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tuism

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TimestampSince previousGametuism's comment
Dec 4 10:13:02 Robotic Sports ♥ 0 It's very pretty - the new post-processing stack is a godsend, everyone's stuff looks next-level now :) But the controls handles very badly and really let the whole experience down - I was never sure whether I needed to look down at the ball to pick them up (and it would be better if I didn't have to, or maybe it'd be fine if the controls were tighter). The control scheme wasn't bad - it was kinda intuitive, so kudos on that point. The design of the game is also a bit off - it's really easy to not be hit by the AI's attacks, and once all their balls end up on your end, well, you can take your time tossing at the opponent. But the deflector's charge time is really a non-issue considering it's virtually impossible to toss balls at any decent rate. Even if this were two players with perfect controls, I think the game design itself needs a more work. Oh the music. A bit more variation would have been very welcome!
Dec 4 10:31:02 18m 00s Secret ♥ 1 Really great idea, I appreciate the sentiment and the mechanic design very much! The graphics are also pretty great (yay post-processing stack, it's definitely trending this LD). But the game itself is simply not fun for several reasons, unfortunately: The controls - the need to both be close enough to highlight someone and then also to click on them makes it really hard to actually do what you want to do. The hitbox probably could tweaked for that. The way the collisions work between characters make moving through the space and crowd really difficult too. And it's not a challenge that one can overcome through clever moves, so it just feels like you know what you want to do but you can't do it. The way people turn on you is completely random and there's not enough time to remedy it once you see it. Which means the best way to play is to tell someone, and then just walk with them. I don't know if they would randomly turn, or if they are "born" with being good or bad. Either way, it's all completely random so it feels like there's no skill component. One could argue that it's "realistic" in that way but that doesn't really help the game be enjoyable.
Dec 4 10:40:33 9m 31s Puzzle Trubbles ♥ 1 I don't quite understand how this works... You want to shoot the shuttles to get the balls off, but the balls will sink you. What's the optimal play? There's no optimal place to shoot them off (like if you shoot them off over the water they won't land on your ship for example). Plus it's really hard to tell when the shuttle can or can't be shot, that's confusing. The aiming of the thing doesn't really work all that well, which means the best move is to just leave it on one place and shoot. Which works because the shuttles always take the sameish path so there's no need to aim anywhere.
Dec 4 10:46:57 6m 24s Collateral Damage ♥ 3 Oooooh, I like this, a lot :D The idea of collateral damage with forced upgrades and friendly fire that hits things you want to protect is really interesting. It does make the game a bit awkward - like you want to go balls to the wall blow everything up, but you're forced to squeeze out a shot here and there for accuracy's sake. It's a great idea and sentiment. And all that despite some not-awesome things: The music... It's there, but it's a bit annoying and jarring against the atmosphere of the game. The controls are tight and good but feels so wrong - it's a spaceship-looking-thing that behaves like a top-down rambo. That feels so weird. I'm sure you could get controls that felt good while behaving more like a spaceship. But again, despite all that, I really like the idea and it plays quite well :)
Dec 4 10:52:14 5m 17s The Golem Hunter ♥ 0 I downloaded the OSX version and opened it - the music came on, and the game seems to be there, but it ran at like a frame every 5 seconds or something. Impossible to play, not sure why. Tried lowest detail settings too.
Dec 4 11:02:17 10m 03s Star Smugglers ♥ 3 The concept is great, injecting humour in this with parents' call is interesting :) Though: I wished it were more engaging - the overall package gave me very little to "care" for. I think it's due to many little details, like: - The overall design is very bland, almost everything is monochrome, and that makes it hard to know what to focus on, and makes it hard to parse easily, makes it tiring to engage with. - The font is not reading-friendly, and that's bad for something that's effectively a text adventure. - The choices could do with some design - have the action bigger, or different colours, etc. That makes skimming choices easier. - The chances of things could be presented easier to understand/read/parse at a glance. - The shipping multiplier could be clearer to indicate that your goods get more valuable after each successive run. So yeah overall it's an information design/ui problem that keeps this from being more interesting, I think.
Dec 4 11:09:31 7m 14s Don't Get Hangry ♥ 1 I would love to check this out........ If there were a Mac version! >_<
Dec 4 11:20:31 11m 00s MAMMONITE LD40 ♥ 1 Great art, cool idea. But the execution is really not very interesting. I have no option to loot or not loot? Just hit things or be hit. I guess the skill here is to start your attack further away from the enemy as your bag grows larger. That's not really all that interesting. The pillars blocking the view is completely bad. The camera does nothing to compensate. I played on the web version and the death screen is broken - I can barely see the top sliver of the button.
Dec 4 11:54:29 33m 58s The more possibilities you have the harder it gets ♥ 0 Hmmmmm, I think this is a case of a cool idea but inevitably it's not a fun idea. At least, not for me. You could call it an allegory for constraining options for players, I guess. The controls confuse me, there's no point to the tank driving controls when a simple left is left, up is up etc would work much much better.
