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HuvaaKoodia

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TimestampSince previousGameHuvaaKoodia's comment
Apr 29 09:46:09 Age of Pacman ♥ 1 A solid dexterity challenge. That is what this boils down to as the only working strategy is, indeed, creating small groups all around the map and quickly giving them attack orders. I do enjoy such a challenge every once in a while though, so I don’t mind it too much. This being a mix of RTS and score hunting I can see why strategy took a back seat. The user interface is simple, yet slightly unoptimal; I’m talking about group selection. The selection rectangle is an RTS classic, but in a hectic title such as this one it is arduous and prone to mistakes. The minimap already groups pacmen together so why not allow double clicking one of them to select the whole group? Another possibility is showing a button over each group in the world, which acts as a hotkey for selecting the group (one of the few good features in Supreme Commander 2, btw.) The battle music is pretty darn catchy for a tune made by an algorithm. The sound effects are nothing special yet functional. The menu scene looks and sounds different than the battle scene which is weird; the wireframe retro graphical style is good, so why not use that in the menu too? The visuals remind me of Darwinia and Multiwinia. You should play those if you haven’t already. Good work in all.
May 13 10:30:13 336h 44m Binary Blocks ♥ 1 A puzzle in the Binary Tree Sorting genre, that’s a thing now. The visuals are good as usual. Faces on inanimate objects is a mainstay for instant cuteness and in this case grimness too. Reminds me of one of my favorite puzzles, the oddly titled, [Jelly No Puzzle](http://qrostar.skr.jp/en/jelly/); the cuteness part that is, not the gratuitous deaths. I do take issue in the memorization aspect of the exercise. It might just be me, but I like my deductive logic challenges separate from memory challenges. Here, there is no way to plop down tiles into the tree itself, meaning I have to keep the actual binary tree in my head in order to solve the level. The deeper the tree, the worse the issue becomes. Luckily you never went beyond depth 4. Restarting randomizes the tiles, which results in having to deduce the same level again when making a small human error. This isn’t too interesting and it is just the sort of thing the user interface should minimize, not maximize. This was intentional so... To each their own? Another UI issue is having no visual indication where the tiles are going to end up in. A grid, or something subtler, would help. Of course this would ruin the tile connection distance mechanic. Not a big loss; let me explain. There is no way to deduce accurately how long the connections need to be. As such using the slider comes down to guesswork. Sure, you can make a guess, test it quickly and only start deducing once the slider value is correct in order to solve the level. Unfortunately the “fake” ending flaunts not only the time taken, but also the tries taken. Due to this guesswork there is no way to finish all the levels without retries on the first go. The only way to achieve 0-retries consistently is to screen grab the correct slider values for each level on the first playthrough and then replay from the beginning. Sounds fishy to me. Heavily hinting at the alternative ending is certainly smart, gets people looking for it. Something I should have done in the past. I’d hardly call it the “true” ending, though. Good work nonetheless. Always glad to see another puzzle, warts and all!
