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Feedback comments for LD41
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | amras0000's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 23 02:43:37 | TS 3001 | ♥ 1 | When I saw the bomb mechanics I initially assumed they would get irritating. And they do rely on trial and error, which isn't a great mechanic. But somehow you managed to balance the game in a way where I could use the bombs without much trouble. Good work. Obviously would've liked to see audio (I assume there wasn't any, and there wasn't just an issue with the playback). You might want to disable scoring for audio for a silent game. One bug I noticed is that I could unreliably fire shots through the laser gates. I don't think that was intentional, but I got through a couple puzzles that way. | |
| Apr 23 03:10:48 | 27m 11s | Shuttle Launch | ♥ 2 | It might be that I'm sleep deprived and tired, but a rocket falling onto me while I'm busy counting blades of grass is the most terrifying thing I've experienced today. |
| Apr 23 03:37:01 | 26m 13s | Empty Space | ♥ 0 | Can't seem to run the linux build: ``` ./ld41: error while loading shared libraries: libSDL2-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory ``` |
| Apr 23 11:34:58 | 7h 57m | Space Chess | ♥ 2 | The audio and visuals are fantastic, the core idea is solid, and there's a lot of variety in the enemies, pieces, and levels. All around, great work. The game is let down for me by a few quality of life things, but that's largely a subjective thing. The controls on PC at least are difficult to use; the pieces are fairly slippery when you try to click on them; because of the speed of the game mouse control is just not ideal. Either having a slower tempo on PC or some sort of keyboard control (hotkeys for the various towers/columns don't seem too hard to implement) would help the experience immensely. A more minor gripe is that pieces disappear when they reach the top. They can be recovered if you drag them to your hand before they get there, but doing so takes time and, as mentioned above, is fairly finicky with a mouse. Automatically returning pieces from the end of the board to your hand would save a few more headaches. I understand that the focus here is on touch controls, though, so I can't really fault you for the issues I've had. The game's really well polished and fun to play. Nice work. |
| Apr 23 11:46:59 | 12m 01s | Memory Warfare | ♥ 2 | I cleared one memory board and got 1010 points before dying on my last run. Doing multiple things games are difficult to do in a Ludum Dare, what with feature creep and building what amounts to several games in the span of one short jam. But you've done good work here. I do have a complaint about the sluggishness of the game, though. It's not enough to break the experience, but it does get in the way. The memory matching has a very long animation and often -due to the delays- the game would turn off a different pair than I was trying to select. I eventually got used to and compensated for the delays, but I would've preferred if when I clicked a tile it immediately turned over (or had an animation <0.2s). The shooting bit also suffers from slight sluggishness and a general floaty feeling. Again, it's not as bad as it could be; for your first LD this isn't bad. But because of the camera angle and slow bullets and not-entirely-clear hitboxes, it was difficult for me at first to aim properly at the rabbits. I would have liked to either have clear-set columns that the rabbits would travel along, and I could jump between, or a wider projectile (like with the spread power-up, but all the time), or faster projectiles. These are all relatively minor complaints though, and pretty subjective at the end of the day. I would have liked a snappier game, but this isn't bad. The game's pretty well-balanced, the music and visuals are very pleasant; I enjoyed myself. Thanks. |
| Apr 23 11:58:41 | 11m 42s | A Puzzling Combination | ♥ 3 | I know a lot of people are complaining about the lack of mechanics, but personally I don't think the game needs more than it has. What you have is a dumbed-down and simple-as-can-be reflex game. The only thing simpler is the same thing but with one button controls. The pace of the game increases over time, so no matter how good you are at pattern recognition the speed eventually catches up to your abilities. The mechanics work, and don't need fixing. But everything around that is polished to absolute perfection. The animations are gorgeous, the story, if cheesy, is very well presented. The sound design is fantastic. I might have a slight complaint about the music, but it fits and doesn't get in the way. Fantastic work. |
| Apr 23 12:09:03 | 10m 22s | BreakOut Typing | ♥ 0 | The idea has a lot of promise, and it's very novel. I think it's let down by the fact I can only move the paddle in a fixed time to the edges of the screen. If there were, say, 3 or 4 positions along the bottom of the screen I could predict where the ball would be and move there. But as it stands it's more a game of timing than of typing. While the ball's bouncing around I have all the time in the world to type the only word that will do anything, then I just need to press enter at the right moment; a task which is difficult because the paddle moves too slowly to predict accurately where it'll hit. I lost a couple balls to the collision bug but you know about that already. It's not a bad game, or a bad concept, but I think the controls need a redesign to make the game more playable. |
| Apr 23 14:40:52 | 2h 31m | PE@CE | ♥ 1 | I love the aesthetic, I love the idea, and I love the levels. I kept telling myself I need to stop playing and do productive things, but I got hooked and saw it through to the (somewhat confusing, are those tears?) end - with `@:106`, I think. Some nitpicks as is tradition: - As others have pointed out, respawn is way too long for a precision platformer - Even though I enjoyed the platforming, I did not like that my character kept moving after I let go of the movement keys. The level design didn't make this too annoying, but it feels like bad practice to have slippery controls in this genre. - The collectible (and neccessary) hearts don't differ at all from the background (and blocking-your-path) hearts, so -in the last (or second last?) level with hearts- I spent a good while trying to pick up the heart in the top left corner, before realizing it was part of the background. - There's a bug where the falling platforms won't respawn after a death, so there's no way to finish the level. - A lot of levels seem to be designed around getting all the hearts/keys and getting to the exit in one go. But if you die after getting a heart/key you keep it. This did help alleviate some frustration as compared to the alternative, but I can't shake the feeling the level design doesn't match the mechanics. - I really like the blood splatters, though they were only ever really visible on the falling platforms, where they looked out of place floating when the platform fell. The animation's great, the sound design matches the theme, the color scheme is minimal but works (except, as mentioned, for the pickups. Same color and same symbol between what you can interact with and what's background is just bad form). Really enjoyed myself with this title. Great work, keep it up. |