Dec 4 12:03:48 9m 19s Dungeon Chat Bot ♥ 0 So... I like the idea, but I don't know how it works. I get into the game, wait for my turn, try help, try all the commands, and it just says I can't use items and there's no way to attack. I don't know, it's a cool idea, but I think it needs to be simplified. Also I don't like the way the bot responds to the help command - instead of separate messages, it should all be in one big message that breaks down individually. Right now help is really confusing to use. Hope to see an evolution of this! I love experimental stuff! :)
Dec 4 12:37:03 33m 15s TetrisTank ♥ 1 I really really like the idea, but I have no idea how it works - the centre of mass indicator is a good call, but it doesn't mean very much as I've had many times where the center of mass is low but it still topples. But what are you *supposed* to do? I see wheels but the tank doesn't drive. I see a number top left with an enemy next to it but it doesn't go down when I seem to have hit an enemy. The idea is really cool but I really want to have a game to play, a challenge I can overcome, a system I can balance :)
Dec 4 14:22:12 1h 45m Space Special ♥ 0 The idea is interesting. It's like a simplification of how Diablo and other power-up loop with stronger enemies work, I guess. The "upgrades" doesn't feel more powerful, there's very little indication of how much power you or the enemy has - the "health", if that's it, being a number on a fast-moving enemy doesn't really tell you much. I don't know how much "power" I have through upgrades. I think improving the feedback could improve the game a lot. And the controls are really difficult to use, the keys felt like they were all over the place.
Dec 4 14:27:11 4m 59s Fruit Hater ♥ 2 I like the concept - the design intent is sound. But the execution was not up to the same par: - Can't see ahead enough to make meaningful choices when you make a jump - No indication of how a jump is going to look, again, makes the jump pretty much blind luck Those are the main points, otherwise just general feedback polish is needed to know that you're being damaged - to be more responsive to what's happening.
Dec 4 15:22:24 55m 13s Treasure Balloon ♥ 0 Love the look of it! The concept is really appealing, the game design feels like it could be really good, but a couple things let it down: - I don't feel like I can see far enough to make any meaningful moves, especially given the controls: - The controls, using keyboard repeat as a limiter of speed doesn't suit the game. One could "cheat" the speed barrier by tapping really quickly, but that's not fun and very exhausting. It should be a continuous move speed. Maybe it's a limitation of pico8, I dunno. - The drop loot key is wrong :)
Dec 4 15:47:12 24m 48s Get in Shape ♥ 0 Yeah, mac download doesn't work :(
Dec 4 16:01:13 14m 01s Fatigue Blade ♥ 2 I had to zoom out on my browser window to be able to see everything in your game. And there wasn't a full screen button? Seems like on principle, you have a sound set of game design that's basically how games like zelda and such works. Predictable enemy movements, attacks, progression via unlocking, etc. It's all there. But the general "feel" of the game isn't there - when you're hit, you don't bounce back, when you hit the enemy, they don't react. There's long stretches of walking. The dodge doesn't really work because you need to press in a direction first for it to mean anything and the enemies and their attacks move much faster than is useful to even think about using dodge. So I think that you scoped this game up waaaaay too much for a first game - instead of trying to make all of zelda, maybe try to make something smaller first - the first room, with one enemy. See how you can get one room to feel good rather than so many rooms that doesn't. Edit: Oooookay, I read someone else's comment and figured out you want your fatigue low. The way the mechanic works you basically wanna spam your attack even when there's nothing to hit. I don't see any reason not to be doing that, and thus this "design" isn't really that interesting - there's no risk in just spamming attacks and dashes.
Dec 4 16:12:00 10m 47s Gophergeddon ♥ 1 I like the idea but I have no idea what's actually going on, the initial goal of getting rid of gophers was easy because it was the only thing to do, then everything else feels like I'm bashing those buttons at random and seeing what comes out... Like for example, at what point does it not allow you to progress when you have all cats? I noticed that you can just click on the stuff on the board to clear them. Was that intentional or not? If so then why not just clear cats, drop cats, clear cats, etc? I really like the theme and I wished it all played out in a way that's much more understandable, and making goals clearer would really help.
Dec 4 16:22:28 10m 28s Junk ♥ 1 Okay, I get it, it's Tetris. The fact that your old board is someone else's starting board is interesting, but doesn't have any actual impact on the gameplay in the end. Clearing the board has been seen in previous Tetris before. Time limitation has been seen in previous Tetris before. I *love* that you're experimenting with "leave some info for someone else to play with", but this game doesn't really use that effectively! Which is really unfortunate! Additionally, mac version - after every drop of a tetromino, there's effectively a small lag which is really REALLY annoying given the timed nature of the game. I'm guessing that you're communicating with the server at every drop? If so that seems to be overdoing it. And it really shouldn't hang the game, however briefly.
Dec 4 16:28:26 5m 58s I'm Over Encumbered! ♥ 1 The problem with this is that the core combat isn't fun. Dodging and attacking is really bland, so that's really hard to give the core idea of the game any test. The mouse aiming doesn't really work very well. The inventory system seems superfluous? Couldn't you just drop your loot without having the entire system? Are there even things other than gold that could go in there? I might have missed something?
Dec 4 16:35:23 6m 57s Cushion Catastrophe ♥ 1 Yeah, the procedural generation needs a bit of care in games like this or else giving players an impossible jump makes them really sad. Otherwise, cool concept, just very bland on execution. I wish the music didn't repeat that same bar over and over? I noticed that you do have a longer loop, but that main bar kept going again and again. A little variety there would have gone a very long way.