May 16 08:42:54 70h 12m A-Card Shooter ♥ 0 I actually rolled my eyes when I saw your entry; a shooter with deck-building? This’ll be a boring mess! **I was wrong**. The running and gunning is challenging and the ability system adds quite a bit of depth to the survival struggle! As said, the deck based ability system is great. It acts as a pre-mission loadout screen and dynamically changes each match based on the order which the abilities are dealt in. Certain waves can be defeated easily with certain abilities, but do you have them at the ready? Card slots doubling as health is the master stroke; healing cards are actually useful. The shield is my favorite as it takes actual skill to use, brilliant! The graphics are standard pixelated mush, not a big fan yet they are serviceable. The effects and particles are a plus. Audio does ok too, oddly enough the deck menu music and the level music are in completely different styles? Sound effects are somewhat grating. There are many issues though, in no particular order: - The deck-building menu is very busy. I would hide each card panel in the deck until you actually buy and add one. This would also make it easier to see which cards are currently in the deck. - Path-finding! The terrorists get stuck on walls all the time. Unity has a build in solution for this, but I’d actually recommend implementing your own ([here’s a good one on A*](https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction.html)) - Enemy spawning; danger close! Enemies should not spawn so close to the main character, it is nearly impossible to dodge them later on. - The later waves lack finesse. Managed to get to wave 8 at which point there was just a ton of enemies of all types everywhere (spawning real close, those jerks!) Having said all this, it is time for the most important piece of criticism ever: the theme does not match much at all! This is way too compatible! *(Just kidding, the theme itself is terrible so I don’t actually care.)* Good job! Overall: *4.0 (Good)* Fun: *4.5 (Great)* Innovation: *4.0 (Good)* Theme: *2.0 (Bad)* Graphics: *3.0 (Average)* Audio: *3.0 (Average)* Humor: *4.0 (Good)* Mood: *3.5 (Above average)*
May 16 08:51:26 8m 32s Astronaut Shoots in Space ♥ 1 Functional Hotline Miami inspired top-down-shooting with a separate, unbaked, spaceship flying bit in the middle. Not much of a mix and very compatible too as completely unique modes tend to be. I do like the idea of crashing into other ships taking them over Heat Signature style. More guns to replace the puny, though efficient, little laser pistol would have added much needed variety to the action. Visually pleasing pixel art apart from the background stars which don't look great clumped together like that. Audio is serviceable at best, pew-pews and short music loops. Ok work, properly mixing up this specific top-down-shooter genre with something else might have yielded interesting design. Now we'll never know. Overall: *3 (Average)* Fun: *3.5 (Above average)* Innovation: *2.5 (Below average)* Theme: *2 (Bad)* Graphics: *4 (Good)* Humor: *2.5 (Below average)* Mood: *3.5 (Above average)*
May 16 22:01:00 13h 09m Ballistic Skylines ♥ 0 At first it is difficult to figure out why the build and scoop capsules do nothing even when hitting an empty area. Apparently they both need an arbitrary amount of free space around the hit location, which is not visualized in any way, resulting in ample lost ore. Missing a scoop is especially annoying. Building vertically isn’t very exciting. How about pressing space when the capsule is in mid air to deploy the construction element which then falls down gripped by gravity? The elements could also attach to other elements allowing for horizontal construction. The last interactivity issue is running out of ore. The only way to get more, via scoops, is completely luck based. I would prefer the destroy capsule to collect ore when removing rubbish. It would either need to be free to use, resulting in spam, or the penalty for running out of ore increased from nothing to utter destruction. Alternatively a little bit of ore could be added to the bank every 10 odd seconds or so... The promo screenshot with a vast cyberpunk’ish city and smog evokes nice retro Blade Runner-ish feelies and looks much better than the actual visuals in motion. This is mostly caused by having to start building the city from scratch. The empty triangleoid (I found the zoom keys!) looks very plain and due to the lack of challenge and general sluggishness of the build progress I never got to the mega city stage. Shame (on me too) Not a fan of the beeps and boops. Ambient music alone, or style relevant music, would have been a better fit. City building and artillery is a near incompatible combination, inconvenient at least, so points there! Overall: *3 (Average)* Fun: *1.5 (Terrible)* Innovation: *4 (Good)* Theme: *4.5 (Great)* Graphics: *3.5 (Above average)* Audio: *1.5 (Terrible)* Humor: *2 (Bad)* Mood: *3 (Average)*
