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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Aurel300's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 21 12:52:07 | Immortals (and Mr Pickles) | ♥ 0 | > wait a year I found it interesting how the feeling of a dystopia could be felt from the very first lines, even before the catastrophe happened. What a sad, sad little world. | |
| Aug 21 13:05:22 | 13m 15s | Chromadice | ♥ 2 | It's a cool puzzle mechanic. My number one suggestion, perhaps even more important than having a tutorial, is to animate what is happening. It is difficult to keep track of the whole screen. Additionally, from the description alone I did not realise that it would sometimes take two turns for a die to be removed, which is what the cracks mean? I could see this expanded into more of a level-based puzzle game, rather than an infinite mode only. |
| Aug 24 13:30:59 | 72h 25m | Cybatron | ♥ 2 | Very cool. Minimalistic but pretty graphics, fitting music, and a lot of interesting level design. My only gripe is that the rule for when blocks can be moved and when not was not really explained. It looked like they could only be slid so that they form a closed / gapless column or row? Once or twice I thought I had a solution to the level only to find out one of the moves was impossible. Even though without explaining this rule explicitly the game is much "cleaner", perhaps it is not worth it to sacrifice the explanation just to keep the atmosphere. Nonetheless, great job overall! |
| Aug 24 22:35:07 | 9h 04m | CubiCo | ♥ 2 | A lot of levels! At first I was going to comment on the fact that some levels seem to be too "obvious", i.e. there is only one path I can reasonably take and it is not too difficult to spot it. But as the levels progressed, I was pleasantly surprised to find more uses of the previously introduced mechanics, in slightly less obvious ways. Towards the end a lot of the levels devolved into counting step triplets :) So the puzzles and level design is great. The difficulty curve is not too crazy, though some reshuffling of levels might be appropriate, just to keep the pace steadier. As for the graphics and the audio – I'm less happy about these. The graphics are functional basically, but the walls do not stand out very well from the floor tiles and this can be slightly confusing if the room is not a simple rectangular shape. Some animations of the trapdoor tiles or the moving X's (what are they even?) would be nice, since the player character is also animated / transitions from tile to tile smoothly? As for the music, the tunes are alright, but get very repetitive quickly. I would say that for a puzzle game such as this a more chill, lower tempo music would be more pleasant. One sound I really hated was the high-pitched produced when moving under coffee influence. Good job :) |
| Aug 24 23:00:46 | 25m 39s | Petra | ♥ 1 | Very cute! The music and graphics worked together, the levels were designed cleverly. The game looks like you managed your scope extremely well and focused completely on the one mechanic, and explaining it properly. This is very good to see in a gamejam :) At this point I would say the next step would be just to have … more! Levels, graphics, music, mechanics, whichever you could manage without sacrificing the overall quality ^^ Good job! |
| Aug 24 23:56:50 | 56m 04s | Andromeda | ♥ 0 | Yay, got there in 2796 years. Not the best score I see :D As for the game – I usually dislike cookie-clicker-type games. I think part of the reason I dislike them is that even though you have setbacks whenever you make an investment, you know that ultimately it is worth it and you will get your money (or cookies or whatever) back given a bit of time. There is no challenge to it. With your game, I felt my resources were a bit more important and so I was reluctant e.g. to mine out a lot of the space, reluctant to nuke the hives, etc. Not knowing what was coming next was great, it had a bit of discovery to it. Apart from that, the graphics are cute enough, nice to see the progression as you level up your tech. Nice game :) |
| Aug 25 15:07:04 | 15h 10m | Dark Lord Ludum Dare | ♥ 1 | Nice! The core mechanic was interesting and the various knights presented interesting difficulties. Some things could be improved, I feel – in the explanations, you say something like "if surrounded by 4 tiles, then X" (for the knight deaths and the warping). I found this quite confusing since at first I didn't realise that if a knight is surrounded by corrupted tiles on two sides and there are empty tiles on the remaining two tiles, the knight dies. Same for the warping. It might be good to visually display what a knight's turn speed is. At any point you only see its current turn counter and you have to remember what it resets to. Perhaps show the different knight speeds with different graphics? E.g. a slow knight with turn speed 4 wearing heavy armour, a fast knight with turn speed 1 wearing light armour. While you're at it I'm sure there are other variations that could be introduced, e.g. knights that only attack horizontally, knights that attack diagonally, knights that move like the knights in chess, etc. After all the knights in a level are dead, it is kind of satisfying to fill out all the uncorrupted tiles, but at the same time, it is just busy work. Perhaps make the dark lord automatically and quickly do this when all the knights are dead? There is no challenge after all. Would be more interesting if there are special tile types, e.g. ones that can only be walked on a number of times before they collapse. Anyway, good stuff :) |