Dec 4 16:44:51 9m 28s Robo Tomb ♥ 1 Hmmmmm, okay firstly, it's a nice solid entry, it works, and works well enough. There's nothing that feels really broken about any of it. Which is a big plus for jam games. BUT The game mechanics feel disjointed, as if they were all made for different games. The trail of gnomes doesn't really work with the bomb mechanic, the cross bomb really didn't make much of any difference, the enemies and the gnomes didn't interact in a satisfying way (often you run away from an enemy but they'd still get your gnomes). The bombs themselves feel like they weren't a fun weapon in this scenario. So... I dunno, it's okay, but it doesn't really stick out in any way.
Dec 4 17:14:37 29m 46s Fiscal Dungeon ♥ 2 The concept is interesting, but the execution effectively means it's a reverse health system. Beyond the joke value of it, there's not enough there for it to be an interesting mechanic in this design. If there were aspects like buying upgrades with the money you carry? Or something else that makes it more than just a health system? Also when you play with theme like this it begs the question of why can't you just drop all your money? Are you a kleptomaniac? If so how does that feel when you play? Shouldn't you be physically drawn to the treasures? The enemies attacks are well done, the bullet hell sort of feeling is good. The movement speed is lacking. The player's attack doesn't feel fun. Training your mouse on an enemy while moving isn't interesting and gets tedious. Slowing the movement speed is in theory a punishment, but in gameplay it's not fun. It's like losing a turn in boardgames - it's not interesting. Would love to see more design on this concept!
Dec 4 17:33:16 18m 39s Dense Revolve ♥ 2 Soooo, what they say about Ludum Dare and platformers is true :P It looks good, it feels good. The simple monochromatic style is great. The movement feels solid, the attacks too. But the mechanic... It took some figuring out, but once you do, I feel that it's really flawed. I've seen a bunch of people use the "more of X = slower movement" trope in this jam, and I think that not every game can be Dark Souls. It's too easy to slide into a bad outcome where the optimal play is to just dump excess and run in - in a system where the excess means something, it works, but when the excess doesn't really mean anything, it just encourages you to reload, shoot blanks into the air, and jump up and unload one shot. Duck down, rinse, repeat. There's no incentive to not play like that, which just means the best play is also the most boring one. There's a lack of risk/reward. Oh and the movement is a bit slidey, it's impossible to turn around a bit on the edge of a platform without falling down. And turning around is important here because that's your shooting direction. Other than that, everything is super solid, the only thing I couldn't find was player health or boss health.
Dec 4 19:51:21 2h 18m IntenSEAty ♥ 7 The presentation is top notch, the music is pretty decent... But after all the chrome of the great graphics and music, there's not really that much gameplay. - The enemies just swarm up and shoot occasionally, there are no patterns to predict and nothing to engage with. - The enemy bullets are almost camouflaged. For a game about dodging things, this means any lapse of concentration and you'll eat a shot easily. - The player movement is a bit too slippery and deters the player from making daring manoeuvres. I basically just sat clearing one side of the screen, occasionally dodging shots, and stray off the other half to shoot a few things if there seem to be a gap in the bulletstorm. And a lot of the game is like that - a single rhythm. No rise or fall. I see that there are more enemies that appear later, but I was bored by that time. And mostly the same applies - except now with the enemy that dashes towards you, you have no way of telling whether your shots would kill it so you don't know whether to dodge or not dodge. And dodging something that fast is again not fun in the sea of bullets and with slippery controls.
Dec 4 20:02:22 11m 01s The band of explorers ♥ 0 Cool pixel art, decent presentation. The idea is really cool, but I really wish the game engages more with it. They basically all die of their own accord and there was literally no reason to think about the mechanic at all. It would be more of a challenge to get at least some of them to the end, which was basically impossible. The character is also really slidey, so that makes the precision platforms really difficult to do, and that's not a fun difficulty.
Dec 5 10:38:48 14h 36m Western Hero ♥ 3 Mac build please... :)
Dec 5 10:43:39 4m 51s Gold Taxi ♥ 2 Mac build? Can't play :)
Dec 5 10:55:41 12m 02s Catastrophic Cities ♥ 2 I really enjoy the idea of a city builder that is SIMPLE. I've been working on a city builder idea of my own for ages, but have never really gotten it anywhere nearly good enough to show. The balance between simplicity and feeling like you have agency in your choices is a tough line to walk in game design, and just building enough of a system to feel like a complex enough city to govern over is also hard. Your game looks great, but I have so much trouble trying to figure out what does what - maybe the system works well, maybe the system doesn't - I can't really tell because I can't follow the causality of what's going on on the screen - your text explanation is fine, but noone reads, and the moment-to-moment gameplay relies on feedback to the players. And then there's the matter of the random builds - do the locations of stations and hospitals etc matter? If they do then I should be able to direct where they go. If not then maybe the graphic you have there doesn't make sense - or it needs to be made clearer that it doesn't matter, that you can see the station putting out fires from any distance, for example. The icons on the screen aren't really clear - I can understand the fire icon but I can't tell whether my efforts in spending has made any difference. I can't tell if I overspent or underspent on the fire department - I spent, and the fires hasn't gone out. Then the putting money into things thing - I can't tell what the money has gone to/is going to. I can't tell if I've overspent or underspent - again, feedback to the player on this is needed. Feels like the dials about spendings should be locked in where they were, having to hit + every turn feel wrong. Are there goals? Like growing the population? Or keeping bad things down? I can't really tell.