May 17 08:10:22 10h 09m Just bullet: A turn-based hell ♥ 1 Surprisingly functional take on the theme. A mashup most obvious, no extra points there. Currently it is quite easy to dodge dangers as bullets seem to all move at the same speed and they all have the same size too. Increased variety and more bullet patters would help. The most pressing issue for me is the user interface. Using only the mouse is aggravating as all buttons are located in different positions around the screen. Hotkeys for shooting and waiting would be easy additions. The movement hotkeys are weird. How about direct control of the ship with QWEASDZXC? The graphics are crude, in a stylish way. These simple pixelated doodles are quite charming, in striking contrast to black background and other titles alike. Audio isn't bad either, yet the 10 second music loops did get on my nerves in the end. If you are thinking of a post-jam version, here are a few ideas starting with classic shmup fare. - Power ups: bullet patterns, lasers, homing missiles, etc. - Abilities: shield, drones, mode shifting, enemy grabbing/throwing, teleporting, bullet reflecting. - Resource management. Spamming bullets could be reduced if there was a cost attached. - Hacking enemy ships to fight for you with a downside (cannot move for 3 turns or a resource cost) - A ghost which follows the ships and mimics its actions. - Multiple ships to manage at the same time? - Multiple ships which can join together to form a bigger ship?! - Multiple ships which can use destroyed enemy ships to create more ships to form even bigger ships?!? (I might have gone too far in a few places...) Overall:* 3.5 (Above average)* Fun:* 3.5 (Above average)* Innovation:* 3.0 (Average)* Theme:* 3.0 (Average)* Graphics:* 4 (Good)* Humor:* 2.5 (Below average)* Mood:* 3.5 (Above average)*
May 17 08:15:23 5m 01s Bubba Illegal Construction INC ♥ 0 Played on Linux. The movement speed is very fast, too fast in fact. The character sliding around in pseudo T-pose is funny, but a running animation would have been more pleasant. Mashing into buildings is funny as well, yet counter productive. Avoiding the inspectors isn’t much of a challenge, they rarely stumble upon the illicit operation due to the size of the city. Building a tower is needlessly finicky. Dropping a floor is imprecise because there is no indicator on where the floor is going to appear in. Once down, floors don’ like to stay put. They should be heavier to combat this. The graphics are simple, as said animations would be a big improvement. Audio is much worse, very annoying sound effects all around. The idea is solid. Physics based tower building could work, maybe in combination of something else than stealth. Workmanship is not up to par. Overall:* 1.5 (Terrible)* Fun:* 1.5 (Terrible)* Innovation:* 4 (Good)* Theme:* 3.5 (Above average)* Graphics:* 2 (Bad)* Audio:* 1 (Terribad)* Humor:* 3.5 (Above average)*
May 17 08:26:22 10m 59s Bullets of Insight ♥ 0 Seen many turn-based bullet-hells around these parts, but this one takes the cake. Plotting the curve and looping around bullets works great. The replay feature is a nice addition. Restarting from the very beginning is quite annoying. I would have liked to skip to the latest boss when defeated. Now I'm not sure if there are more than three. Music sound very disharmonic, is it autogenerated? The sound effects are the usual low fidelity sfxr clips so no points there. Mood isn’t the strongest point either, mostly due to the audio-visuals. Ok entry in all.
May 18 21:23:01 36h 56m Wasted Warlocks ♥ 1 Looks great, sound great (although the music loop is too short) and the design, on paper, is pretty great too! If only the combat code wasn't missing. ☹️ Can't say much about the interactivity. Multiple separate phases for each turn doesn't seem like a necessary addition. Usually there aren't any phases per turn, just do what you want and then let the enemies do the same. Maybe you were going for more of a card game vibe, than dungeon crawl tactics. Do work on it if you have the time. This could be quite something. Overall:* 3 (Average)* Fun:* 1 (Non-existent)* Innovation:* 3.5 (Above average)* Theme:* 4 (Good)* Graphics:* 4.5 (Great)* Audio:* 4 (Good)* Humor:* 3 (Average)* Mood:* 3.5 (Above average)*
May 18 21:26:46 3m 45s Patrick's Shoot Towers Pew Pew! ♥ 0 Dropping the player onto the battle field could yield all sorts of interesting choices to be made. Positioning the tank would matters if the towers required fixing, more ammo or upgrading; certain enemy types could only be defeated by the tank turret; or by powerups appearing all around the map, to name a few possibilities. I had bought every tower by wave 15. Waited for a while and even at Wave 30 the very first tower was able to defeat all of the monstrous cubes. Where's the challenge progression? The ship and the turret look good, yet they are tiny. You could have used the screen estate better by fitting the level horizontally thus allowing the camere to zoom closer. Not going to comment further on the temp cubes. Design and content are lacking, workmanship isn't bad apart from the missing graphical assets. Good effort, low scores though. Overall:* 2 (Bad)* Fun:* 1 (Terribad)* Innovation:* 2 (Bad)* Theme:* 3.5 (Above average)* Graphics:* 3.5 (Above average)* Audio:* 1.5 (Terrible)* Humor:* 3 (Average)* Mood:* 1 (Terribad)*
May 19 18:50:08 21h 23m Firun ♥ 1 A runner mixed with... something? Running a way from a fire sure works. The controls are tight enough and the challenge ramps up eventually. I'm not sure what the white and blue balls do. Points perchance? Presentation is a mixed bag. The graphical assets overall are low quality, but there are many neat effects which make up for it, such as the lighting system, fire propagation, the smooth slipping animation and wet footprints. Audio is lacking. Basic sound effects and a lack of music don't create the urgency which a runner of this type needs. Well made on the programming side. The audio visuals could be improved a lot.
