ♥ 1 | This is insanely beautiful. I haven't seen anything like this for a long time in the Compo. Absolutely great. The music is perfect as well. The controls are really smooth and the game feels great. A tremendous achievement, congratulations. There is some room for improvement though. You don't have any clear visual or auditive indicators that you actually shot down an enemy. Took me a while to figure out that the enemies just drop into the sea. Changing the particle parameters and color, adding an explosion and playing a sound effect would do wonders here I think. I didn't get the feeling that the game got progressively harder over time. I understand you implemented auto-heal which is fine, but should be counteracted by an increase in difficulty. Should you keep working on this game, please let me know if there's a new version, I would definitely replay it. Great job overall. Probably the most beautiful game I've seen so far. |
| Dec 5 13:01:45 | 35m 12s | Junk | ♥ 1 | I enjoyed the concept very much. Great idea turning a classic game concept into a community thing. Some good points have been raised by other people, so I may have a few suggestions for improvement: - Provide a quick intro. It's not necessary to read the intro text for each round. Once upon loading the game is enough. Give a short one-liner summary for the player's effort after finishing a round and let them return to the action right away. The longer text was funny, but it doesn't add a lot if you have to read it each round. - Ask for the player's name in the beginning and remember it - Display the name of the player whose field you take over to allow recognizing someone's name without having to reading the intro. - If someone starts with a clean field, let them choose a name for that field and display that name while playing. Give the player the choice to continue working on the same field or pick another one after play. - Allow the player to select from a number of fields where you show a list of contributors and what they added/took away from the field. That way, some social construct could form where a bunch of people get together to try and clean up the messy play field of other people. Offer some reward/accomplishment if they do. Some chat lobby would work well together with that idea. - It's much easier to wreck playing fields than to heal them. Erase the "contribution" of people who are merely spamming blocks, e.g. by comparing "removed_lines / added_blocks" against a threshold. That way a team of workers can actually finish cleaning a playing field. |
| Dec 5 13:24:48 | 23m 03s | Danger Noodle | ♥ 0 | Wow, that was tough, I didn't make it past level 3. The graphics are sweet and adequate for that type of game. The music also fits but is a bit repetitive. I think I would have preferred if the game didn't have lives and you would immediately spawn back once you died. Not sure whether this was by design, but I was not able to collect some of the blobs. I was able to finish the level without them though. |
| Dec 5 16:02:02 | 2h 37m | Kabloo8 | ♥ 0 | Nice mix-up between Breakout and Puzzle Bobble! Really addictive. I didn't get past 51 though. The Graphics are very nice, the sound effects fit well. The extras are meaningful and fun to look at. The speed-up button is a very important feature. The only gripe I have is that it's pretty much the opposite of the theme, because the more balls you have, the easier it gets. Overall a very neat Pico-8 game. Great job! |
| Dec 5 16:17:37 | 15m 35s | How to Understand Alien | ♥ 0 | I have problems getting it to run. The whole screen is shifted to the side so half the text is cut off. A pity, It looks very promising. alien.PNG I can't select the resolution that you recommend above. The highest I can go is 1680x1050. Let me know if you find a fix, I'll be back to try again. |
| Dec 5 16:33:01 | 15m 24s | The Infernal Knowledge | ♥ 2 | That was weirdly fun. I really like your visual style and the fact that you combined hand-drawn 2D graphics with an ego-3d engine. You can never have too many Cthulhus ;) Unfortunately there wasn't much of a challenge, as I didn't think the Cthulhus were able to hurt me. I also got stuck in the level with the columns because the door wouldn't appear. There was one defeated enemy leaning on a column, maybe that did not trigger the door. |
| Dec 5 17:04:18 | 31m 17s | Usagi Story | ♥ 1 | Cute idea. I liked the graphics. The ending was a surprise. The difficulty ramp-up might have needed a bit more tuning. The main part of the game was extremely easy, and on the last two days the game became more challenging. I was able to rescue all rabbits without breaking much of a sweat (except the last two levels which required a bit more effort). Good job overall. |
| Dec 6 22:05:17 | 29h 00m | Time for Downgrade | ♥ 1 | Hey, just letting you know, the itch link is dead. Let me know when you fix it, I'll be back to play your game. Looks neat. |
| Dec 7 21:20:50 | 23h 15m | Gelatin Eater | ♥ 1 | I didn't think much of your game at first, but it opened up a strange fascination once I figured that you can make huge leaps if you wedged the ball between two ledges and bounced back and forth for a while. I think if you focused more on this aspect of the game and added some more polish to the controls (allowing the player more control over the ball, e.g. by adding more staggered ledges or slow motion at the press of a button), I think the core mechanics could have been quite addicting. I got to 1900 points and would have continued playing if I had the feeling that I could exploit these big jumps better. |
