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Feedback comments for LD40
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | xk_the_name's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 4 05:56:48 | LD sim | ♥ 2 | I can feel it. | |
| Dec 6 20:40:36 | 62h 43m | LD40 - SirPumpy | ♥ 2 | ### FOREWORD: First of all, that's a great first-time entry, I hope you'll be entering a second, third and whatever time (if you enjoy this sort of thing of course). I followed you, so you can expect another review if you enter next ludum dare. ### GRAPHICS: I dig the aesthetics, that's what got me to try it, I see you put a lot of effort into it, that's 5 stars from me. Nice reflection, nice color scheme, smooth frame rate, tiny details like ship trails and such, you did well on getting people to try your game! This is where it goes south though, I hope you don't get discouraged by my criticism, treat it as compliment because I take my time to point out what I think is missing in your design mindset. 0. I don't see a shooting animation. 1. I don't see a hit animation at all, if its there, it's not visible enough and it's a vital piece of information. 2. I don't see enemies exploding, same thing, vital information is missing from the player. 3. I don't see me being hit, vital information. 4. I don't see my health clear enough (It took me a 3rth look to figure out that this black vignette is my health, it should be screaming YOU'RE DYING) 5. You get the point. You should focus on these things first, because this will make or break your game. ### SOUND: Music is ok but it gets old really quickly. I don't know if its a bug or not but when I played the game it had no sound 0. Shooting 1. Hitting stuff 2. Enemies dying 3. Me getting hit 4. Me dying 5. You get the point. Sound is a vital for articulation of gameplay mechanics and it's just good to have it, you've made a rookie mistake here. :) ### GAMEPLAY: Well, not much here. Enemies take too long to kill, they spawn too fast, you could be better off just spawning a single enemy each minute for the first 3-5 minutes. You could add some variety by having just two types of enemy, big slow ones and small fast ones, I don't think that would take too much programming time, but I'm getting tired here, so that's the end of my review. ### CONCLUSION: Good job, a little more conscious direction and it could be a really fun game with awesome aesthetics. I hope I won't sound arrogant by suggesting you to check out my previous entry, it's a spaceship shooting game too (be vary that's a jam entry though, but I was working solo) you can see the difference those little things make there. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/power-2 Have a nice day and excuse my grammar! See you at LD41! |
| Dec 7 14:11:12 | 17h 30m | Hot & Cold | ♥ 3 | ### HI Foremost, great first-time entry, keep at it! ### THE GOOD Surprisingly smooth controls (although you should've used CCD for the character to remove jitter). Nice little touches on animation, nice use of screenshake. The concept is good, but I think it's too challenging (for a designer, not gameplay wise). Plot adds a nice simple narrative touch to everything. Doing 8x8 art was a good move, there is a nice unity in your sprites. ### THE BAD The whole game feels like a tutorial, each level there is some new thing, but I haven't used the previous thing long enough and... well you get the point. No sound or music, I know time constraint and stuff, I failed to deliver sound myself many times, but that's no excuse, sound adds a lot to a game (much more than it feels like when you're making it!), missing out on that is not a good tradeoff at all! The color palette, I know you're probably not an artist, but here is the tip, find some picture that you really like and use the eyedropper tool on it to get yourself some nice balanced colors, then just use them to draw everything. Low tonal contrast, open your graphics editor, open hue/saturation filter, drag saturation to 0 (make image black and white), you will find that your background is just as dark as your foreground, and the grass is brighter than your characters, you want have tonal layers in your graphics (unless intended otherwise), that makes them clear sharp and punchy! ### CONCLUSION Every ludum dare game has a lot of flaws, that's just the way it is, don't take anything personally, learn to focus on the essential and you'll get a great game. You have every skill needed, practice them, learn to manage them and I hope to see you at LD41! |