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piscythe

Feedback comments for LD41

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		piscythe's comment
Apr 23 21:36:49		Dodobrawl	♥ 1	That was certainly interesting. I like the art style and character design, though I kinda wish there had been some animation of the fighting. For some reason, the music played through only my left headphone even though I could hear the sound effects through both. I think the high volume of defensive cards works against the gameplay - in one of my matches, I ended up with a hand containing four separate copies of the 'guard' card and as far as I can remember my opponent played Vengeful Lunge and nothing else. Draft or preconstructed decks would add more depth, but I think the game would also be improved by more complicated card effects that take the game away from the rock-paper-scissors that it currently is. Good work!
Apr 23 22:00:47	23m 58s	Modern Fairway 4: Spec-Ops in the Rough	♥ 2	After some experimentation, I have come to the conclusion that I am a terrible shot. This is a great idea, though - I laughed a little just reading the weapon descriptions. I wish I'd had a more involved course, though - pushing the ball along a featureless desert got a bit old. Also, it seems odd to me that the ball doesn't collide at all with rocks. I understand that otherwise it would get stuck, but it's a bit tricky trying to get the ball out from inside a rock. I am very thankful that you included the tab-to-locate-ball feature. Good work!
Apr 23 22:28:19	27m 32s	Riot Brawl Arcade Cardgame	♥ 2	Excellent use of the theme. I love this implementation of the beat'em-up X card game because it's not just a card game about fighting - it's a card game with a brutally fast arcade tempo. It's challenging to remember where the cards you need are and to drag and drop them quickly enough to beat the meter, making for a technically demanding game. This is exacerbated by the fact that sitting idle causes the player's hand to fill up with cards, making it even harder to find the one you actually want, let alone click and drag it out. The result is a very tangibly skill-based exercise. Tellingly, I visibly improved across my four or five attempts. At first I was only able to stand still firing wildly into the enemy lines, but on my winning run I deftly danced through enemy formations. Difficult as it is to control, you are very much on to something here. I'd like to see this as a post-compo or full release.
Apr 23 23:06:53	38m 34s	God Is Angry	♥ 1	Really nice idea here. The character model is remarkably good given LD constraints and I always like to see inhuman-looking angel designs. Gameplay-wise, the platforming felt a bit awkward and punishing, exacerbated by the fact that Unreal Engine games never ever run well on my system. The hitboxes were a bit odd, too - I would often watch my sword pass right through an angel for no damage and then smack right into the thing. Still, I eventually got the hang of the mechanics and cleared the game on my second attempt. The slow choral music goes well with the slow, calculated pace of the gameplay. Good work!
Apr 24 01:08:49	2h 01m	Mud and Pixels	♥ 1	Nice. I like how the combat is tuned so that units can deal damage even when outnumbered. The death effects are well done, especially the visceral impact of the artillery barrage and the explosions on the ~~money pinatas~~ tanks. However, there was also a good deal of monotony in between tank encounters and waiting for the difficulty to ramp up. After a few early deaths trying to hold the furthest trench out, I stacked 40-50 men in the second trench and held up to wave 96. I might have been able to hold longer if I'd been smarter with artillery and ignored barbed wire. Good work!
Apr 24 02:40:59	1h 32m	LD41 -Fishmup	♥ 0	I'm forced to agree on that count. This game feels basically incomplete. I showed up and shot a bunch of fish, which earned me points, and when I went to the top of the screen with or without a fish I would get a fish info page and no way to go back into the game except through the main menu. I'm not really sure what the point was.
Apr 24 02:57:20	16m 21s	Cocaine McBain - A Farm Rush Adventure	♥ 1	An interesting idea supported by a strong art style and fitting music. It took me a few tries to figure out the jump timing - the vertical movement feels a little on the fast side. The crates felt much more significant than the other items because missing a field/cow/chicken only counts for rank, but a crate can force a reset. Once I had the timing, I managed a four star rating - with some practice I could probably get the 5. I liked the intro/outro text too. Good work!
Apr 24 03:09:31	12m 11s	TOBY GAWK PRO WALKER (🔥NOW WITH HTML🔥)	♥ 1	That happened. Wasn't expecting that options button. The controls felt a little awkward, but there's some serious optimization work here for the interested. Good work!