| Dec 7 23:13:39 | 1h 52m | OverPowered! | ♥ 1 | Awesome idea! I also spent considerable time trying to perfect the corner-camp strategy, but it only got me to 990 points. Once the red spreaders got me it was basically game over. I enjoyed the game a lot. I think some sound and visual effects would go a long way here and would probably be pretty simple to implement in unity (a quick bfxr session and some screenshake maybe). If you could have added a specific sound effect for each powerup that would have helped keep track of what you collected at each time. The Graphics are very basic but do the trick, the main show belongs to your own shots as they start to fill up the screen. From a difficulty ramp up it was okay, maybe a slightly faster early phase realized by slightly faster fire rate in the beginning. The enemy succession was pretty spot on with levels of escalation well sorted by threat. The red devils could do the most damage I think, so it was great that they came last. Some thoughts on communicating game play mechanics. I am usually not a big fan of "how to play" or tutorials, but in this case it may have been warranted, because the game idea goes against the intuition of "avoid enemy shots to not die". If you do write a how to play, I would advise to use as few words as possible and if possible implement a "show, don't tell" approach, especially in game jams where everybody is playing a lot of games and probably prefers to get right into the action. This video comes to mind, which discusses, among other things, how to show a player what they need to know about the game :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM Truth be told, I kinda messed that up this LD myself, though. |
| Dec 7 23:41:24 | 27m 45s | The More You Snow | ♥ 1 | Played it with my 7-year old daughter. I think it's one of her favorite games so far. I liked the concept of creating a misshapen ball that became harder to control as it grows. I think the controls might have needed a tiny but more tuning, as sometimes I felt there was almost no chance to take a turn once the ball was in motion and to prevent it from dropping off the edge. Apart from that it was a pretty fun entry. |
| Dec 8 16:02:54 | 16h 21m | Aimmo | ♥ 0 | The concept was well thought out, but could have used a few more mechanics to actually make this into a game. I found the randomness of the crosshairs a bit too chaotic, maybe some swaying motion might have been better with the radius and speed determined by the amount of ammo you have. That way, aiming would still be hard, but more a matter of skill instead of luck. Since there is no disadvantage in having low ammo, there is little incentive to actually conserve it. A simple modification would be to add score tally where you get a higher score when you hit a target with full ammo. You could award medals or stars according to the score achieved. That may increase replay value. Loading levels from text files sounds like a cool concept to create a lot of levels fast. Shame that it didn't seem to work out for you. |
| Dec 8 16:29:31 | 26m 37s | Greedy Dungeons | ♥ 3 | I love your logo and character design. The lore section was pretty funny and one of the rare cases I didn't mind reading an intro text (and it was obligatory as well!) The music set the mood well. Did I hear correctly that you composed multiple soundtracks? Nice! The coin sound effect was a bit too generic for my taste, maybe some more time with bfxr might have netted you something a bit more unique. Overall I enjoyed playing your game, I especially liked all the different approaches to the whole "harder to play if you carry more gold" theme: The "drop it to get past danger" mechanic, the choice you have of luring the gargoyles to the fire or simply shoving them in when you drop your gold, the path planning you have to do to get past the ghosts and so on. The main problem I saw with your game was the fact that it feels a bit too buggy. Now and then my character would simply stop until I released and pressed the move buttons again. When I dropped coins the circle around me would move inconsistently, sometimes shrinking and sometimes growing after a coin drop. Not sure whether that was intentional, but I would have preferred "drop a coin and the circle shrinks, collect one and it grows". Also getting resurrected at a checkpoint would decrease the circle, but not the coin amount. Also I was not sure whether that was some sort of glitch but I wasn't able to make it past the golems. I read the note that they die if they can't move anymore but I didn't get it. There was one golem that didn't move and didn't die (I think it died when I killed the gargoyles in the room). And the other golems moved. When I dropped all my gold I was able to push them in a position that trapped them in place, so they wouldn't move anymore, but still they wouldn't die. Maybe I'm dumb but I felt that could have been communicated better. All in all a solid entry, especially considering the sheer content of the game. If it were a bit more stable I would have loved to finish it. |