Dec 5 11:07:57 12m 16s Hellrena ♥ 2 There are some really great ideas and mechanics in there, and the sense of progression with different enemy types is pretty rad. Unfortunately the ideas are let down by the execution. The basic movement, shooting and combat is unsatisfying, there's very little in the way of juice and feedback to make hitting the enemy feel good. The enemy movements are also bare and doesn't feel good. Controls wise the clicking to shoot is problematic - In this case, being able to hold down the button to shoot at the maximum interval speed would have been much better. Also the reloading doesn't make sense - the best way to play would be to just click both mouse buttons continuously. Reloading should be its own interesting choice. The way the corpses are dealt with means it's basically a game of entropy - you WILL lose ground to irritating corpses, and the rate at which it happens is too slow for meaningful challenge to set in - the escalation is too slow and that makes the experience a bit boring. You want to speed the challenge up so that it feels exciting, so the player can lose and come back to play again, rather than feeling like you're just waiting for the next thing. Also feel like there's not much choice/challenge in the corpse piling up - if there were ways to make them sit on each other or something, one could conceivably harness the skill of piling corpses on top of one another to avoid having the field saturated so quickly. This would require tweaks to the rest of the game - player movement speed, enemy movement speed, etc, too, of course.
Dec 5 11:20:53 12m 56s Infernus: The Descent ♥ 5 I always appreciate edgy and interesting design, and willingness to break with norms is good. That said, the graphic nature of the game seems completely arbitrary andI didn't see any reason for it to be lewd. So... The gameplay is basically meeting dogs, slashing once and attacking 3 times, repeat until dead, go back to the office and come back with more health, and repeating until... What? Repeated the same thing until 100 energy to see what happened. Then 130. Found a gate that didn't do anything. Then got bored and left. The game needs to give me a lot more direction so I know what to look for and what to expect. And the core gameplay is completely predictable and not challenging.
Dec 5 11:28:35 7m 42s S - The Game ♥ 1 Really interesting idea, I think the progression could use some work, and there's a lot of waiting around so you might want to reduce the time it takes to respawn a letter. The controls could be better - half the time I'm trying to get something to where I want it to be rather than figuring out where something should be. The pegs that appear and disappear are really frustrating, and not in a good way. I can't tell if it's based on timing or some other mechanic, and that just made me close the game. Some indication of what's supposed to happen would be great. Also... What does this have to do with the theme? In summary, I do like the game, but it needs more polish to make it really good.
Dec 5 14:18:36 2h 50m Reroute Reboot ♥ 1 This looks hella slick, but the interface is really really difficult to get into. It's a given that noone reads - I tried the thing and went back to this page to read the thing twice before getting a clue about what's going on. The mechanics are really interesting, but the interface is annoying as hell. Separating the base from the panels to set their destinations is annoying. Needing to click each timeslot to set each of them is annoying (clicking and dragging should work). The "menu" looks so much like it's part of the gameplay that I quit the game thinking I was playing it. Ultimately though it's an interesting engine to optimise - I found that it feels like given that you can't affect the number of bits you output, there's not much to do other than to drop your "defences" in some parts and to make sure that you're not "wasting" capacity by over-protecting some parts, and direct all of that to try and attain a mainframe to get more firepower. That's pretty interesting :) I do wonder about the game beyond grasping that initial concept of not wasting resources, then it becomes a matter of watching incoming focussed attacks to counter and then redirecting everything to offence. Once you take down another mainframe you pretty much push right through everything else - it's a matter of going to your outermost nodes and clicking all the enemy nodes :P I just wished the interface wasn't so annoying...
Dec 5 14:46:07 27m 31s [Web] Bunion ♥ 0 The game's not working for me, on chrome, the game loads but the controls do nothing. Music works. On firefox, it's just blank and doesn't even load. On a Mac if that makes any difference.
Dec 5 14:54:51 8m 44s Feed Them ♥ 2 Great presentation, lots of pretty graphics and polished visuals. The game itself - the movement was fine, but felt unsolid. The characters slid around and didn't really feel good to control. Felt too fast as well, which takes away from the skill component of the game. I think slowing everything down could make the game feel a lot less random and chaotic and thus not skillful. The game mechanic itself was okay, basically a reverse health concept. I feel like there could be a lot more indication of what's desirable and what's not, as getting hit by food and picking up food looks identical and at the speed this runs it feels difficult to tell. The aiming and tossing didn't feel really good - it needs to be more solid and purposeful, again, it just feels random and chaotic and not skillful. Great idea, though could be tightened up!
Dec 5 16:36:22 1h 41m Drift Punk ♥ 3 Holy heck the production value on this is insane, I can hardly believe this was made by one person in 72 hours. Polished all the way through, love the graphics, presentation, but uhhhh, not quite optimised enough... I went to the lowest resolution, lowest detail and it still lagged enough to be really annoying. I might not have the best machine but one shouldn't need one to play a game like this. The controls feel a bit too sensitive? Or just not tight enough. Turns are too tight and there's not enough fine control to manoeuvre satisfactorily. The health system is a mystery - sometimes I crash once and game over. Sometimes I crash a couple times and nothing. Sometimes I head-on crash and nothing. The health meter is hard to read. The difficult controls combined with this unforgiving and mysterious health system means it's quite difficult to build up speed and feel awesome. The vehicle doesn't handle with enough nuance to feel really interesting. I think that's a big issue. Drifting and driving over stuff and trying things knowing the controls allowed you to was a big part of crazy taxi!