| Apr 23 17:02:10 | 2h 21m | Alchemist Adventure | ♥ 2 | I want to like this game, because the trailer is good, the aesthetic is nicely executed, and the mechanics are promising. I can't get past the first level, though, for a couple reasons: - The bombs are unpredictable in what they'll hit. If I place a bomb in a given tile, I'd like anything in the surrounding tiles to be effected. On multiple occasions, enemies weren't hit by explosions that felt like they should've reached them. Just increase the range of the explosions if nothing else. - The level has a lot of what seem to be dead ends, traps, or red herrings. You need to have a full understanding of things you can't see until you're screwed. This wouldn't necessarily be a fault; exploring and learning a level can be rewarded, except that: - Death is easy, frequent, and sets you back longer than I'd like. In a way this unforgiving nature adds to the aesthetic and brings back memories of older ideas of game design. But it doesn't make for a fun experience in a Ludum Dare entry. I don't see why water should kill you rather than stop you moving over it. I don't see what explicit and unpredictable traps add to the game. I guess at the end of the day it's a subjective thing, and I really wish I could like this game more because everything else about it is really well done (the art, the audio, the aesthetic, the mechanics design). But I can't get far enough into it. |
| Apr 23 17:48:03 | 45m 53s | I, Love, Robot | ♥ 2 | The game's cute, the music's nice and despite being repetitive and upbeat it never got irritating. The writing's a bit flat but it does the job, and after a few minutes of play I was able to figure out the robots' preferences and the rest of the game I didn't make any major mistakes. As others have pointed out, the game is a bit slow. The messages themselves moving slowly wasn't an issue; I'm on a touchpad so this actually helped. But getting a reasonable score on either side takes many, many messages, and a lot of time. I got to the stage where the model bot would accept flirts and had a beating heart, but the sports bot's hearts are growing way too slowly. A lot of LD games of this style (learn the rules by trial and error) run into the issue of having unclear rules that are hard to categorize. For the most part, though, your adherence to clear tropes makes it obvious which message belongs to which category (except for the TV and pizza message). I appreciate that. So really, if the game had ended after both bots had 15 or 20 hearts, I would've had a great opinion of it. As it stands, it's still good, just drags on much longer than it should. Nice work. |
| Apr 23 17:53:20 | 5m 17s | Prison Farming | ♥ 1 | You might want to flag the game as unfinished (as opposed to Compo/Jam) so it doesn't show up in the list |
| Apr 23 18:14:42 | 21m 22s | Perplexive Perspective | ♥ 3 | The controls have a very slight delay to them. That's the only fault I can find with this title. I didn't have any trouble controlling the character; the platforms were large enough and jumps had enough leeway that it wasn't an issue. The music is genuinely lovely, the concept is creative, the colors do a really good job of conveying how much you don't belong (the color scheme is consistent and beautiful, punctured only by the player character). I'm always a sucker for perspective games, too, and I haven't seen one play with shadows like this. (Though I have to wonder how anything is casting a shadow on a pool of magma...) The checkpoints are generous, the level transitions elegant. I could keep going, this title is very polished. There was one tiny bug in the shading: in the helix level, standing on the bottom level, the top platform was a slightly different color from the rest. When I got higher this stopped being an issue. I imagine this is something to do with Unity's lighting. This had no real impact on anything, but since everything else about the game is fantastic it felt worth mentioning. Great work. |
| Apr 23 18:46:24 | 31m 42s | Divine Dungeoneering - A roguelite godgame | ♥ 2 | The writing in the game is its strongest suit. I wish I had a bit more time to read it, without constantly racing the clock. I like the general vibe and I like the quotes you've written. I hesitate to brand this game a roguelite, or a roguelike, or a god-game. Mechanically, it's really nothing more than a maze with a time limit, shader, and some collectibles along the way. Not that there's anything wrong with that. As I said, the writing carries this title - having simple mechanics is very much justified and desirable. I just don't think you need to up-sell your game with the genres you mentioned (though I understand that you were trying to fit under LD41's theme here). The graphics weren't particularly difficult to read, but if I could change anything I'd like the exits and collectibles to contrast a little more from the walls and floors. I skipped past most of level 4 because I didn't notice I was walking into an exit. My final score was 2190 years with a peak of 3435 followers. |
| Apr 24 17:11:07 | 22h 24m | Racingsaurus Text | ♥ 2 | The dinosaur stuff is pretty abstract but it does fit the LD theme pretty well. The mechanics are solid and polished, the game looks awesome and handles smoothly. It is far too easy to win just by keeping the phone open at all times though; you can steer well enough from what's on either side of the screen. I feel like there'd be a lot more urgency if either you had to look down to text (limiting the view of the road some more), or if you were punished for taking your time/crashing. I was able to get through the first level by gathering up time at the start of the level (until I had like 45 seconds) then just driving to the goal without looking at my phone. This isn't a major issue, and the game's much more fun if you text and drive like you are in a hurry, but the broken strategy does exist, and I don't know if you intended this. And at the end of the day it's probably better a game like this is too easy than too hard. A couple aesthetic bugs I ran into: - the voice clip peaks a lot, especially on the "smoooth" recording. And since it plays frequently that does get a bit irritating. - the exit button is stretched on the game over screen; the font isn't properly rendered. - on one playthrough (don't know what caused this, but this was the 45 second one) the space bar seemed to either select a random option on the phone (the phone wasn't up) or just play a random voice clip. All in all I really enjoyed the game. Thanks for making it, and keep it up. |