| Dec 8 17:13:48 | 44m 17s | ANTagonist | ♥ 2 | I like the concept of rescuing your resources from waves of attackers. The game plays fluidly and the difficulty ramp up is well-balanced. The graphics are clean and convey the idea of the game well. The best quality of the game is how smooth and fast everything moves. This allows for some nice fast-paced action. There some problems with the gameplay though. I played with controller and the thumbsticks only allowed shooting in 8 directions, which made the game unnecessarily hard to control. This is a big problem for games that require skill and reflexes. Also it wasn't clear at all times how the pickup of the food works. It seemed that you couldn't pick up the food from a live ant (fair enough), but apparently also if ants were nearby. On two occasions I couldn't pick up the food at all, maybe because it was too close to the screen? There are some tricks I would recommend to improve the game feel. For a game with low-key graphics these tricks can make the experience feel more robust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U Overall I would say it's a solid entry that could use a little polish. |
| Dec 8 19:38:42 | 2h 24m | A Dying City | ♥ 0 | Hey, just a hint: You need to mark the game on itch.io as Windows compatible, otherwise it won't allow downloading it via the itch client. |
| Dec 8 20:13:16 | 34m 34s | Super Economy Twins | ♥ 1 | I love the idea of subverting the coin collection trope and converting it so something darker. I wish you would have expanded on that premise. The levels don't differ very much and with the same story at the end it feels a bit repetitive. I think that with a more involved story and a bit more variety the game could gain a lot by a little bit of polish here and there. The graphics are simple yet adequate. One remark about the animation: Two-frame walking animations are tough to get right. Adding a third frame helps trick the eye that the animation is smoother than just back and forth. For 2-frame animation, this tutorial explains how to pull it off well (archived): https://web.archive.org/web/20111128203610/http://www.manningkrull.com:80/pixel_art/tutorials/walking.asp Audio-wise, I'm not sure how tight your time budget was but for a game like this, sound effects are very important. If you play around with bfxr, you will quickly find a few sounds that match the most important actions (jump, coin, squish enemy). Depending on your framework, it may not take more than an hour to select, save and add the sound effects and it will do wonders with your game feel. The controls are good but may also benefit from a little tuning to make them tighter. Overall a solid jump&run that shows promise but could use a little polish and variety. |
| Dec 8 20:35:22 | 22m 06s | Collateral Damage | ♥ 2 | I love the trail animation and the backdrop. Did you draw the space background by hand or use some sort of generator software? The gameplay is very solid and the controls are tight enough to play the game skillfully. I think the idea of having increasingly powerful weapons as a curse is quite nice. My favorite was the machine gun, afterwards it just becomes harder and harder. At the four-way gun my luck left me and the planets exploded. One thing to note about presentation, the bottom enemy indicators may have better been off above the energy bars instead of below. Alternatively the energy bars could have been placed outside the game window, or even integrated into the game itself (e.g. circular energy bar around the planet). Often I overlooked the arrows and missed an enemy wave. Also I'm not sure if it's my lacking attention, but I had the feeling that for some waves there were no indicators, which felt a bit frustrating. Maybe having them blink for a few second as a new wave arrives may have shifted attention to this very important aspect more clearly. For my taste, the sound effects were good, but I think having proper explosions except of blips may have been more fitting. Also a game like this begs for screenshake and excessive particle effects for explosions. Look at @terracottafrog's work for reference, he uses these two concepts in tandem masterfully. All in all certainly one of the better games that I have played, great job! |
| Dec 8 23:57:26 | 3h 22m | Guy is late for school | ♥ 1 | The first genuinely funny game I've played so far. Looks inspired by Carefulzilla from LD38. I liked it a lot. Not much to criticize. The graphics were a bit simplistic for a Jam game, but the character motion was very charming. Controls were nice and intuitive and allowed for fast and slow motion depending on your surroundings. I would have appreciated a slightly stronger camera shift to see upcoming obstacles sooner. That would have allowed to walk with fast strides more without fear that a house might appear out of nowhere. The music is very nice, but the sound effects could have been chosen a bit more carefully to support the humor better. All in all a very funny and fun entry. |
| Dec 9 00:26:46 | 29m 20s | LDAX: Ludum Dare Asset Exchange | ♥ 2 | Very cool innovative concept. I love the visual style, very appealing. This is a game that can do without music or sound effects and still be awesome (although maybe some soft clicking sound when pressing a button may have been nice). It's fairly easy to exploit though, but I guess simulating a crypto market is pretty tough. Great job! ldax2.PNG |