Dec 5 16:40:22 4m 00s Magus O-Minus ♥ 1 No.... mac build? :)
Dec 5 16:52:17 11m 55s The More You Make ♥ 1 So torn! I really like this as a collection, and there are a couple really cool games in here, but overall, like you're trying to prove that your games are getting worse as you make more? Lol in a way that worked :) The effort is amazing and I appreciate the amount of work and thought :) Technically though, I can't believe a game this tiny lags THIS much. So, so much lag. I played the chrome web build, I'm on a mac. And I would say sacrifice particle effects to get the game to play well enough. Also I feel like some of the games simply dragged on. Cardinal, racing car, etc. By you not booting the player out quickly (or the game being hard enough to boot them out quickly enough) you leave the opportunity for the player to actually get bored. So I think the warioware approach to this is prudent - end each of the mini games sooner than later, one way or the other. Then, a minor but I think important thing, putting virtuaman first means that a lot of people would not read (a lot of people do not read and it's noone's fault, it's just how it goes) and would go straight in and think your game's broken because the game does nothing, even after reading "oh these are the controls". At least make virtuaman react in some way to key inputs and say "hey man I'm just chilling" "quit to play a real game" or something. Cool stuff :)
Dec 5 20:56:37 4h 04m Life's A Glitch ♥ 1 It's a black fly... In your chardonnay, it's a game that crashed... When its theme is glitching :) Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 22.50.06.png It's a really solid game, very challenging, simple, clean core loop. It might be a biiiiit too simple, though. The graphic style and juice is amazing, spot on, and the controls are pretty good for the most part. The jump height that varies between getting up to the next platform and not is a really great touch. But I found the movement too fast, and left very little room for small manoeuvres, like dropping off the side of the platform and turning around immediately. So that was a annoying. Also the shooting was a bit annoying - I know I want to shoot as fast as possible, but the best way to do that is annoyingly tap the button quickly. That's both tiring and creates a physical barrier to playing the game well - if the shooting speed were capped, you could balance the game to that cap. But now it just means some people will be worse at the game through no fault of their decision making or actual skills (I don't count rapid firing a button a real skill). I kind of also wish there were more patterns to the glitch to discern. But I guess it's fine as it is, a great big goo of a boss character. Other than that, really polished, good stuff :)
Dec 5 21:27:00 30m 23s A cozy winter walk ♥ 1 I really like the thought of the game, but it really wasn't "fun" or "interesting". I would have liked to feel more agency - there were all these moments that could introduce agency and give player actual choices that could make differences in the game, but alas it wasn't meant to be. I ran through a second time without picking anything up and nothing was different... A missed opportunity. The controls felt sticky? It would be nice if the movement weren't against a keyboard repeat where there was a delay before moving, and the fastest way was to tap faster... I really liked the little touches that were in the presentation - like the rainbow texts, wobbly texts, etc.
Dec 6 11:04:54 13h 37m Zealot ♥ 0 A really polished game, well put together, well oiled. The game however is really hard to wrap your head around - I play a lot of tabletop games, and I like the mechanics and ideas in here, but it's difficult to understand. The "aoe" cards require "activation", but it's not clear how activation works. Like, only "blow up" works with activation? Or does stealing do that? Killing? I'm not quite sure. I think I got it but it's hard to parse. Don't really like that the two sides can have different cards, sometimes the setup makes for a bad game, but sometimes with the same cards it gets boring. I'm not sure how to mitigate the luck thing without pre-designed setups. I feel like the last turn has a massive advantage. Not sure how to mitigate that. Overall great game! I'd love to see it physically, but I guess it gets too fiddly :)
Dec 6 13:14:44 2h 09m Kim's Party ♥ 1 So you basically made a mini Scott Pilgrim game? :) The production value is stellar, the graphics are amazing, the juice is incredible, hit-pause, everything is rad to behold :D But the game itself is really lacking... There's no depth of combat, you just can run as quickly as possible to the next clump of enemies and bash the attack button and remember to use your charge blast thing. Which looks awesome! But that's just that. And this has what to do with the theme? I almost feel like you may have thought to build this game without having seen the theme.
Dec 6 13:31:11 16m 27s Between Stations ♥ 0 I really can't say that I didn't like that, but there's something about the expectations of agency that makes me feel really robbed when I understand that this experience offers no agency... Excellent writing, great visualisation, I just wish it actually mattered at all what I "did" or chose. I kinda understand that the lack of agency is a kind of the point, but that doesn't make it "better", at least for me. This would be amazing if there were some agency :P Did I mention agency? :P
Dec 6 17:21:58 3h 50m Fluffy Space Escape ♥ 1 Omg amazing, really really awesome! :D Fantastic design with the speed + coin pickups, the puzzles are great and mostly show off the mechanic very well. There was an initial moment of confusion but it was overcome quite quickly. Maybe a clearer correlation between the speed and movement would be great if you're going to take it further. The presentation is top-notch with the NES heritage - the colour cycling and such bring back such nostalgia :D The *only* annoyance is that I find it impossible to tell which direction enemies will head into, especially those grey blocks. I don't know if that's intentional, but it feels like it should be clearly shown given the nature of the game. Really love it! :D
Dec 6 20:32:06 3h 10m Escape Infection! ♥ 1 The download said it has a mac version but the dropbox says it's only the windows build.