| Apr 24 17:30:18 | 19m 11s | Speed Phoning | ♥ 0 | You definitely included instructions in the game description. And the controls. And I definitely should have read them. I didn't. But figuring out what the hell was going on and trying to solve a sliding block puzzle in the 5 seconds I had without moving the car. While hearing your beautiful and ever-deeper voice telling me to SPEED UP. SPEED UP. SPEED UP. SPEED UP. was definitely an experience. After that the game was surprisingly easy, but maybe I just like sliding block puzzles too much. Nice work and stuff. |
| Apr 24 18:08:54 | 38m 36s | Tofu Royale | ♥ 2 | I'm always going to enjoy a game with a dedicated 'Dance' button. I love the map design and the graphics are cute. I initially assumed other tofus were other players, which speaks wonders to your AI design. (I mean, I assume it just picks a random direction to walk in, but still.) There are a few issues with the game though, most notably that it seems to be impossible to win. I spawned a few times directly on an obstacle, or in the water, and died immediately. Then I found a good strategy, ran from danger zones, and managed to reach the end of the game, where the last zone was deleted. And then I lost the game, because I was in a forbidden zone. There were literally no non-forbidden zones on the map. I understand the game checks for surviving_enemies==0, but I have no ability to interact with my enemies, so if another tofu just happens to survive to the end there is nothing I can do. I just lose. Some more minor gripes: - the controls feel floaty; I can't ever stop moving and my acceleration is pretty fast. I'm not sure if this is supposed to make me feel more like tofu, but sliding around is always going to be an annoying movement system. - enemies eat you but you can't eat enemies. What's up with that? No justice in this world. - rivers speed you up. I don't really understand why. To be clear, I did enjoy the game. I liked dancing around and because death was so easy and I could do nothing but wait the whole experience was tense. I definitely felt like I was in a battle royale situation, where everyone was out to get me, and each other; though one in which all I could do was hide. Bit of a pity about the lack of sound but it's LD; what can you do. I'm just a bit bitter because the game arbitrarily told me I lost despite getting to the end. |
| Apr 24 19:25:02 | 1h 16m | TIMBER | ♥ 3 | First off, this game is gorgeous and the aesthetic is beautiful and I don't know why you disabled mood because I'd be rating you pretty highly on the atmosphere you've created. Two real quick and super minor nitpicks I ran into when I started playing: One. The non-fullscreen window barely doesn't fit on a 1080p screen and there doesn't seem to be a way to resize it Two. The first thing you see when you start the game is "F" right in the middle of your screen, so instinctively you build a branch, which is an awful use of your first 25 acorns since it does nothing to protect you. Now back to the compliments. This game does a lot of things right. The arc on your firing means there's some skill to the aiming and you don't just click on the enemy. The enemies seem to come in ever faster at just the right rate that you always have to be building new defenses; after the start of the game it's not enough to rely on your peashooter. There are enemies to counter every strategy. The game is dripping with polish and good design and I love it. That said, I still don't entirely understand the point of branches. Sure, if you're trying to defend against high-flying wasps they're necessary, but they're incredibly expensive to deal with one of the few enemies the peashooter works well against. Maybe you could place a catapult on a branch to increase its range, but I didn't get far enough into the game to test that hypothesis. I'm likely going to go back to this game later and try to find a better strategy than what I've been trying. You've really done some good work here. Thanks for the entry. P.S. - My high score after a couple tries is 7 minutes 50 seconds. |
| Apr 24 19:42:09 | 17m 07s | Spin Quest | ♥ 1 | This is wonderful. A slot machine for a match 3 game is a fun and weird idea and your execution is spot-on with loads of polish and a great design all around. The graphics are clean, the mechanics are intuitive and strategically rewarding. I'd say the game's a bit on the easy side, but that's honestly to its benefit; I can only imagine the frustration of having a difficult game be this random. If I'm being super nitpicky I could point out that when you get a reward the animation for getting all the coins plays out a bit long. On the one hand I know you're trying to emulate the drawn-out reward of getting a jackpot, but I think you've overdone it just a bit. And maybe skipping the quests should carry some sort of cost with it. But that's all I can really fault the game for. Great work, and keep it up. P.S. - after writing this comment I came across a bug where after a match was made the pieces wouldn't fall and I'd be left with 3 empty spaces that would move around with the board. This resolved itself when I made my next match. I think it had something to do with de-focusing the game tab. |
| Apr 24 20:39:47 | 57m 38s | Blind Vision | ♥ 1 | The sound effects were funny. The level design worked really well for the game. There's not a whole lot to say, since there isn't anything the game does wrong and despite being fun to play and mechanically interesting, it's not particularly complex. You got everything right, polished it up, and made a solid game. Good work. One thing, though. "Blind-friendly" I can accept, but "visual game" is not a genre. |
| Apr 24 22:45:12 | 2h 05m | .PERIOD | ♥ 2 | Really nice game; not an uncommon mechanic but I like the unixy aesthetic. There were a few spots where the controls didn't feel perfectly spot on, but I was able to get to the end of the game without much of an issue. The ending was pretty clever, too, merging the mechanics with the story in a pretty satisfying way. That said, I think the game crashed before the ending played out in full. After the 'did you just...' line displayed and I pressed enter, the game closed. This didn't seem intentional. I was expecting that at some point in the game you'd have the letters jumbled and force the player to unscramble them to get what they need. The closest I saw to this was when "jump 3 dash 4" could be written as "jump 43 dash". Having everything appear more or less in order in the level did communicate what you wanted the player to do, but also removed part of the challenge. The writing in the game wasn't really its strong point. The relationship with comma felt a bit awkward and unnatural. It didn't hurt my enjoyment of the game, but it's worth mentioning. I really liked that many levels had multiple routes and backup letters lying around. It's rare to see a platformer with branching paths in a LD entry. All in all, I'm impressed, and I really enjoyed myself. I wish I could see the full ending, but I got enough out of the game without it. |