| Dec 10 00:51:07 | 24h 24m | Final Stand | ♥ 0 | Currently watching the Tim Beaudet stream. Game is looking very good and has an awesome soundtrack! I gameplay wise, I would like to recommend this video for you, it's about 2D games but the content still applies. I think your game would feel a lot better following some of the ideas in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U |
| Dec 12 19:41:35 | 66h 50m | Snowmania | ♥ 0 | I found your game very hard to control. Am I right that you can only change the snowman's path if you click very close to its feet? There was little indication that this was the case. Also it seems you added some sliding mechanic, which added to the confusion as sometimes even when I thought I clicked the right place, the snowman would not respond due to its inertia. Maybe having some visual indication may have helped make things clearer, like a ring around the snowman's feet to indicate where the player can click. Also having some sort of visual or audio clue when the snowman is sliding may also help gain control over the situation. On the upside, you create a very soothing atmosphere which is in great part due to the awesome, relaxing soundtrack. |
| Dec 12 20:04:49 | 23m 14s | The Exalted | ♥ 1 | Great job, the visuals are awesome! It's a fun and challenging game I found a good strategy to be slowly approaching the core and spamming it with shots. Any ricocheting shots may also hurt the core, but it should be enough to avoid them half-heartedly. Don't collect any extras except health, and only if it doesn't fill your bar completely (otherwise save them for later). The downside would be audio for me. Not sure if it was intentional, but I found it a bit too cacophonous. I understand that you probably wanted to capture the chaotic nature of the game, but maybe something more chill may have worked better. Also sound effects are a big deal for this kind of game. Bfxr should make it possible to add a few shot and ricochet effects in no time. Overall a pretty solid entry, congratulations! |
| Dec 18 09:12:09 | 133h 07m | Shooter Guy | ♥ 1 | You have all the basic mechanics of a FPS down, congratulations. I especially liked the Doom-like end-of-level switches and that you actually added a boss. Using voice work was a nice touch. I also thought the level was neat, if a bit repetitive. I would suggest you keep working on it to find out how to make it more fun to play. Of course enemy ai would be a huge improvement, but there are a lot minor things you can improve that are fairly easy to achieve. First of all, I would recommend this video to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U I know, it's about 2D platformers but a lot of information applies to any action genre really. Concretely, I would suggest you work on the flow of the game. Try increasing your fire rate and see if that makes your game more fun. Then of course do the same for your enemies to see if it forces the player to be on their toes more. Maybe make the player move faster as well. Make the moment of attack of your enemies more random and give a clearer indication when they fire (e.g. muzzle flash). Maybe have the tougher enemies take more than one hit and give an indication when they are hit. Maybe you can distinguish them besides the visuals, like giving them different weapons or attack patterns. Make the bullets travel much faster (make them hit almost instantaneously). I also think the player bullets may need some more accuracy, sometimes I had trouble hitting the already stationary enemies. I didn't think I saw the theme incorporated in your game except for that there was an increasing amount of enemies. Sound effects were nice, but the voice work could have used some balancing so all the sounds have a proper volume (steps a bit quieter, enemy voices/shots a bit louder, etc). For a 48 hour game it was not bad, and I am sure with some practice you can create something so much better next time. |
| Dec 18 09:29:54 | 17m 45s | Life's A Glitch | ♥ 1 | I love the visuals and the music. It creates a very unique atmosphere. Gameplay wise I am a bit torn. I found that standing on one side of the screen and spamming X and Z was a viable tactic as it prevented the glitches to come nearer, and only sometimes required to move to a lower or higher platform. I had trouble finding out what the glitch boxed are for. Apparently they increase the amount of glitches, but what was the benefit in collecting them? Some notes about the controls. Some control schemes mess with German or French keyboards, so using X/Z is may not be the best choice. I found that using A/S/D works for most people. If you want to stick with the X/Z scheme, you can make your German players happy by allowing to press either Y or Z for the same effect. Personally I would have preferred to jump down with Down + Jump instead of just Down. Also I would have liked if the direction wasn't locked but instead returned to the horizontal shot after you let go of the direction key, but that could just be personal preference. All in all I think you made a very unique game that stands out among the crowd. Great job! |
