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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Sean S. LeBlanc's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 24 04:05:59 | Heck Deck | ♥ 1 | Great entry! This mix of ideas worked really well! I did find that after a couple tries the core loop got a bit too easy. Because you have so much control over movement with the superhot time mechanic, it's pretty rare that you actually get hit unintentionally. In fact, I often found myself spinning around for ages, waiting for pickups to drop so I could progress. Something that might make it a bit more challenging is making the superhot mechanic less than 100% effective, i.e. make it so that even when you're not doing anything, things still move, just at a really slow pace. btw, I saw you mention on twitter that this was the first time you tried a hand-drawn art style; you should try it more often, because it turned out really cute! | |
| Apr 24 04:14:10 | 8m 11s | Vyperspace | ♥ 0 | Cool entry! It's a simple idea, but works pretty well! I did feel like the best strategy after awhile was to just run around in circles and mostly ignore the asteroids/ore though. Even without actively going for them, the collisions between asteroids were often hectic enough that you end up collecting ore anyway. (I could just be bad at playing it properly though, so take that with a grain of salt.) Really digging the slight screen distortion btw; it's surprisingly effective at giving it that extra retro boost without being too in-your-face and getting in the way of the game. |
| Apr 24 04:29:57 | 15m 47s | Netcrawler | ♥ 2 | Oof, this is a really challenging one! Took me quite a few tries to understand what was going on, and even then I only managed to make it to around wave 30. Having all the instructions written out was helpful, but it's a lot of info to take in all at once. If you were to ever expand on this one, I think it would benefit a lot from some in-game tutorialization which progressively introduced the mechanics (that's quite a bit to ask for a jam entry though, haha). I also got the above bug btw; it can be reproduced pretty consistently by placing a tile just off the right edge of the board. Overall, it's a fun entry! |
| Apr 24 04:50:33 | 20m 36s | BIRKANOID | ♥ 2 | Neat entry! Definitely in need of some balancing, but I could see this being a really solid game with just a bit more polish! There's a surprising amount of content for a jam game, and it's a cool concept. btw, there seems to be some issue with the audio, where sounds stop for awhile and then a whole bunch play all at once, as if catching up to the gameplay. This may just be an issue with the engine though, so 🤷 |
| Apr 28 17:03:59 | 108h 13m | Fluffy Koala and the Delicious Cake Café | ♥ 0 | This was adorable and awful (but in a good way)! |
| Apr 28 20:24:53 | 3h 20m | discardagain | ♥ 0 | Love the springy art style of this! I agree with most of the criticism of the AI others have posted (starts off feeling very hard and feels too easy once you learn the mechanics). It doesn't do a great job of making the game fun, but good AI's also super tough; it's impressive for LD even if it is a bit unbalanced! I also found that the shield card wasn't obvious. I had to refer to the written description to figure out what it was supposed to be; maybe something more straightforward like a literal shield for the graphic would be clearer? Overall, this is great entry. I think with a few more card types, this could be really interesting! |
| Apr 28 20:40:34 | 15m 41s | Tiny Crusader | ♥ 1 | Great entry! Love the particle effects, and it's nice to see another PICO-8 entry. Some criticisms: - the crusader to rescue for an extra life is a bit unclear in-game; I though it was just a graphics bug until I referred back to the text - using procedural levels is cool and probably let you include a lot more content than possible if hand-authoring them, but it also means that the game felt unbalanced. I found that the levels were all way too easy, except for the occasional one which feels way too hard and starts off immediately funneling your guys into a pit - you should probably hide the native cursor with a bit of extra CSS so it doesn't double up on the in-game cursor - there seems to be a bug where there's a second in-game cursor baked into the map Overall, it's a neat idea. I think it needs a bit more complexity in the game design for it to be compelling, but as-is it's a solid prototype! |
| Apr 28 21:50:26 | 1h 09m | Dragoon Drop | ♥ 1 | Oh wow, this is without a doubt one of my favourites from this LD! The music and artwork are both fantastic, and the game is quite fun! It's not the most original take on the theme (I've seen a bunch of card-based/turn-based action games), but this one had my playing for almost an hour before moving on. With some more content and variety, I could easily imagine this being a full game. Great job! Minor bug to report: sometimes the text rendering on cards got a bit messed up, e.g. Capture.PNG |
| Apr 29 04:03:23 | 6h 12m | Birder x Runner | ♥ 1 | In my mind, both bird-watching and running are meant to be fairly relaxing activities, but the time-sensitive multi-tasking in this ended up making for a very stressful experience! Outside of the "story" section, this also felt like it was missing some of the trademark wackiness I've come to expect from your games. This was an interesting idea, but I think the execution was a miss for me. |