Dec 6 21:43:38 1h 11m Cherry Creek ♥ 2 Awesome! Really fantastic game, great concept, it kiiiinda fits the theme, but I'm not entirely sure about that :) Great graphics, nice animation touches and flourishes everywhere. The clouds are gorgeous though slightly annoying when over where you're looking at. The mechanics are reminiscent of Minesweeper, but obviously not the same, and in that it's like an instant classic. SHIP ITTTT! :D But dangit it gets really hard :) Some issues: I can't seem to get out of a game once it starts? That seems to be an oversight. Escape doesn't work, no button to press on screen that I could see. And the "next level" vs "change difficulty" doesn't quite make sense, does next level increase difficulty?
Dec 7 06:15:05 8h 31m Infested ♥ 0 Mac build? 😕
Dec 7 07:56:26 1h 41m Musk Mining Industries ♥ 1 Lol annoying I found an edge case bug, and without a restart or menu button the delivery guy rots away on the surface of the moon for eternity: Screen Shot 2017-12-07 at 09.50.26.png (I only discovered the down to restart after reloading the game, perhaps that bit should be on the screen, even if subtley.) Lovely polish on a simple game, somehow the controls are a bit unintuitive... I've tried playing in different ways, crossing my arms, etc, but it just isn't quite "intuitive". Also I kept thinking I was supposed to pick up the miners or something and kept trying to land with them and nothing happens. I think the way the game controls need to be more intuitive - like the controls shouldn't be "fire this thruster" but "if I want to go this way I'll press this", if you know what I mean. It can be tweaked to be more enjoyable to play rather than like learning an alien instinct.
Dec 7 07:59:58 3m 32s Busy Room ♥ 1 No mac build :(
Dec 7 08:34:53 34m 55s Drink Or Die ♥ 0 Mac build? Looks amazing :)
Dec 7 08:47:11 12m 18s Ice Dream ♥ 1 Oh man, what a lovely little game, the sentiment is fantastic and the presentation is pretty good, decently polished. The music suits well, though the sound effects were a little off. Just a little. My main gripe is that the main "interesting thing" is actually bad for the game - the best way to use the mouse control is to leave it off to the side of the screen and moonwalk everywhere, trying to use the mouse results in flips of the sprite that completely sends the ice-cream flying. That might have been fixed by centering the cone and rather moving the character around the cone, but anyway it is what it is now. And because of that the game is just catching things and moving on. And the lack of failure means there's little challenge. I'm not sure how the ice cream physics works, but they don't seem to really "stick", despite being not bouncy. That a perfectly placed ball would just roll off seems weird to me. So if the ice-cream physics were modelled better and more to "expectation" of how ice-cream behaves, that would probably make the game feel even better. Overall, charming :)
Dec 7 08:58:20 11m 09s Yottaman ♥ 1 Really interesting, I love the concept and the writing is really fun. The problem though is the feedback - it's really hard to tell when you've hit stuff accidentally, and the way the game is designed it's very hard to avoid hitting things - being careful is one thing, having to line up weird angles like straight into the ground and such is not much fun, and distracts from the "narrative" - the player is now gaming a system rather than feeling like a crime-fighting overpowered superhero. There should also be some incentive to hit enemies rather than "just because", like, are *they* causing destruction? Oh and how you "get more power" seems arbitrary to me? That bit's really weird. You just get it out of the blue.
Dec 7 09:40:48 42m 28s The lost strawberry ♥ 3 Super impressive, given the time constraints and the engine choice - but I guess the engine choice is part of what made it possible :) Beyond great visuals and audio, let's give some hopefully useful feedback: - The mechanics are really opaque, I'm still not sure how the dash works, sometimes it works, sometimes not. Seems only to work if you collect something, but then... Why should you have to press a button if you can only press that button when collecting that thing? Could you store it up? I couldn't tell. - The visuals are helluva confusing. Yes, the three colours thing is a nice gimmick, but I daresay an unnecessary gimmick that didn't work in favour of the player. There's a ton of trial and error that would have been unnecessary if it weren't for the confusion. - The controls are tight, but it does feel too fast, there's a lot of super tightly timed things that need to happen. One could dismiss this as "noobs stay away" but I don't feel like that's a good thing. It limits accessibility. - Totally agree with @drazil100 on the intuitiveness thing - there are many many many games that I encounter that nail that, and many many many that ignore it and slap players with wall of texts and then blame the player for not reading. And that severely limits the game's potential in terms of DESIGN.
Dec 7 12:59:10 3h 18m One for sorrow ♥ 1 It looks gorgeous, dunno about the sound since I played on web (am on a mac). Really love the art style. But the game........... The gameplay feels really lacking. At the base of it, stopping the wheel at a good place is purely a timing thing, and the spots on the wheel basically only do the basic stuff - so basically all you want to do is hit the enemy, that's it, not much strategy to it. Heal when you're low on health. If there were some more strategic choices it might be more interesting, but right now it's just that. And because it's so straight forward, the wait between spins are excruciating - you know exactly what you want to do, but you have to wait SO LONG to do it. And if you miss the spot you wait some more. A lot of waiting. Gets really boring really quickly. The mechanic might have some promise if you designed more interest and nuance into it, but right now it's just not a fun game. Really gorgeous though.