| Dec 18 09:46:36 | 16m 42s | The Pointy Stick Hypothesis | ♥ 0 | Awesome game! Full marks on mood. I especially love the music and the writing. The tree of life animation was very well designed for a minimalist choice of graphisc. Great job overall. Unfortunately the ending was a bit sudden. Some minor issues: The text did not fit entirely on the screen sometimes. It was still readable, but it felt a bit weird. The outside movement could have been a tad faster to make exploring a bit snappier. A note about the music: Maybe you could have created the music in a way that it loops better. As it is there is a short moment where the player notices that the track restarts. But that's a minor nitpick. Overall I would say it's one of the most atmospheric games I have played so far, great job! |
| Dec 18 09:57:06 | 10m 30s | Gophergeddon | ♥ 0 | Fun and chaotic variant of the foxes and rabbits simulation. I liked how everything escalates after you simply try to get rid of some gophers. I was genuinely surprised when the dogs were converted. Great job! For my taste, I think motion of the characters could have had a bit more range. It seems you chose an RNG to make everyone move a step in either direction randomly. However, by using a velocity variable I think you can make the game more dynamic and prevent all characters from bunching up in a corner of the playfield. |
| Dec 18 10:05:14 | 8m 08s | Danmaku Burp | ♥ 1 | I love a good SHMUP and you made a funny and fun variant on the genre, great job! My favorite parts are the whimsical graphics and sound effects that add a lot of charm to your game. I wish the player character would move a bit faster and that the *frantic bar* wouldn't overlap with the character. One bug I found was that the score does not reset when the game is restarted. |
| Dec 18 10:30:08 | 24m 54s | Robo Tomb | ♥ 1 | Very good execution of the theme and great concept. I liked how the graphics and the gameplay tied everything together to a coherent whole. I wasn't very good at this game so I only played up to the end of the second level, so I may have missed content. I think the one thing I would have preferred to make the game easier to pick up again after dying would have been to allow placing more than one bomb similar to Bomberman. That would allow me to clear less dangerous areas quicker. One comment: usually the itch.io client allows me to download web games but in your case, I got an error message: robo_error.PNG It's probably not your target platform, but maybe you wanted to know. |
| Dec 18 10:46:34 | 16m 26s | RedCell | ♥ 1 | Not bad for a first attempt! I like the charming graphics and the character animation. Some thoughts: As others have mentioned: The movement is a bit off. Normally you would expect your horizontal motion to remain in place when you jump. Depending on your programming language, you can fix this by querying all keys that are pressed down in the current frame. If the right key is down, move your character x pixels to the right, no matter whether a different key has been pressed. That way you can register a jump (jump key pressed + character standing on the floor) and keep moving at the same time. When you land, there is this cute step animation. However this breaks the game flow a bit because the player has to wait until the animation ends. An improved version of this would be to keep the step animation, but allow the player to jump as soon as the character lands (even if the animation is still playing). You may need to stop playing the animation upon jumping if it looks weird. Visually, I think the difference between the harmless water and the acid wasn't clear enough. It became obvious once I tried it, but these things should be communicated visually (I have trouble with this as well). I thought the collision with the acid was a bit too harsh, as I died numerous times when I thought there was still enough space. Professional game designers use all kinds of tricks to make the game more fun even if it goes in favor of the player and against the game rules (see this awesome article: https://kotaku.com/game-developers-explain-some-of-their-favorite-ways-to-1798749279). Things like Coyote Time are a brilliant way to make a game more fun, even if the player doesn't actively notice it's there. About audio, I would encourage you to look into bfxr to create some simple sound effects. That's basically what everyone is using. Sound effects give your game a lot of depth and are very easy to generate. If you want to get into writing music but have little experience I would recommend Bosca Ceoil. It's fairly simple to use and a good place to start. Despite all the criticism, I think you are on a good path. Don't be discouraged when the ratings come in. Usually the comments are more positive than the numbers and many first-timers are surprised and frustrated when the two don't match. Keep up the good work! |