May 19 18:53:32 3m 24s Dedicated User Defined Entity (D.U.D.E.) ♥ 1 Works on Linux. For some reason the menu scene is in glorious fullscreen while the actual scene is a tiny image in the center of the screen. Odd technical issue there. Simple, kind of an obvious idea and not at all incompatible! Sure the theme isn’t great, so let’s skip it. There is potential in this “random skills to get through a level” idea. Having to switch the skills every 10 odd seconds isn’t too thrilling though as it breaks the flow. How about picking 3 skills out of 5 available, where every combination is still usable? This would require clever level design, but improve the experience, I reckon. Some levels could automatically select a random set of skills so that the player cannot go with their favorites all the time. The graphics are indeed nice, 16-bit retro feelz. I wouldn’t mind the black background if the assets were even more retro (think Atari xx00 and early NES), but currently it does detract from the style. Audio would have added a lot, you’ll get there eventually! Ok effort, you should have disabled humor and mood in my opinion. Overall:* 2.5 (Below average)* Fun:* 2.5 (Below average)* Innovation:* 3.5 (Above average)* Theme:* 3.0 (Average)* Graphics:* 4.0 (Good)* Humor:* 1.0 (Non-existent)* Mood:* 1.0 (Non-existent)*
May 19 19:00:32 7m 00s Funk Escape ♥ 1 Interesting idea, splitting the player’s attention to two separate modes, yet it doesn’t quite pan out. The rhythm section can be managed by ear. Seeing the blocks in the peripheral vision is also enough to do well, not that I can ace the tricker parts or anything. The shmup side of things is way too simple. Dodging is a breeze and shooting only makes is easier as there doesn’t seem to be much of a downside to it. Enemies shooting towards the player would have heightened the tension by quite a lot. I’m guessing the ship moves faster with more Funk Power in the tank as my second playthrough finished in 3 minutes rather than 4, but I couldn't see (or feel) an increase in the actual speed. What's going on with that? Ok work in all. Overall:* 3.5 (Above average)* Fun:* 2.5 (Below average)* Innovation:* 4 (Good)* Theme:* 4 (Good)* Graphics:* 3 (Average)* Audio:* 3.5 (Above average)* Humor:* 3.5 (Above average)* Mood:* 3.5 (Above average)*
May 23 21:00:43 98h 00m Zumaster ♥ 1 A neat techdemo. The genre combo is certainly a functional one. Had a similar idea initially using hex tiles and then decided to go with the easier rectangle grid. I feared running out of time with a more complicated set up, which might have happened to you as there really isn't much to do. Lifting more mechanics and tropes from shmups, for instance, would have helped. Enemies who not only try to attack the player's ship, but also add in more bubbles, steal them or mix them up. Stuff like that would have livened up the proceedings. The visuals are great, audio good and the controls tight. The lack of challenge is a shame. A solid effort nonetheless.
May 23 21:04:28 3m 45s threeSpace ♥ 0 Chill space exploration at its best! The music, hud, planets, debris effect while moving, all excellent work! There are a few typos here and there, not a big deal. I would have liked to see actual mysteries hidden on the planets and enemies lurking about ready to strike. Not something you had time for of course. Then there is the match-3 portion of the project. What a letdown! A barebones, humdrum, clickety-click fest. There is no tension to it, no challenge, no need to think, just click fast. Even pattern recognition is out the window as it is possible to swap tiles even when there is no match. The visuals are worse too... This mix is certainly close to incompatible as these modes add nothing to each other. High points for that, otherwise the match-3 side drags everything down.