| Aug 25 15:17:44 | 10m 40s | Quadrofall | ♥ 1 | Went into Tetris-- I mean quadrofall auto-pilot. Made a line of four. Nothing happened. What a twist! |
| Aug 25 15:22:06 | 4m 22s | Backpack packer | ♥ 0 | Ta-dah, I placed items into the back pack :) Also, I never knew there was a mouse-option for PICO-8 games :O |
| Aug 25 15:36:40 | 14m 34s | Space Box Rescue | ♥ 1 | Nice. The puzzle mechanic itself is great, the rules are explained with the levels in a smooth enough way, but I didn't feel any level was particularly difficult. Having the stats after each level is nice, and it shows that there isn't that much variance across solutions for the majority of levels – not totally unexpected given the rules. As for the graphics, they were not terribly interesting, but it was clear what was happening. Still, I wonder how this would have turned out in crisp 2D :) |
| Aug 25 15:57:41 | 21m 01s | TeTrans | ♥ 0 | Not my type of game (puzzle-sim?), but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Some graphics polish would be nice, especially when the cities get extremely cluttered with ? and ! – maybe you could go for a slightly stylised view of the countries you chose instead of geographic accuracy? Something like metro maps. One thing that I have to wonder about, since there are leaderboards – how are the goods spawned? It seems like it is a randomised process, maybe it should be seeded so that each level has the same blocks spawning? Otherwise it takes a couple of attempts before you get a "good run", although I guess a good strategy is still key :) But good job overall, the gameplay is solid! |
| Aug 25 17:45:05 | 1h 47m | Memory.exe | ♥ 1 | Very solid metroidvania / puzzle game. The main puzzle sounded just cryptic enough, but was not really difficult, just a little bit annoying due to backtracking / lack of me also drawing a map in my notes :) Also, I kind of wished there was a visual indication when I got the fifth signal block in the right order – I was pretty sure I got the solution right but not having *some* sort of sound was a bit worrisome. The graphics were cute, though simple, same for the music. The latter got a little bit repetitive, maybe I wish there was more of this game! |
| Aug 26 13:28:23 | 19h 43m | Exhaustlands | ♥ 2 | So right away I noticed that this game seems to borrow a lot from Kentucky Route Zero, with its desolate / chill mood, dialogues that let you choose but don't really matter, driving, exploration of places that often doesn't lead to a goal, etc. Similar games: Oxenfree, or even (LD30) Hempuli's [Badland Quest](http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=491). I quite enjoyed KR0, but while this game is similar in many aspects, it suffers from the same problems: the world is a little bit too big and too ambitious to feel interesting after being explored for a little bit. There is no reason to return to places, and fetch quests with lots of backtracking and random wandering really don't help, since I won't find anything else. I haven't managed to finish the game, I got three faith increases (burning bush, mould, blacksmith), but I guess that wasn't enough, I assume I was missing something with the static mountains … But at that point after checking in the HQ that my faith wasn't enough (which doesn't actually end the game), I wasn't interested enough to keep playing anymore. I feel this game would be much much better if you limited your world size and instead of making it so expansive focus on making it "deeper", i.e. tell a more interesting story at the existing locations, add new ones, incentivise re-visiting the same locations, etc. More complex puzzles! (I visited the Mine before I got to the Miner's house, and there was no way to leave until I got the correct path by trial and error!) The character selection in motels is a little bit annoying, it takes too long for the next character to show up when you click the arrow, and there is no indication of how many there are until you have all 4 of them. Also, some of the "abilities" in the character descriptions seemed untrue? Maybe I needed to place the characters in the driver's seat, but e.g. the Druid says no fuel is used and yet my fuel was going down as usual. Same for the Wizard's Service Station warping. It made me think that the game is incomplete in many ways – same goes for the "darkness" which never seemed to actually approach and time progression did not matter. I did not see a very clear connection between the theme and the game. I understand that the story vaguely references the theme, but this is not really reflected in the game. If anything, as long as you are driving with the cartographer you are exploring more and more of the map, thereby gaining space rather than running out of it. There should be a more concrete connection with the theme in the actual mechanics of the game as well. The graphical style is simple and minimalistic, but perhaps fitting. The ASCII stuff is not bad, but I wonder why mix ASCII characters with hand-drawn art? As for the music, I spent most of the game listening to Raindrop FM, and I feel that this kind of "music" is the most fitting for the game. The other radio stations perhaps not so much? But I suppose it is good to give the player a choice. But overall this is a very decent entry. |