Dec 7 13:08:54 9m 44s Cardhoard ♥ 1 Flawless victory :D I usually give detailed feedback and I pretty much have none :) The graphics are fantastic, the bounce on the character is gorgeous, the sounds are spot on, the controls are tight and perfect, it's amazing, it's done :) Perhaps the only thing I can offer is that it doesn't *quite* fit the theme so well, but heck it wasn't *the worst* theme fit I've ever seen <3
Dec 7 21:25:36 8h 16m Last Minute Santa ♥ 0 Gah. No Mac build?
Dec 7 21:54:58 29m 22s Speed Date Shuffle ♥ 2 Omg PERFECT. PERFECT PERFECT. The game perfectly encapsulates the terror of being on a first date. The ballooning expectation that comes with each exchange, the fear of not answering with the right things, and scouring your brain for the right things to say but coming up blank, and all the while time/energy/brainpower runs out slowly. It's a terrifying tightrope, and damnnnnnnnnnnn this gets it so right. Love that the more you played the more the emergent properties of the game reflecting real life comes through. SO GOOOOOOD Without that tutorial the concept wasn't so clear, but the tutorial was perfect. SHIP SHIP SHIP!!! I mean sure yes it could use more variation down the line but the the mechanics are so THEMATIC! I kinda wish you could play this two player, but I'll leave you to figure that out. And with a physical game version :)
Dec 8 09:00:00 11h 05m House Party ♥ 1 I love physics animations! Any possibility of a mac build?
Dec 8 10:00:14 1h 00m Tentagraba ♥ 1 Interesting to be sure! I enjoyed the idea of the game, though I think the mechanic feels a bit too "uncertain" - I understand that's how physics games are supposed to be, but it does feel like often I would do something (press/hold) a key and nothing much would change. And that's counting in key jams, so I'm talking about one key at a time. Often losing doesn't feel like "my fault", and it would be good to address that with more clarity in feedback to the player (and tightening of physics) Yes, and key jams ruin this game big time, and isn't something you can control, but should, I think, be something you take into consideration when designing the game. I would have liked to see the game be more responsive so you don't have to/want to hold down that many keys at a time. Good job :)
Dec 8 10:14:20 14m 06s Bunnyfication ♥ 3 The graphics are gorgeous, the presentation is great :) Played the web version if that matters. I really like complex system games that are easy to control. I thought this was it, but I tried several times to follow and understand it and gave up eventually. The "clicking on a rabbit" thing seems really really hard to do, what are their hitboxes? I couldn't tell. Sometimes something would happen that wasn't carrot-dropping, but usually a carrot drops and more bunnies come and I just kept bleeding money. Also, I thought you were supposed to be able to click the checklist thing? I couldn't, and lost a bunch more carrots trying to click on that. I wish the game would do what I want it to do!
Dec 8 12:24:35 2h 10m Cats Per Second ♥ 2 Lol, it's cute, it's funny, great presentation and graphics, but the gameplay is lacking a bit, I wished there were more interesting decisions or skills than to hammer keys as quickly as possible, but otherwise fun effort :)
Dec 8 12:50:15 25m 40s Bum Bag Bangin' ♥ 2 Fantastic presentation, art and audio is GREAT, the comps people drop are just off the charts, humourous, stylish! BUT... The gameplay itself is very lacking, there doesn't seem to be much more to the game than to shoot everything in sight - hitting obstacles isn't very interesting either. Eventually I realised that since shooting is free (as in, no downside to shooting), why not just keep shooting forever... And that means I randomly hit half the targets, and the other half isn't hard to hit. And it could go on for like EVER, and that was no fun. The game doesn't seem to get harder then, at that point. I would have liked to see something that made the big head affect the game so the gameplay feel changes over time. Where's the bit where everyone's running behind you? Didn't see anything that looked like that in the game.