Apr 24 16:15:02	13h 05m	Fight For Food	♥ 1	I appreciate the ambition here, but this could do with a bit more polish. Memorizing a long list of ingredients and then trying to figure out which things drop which things on tight time limit would be easier if it didn't take me a full minute to find any enemies at all, only to get swamped a minute later. It's hard to even check what enemies drop since the swarm of enemies demands a fighting retreat. The lack of feedback and knockback in combat make it feel dull. The charming character design and good concept speak in your favor, but the implementation is unfinished. Good work!
Apr 24 21:19:28	5h 04m	Axe and Roses	♥ 5	I like the juxtaposition between the romance story and all the heads on pikes. I succeeded in all three romances despite never actually figuring out the reaction indicators. The text speed is a bit on the slow side, and I was a little thrown off by the 'you're afraid/you're admirative' type choices where they described the player's reactions rather than statements. That got me in a little trouble with Agna when I thought I was calling her out and just ended up shaking in fear. The character portraits are sweet and the level of narrative content is exceptionally high for an LD game. Good work!
Apr 24 21:40:42	21m 14s	Knight Pants	♥ 1	I always like to see people trying rts-type things in LD. I like the basic idea here and the stylized art. I agree with @G4MR about features to add, but am also compelled to point out that there should be stronger controls for your knights - at the very least I want to be able to select and move a group of knights instead of having to select and move each one individually. Good work!
Apr 24 22:02:04	21m 22s	Mob Defense	♥ 1	I really like the idea here. The graphics are nice, the music sets the mood, and it looks cool when your whole line of guys crashes into the enemies. Personally engaging in combat didn't feel so good, though, as it was tricky to fight without getting hit and the lack of a health indicator made every fight feel like flirting with death. It would also be nice to have cost indicators for the player units instead of having to determine them empirically. Still, it's always fun to see strategy games in LD. Good work!
Apr 24 22:35:21	33m 17s	Lord have mercy	♥ 1	I think you're right on the money with your self-assessment - this game is unpolished, but feature-rich. I found myself scrambling to balance protecting the house with running around trying to grab items. Landing good shots with the bow was tricky, but rewarding when I got it right. I never understood the point of the fire arrows though. There are a lot of items and controls that get thrown at the player all at once where a more polished game would introduce them more gradually. I appreciate the amount of content you tried to cram in and would love to see a post-compo version.
Apr 24 22:57:00	21m 39s	Star Brawler	♥ 1	I'm surprised that people keep trying to use WASD controls for this when arrow keys work much better. The game is visually and conceptually cool, and throwing enemies at other enemies is fundamentally entertaining. However, I agree with @DeadPotato that combat doesn't feel quite as satisfying as it could. The weak x attack seems pointless, and it's not always clear why actions do or don't score points. The score indicator told me I had 100000+ points when I killed the boss, but the win screen said my score was 0. Also, the boss really could have used some kind of health indicator. All that said, I really like what you're doing here. Good work!
Apr 24 23:35:18	38m 18s	War Maker	♥ 1	Simple, but elegant. I'm going to have to dock you on theme on the grounds that I don't see any incompatibility between war and making money. I liked the arrow graphics, too. My first attempt was 277 s / 3781 units. Good work!
Apr 25 00:05:26	30m 08s	- Arc Boss - Sternum vs The DDDmension Faries	♥ 2	stern.png I like the idea of bringing 3d invaders into a highscore arcade game, and the music and feel match up with that idea. However, I think I found a problem with the enemy design. I just parked myself in the bottom right corner and nothing could get past my sword. I played until I got the 5400 points screenshotted above, then suicided because I was bored and the difficulty wasn't going up. Things got a bit strange after a while - fairies would crash into each other on their own and score large domino chains and by the end I had three fairies that were just kind of flapping around in the foreground instead of descending on the stage. Regardless, good work!
Apr 25 00:16:06	10m 40s	Prom GOblin	♥ 2	@Deprecat is exactly on the mark here. The art style of this game is very strong, but the feedback given to the player isn't as strong as it could. The game feels more tense than satisfying, though the music is certainly an appropriate choice for a highschool dance. It's fun watching the big people freak out and chase you if you hit one of them - less so if you're trying to get away and there's just a wall of people. Good work!
Apr 25 04:44:58	4h 28m	Celauss - An Epic Realtime CCG Space Battle Game	♥ 1	I like where you're going with this. It's unfortunate that you didn't really have time to do anything with the CCG, so the result is more of a general space strategy game than a space strategy card game. The graphics are reasonably good for a jam game and I'm impressed by how well the jukedeck music fits. The cooldowns seem more restrictive than the fuel, meaning that the game is more about positioning ships and attacks than it is about deciding which cards to throw. Still, it was fun and I would be very interested in seeing a post-compo version.