| Dec 18 11:31:42 | 45m 08s | Cardhoard | ♥ 1 | A brilliant entry! This has to be one of the best Compo games I have played so far. Everything is so polished and works very well. The concept is great and the execution flawless. I love your choice of sound effects, they tie everything together perfectly, especially that "smack" sound when you mark a box. Did you record that yourself, because the other sounds seem generated except of this one? The music is simple and unintrusive so it provides a good auditive backdrop while letting the game speak for itself. Gameplay-wise it took me a while to figure out you were able to stomp so my first round consisted of avoiding boxes until the skull boxes accumulated to the top. At this point the games gets stuck in an endless loop because it repeatedly creates skull boxes on that column. After I figured out how to properly play the game that wasn't a problem anymore though. Overall the game offers the perfect balance between trying to get combos and trying not to play too risky to avoid getting squashed. Flawless balancing and execution. No major criticism. Definitely a keeper. *Edit:* Maybe a tiny thing, although that could be by design: I think the player would have more control over the game if you allowed to break the stomp chain because if a new block arrives at the current stomping column, the player has no chance to escape and this is an element of pure luck/risk and the rest of the game is firmly based on skill/risk. |
| Dec 18 11:58:21 | 26m 39s | Slightly annoying traffic | ♥ 1 | Awesome idea! I especially enjoyed that after seeing the screenshot and clicking for the first time, it became immediately clear what this game is all about. It was great fun to play and I can't wait to show this do my daughter, she will love it. Some criticism: For my taste the difficulty ramp up could be a bit steeper to have a more satisfying replay. I believe the longer the player has to wait for the game to reach core difficulty, the less likely they will restart the game. Unfortunately the game is pretty much over after the first crash. I found the game appealing especially because the screenshot promised all this mayhem during gameplay, but when I actually played the game I realized that the really fun part only comes when the game is over. This is all well and good (Super Meat Boy did something similar with their replay mechanic after the level was done), but I wished that the player got rewarded for playing well, so that the amount of traffic chaos after play was somehow tied to how long you played (maybe stop spawning new cars on a crash so that the crash only gets as large as the amount of cars which is directly tied to how long you have played). I get that you can let the game run and you can even interact with it after the first crash, but it is not really a reward, because it's always the same. Maybe you can keep working on it a bit more and make the crash chaos more part of the actual gameplay instead of an afterthought because I think this mechanic makes the whole thing so attractive and fun. Overall congratulations to an brilliant concept and a solid execution. |
| Dec 18 12:26:11 | 27m 50s | Sunken | ♥ 1 | I love these kind of dungeon crawlers and you managed to pull of something very atmospheric. Your graphics are awesome and the game appears very inviting. Definitely an achievement in such a short amount of time. I have some criticism though. I think I would have preferred not having to double tap to move, for me it didn't give the game anything but was a minor annoyance when you wanted to move quickly. The gameplay could have used an additional round of polish. I didn't feel the weight of the gold and didn't really understand how it was supposed to slow me down, but maybe I didn't get far enough. The cursed chests were more of a curse than a blessing because when I was low on health I couldn't afford to open them for fear of having less health afterwards or dying right away which happened once. The flooding mechanics were a nice touch to give the game some urgency but I never felt it was a real threat. All this is a bit unfortunate because I think if you had skipped the theme altogether and made a classic dungeon crawler, the game would have been outstanding and I would have kept playing for a long time. I hope this critique doesn't sound too harsh. I enjoyed played your game and you create a great atmosphere. Doing all this in 48 hours is a great achievement, despite some aspects that were a bit rough. |
| Dec 18 17:09:45 | 4h 43m | Aurora | ♥ 1 | Awesome and atmospheric game with minimalist but very pretty graphics. I enjoyed playing it a lot, a very relaxing experience, thank you. Some minor points of note: - It would have been nice to have a reload button. - The number of bullets influencing the enemy speed seems more like an afterthought and doesn't change the gameplay mechanics much, especially since you cannot control how many bullets you have (see previous point). - I think I would have preferred it if the music had some slight rhythm that would change throughout the game and the enemy speed adapted to the music. It wouldn't fit the theme, but the game might have benefited from it. - I wasn't able to play the game in the itch client (normally this works even for web builds) |
| Dec 20 15:53:30 | 46h 43m | Intruder alert | ♥ 1 | Just letting you know that the game does not play on the itch.io client, likely because you haven't marked it as Windows-compatible. Tag me if you fix it and I'll give your game a shot. |
| Dec 21 09:46:11 | 17h 52m | Famous Knight | ♥ 1 | Great entry! I love the visuals and sound effects, charming and humorous. I wasn't able to figure out why I should choose the popularity powerups. I always chose the stat powerups and the only disadvantage was that I had to repeat the first level to raise my popularity enough to enter the final dungeon. Maybe some tuning might have helped here. Also I feel that the fans, as cool as they were, could have been integrated into the concept more. From what I understand they are only a minor nuisance (except the autograph guy) and it not super necessary to save them because you are rewarded new fans when you beat the boss. I guess it's tough to make the fans more active in hindering the player's progress and at the same time not make the game frustrating. Overall I enjoyed the game a lot, thanks! |