May 26 20:06:19 71h 01m Python Barrage ♥ 0 Snake is quite the classic. It is about avoiding the walls and the ever growing tail. Shmups in general are also about dodging things: enemies and bullets. Why then, when put together, there is no need for evasion? After picking up a few powerups the best strategy becomes doing nothing. Automatically scrolling from left to right is enough; the enemies don't stand a chance! The snake won't hit its own tail if there is no reason to turn, no reason to take risks. Nothing happens when hitting an enemy. Changing this would have been enough to incentivize movement. Actual walls at the area borders, but also inside it, would have helped tremendously as well. Force the player to move around, add in some challenge! Spawning enemies from different positions is yet another possible solution to the same problem. The graphics are somewhat inconsistent. The backgrounds and the entities being in a different styles, not that they look all that terrible on their own. Audio is a worse offender. The 10 second background loop is very annoying and the sound effects peak the volume in an ugly way when many effects play at the same time. The potential of the idea is, unfortunately, not realized here. A for effort.
Jun 2 15:40:42 163h 34m R-Trooper Squad ♥ 0 The Linux version worked for me, but for some reason it only runs in a small window. Still, it is playable; might be the 32-bit version acting out. Segmented real-time tactics isn’t a new concept, Frozen Synapse immediately springs to mind. The theme was technically impossible, but this isn’t even a combination of genres to start with. There is not a lot of challenge at the moment. 5 troopers are more than enough to repel the few enemies. I would have liked to see swarms of ~~bugs~~ horned... hounds? On my second playthrough the ending screen popped up claiming all the troopers had died while that was clearly not the case. The graphics are ok, I especially like the chibi starship troopers and the fat drop ship. The gray terrain is dull and the monsters look silly sliding around the place. Voxels aren’t exactly easy to animate, yet it is doable and would have added a lot to the lumbering beasts. The lack of audio hurts the mood, overall presentation and feel of the combat; never underestimate the importance of sounds! Maybe you just ran out of time. Ok work. A lot of tweaking needed to unlock the potential of the idea.
Jun 2 15:49:13 8m 31s fishing: into the abyss ♥ 1 Sure you didn’t like the theme, yet I don’t exactly see this as an extreme take on it. A shmup with powerups. Isn’t that every shmup ever? Visually speaking there are cards and lobsters and bullets, but the mechanics are still very standard. Is that a bad thing though? Not really, a solid shmup is a solid shmup. It was a challenge getting to the boss without taking any hits and the boss has a good variety of moves, even if they are rather easy to overcome. I tried a no-shooting dodge run too, but that was simply impossible. The yellow spammers combined with the blue sharpshooter fish is lethal combo! The graphics are not going to win any awards and the audio fares only slightly better: the sound effects do their job, the music is repetitive. The absurd idea and visual style do poke through the crude exterior. You need to work on your presentation skills to make them truly shine.
Jun 2 15:52:34 3m 21s Infinite Typer ♥ 0 A typing runner! Didn’t even consider those mechanics for some reason... (I wonder why?) Innovative and very thematic for sure. The graphics are in a blocky style which isn’t very appealing to me, but could work. Unfortunately the block sizes vary wildly and the models looks very plasticy even toy-like. The roads are also floating in space. I should not be able to see that! The music is ok, while the sound effects are quite annoying due to their high pitch. I do find the ragdolling funnier than it should be and the mood is effective in its zany, crazy-land way. The typing then. Eh, it could be quite an enjoyable challenge, yet there are issues. Starting with the controls. Pressing space should apply a command, just like the enter key; and there should be a hotkey for restarting. The bigger issue is the constant speed up. Give the player at least a few roads to get used to the controls before ramping up the intensity. The maximum speed should be limited so that the physics don’t break. Currently jumping over cars simply isn’t viable as each jump goes extremely wide. Good idea, janky execution.