| Apr 29 04:24:57 | 21m 34s | Paddle Pals | ♥ 0 | Really adorable entry! It's a relatively simple idea, but the execution is great and you've got an impressive amount of content too! The checkpointing does leave a little to be desired though; some of the later levels are actually pretty difficult and having to restart the entire level gets a bit tedious. A couple other minor criticisms: - The in-game tutorial showing you how to switch back to platformer-mode is a bit poorly placed: The area which first has you switch to the paddle mode can easily end up killing you, and you have to actively look ahead to find out how to get out of it. - On the "give me a hand" level, it's possible to get stuck in the area where you have to break the floor (you can break some, then switch to platforming, and you won't be able to jump out) Overall, this is solid game! |
| May 13 03:36:03 | 335h 11m | Soul Sword | ♥ 0 | Really great pixel art on this one, though I found the gameplay a bit lackluster.I see a lot of people have left suggestions on what could be done to improve the combat though; I don't really have much else to add to that discussion. The disconnect on the controls was also a noticeable problem; arrow keys + s requires two hands, so you have to take a hand away to interact with the store elements. This seems like it could have been easily solved by making the mouse button attack when you're not in a menu, or by making the menus keyboard-based. This game does have really great style; I think with more polish it could be quite fun! |
| May 13 04:16:24 | 40m 21s | Dear Clicker | ♥ 0 | This was a funny concept, though I think the execution left a little to be desired. There are some good jokes in here, but the delivery feels a bit weakened since it's lacking a lot of the moodiness of the parodied material. Obviously I wouldn't expect someone to try to match the production value of Dear Esther in a weekend jam, but I think there are a few relatively quick additions that could go a long way towards getting that feel, e.g. an ambient track with some wind/waves, a darker palette, voice over that's hamming it up a bit more. It could even be funny to make some of those layers of polish unlockable through the clicker game, similar to how you have to buy the ability to walk. Couple other minor things: - it seems like spacebar was unintentionally tied to jump, and the jump is just made really short instead of being disabled entirely - one of the audio tracks has significantly lower recording quality than the others Despite those criticisms, I enjoyed this entry! The ending was also genuinely great. |
| May 13 04:41:44 | 25m 20s | Painting the Black | ♥ 1 | Nice entry! Starts off a bit too quick imo, but neat idea once you get the hang of it. I think the "red gloves" need to be a bit smarter though, especially once you start getting some points. I found that the best strategy was to aim at a corner and barely ever change the angle. Even occasionally hitting one wasn't that much of a setback; filling the bases again is tedious, but getting a strike is a much worse penalty. I took a quick look at the post-jam version btw, and the addition of sound/music definitely helped a lot. |
| May 13 05:25:26 | 43m 42s | Flee, little guinea pig! | ♥ 0 | Oof, this one's really tough! It's a cool concept, but it could definitely use a softer introduction. I feel like the mechanic for choosing the power of your shots is a little too punishing. I think either making shorter shots have a shorter stun time, or making it so you have full control over power by making it based on mouse distance from the guinea pig could make it feel a bit more fair. I was going to say it would have been improved by audio, but looks like I also ran into the issue where audio didn't play. Great entry! |
| May 13 05:37:07 | 11m 41s | Pill-Boy's Text Adventure Platformer | ♥ 0 | Really clever entry, if a bit simple. This is a solid concept; with more content it could be a pretty interesting game. Unpopular opinion: changing "exit" to "win" on the last level is actually pretty funny if it can end up killing you. Nothing wrong with trolling your players, haha. btw, the narration gets a bit weird at the ends of levels: Capture.PNG |
| May 13 05:49:52 | 12m 45s | Cruise & Co. | ♥ 1 | Cool idea! I found that in general, there was far too much RNG to feel as if I could realistically survive for very long, but with some balance changes I could see this being pretty fun. Some other minor criticism: - The audio starts/ends are pretty noticeable and abrubt right now; having some background audio and putting the dialogue through a noise reduction pass could help fix that. - Occasionally the restart would break the game (it would start, but the car wouldn't move and there were no other vehicles); I'd have to do a full refresh of the page to fix it - Given how difficult it is, having a couple hits of tolerance before losing the game would be nice Having said that, this is really impressive for a first proper attempt at a game. Well done! |
| May 13 05:58:02 | 8m 10s | Pretty Pretty Pirates | ♥ 0 | This is an interesting idea, though I think it needs a lot more feedback on what's going on in-game; the controls often felt unresponsive, though I'm not sure if it was bugs with the game or just that I was misunderstanding what was going on. Couple notes: - having a web game with WASD and also CTRL means you're gonna occasionally have people pressing CTRL+W and closing the tab. You may want to rethink that one, haha! - the rendering of the clothes seemed to be a bit buggy, and they'd often swap between being on top of and behind characters at random: Capture.PNG |