| Dec 21 10:10:47 | 24m 36s | Lose weight | ♥ 0 | Cute flappy bird clone. I liked the eat/lose weight mechanics. Unfortunately the top of the screen seems to push the bird back forcefully, sometimes right into the obstacles. Other than that the game played very smoothly. |
| Dec 21 10:29:42 | 18m 55s | The Legend of the Bikini Armor | ♥ 1 | The game is quite strong in the graphics and humor department (your choice of design notwithstanding). I enjoyed the fact that there is controller support. Controls could be a bit tighter, look up "Coyote Time". Also, in jump and run games like this it is usually better to not use "up" for jumping. Assigning a jump key to the hand that is not running is generally more ergonomic. In one instance, I was able to get myself stuck in an area where I couldn't make two-block jumps because I still had my armor on and there were no rats left to get hit. It's a shame really that you didn't get to finish the game. It's a pretty cool starting point to make something greater. Adding sound effects and music will do wonders to the game and with snappier controls I believe it could become quite popular on Newgrounds or a similar platform. |
| Dec 21 10:46:02 | 16m 20s | Don't Rock the Boat! | ♥ 0 | Nice one. I dig the graphics, which add a lot of charm to the game. The buying/selling mechanic reminds me a bit of the classic Amiga game Ports of Call. Unfortunately I had trouble playing the game properly. The crashing mechanic was a bit wonky and I sometimes ended up insta-dying when the boat was wedged between two rocks. When I first entered a town, I thought I might go all the way and filled the boat to the brim. Unfortunately the game was broken after that because I couldn't go forward anymore (the boat went backward instead). On my next attempt I bought only one barrel and successfully brought it to the next town only to realize that the price had gone down and I actually lost money on the trade. I think the game is on the right path overall, but needs some tweaking to really make it fun. Being able to plan trading routes with different goods and figuring out where to buy low and sell high, with a challenging and fair gameplay that rewards risk but does not feel frustrating, and finally by not ending the game on a crash but allowing you to continue with financial loss instead might make this quite succesful on platforms like Kongregate. I'd urge you to continue working on this. |
| Dec 21 10:55:03 | 9m 01s | Hasempfeffer | ♥ 1 | A smooth and colorful experience, nicely done! I love the sound effects, especially the bowling pin effect. the rabbits and foxes look very nice and the fading grass effect is awesome! Thematically it's not clear why the fox would care about the green grass, so some short intro might have been nice. I wish the fox's attack was a bit wider as I found actually hitting the rabbits that I wanted to get was a bit fiddly. Some sort of targeting hint might have worked in your favor as well. The reload time could have been a smidge shorter to make the game even smoother. Overall a fun entry, good job! I hope you are recovering well from your surgery and will reach the 20 votes. |
| Dec 21 11:09:53 | 14m 50s | Samurai Shaver | ♥ 1 | I love rhythm games and this one is near perfection. Everything fits together so well to create a coherent whole. The art style and to music match greatly. I admire how you fuse the classic Japanese composition with authentic samples to a retro chiptune sound. May I ask what tool you used to compose it? The gameplay is super tight and the visual and auditive cues are flawless, from the the guys bobbing to the beat to the game actually showing you the rhythm in advance without taking the player off the action for too long. The humor is also spot on. The basic premise alone is hilarious, but the execution with the gushing blood, surprised faces and the funny audio effect makes this a masterfully crafted experience. The difficulty ramps up nicely as well. In the beginning still very well manageable, it turns to off beats and triplets in the final level. The only complaint I may have is that the theme feels a bit shoehorned, but that's really nitpicking for a great game as this. Definitely one of my favorites of LD40. Great job! |
| Dec 21 11:24:05 | 14m 12s | Office Robber | ♥ 0 | I was looking forward to playing your game after seeing the noodle arm characters on your feed, such a pity that you didn't manage to finish it. The artwork and the music are brilliant. Can't say much about the gameplay itself as I had trouble controlling everything because the mouse was so fast and it was turning all the time. I think having the character move in the direction the mouse is facing would have helped playability a lot. Having all these narrow doorways didn't help either. I didn't really figure out what to do. I was able to pick up stuff, but didn't know what really counted. The coat rack and fire extinguisher were displayed in the GUI but nothing special happened when I picked them up. Also I didn't quite get what the item with the number was supposed to be. Apparently I was supposed to find more than one of them, but I couldn't. On my first run, the countdown went to 0 and it said that I had won, but I'd only collected the coat rack, so I was a bit confused about what the purpose was. It's a shame really, because the visuals and audio are there and from looking at screenshots, it seemed to be a super polished and fun experience. Time is a harsh mistress I guess ;) Good luck on your future endeavors, I think you have a very talented team. |