| Apr 26 19:16:41 | 44h 31m | Change of Pace | ♥ 1 | The writing was nice, and the game surprisingly difficult at first. I like what you did with the last character especially. I would normally point out some flaws with the game. And I guess I'm not too keen on the music, or how it resets on each menu. But honestly, the whole thing is pretty polished: well balanced, well written, doesn't overstay its welcome, and doesn't have any real issues that came up during my playthrough. Nice work. |
| Apr 26 19:55:52 | 39m 11s | Dungeon Solitaire | ♥ 2 | The theme is pretty great and I imagine I'd enjoy playing something like this as a kid if it came bundled with an old windows installation. The monsters work well enough and the interface is legible. But I think you've restricted the game so much that it just becomes frustrating after a while. My first run through the game I got lost right off the bat. I ventured a little ways from the card room and was unable to find my way back. A teleport home button, or a minimap, or an arrow pointing back to the card room, would have been appreciated, as would some markers making the card room stand out from the other walls. I understand I could die to teleport back, but there weren't always enemies around. I restarted the game and this time I only followed one wall so I could find my way back. This worked well enough but I had to backtrack constantly, making the game really slow and tedious. Again, I understand the intention that I'd pick up cards along the way using solitaire rules, but at any given point there's a very small chance I'll actually find the card I need, and if I didn't bring the cards back to the card room I'd forget where I left them because I could not find my way around - everywhere looked the same. Besides - after 6 minutes of play I'd only found 6 or 7 cards. It's also worth pointing out that since I could drop cards anywhere in the world, the 4 stacks I could create on the wall of the card room seemed a bit pointless. I think there's a very different approach you could have taken that uses more or less the same mechanics, but would have become a much more compelling experience: - Scrap the card room. Put the solitaire interface in a HUD: 4 spaces for aces on the top, 4 spaces for stacks on the bottom. - Add a LOT more enemies, and put the player in tense arena situations with 5-10 cards left lying around after the dust has settled. Also, change the dungeon layout from a corridor focus to a lot of large rooms with a higher render distance. - Don't let the player drop cards, only pick them up or rearrange them in his HUD. - If the player doesn't (or isn't able to) pick up cards after an encounter, get rid of them after a while. I know I'm describing a very different game from what you seem to have had in mind. It's something I personally would have enjoyed a lot more, as it wouldn't have forced me to stop the exploring/fighting to run back home after every encounter. It seems other people are enjoying the game you have now more than I am, so it's possible I'm not the target audience here. What it comes down to for me is that I'm really impressed with your combat and movement mechanics, graphics, and overall aesthetic. I really wish I could enjoy your game more, and it frustrates me that so much good work went in this design direction. There are a lot of good things about this title, so please keep participating. I would love to see what you come up with next LD. |
| Apr 26 20:33:16 | 37m 24s | Dungeon Solitaire | ♥ 3 | I wasn't able to finish the game because I got two sets of double saws, after I'd already placed single saws on two of the final three levels. So I wasn't able to finish the game. But I did get through the entire deck, except for the one double saw card that was impossible to place. The animation on the player is fantastic, and the general aesthetic - though it's split down the middle with a half classic flash game, half old windows solitaire background - works quite well. The game could also probably do with some better labels on the "exit" and "restart" buttons - I assumed the reset button was a "draw a new hand" button and lost a lot of progress. Aside from the randomly unfinishable scenario though, I do really like this game. Between the dash, the double jump, the well-balanced levels, and the tight platforming controls, I was able to get through some fairly ridiculous challenges. I like how the last three levels of the game have to be finished in one go; it gives the ending a bit of a boss level feeling. And I like how the spikes and saws have various tiers of difficulty. If there's anything I would add to the game it'd be a few metacards: redraw hand, discard card, skip one level. Have them come up very rarely to get the player out of particularly impossible situations. But that's a consideration for if you ever want to expand on the game; it's solid as it is. All in all, I'm impressed. This is a very polished and satisfying title to play. Keep up the good work. P.S. - While the other dungeon solitaire isn't as good a game, it's probably more deserving of the title than you are. I mean, where are there dungeons here? |
| Apr 26 21:04:16 | 31m 00s | Jing & Jang delivery Co. | ♥ 4 | All in all the game's not bad; the controls felt a bit off and I could run off the screen, but as has been mentioned the core gameplay loop is relatively fun to play. I do have a couple comments that came up while I was playing: - What is going on with Jin? Really. He changes in a single frame from a monk's tunic to a black delivery uniform. He can walk through cars, and time stops while he's in control. I do kinda like the idea of having a much slower and punishment-free experience to break from Jang's panicked and difficult journeys. But I had no idea what was going on thematically. - Why does Jin go back to his station automatically, but Jang has to run back? - No, really, what the hell is Jin? - The hitboxes on the cars seem a bit off, I'm pretty sure I died a few times while Jang was standing right on the dotted line, or before he entered the road. - Jin is apparently a metaphysical motherfucker who can walk under the screen and walk onto Jang's road. And the cars all stop for him, and he can push cars backwards with his MIND. What the hell? - I can walk on top of buildings but under cars. - The music loops, but stops after a set number of loops if I don't switch to Jang soon enough. - What? In summary. wat.png |