| May 13 06:19:32 | 21m 30s | Strategysphere | ♥ 1 | This seems like an interesting idea, though there are a lot of things in the way of being able to play it properly. I think introducing it as a 5 player game is a misstep, as you're pretty unlikely to find 4 other players on short notice when going through rating LD games. The game itself seems to work fine as a 2 player game where one player controls "good" ships, so saying it's 5 player probably scares off more folks than necessary. The controls and dice rolls are also quite obtuse; they're explained in the description and it's good that the game calls that out, but it'd be a lot better if they were more intuitive + presented in-game. The dice rolls in particular could simply show the actual number of moves/ammo you got rather than showing 1-6 and giving you a mapped amount. I also agree with the comments about dice rolling taking too long; the game should do this part much faster. If the concern with making them shorter was that you wanted to give players a chance to see them, you could maybe have the dice rolls continue to be shown while they are making their moves. I do think this has potential though! It's a shame the issues make it difficult to play, because I have a feeling that the game can actually be pretty fun. |
| May 13 06:44:31 | 24m 59s | Siege Of The Cloud Empire | ♥ 0 | There are some interesting ideas at play here, but tbh the "platformer" genre felt under-developed to me. The transition from 3D to 2D was cool, but beyond jumping up when a wave is finished and the occasional pickup, there isn't really anything to do as the player during sieges. I think it could have been a lot more interesting if the player was actually a combatant, or if they were more directly controlling the army. btw, minor bug to report: if you press down while you're on the ground in platforming mode, you fall through the earth. |
| May 13 07:32:02 | 47m 31s | Idleshot | ♥ 2 | Wow, glad I gave the post-jam version a shot after trying the original. There's a huuuuge difference in how much fun can be had. Even with the post-jam balance update though, it still feels kinda broken: You can easily hide out during early waves and get enough of a lead on shells that you're basically unstoppable, but jelly drops at such a low rate that it still takes ages to make progress. Some other issues: - the store UI was very cumbersome - unless I'm missing something, the turrets seem like a bad investment since you need jelly to progress - there wasn't really any need to decrease bullet spread; when you're shooting dozens of bullets per second it's actually kinda beneficial to have them spread so you don't have to aim as precisely I love the art direction in this though. Really enjoyed the super bright and saturated look! |
| May 13 08:02:37 | 30m 35s | Shoot bullets in my head while I play golf | ♥ 0 | Didn't know what to expect from a title like that, but glad I played it! This was a cool mash-up; one of the most interesting takes on the theme I've seen this LD. It's a little too hard for my tastes, but this is definitely a great entry. I'd be really interested in seeing a version of this which eases into the difficulty a bit more smoothly. |
| May 13 14:41:21 | 6h 38m | Demon Trials | ♥ 0 | I liked the visuals in this, but it was a bit frustrating to play. I felt like the drifting could have been a bit smoother; as-is, it feels like you lose way too much speed any time you take a corner. |
| May 13 14:55:31 | 14m 10s | Platform Hero | ♥ 1 | Nice entry, always cool to see more PICO-8. As a few other people have mentioned, the platforming physics could use a bit of work and the rhythm sections start off a bit tough, but otherwise this is a pretty solid game. |
| May 13 15:09:01 | 13m 30s | Golden Beak Golf | ♥ 0 | Interesting mashup! It does feel a little unbalanced though; there isn't really much point to trying to golf effectively, since a faster hit makes the flappy bird game harder, and you can only realistically clear one gate per shot with the golf shot. Making the whole thing playable with one button was a nice touch. Always nice to see PICO-8 entries too! |
| May 13 15:19:15 | 10m 14s | Tetrikaruga | ♥ 0 | This was a clever idea! The mash-up works really well together, and the audio is a nice layer of polish. Adding the ability to tap the pieces upwards was also a good idea; I feel like it would have been much too difficult without that. Great job! |
| May 13 16:04:13 | 44m 58s | Match Strike | ♥ 1 | This is impressive for a jam entry; building a whole flight sim in such a short time frame seems like quite a task. The genre mashup is pretty funny too. |
| May 13 16:28:34 | 24m 21s | Pinboy-an RPG+ Pinball game | ♥ 0 | Great artwork and audio on this one, but the pinball physics feel really wonky. It seems more like the ball is sliding instead of rolling, and the bounces are often way weaker or way stronger than you'd expect. I even managed to get stuck on one level because the ball was bouncing perfectly up and down on an obstacle. Btw, not sure if you've heard of it, but you should check out Rollers of the Realm, which was a fully-fledged game based on the "pinball + rpg" concept. |
| May 13 18:13:10 | 1h 44m | InvadTris | ♥ 0 | Nice entry! I initially thought this one would be boring based on the description, but it turned out pretty fun. It could use some more polish, especially in terms of making the two games feel more coherent, but it's otherwise pretty solid. Great job! |
| May 13 18:29:22 | 16m 12s | Keyboard Army | ♥ 1 | This is a really cool idea, but it's way too hectic for me to enjoy unfortunately. I found the multi-tasking required to be too difficult and could only manage to look at either the recruiting or the deploy area one at a time. It's easy to tell a lot of work went into this one; great job folks! |