Apr 25 04:59:13	14m 15s	CWF: Card Wrestling Federation	♥ 1	Cool idea, but I'm honestly a little confused. I never really understood why card interactions like 'the wrestlers crash directly into each other' would happen. Damage-dealing felt luck-based, especially with the aerial moves, and I never really understood the mechanics behind the submission holds. In my first run the second opponent took me down from nearly full health with a submission move. Though the gameplay felt opaque, the bells sounded good and the textual storytelling was on point. It woud've been cool to have narrative commentary along with move descriptions. Good work!
Apr 26 16:40:13	35h 41m	The not-so Correct Platformer	♥ 1	Nice work! I was initially skeptical about the top-down platforming, but it actually worked reasonably well after I got the hang of it. It took me more work to understand how the game communicated platform height - it took me something like half a dozen attempts to get through the penultimate level because I tried to make jumps that didn't work because the target platform was too high up. The boss fights were cool visually and aurally. I kept getting caught off guard by the speed of their attacks, but I dodged enough that I was able to dps them down before they killed me. Playing the 1.0 version I beat the crab boss in two attempts and the other two on my first try. The controls felt awkward in that I needed to keep track of WASD for rotating, arrows for strafing movement, and two other buttons for jumping and attacking. It would be simpler to have a single stafing button, rotation tied to shooting, or mouseaim with right click for jump. Boss health bars would also be nice. I love boss fights and therefore support the idea of a boss-focused post-jam version of this.
Apr 26 16:54:30	14m 17s	Beat Platformers Up	♥ 1	Really interesting idea, but I just can't seem to get the hang of it. The punching controls feel fine, but the viewport feels too small to make good judgments amount where I'm going to land and it's alarmingly easy to end up going nowhere useful or get stuck on a platform. Several times I found myself stuck on top of a platform and none of my buttons, including middle mouse, would get me. I give you credit for creating reasonbly good visuals and audio, though. Good work!
Apr 27 16:17:46	23h 23m	Soccer Fight	♥ 1	5/5 would listen to screams again. It was really fun knocking the enemies around and trying to set up goal shots. However, it was frustrating when the ball would get stuck under an enemy since then I would just be waiting for death. If soccer were more like this I would watch more of it. Good work!
May 15 04:36:19	420h 18m	Peckbuilding	♥ 1	I really like the idea here. The wounds that slow down the player's deck and limit their options do remind me of curse-heavy Dominion games, but the lose condition itself feels a bit too random. Fortunately for me, that randomness worked in my favor and I won two of the four fights because my opponent drew into three wounds first despite being behind on total wound count. I did often feel limited in options, especially when I drew into two wounds or a hand with no attack/move. Maybe a bigger hand size would help with that. The final black opponent seemed weaker than the others - it didn't seem to have as much of a cohesive strategy. Points for making a game that incorporates both card game mechanics and fighting game-style reads. Good work!
May 15 04:47:23	11m 04s	Pet THAT	♥ 1	As other people have mentioned, it certainly seems that life can be bested by moving with speed, precision, and confidence. And the reward is petting a cute cat. What's not to like?
May 15 05:11:45	24m 22s	Plasimajita	♥ 1	Really interesting and fun. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this. It's a game that expects both methodical planning and twitch reflexes, though fortunately it gives a lot of leeway. The sounds have understated weight to them and the graphics are clean, if minimalist. I found the mouse control a little sluggish, like my sensitivity was being held back. I liked how I was able to sort of 'conquer' areas of the map by dashing behind enemy lines leaving a wake of turrets. Good work!
May 15 05:20:14	8m 29s	ShmuRTS	♥ 0	I like the idea here, but this feels pretty bare-bones. The 'rts' mechanic is more of a route-selection than a true RTS, and I'm not seeing a connection between what happens on the map and in the gameplay. Forging that connection somehow would be the most important thing to add to this game, though making enemies that can realistically threaten a player who isn't out of ammo would be a close second. Still, good work!
May 15 18:58:41	13h 38m	Nubes Pila	♥ 1	This was fun and challenging. It took me embarrassingly long to realize that I could deal with the ball getting stuck by just sort of walking over and grabbing it. Because there is vertical movement in this game. Took me until the third level to notice. I like the clear definition of the different levels of charge and how they interact with the different enemy types. Predicting where the ball would end up was tricky, so I was thankful for the 'moving charge' upgrade. Good work!