| Apr 27 08:18:13 | 11h 13m | Bad Band | ♥ 1 | I love the idea; at the start of LD I was wondering how to interpret the theme as a musical one, and couldn't come up with much. This nailed that approach. There's not a lot of challenge, but I'm a sucker for in-game music mixing and the points system definitely encouraged me to change things out throughout. I do have a couple nitpicks and a few suggestions: - I object to the idea that electro and classical are somehow incompatible :P - You have a set time limit of two minutes; but your music loops every few seconds. Having a two-minute soundtrack for LD isn't unreasonable, especially if it's the main focus of your game. Especially considering a number of instruments are just playing bar-long chords or drum loops, I think you dropped the ball on this one. The game's really missing a complete song structure. - The points are, as I mentioned, a good system to get me to change things up, but I wonder if there wasn't a cleaner way to integrate them into the UI than colored numbers. This isn't that significant though, the current UI works. - I'm not sure why you chose for the final score to be an average of the two. I feel like this system would reward you for just playing to one crowd, rather than keeping a balancing act. Maybe I'm missing something about the design, but I think I would have gone with the final score being the minimum of the two others. Should be noted that on my second playthrough, I elected to have all the instruments play classical/blue for a while. The red audience dropped in score as expected, and stuck at -001. But the *blue* audience's score also dropped, at a rate of a few hundred per second, down into the negative thousands. I wasn't able to recover that game. Still, I'm only pointing out these issues because I think the game's pretty great overall. I enjoyed my 3 minutes here. Thanks for the game! |
| Apr 27 08:41:54 | 23m 41s | The Matter at Hand | ♥ 2 | This is a fantastically clever puzzle game. The design of the levels caught me off guard many times. Everything's tutorialized properly, and you did a great job leading me on to a false solution. Great job there, really. The music fits the aesthetic and I'd like to see it on soundcloud or the like. Graphics are also impressive. Relatively minimal, but incredibly clean and legible, and with a pleasant palette. There's one minor failure of the design, I think: I had to spend a few levels just counting things. Grid squares sometimes, but more often cards. How many warps did I have, how many switches, etc. I understand that you were trying to meet the LD theme, but I think an interface where I had a number next to each ability, rather than a set of cards, might have been easier to use for those levels. On the other hand, you used the order of the cards to great effect in training and fooling the player. So I'm on the fence here. The amount of different mechanics is impressive for a compo game, too. I want to find any other points to critique the game but it's so thought-through and polished that I can only say good things about it. Keep it up, I'd love to play your entry next LD. |
| Apr 27 23:12:41 | 14h 30m | Crescendo | ♥ 3 | OK so yes what everyone's been saying is true, this game is far too hard. But that's a very shallow criticism, and I don't think anyone's talked about the root of the problem yet: First things to get out of the way, I adore everything about this game - the idea is brilliant, the graphics are clean, the mechanics are weirdly intuitive despite being something I've never seen before. The music's atmospheric and plain good. All around this should be a fantastic game. There's a really frequently repeated adage that how satisfying a difficult game is is tied to how long, after a failure or death, it takes to get back to what the player was doing. I know it's been said a million times but it's worth repeating. Because this game completely fails on this front, and this alone has turned this from one of the best games I'm going to play this LD to one of the most frustrating. To start, the game punishes you for unfair reasons. I can dash, with the volume well above the required 3 bars. But if, _after I've pressed the shift key_ the volume drops to below mine, I die. I quit the game on level 4, because you gave me what amounts to one or two frames to make each jump, then asked me to time, with the same precision, a fall onto another platform. I was able to do this twice, and died immediately afterwards both times. Once you do get fail, the game just revels in your failure, making the player feel like shit. First you get a giant red "YOU FAILED" for a good chunk of time, along with a sound effect that completely kills the mood of the game and drives itself into your skull after the ntieth death. Then, you get sent all the way back to start of the level, with the music back at the initial state. So now you get to repeat all those difficult jumps and wait for half a minute to get back to the one part of the song that lets you progress and try again. The switches should act as checkpoints. The game should let you take 2 or 3 hits before it sends you back. Or at the very least, the music you've set should stick around when you're sent back to start. If you feel like this would trivialize the game too much, add a setting to toggle "baby mode/hardcore mode" on and off. The third level was somewhat cleverly designed. The one long fall you had to make was possible because the song playing gave you a few seconds of persistent level2 volume to make the fall safely. The fourth level, at least until you hit a switch, is just impossible bullshit. You can't consistently make a _frame-perfect fall_. I desperately want you to make a post-LD update to this game, because it does SO MANY THINGS SO WELL. But you need to: - get rid of the timed falls and frame-perfect jumps on the 4th level, or wherever else they appear later in the game. - add an easy mode where switches (and the orb) are checkpoints. OR give the player 3+ hitpoints each level. - get rid of (or add an option to get rid of) the TOO LOUD death screen. The player should be in control of the character at most 2 frames after their death. And change the sound effect to something less grating, more smooth. - get rid of the double-spike in the dash volume. Only count dashes as failure if the volume's wrong when the shift key is pressed. - maybe let the player make noise a frame (or a few frames) before the volume spike happens. This isn't crucial but it would turn this into more of a rhythm game and could add some nice flow. And please mention @me if you upload a post-LD update. I would love to play it. So yeah. I'm really frustrated because this is a fantastic and amazing game that I can't enjoy because you failed at the most basic principle of platformer design. Please fix it. P.S. - the game reads inputs when it's not in focus, like when I tried to type this review without losing all my progress. But since I can't pause the game, or make it ignore my spaces, it's just making the game over noise every few seconds and driving me insane. |
