Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD41 → Feedback comment stats → phi

phi

Feedback comments for LD41

Timestamp	Since previous	Game		phi's comment
Apr 26 18:30:37		Joyful Cute Pals	♥ 1	Now that's just cruel... I love it! Like the sarcasm. I don't exactly know what the two genres you combined are, and you might have been able to implement the mechanics a little more elegantly. Especially the controls are not very satisfying and everything feels very clunky and repetitive. The whole concept isn't bad, and the graphics are appropriately cute, I just think there could have been a better choice than this pseudo-tile based level. Also, how could you not put some funny sounds in there? 😜
Apr 26 18:46:59	16m 22s	Zlornko Teaches Typing	♥ 1	This is ridiculously challenging and ridiculously well made at the same time, I love it! At first I thought I had to type on the real keyboard until I realized what it's about, then I feared it would be one of these annoying point-and-click-as-fast-as-possible things, and then all my worst nightmares seemed to come true, in the best way imaginable. 😆 I enjoyed this thoroughly, the visual appearance and awesome music make it surprisingly fun to play. I thought the random (?) selection of keyboard-going-wildness makes the score quite unrepresentative of the player's skills, since there are clearly ones where it's physically impossible to type. But I don't think that takes away from the general experience. Very nice, thanks for making this! My highscore after 5 tries was 633.
Apr 26 19:08:10	21m 11s	Cruise & Co.	♥ 1	The jam version actually works quite well, but it's still ridiculously hard. The crashing physics are satisfying, which somewhat lessens the frustration. I liked the voice acting and the jokes quite a lot, but I would have loved to hear more of it before dying. Maybe being able to slow down and in turn getting more annoying comments would be an option to consider? Anyway, after playing this I am both amused and dad.
Apr 26 19:25:42	17m 32s	Demon's in the NFL	♥ 1	Cool story bro 😀 But seriously, the level design and storytelling is quite good, and it's what kept me playing until the end. The aesthetics however were quite arduous, especially the color and font choice. I found the respawn and don't-go-too-far-off-the-map somewhat unintuitive and annoying, especially since the visuals sometimes weren't clear. I ended up having to replay a couple of levels just because my brain didn't manage to recognize the objects on screen within the first two seconds. Other than appearance, I don't think it's a bad game at all. So, if you clean up the visuals a bit (less is more!) and maybe put in some appropriate music/sound, this could be awesome! Especially since the ending is totally worth the struggle 😜
May 7 18:32:37	263h 06m	Bloom	♥ 1	Very calming gameplay and fitting soundtrack! I like the concept, and this would be a nice game to play kind of half-actively while listening to podcasts or so. A little more consistency in the art style would definitely help the general appearance and the controls feel a little sluggish (maybe partly because of my slow computer), but overall this is a playable and very well done entry! Congrats!
May 12 18:51:05	120h 18m	Walter's Well	♥ 1	Congrats on finishing your first Ludum Dare entry! What an intricate well system... Unfortunately, I suck at these types of game, and after countless deaths I had to give up on level 2 🙈 I found it really hard to move the platforms around and not being able to stand still at the same time. Also, the platforms are quite glitchy and hard to control, sometimes they disappeared (partially), sometimes I got stuck or fell through them, sometimes they wouldn't move for unclear reasons. asdf.png I really love the visuals and audio, and the concept in itself isn't bad and can allow for very interesting level designs. I just think it could benefit from some more work, both in terms of physics and game mechanics. I would have loved to play further, but I just couldn't figure out how to control the platforms in a way that would let me go where I wanted to without glitching out. But it's a great start and I hope you'll continue working on it! Well done (get it? like a _well_?) and hopefully till next time! :)
May 12 19:21:13	30m 08s	Sim Defence	♥ 1	Hey, congrats on your first LD, and welcome to the community! :) Awesome idea! The dialogue is great -- of course there could have been more content, but I think what's there is great. If there is some more interaction between the two games, maybe if the dialogue also reacts to the tower-defense game, I imagine this would be really fun! It's of course unfortunate that you've underestimated the complexity of the game, but what you've got here is a good start and a good concept, so I hope you'll continue this project. I had a look at your source code, and the dialogue parser does seem a little overly complex to implement and debug in a 48 hour game jam... My advice for next time would be: If you really need to use a specialized data format (which may well be the case because it simplifies level design), pick a format that can be parsed with minimal effort. For dialogue trees, you might want to use XML if there's a library for it in your framework. Otherwise, design your own format that can be parsed for example using regular expressions with capture groups. For our game, we used this approach to design platformer-style levels in a simple text format, and managed to parse it in about 10 lines with a regex. It's absolutely ugly, but it works and it's easy to debug. (if you're interested, [here](https://github.com/phigames/ld41/blob/master/web/baselevel.dart)'s the source code with the level string, [here](https://github.com/phigames/ld41/blob/master/web/baselevel.dart#L89)'s the parsing section) Anyway, I hope you're continuing development on this, and see you next time! :)