| Dec 22 12:26:46 | 25h 02m | Castle Diorama | ♥ 2 | Very short but beautiful game, I could easily see it on an app store, great job! Cute sound effects like in Samorost would make this so much better. |
| Dec 22 17:54:17 | 5h 27m | Dog-Off! | ♥ 2 | Simply brilliant. The idea is great. The visuals, the music and implementation all feel super polished. I had a lot of fun although I wasn't very good at the game. Not sure whether this was deliberate, or just tolerated but I noticed that it's possible to drink and eat at the same time. Didn't really help get a high score though :( One of the strongest Jam entries I have played so far, great job! |
| Dec 27 17:03:06 | 119h 08m | Infernus: The Descent | ♥ 1 | Wow, an NSFW game at Ludum Dare, well I'll be. It's quite impressive what you managed to put together in just a few days especially with the high quality artwork. The content is certainly there but unfortunately you didn't manage to add the necessary depth, so gameplay feels a bit prototype-ish, I would assume time to have become an issue in the end. I think going into the castle to fight a boss that could only be beaten with leveling up the character (maybe finding some random treasure) might have rounded off the game some more even without designing a lot more monsters. This could have been achieved by keeping captured folk in the dungeon to auto-generate energy (maybe the secretary could have accomplished this during your absence) which in turn would have allowed leveling up the character (so no further assets required). Upgrading the cell might have allowed to keep more than one creature captured which again might have increased auto-generated energy and added a little more to accomplish. I know you accomplished a lot and you were likely burning at both ends towards the end, but I think some cheap coding tricks may have made the game feel a little more complete without too much effort (unless you added the boss fight of course). Gameplay-wise the game could use a little more polish to make clicks register a bit more snappily. I tried to grind through the fights quickly but for this speedy play style it felt like I had to click twice for every action until it registered. One specific technical issue: I am running on a 16:10 resolution and the mouse cursor does not fit the clickable menu entries, which is especially frustrating on the battle screen, since it forced me to click the option above the one I actually wanted. Apart from that I think you are a on a very good way to make a good adult-oriented browser game that could find its audience easily. I would encourage you to keep working on it and make it a full length experience. |
| Dec 28 14:26:06 | 21h 23m | Abstraction Blaster | ♥ 2 | Nice one, I especially liked the players' shot pattern. Unfortunately I was only able to play it alone, so I missed the effects of competition. The enemy shot patterns were neat and tough to avoid, as it should be in this genre. There are a few things that I would suggest to improve the game: - Offer higher resolution. In Gamemaker this is a one-liner (unless you want to be able to switch between resolutions, then it's a little more effort, but nothing serious). Full screen would have been nice - In a bullet hell shmup, visual effects are king. Especially when it comes to registering enemy hits, which is completely missing in your game. Often I didn't realize whether I was damaging an enemy or not. - I always recommend this presentation about game feel, a lot of the points discussed there would improve the fun factor of your game a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkgkIXZ_13Y |
| Dec 28 14:37:53 | 11m 47s | The Perfect Halay | ♥ 0 | That was quite a unique experience. The game's graphics are minimalist but coherent, the music gives it a lot of atmosphere. I just wish there was a clearer indication precisely where in the Halay my dancer would enter. It was a bit frustrating to aim for a spot only to realize that the dancer would enter the spot right next to the one I was aiming for. I think it may have worked in the game's favor if there was a way to remove a dancer from the Halay, maybe by achieving a combo of 5 consecutive numbers or something like that. The way it is, an error remains an error until the end of the game which I feel lowers the motivation to keep playing. You should prevent a player from leaving the screen. It was a bit fiddly sometimes to find the dancer again once it leaves the screen. Also it would have been a neat touch if the inactive dancers would wander around the periphery of the room, might make the game a little more lively. Overall I think the game was quite innovative and fresh, but could have used a little more polish. |