Dec 8 14:05:43 1h 15m Mushroom Délicieux ♥ 1 So gorgeous and the sounds work perfectly. The little running dude is just too cute. This really showcases what pico8 can do, and has me looking into it over and above my noob unity knowledge :) The only gripe is that there's not that much more to the game besides running and avoiding enemies, but the sheer amount and quality of juice almost makes up for it entirely :P It feels just like this one time I had with mushrooms :)
Dec 8 14:17:50 12m 07s Herd of Bunnies ♥ 2 Interesting game! It was very different from other games of this nature where there's a good growth to keep you going, this feels like every moment was balanced on knife edge, everything is expensive, everything sells for nothing. If I can be bothered to crunch the numbers on feed vs age vs production, it could probably be worked out, but I don't like maths :P Once you realise that you just need enough money to keep everyone alive first (have some savings), then things got easier. I think the controls could use a little tweak - like for example two clicks to do something could be simplified to click, drag, release. Or hover, options, click. Don't get rid of what there is already, the drag and release would be a more advanced option that saves some time. Or heck, keyboard keys replacing the three options so you can just hover and press keys? The reason is that clicking so much gets tedious and tiring. I also think maybe a bit more visualisation of the mechanics might be good, I'm not sure how the timer works on bunnies - sometimes I feel like I don't feel like feeding a bunny because it's not going to be useful, but is it possible to wait for it to breed first before killing it? I dunno, I can't tell. Should I be able to tell? Maybe, maybe not, but I feel like I don't know, and that makes me feel like I'm being taken for a random ride, when this feels like a simulation game which I should be able to see aspects of the simulation. The dark humour here is quite good too :)
Dec 8 18:38:17 4h 20m Space Dominator ♥ 1 So... It looks good, the concept is sound. The whole game is basically a series of UI, and it feels like the UI hinders more than it helps your mission. For example, the planets on the left doesn't map in any meaningful way to the planets shown to the right (if it is I couldn't see the relationship) and that makes finding planets a pain. Then the interface has three focuses - the centre, the left and the right, and doing anything requires you to move from the left to the right and back again, etc. The drop downs don't meaningfully map to the planets at all - if I want to send ships to a close by planet - see the planet that's close, find its name, check on the left how much resource there is, go to the right, hit the drop down and look for the name... It's all very cumbersome. If the UI can be more refined to present relevant information where the player needs them most, and issue commands easier (e.g. hover over a planet to see commands, click send and drag, or click send x times then click destination... It might not be perfect and there might be other problems but I just spitballed that), then playing the game wouldn't feel like that much a problem. The UI problems are especially pronounced because it's a race against time game, and knowing what I want to do and it taking so long to parse and execute feels like an artificial barrier. It's like giving someone a rubics cube, and telling them they could only solve it with one hand. It's much harder, but the difficulty isn't the mental or skill challenge but the execution. It feels like a clicker with really complicated controls. It has potential, but the UI needs much improvement!
Dec 8 20:53:42 2h 15m Friendly Fire ♥ 0 No... Mac build or web build?
Dec 9 07:52:45 10h 59m Goblins 2 Go ♥ 1 Really interesting! The graphics are gorgeous and the use of that fluid simulation as a mechanic is genius :D The short term goals were fun to work out - slightly frustrating in the beginning without much of an immediate feedback, but once you get over that hump it made sense. The drawing being a very different style to the actual goblin threw me a bit, and also I expected the bottom right goblin to match up to the potion I was dumping in the pot. I think it would be better to have the next goblin come in later because it's a obvious focal point and can be misleading. Would love some longer term goals :) Nice work!
Dec 10 10:17:20 26h 24m Chuckles, the Word Juggler ♥ 1 Very cool :) I love interesting typing games, this one's pretty cool, everything works, though I feel like there could be a lot done to make the game feel more natural, for example a lot of typing comes with anticipating the next word, and typing in sentences, which this lacks. Also there's definitely a deadly game end problem as in having 3 lives was almost not useful given that unless you were really good, missing one word quickly cascaded into losing 3 lives consecutively because you're stuck typing the previous one. An automatic clear or something when you miss a word would go a long way towards making players feel more comfortable.
Dec 10 15:34:21 5h 17m Don't get drunk ♥ 0 The game itself is weirdly hanging on the fact that its most interesting thing is the thing you don't want to happen. After hitting a few drinks it becomes impossible to play - not "difficult", but impossible. So... Good effort, interesting, would be good to see more design around the drunkness rather than just it being impossible to actually have meaningful interaction.
Dec 11 09:43:02 18h 08m Curse of Greed ♥ 0 Congrats on your 10 years of LD! :D Great little package, great presentation and details in this pico8 gem :) The controls felt a bit too slippery, and sometimes the walljump didn't fire when I expected it to (I appreciate being able to hold it down to just continuously jump, but if you keep doing wall jumps they fire earlier than if you jump at a wall and held it down - it would touch but not fire like if you repeated the jump. It felt like a mistake). As much as the coins as an inversion was cool, it didn't do much mechanically besides being another form of damage, given the health thing. So was the goal to get a high score, or to finish the game? If it were both, I think the feedback loop needs to be much shorter (shorter levels, so you can "bank" your score or whatever) rather than having such a long game then realising "shit I can't get through this next bit because I collected too much gold". If it's just purely about getting through the game then the gold has no interesting tension rather than just being something to avoid like lasers that were pretty much unavoidable. In all, interesting and well presented! Beautiful work as usual!
Dec 11 14:58:08 5h 15m SUPER COP HERO ♥ 0 High polish but annoyingly hard. I would love to enjoy it but it doesn't feel reasonable. But excellent polish on all fronts.
Dec 11 22:17:02 7h 18m Jazzy Beats ♥ 3 It's really gorgeous, and the music is above-par, but really the gameplay doesn't really hold up. Just... Do a lot of attacks. There's really not much strategy or skill, smash the attacks, smash the charge attacks when they're full, smash some more. I was hoping that the combat had some sort of musical jazz improvisation to it, it really didn't feel like it. Kudos on a really swish and polished presentation.
Dec 15 07:53:46 81h 36m grooOW! ♥ 1 Interesting puzzle mechanics but I can't help but wonder how much more there is to the mechanic besides "avoid all the first ones, pick up the later ones then backtrack". Would have been nice to see some more interesting puzzles than that. The last level was beginning to feel like that, but again, wonder how much there is in it :) Try working out more stuff!