| Apr 28 10:51:47 | 11h 39m | PathMatcher | ♥ 0 | This is a great little puzzle mechanic, implemented in a fun casual setting. All in all a pretty fun game. I managed to get through the first two levels with no trouble. On the third I got myself into an unwinnable position. I kinda wish the game would recognize that but that might be difficult to implement in a LD. I'm actually not sure if the 3rd level that generated for me was winnable or not. I wouldn't know how to tell. In terms of UI, there's just a few quality of life things I might change if you ever want to improve on the game: - There's no way to select a tile adjacent to the tile you've selected. You can click on another tile first to change your selection, but that's finicky. Maybe have right click deselect the existing tile? - I would like to see the complete map after I'm done. It's satisfying to watch the A* navigate through my maze and to dig through the map, but it would be more satisfying to be able to zoom out and look around at the chaos I've caused after the level is complete. - As a moonshot, maybe you'd want to add a hint system, where valid moves on the border glitter a bit if the player doesn't do anything for a while. Since this doesn't work like a match 3 usually does, my brain is having trouble finding the appropriate patterns Other than that, and the unfortunate lack of music, I can't really fault the game. It's got a consistent and clean set of mechanics with a lot of room for emergent strategies. Great work. |
| Apr 28 11:14:31 | 22m 44s | Regular Chess with Sam | ♥ 2 | Some quick admin before I get to my review: If you could add a quick note in your description on exactly what changes you made in the post-LD version, that would let LD participants better decide which version to play. (side note, your itch.io page is set to request money, not sure if that's an intentional choice or you mis-clicked there) I elected to play the 1.0 version. - I love the writing here; it's abstract and childish and there's a lot of jokes scattered around. - Pawn movement is slightly buggy but you may have fixed that in the post-LD version. - I'm not entirely sure why the enemy pieces seemed to vibrate most of the time. - The game doesn't offer any challenge, either in the dialogue or in the chess. This adds to the narrative you've written, so it's not a bad thing, but I also wouldn't mind an actual real-time chess puzzle mechanic. - I do wish there was some music here, but spending that time on writing was not a mistake. The writing did come out very nice. The experience was surreal, and innovative, and I enjoyed it. It's hard to find much more to say about this title, so I'll leave it at that. |
| Apr 28 19:25:38 | 8h 11m | Dr. Snake | ♥ 2 | It took me far too long to figure out that the 4 same-colored blocks had to be in a line, not just adjacent. I also needed a bit to work out when blocks would fall, and when they'd stick around. Once I had that down though, this game proved to have a lot of depth and strategy to it. I don't think I ever felt like I needed a speed button; the game's slow but not unreasonably so. Wouldn't hurt to have one though. One issue I had with the gameplay is that it was difficult to judge distances. I had to do a lot of mental arithmetic to figure out where my snake would fit, and how. I think a visible grid (both on the map and on the snake) might have helped with that, but I'm not sure. Also, I'd have liked to have a restart button (or known what it is if you have one), since I had to restart the game after every game over and had to return to level 1. I definitely enjoyed my time with this title. It's got a good idea behind it, with good execution and a fair bit of depth. Good work. |
| Apr 30 19:57:38 | 48h 32m | Rhythm Massacre | ♥ 1 | The mountain king theme is really well rendered, shame that I could barely hear it over the repeating sound effects. Quieter sound effects and a score displayed at the end would have improved this game a lot. I admire your commitment to a several-minute song. A lot of Ludum games I've played this time around have claimed to be rhythm games but offered only a 20 second loop. Yours delivers, both musically and in terms of a pretty long scripted level. There's not a lot else to say about this game. The mechanics are solid, simple, and fairly engaging. There's a good amount of visual and audio feedback when you hit something (though as mentioned, the sound effects drown out the music, so maybe tone them down a bit). I can't complain. Good work. |
| Apr 30 20:10:09 | 12m 31s | Spawn & Blade | ♥ 0 | The graphics are the game's strong point, as people have pointed out; the animations are impressive for a compo game. My chief complaint here is that while you can't game over, you can softlock: If you spawn in front of a bunch of turrets you die instantly. If you parry before they kill you, you're stunlocked and can't move. Eventually my game just glitched out and would only spawn soldiers off-screen to the left, because I'd been pushed back that far by the bullets. I would have liked to be able to choose where I spawn, so it's not right in front of a turret or in the middle of enemy fire. Also, really confused about the score. Spawning new soldiers felt insubstantial, since I could get the score back just by attacking the air in front of me. |
| Apr 30 20:14:01 | 3m 52s | A Nightmare on the Canned Goods Aisle | ♥ 0 | Still can't seem to run on Linux, seems like you forgot to include some libraries: ```./ANightmareOnTheCannedGoodsAisle-linux.x86: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory``` |
| Apr 30 20:22:11 | 8m 10s | Platform Of Love | ♥ 1 | Most of what should be said seems to have been said already, and you seem to value hasty comments so I won't stick around too long. - I would have liked to have the second platform be one you had to depress/offend/make leave, since it was set up to look like you should remove a blockade rather than jump over it, and having that variety might have added a lot of extra depth to the game. - Some checkpoints/acknowledgement of progress would have been nice, rather than starting from the start after every mistake - the lack of music really detracts from the cute mood here. Even a quick recording of you humming a tune would have helped a lot. |
| Apr 30 20:47:22 | 25m 11s | Pseudonarrative Dissonance | ♥ 0 | As has been pointed out, the text is tiny and hard to read. I played in browser, so I was able to zoom in that way, but the text really should be much bigger - you have the space. I was tempted to write my review with the noir language you were using, but I know I can't even begin to reach the *excellence* on display here. The language had me impressed and laughing for most of the game. It's beautifully camp and perfectly moody. On top of that, you managed to back the moody language up with a phenomenal visual and audio atmosphere. The endless tunnel and abstract architecture gave me a strong Beginner's Guide vibe (probably helped by the streetlights being a dominant theme :P). I adore that aesthetic it's very rare to see that outside of Davey's work, so thank you for getting it to work so well. The puzzles aren't the greatest mechanically. They fit in the theme, but they feel unnecessarily contrived. The first two puzzles made sense - they were simple almost tutorial-like devices that gave the player the feeling of participation without