| Aug 26 17:56:26 | 4h 28m | TINY TOWNS | ♥ 0 | Nice little puzzle game :) The levels were interesting and the difficulty not too curve (or high). The core gameplay is quite simple and although there are some levels where certain tiles are predefined, I wish there were more mechanics, e.g. levels where you can only place a certain thing, or levels where the check list has slightly different rules, and so on. A town puzzle like this can have lots of interesting rule sets, of course :D Some polish would also be nice, like a level selection UI or fancier in-game HUD. The audio is somewhat repetitive but it fits the game I guess. The faux 3D is a nice effect though it adds nothing to the game. Good job overall! |
| Aug 28 20:33:21 | 50h 36m | California Jane | ♥ 1 | Nice work. One thing I hated very much: the pixel scaling. If you go through the trouble of making pretty pixel art, why ruin it by mixing it with non-pixel-arty effects? I get that the character looks more expressive if you do a stretch / squeeze tween, but there are ways around that – scale with nearest-neighbour so the pixel size remains the same as that of the background, or draw more frames (more work obviously). I know I'm just a bit purist in this but still :) Now, apart from that: great game. The graphic assets themselves were fitting and coherent. I noticed a graphics glitch where a trapped wall could move behind a golden idol even though it shouldn't have but oh well. It was generally clear what I was looking at and this is very important for a puzzle game. The music was pleasant and didn't get old, the sound effects also worked nicely. I had a minor gripe with the controls: a lot of the time when I would jump, the character would move an extra tile in the same direction as the jump AFTER the jump. I think given that the jump is a rare commodity and this is a turn-based game, so moves should be careful, I think it would make sense to never allow multiple moves like this. Maybe add some sort of short delay where inputs are not processed immediately after a jump? As for the puzzle mechanics, they are nice and simple, though I've seen the exact same gameplay (with some more involved block pushing mechanics) in [CubiCo](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/cubico) for this LD as well. The levels followed a nice and smooth difficulty curve for the most part. The only level I was stuck on for much longer than the others was level 19. I think it wasn't clear to me from the previous levels that a mummy walking into a wall would stay in place? Apart from that I would actually enjoy more challenging levels – making a level larger is not necessarily the way to go, but it can be frustrating, especially when there is no way to scroll the camera so you can see and plan ahead. With the mechanics you have there is already a lot you could pack into a tiny level :) Overall this is great, I think you will get good results! |
| Aug 31 12:47:51 | 64h 14m | There is Never Enough Space!!! | ♥ 1 | Lovely game :) I wondered if the lack of clear spaces in the titles / instructions was intended. I tried to play this game with a trackpad, so it took be a bit longer, but I don't think you can be blamed for that, it is clearly a drag and drop game :) The graphics were very good, the music was not too distracting. There is a lot of variety that could be found in "drag and drop" puzzles, the checkmate one being a nice example. Unfortunately, I didn't see the theme expressed very much in the games themselves. The tweet one was perhaps the closest? Well done, it was fun to play this! |
| Aug 31 13:12:07 | 24m 16s | Rebound | ♥ 1 | Nice! It felt a bit laggy but maybe that's just the web version. The level design was good for the most part, though the mechanic was really extremely simple. I am a bit unsure about the choice to make the gameplay not-quite-turn-based and not-quite-realtime – the player's movements are turn-based, but the falling platforms are not, nor are the spikes. Maybe this adds a bit more challenge but I think I would have preferred an actual turn-based puzzle game. Having said that, the versus mode might not work without the realtime component. The graphics looked simple but they were nicely polished. I was happy to see "Optimal" show up when I finished some levels, but then I was disappointed that I could not go to a level select screen, and try to score "Optimal" on all the levels. A missed opportunity to make the game more attractive to perfectionists! :) Good job! |