breaking the timing (again, Davey Wreden comes to mind). If all the puzzles had been in this style I would not have complained. But the latter two puzzles (the math and code) broke the immersion the rest of the game had so wonderfully kept. I had to google "sawbuck" and the code didn't seem to register the correct answer so I tried a bunch of strategies, tried to work out if SWIFT was referring to a bank, googled some more, then came back and solved it. I think more input-the-right-word puzzles would fit in with your theme, if you do want to create that challenge. Button pressing didn't do much for me. I love the footsteps, I love the shaders, I love the writing, and I love the atmosphere. If you'd had nothing else in the game I would have been a happy camper. The puzzles added a layer of depth and purpose, and even if they didn't stand up on their own, they contributed to the game as a whole, making it that little bit deeper and more enjoyable. This is a LD gem and I hope you keep on doing stuff like this. P.S. - all this said, I have no idea what incompatible genres you were combining here. |
| Apr 30 22:04:48 | 1h 17m | World Bender | ♥ 0 | A couple notes about the controls: -Since you're using a lot of rectangular platforms, a grid-based movement system probably wouldn't hurt here (in the style of a step platformer) - Given a system like this, it's imperative that when I press a button the character starts moving, and when I let go of the button the character stops moving. On the exact frame of the input, I should see the character react. For some reason you have almost a second delay on any inputs which makes the game really frustrating to play - Regarding jumping, what you seem to be doing is checking if the spacebar is down, then increasing player velocity if the character is standing on something. This allows me to jump up towards a platform, keep spacebar held down, and get launched up very high, potentially breaking the level. You should only ever check for jumping on the frame I press spacebar, not on every frame it's held down. - I think you used Unity's physics engine for this, though I can't be certain. There is basically no good excuse for using physics on a player character. No excuse at all in a platformer. I don't understand why Unity encourages it; half the platformers people put here from that engine have these exact issues. |
| May 5 17:20:37 | 115h 15m | Need for Seeds | ♥ 2 | I disagree with most of the comments before me. Yes, this game is pretty fun, but it doesn't really need a goal, or a target. The mechanics work really well for an endless scroller with high scores as the main incentive. It just needs a bit more of a challenge to really shine in that area. I think this game would be a lot stronger if: - there was no way to stop accelerating - the harvester increased its max speed over time - there was no way to go backwards on the course - the game ended once either side of your harvester was completely destroyed Incidentally, the harvester can turn around fully and reverse down the course, but the camera doesn't follow it. So it seems like you had something like this in mind, just didn't implement it fully. Either way, good work. I löve the faux-3D on the tractor. The music's repetitive, but nice enough for a LD entry. The physics are fun to play with. |
| May 5 20:45:50 | 3h 25m | TypeRunner | ♥ 2 | Today I learned that `JUMP` is a difficult word to type. This game is fantastic. Lots of polish, a consistent artstyle with a very well-designed UI, and most importantly a very compelling set of mechanics. I like the screenshake when you mistype a word, I like the keyboard sound effects, and I think the boss at the end of each level is a great idea. As far as complaints go, I might have liked jumps to be a little easier to make; typing the word is hard enough, timing when to hit 'enter' is a frustrating challenge. The game seems to lack the little bit of invisible platform that most platformers provide (so you can jump after you've run off the physical edge), and it's additionally frustrating to be stopped in the middle of the fall and asked to type another word before you fall to your death. The music's fairly repetitive, and there doesn't seem to be a way to mute it (a 'mute' command would have done nicely :P) Initially I was a little confused as to why there were `WALK` and `STOP` commands. This seemed to remove some of the quick reactions that a runner like this usually requires. But I was quickly convinced that stopping didn't actually give me more time to type, and it proved particularly useful when I needed to pause the game. I consider this one of the best games I've played this LD. I look forward to seeing what you do next Compo. Thanks for the entry! |
| May 5 21:03:29 | 17m 39s | BBall | ♥ 2 | There are many 48-hour games that do less and less competently than this does in 6 hours. This is really a great entry. Difficult, yes, but not unfairly so. I might come back and try to get through the last 3 levels later. It did take me a few minutes to learn the controls and mechanics, but the game's simple enough that I don't think it needs a tutorial. Great work, really. |
| May 5 21:47:07 | 43m 38s | A Fourth Idea | ♥ 3 | I went with the black orb, and read through to the end. This is really not my literary genre - I'm a skeptic and atheist so reading about souls and faux-immortality didn't strike home. And probably for that reason I found the ending really unsatisfying. At the risk of spoiling the ending, there's no closure as to what the thing is, it's just described as "inexpressible". The others have words, but this didn't. I don't know how much of this was yours and how much was borrowed from the public domain, so it's hard to rate this fairly from a Compo perspective, this feels like it belongs more in the Jam. For what it's worth the wordsmithing is compelling both in the weird introverted descriptive things (which did make me hate the protagonist, but objectively they're just well written) and in the more direct "here's what happens" adventure game stuff. I would have also liked closure on the people in the cottage and garden. I didn't understand what role they were supposed to play, or what they were supposed to symbolize. But again, not my genre, there's probably something I'm missing. The puzzles were surprisingly compelling and logical. The world was small enough I could navigate it easily and find all the items I needed easily as well. I did get a bit lost after I picked up the orb (tried putting it in the cottage, boathouse, sea, brook, and outhouse). I think you could have given a bit more direction there. But it was the last real puzzle so it's not the end of the world. I tend to avoid word-heavy games, and I tend to avoid supernatural/spiritualist literature. But this pulled me in, for some reason. Nice work. |
| May 5 22:22:20 | 35m 13s | SKYWOOOD PIER | ♥ 1 | On the title screen, I noticed I was playing v 1.3. I'll assume you're playing fair and you released that within the submission hour and the numbering is just a weird development quirk. I love the title screen. The animation borrows from the rest of the game while still looking distinct. The animation of the disappearing level in general is amazing. This is by far the best-looking and most aesthetically interesting Unreal game I've seen in a Ludum Dare. The narrative made me chuckle a good few times. The echo adds a tone of taking-itself-seriously that's undercut in a tongue-in-cheek way with the absurdist statements and comedic timing. What you probably didn't intend is that the timing reminds me very strongly of a 90s preschool-level edutainment style ("_click on the...APPLE_") All in all, a great-looking, great-sounding game that doesn't overstay its welcome and offers a quick surreal and absurdist adventure. Nice work. |
| May 6 10:42:38 | 12h 20m | Gradioid | ♥ 1 | As a caveat I'm not particularly fond of the metroid aesthetic or metroidvanias; and there's not all that many horizontal shooters I actually enjoy. So this probably soured my opinion of the game which, as has been mentioned, is very polished and stands up quite well objectively. A couple design concerns that seem standard for scrolling shooters these days: - The starting weapon (the only one I've used so far) requires repetitive tapping instead of holding down the attack key. I understand that you wanted to be able to charge the weapon, but I'd much rather have the charge shot be on another key. maybe X. - There is no way to control the speed in this game. I'd like shift to slow me down and let me dodge tight clusters of bullets (you can have ctrl be used for boost, though I'm not actually sure what that adds to the game). With the current control scheme I ran into bullets way too easily because my character would fly across the screen at the slightest provocation. - The hitbox seems to extend beyond the character a bit, making a box around him. This might just be my perception, but it was frustrating to be hit by things that shouldn't have hit me. Almost every scrolling shooter I've played has a hitbox the size of a few pixels in the middle of the character. - I like the healthbar; it's less punishing than instant death whenever you hit a bullet. And I like the health refills that get dropped. This is not too common in the genre but I like what it does for the game. What I do have a complaint about is how little invincibility you get after a hit. I ran one game where the entire first screen (including the first boss) I got through taking no damage, entered the second screen with full health, and got shot to death by the first set of turrets. These might seem like nitpicks, but given how standardized and formalized a genre you're working in it's pretty vital to have speed controls and a tiny hitbox, at least in my book. A couple more minor notes: - There seems to be a bug where you can move off the screen while traveling to the left. - There's no indication when the boxes are going to spawn a new enemy. I've lost count of how many times an enemy would just spawn on top of me and take off my health. The game is pretty good overall, in terms of level and enemy design, in terms of the weird branching path idea, in terms of the aesthetic and mood. But there are too many sources of frustration for me to continue playing to the end. I might come back to it later when I have more patience. |
| May 11 20:51:35 | 130h 08m | Drive or Die | ♥ 1 | As others have said, the driving model in this game really breaks it. Turning is way too slow and there is not enough friction. It's difficult enough to drive down a straight road; making a turn without veering off into the grass is basically impossible. I got through the first two levels with barely enough time left on the clock, but the third seemed like I had to know the map well to actually beat it, since there's branching paths that aren't all visible on the minimap. I really like the transition animation between the driving and the shooting. Shooting didn't have much weight to it, I just had to locate and click on all the enemies. I wonder if a little bit of kickback on the player camera, or a more visceral death animation would help this section. I think the driving music was a bit too aggressive and sine-y and grated on me a little after a few levels. The shooting music tones down the frustrating bits so I enjoyed that a lot more. Oh, and it's rare to see a LD game with multiple music tracks so nice work there, and with the transition. Overall, this game feels like it just needed a lot more love put into its core mechanics (the driving and shooting models), maybe at the cost of the maps and objectives being less fleshed-out, or fewer levels. I know I've made the same mistake myself sometimes, prioritizing content without a good baseline mechanic. Maybe keep that in mind next LD. |
| May 12 12:18:47 | 15h 27m | Batteries Not Included | ♥ 1 | I love this entry. It's far from polished - it's lacking music, there's no tutorial, the game doesn't pause in build mode and half the time it won't even let you enter build mode ("must be on flat ground"). So there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. But it does the actual vehicle building really well. there are a lot of block options (most of which I didn't understand), and multiple methods of moving the vehicle around. It's missing an option to rotate the blocks (I'd like to have wheels facing sideways!) but there is still a lot of freedom in how you design and control your vehicle. And at the end of the day, one really good mechanic can make even a buggy and unpolished game really fun to play. I tend to be awful at these types of games, so my best design was a thruster on the bottom and left of the vehicle which I could use to steer myself above the map. My final score was 44216. Great work. |
| May 12 12:57:48 | 39m 01s | Greg Island | ♥ 1 | It's a warm spring day and the birds are chirping outside, which added to the mood a lot. The aesthetic is beautiful, and you've managed to get a lot of aesthetics and feel-good-ness out of some pretty minimal graphics. On my first attempt through the game, I talked to everyone, then fell off the world into the water. A shallower beach or an invisible wall would have been useful, since I wasn't able to get back up. After restarting the game, I decided I'd like to make all three gregs love me, but as soon as I finished helping emo greg the game ended. I accidentally skipped a lot of narrator text; I'm used to textboxes in games where the first click skips the text animation, displaying the whole thing, and only once all the text is displayed does a click go to the next line of dialogue. But here I either had to wait through the animation or I didn't get to read the narration. Aside from those nitpicks I really enjoyed my time here. It's hard to pin down the mood of this game to any one component; the music, graphics, and tasks you're given all contribute to the overall feeling and I think you've done a great job here. |
