Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Feedback comment stats → Lumos

Lumos

Feedback comments for LD42

← LD41   LD45 →

Lumos's games and stats for all events →

TimestampSince previousGameLumos's comment
Aug 23 15:25:46 CLIMB ♥ 0 The idea is interesting, but the game lacks tutorials. The player is immediately thrust into a mode where one has to race against time, and presented with a number of buildings that all do... something. We know the final goal is to build a rocket and probably fuel it up, but the mechanics of achieving that are nebulous. The planet "eats" levels, a very interesting play on the topic, which requires having a very clear picture of what to build where. Reading all the information on the screen (what each building does), getting familiar with the odd shapes of the buildings, and even starting to come up with a strategy requires you to "lose" a few times, all the while you feel like you're not entirely certain what you're supposed to be doing. Indeed, I like the concept. The execution, however, renders it far more impenetrable than it should be. For a "real" version, I'd recommend having an unlimited-time tutorial stage first, or maybe a gradual introduction of the various resources that need to be collected, so as to ease the player into the gameplay. Other than that, good work! It also works without issue on a 4K display, which is always a bonus.
Aug 23 15:37:56 12m 10s Crate-LD ♥ 0 Also known as "I need to breathe in a paper bag, the game". The relentless influx of boxes is completely impossible to manage, and that's quite perfect for the theme, as well as rather amusing... and also anxiety-inducing. :) There seems to be an occasional issue with hovering over boxes, as is suggested by the first comment. In addition, I feel that some sort of a sound notification or a GUI notice that the "output colour" has changed would be very useful. Crossing the room to find a green box only to have had the required colour change in the process gave me a remarkable desire to rage-quit.
Aug 23 15:47:39 9m 43s Space Plots ♥ 0 The goal is rather unclear. On my first go, I tried to utilise the free space as much as possible, but the boxes come in so fast that planning for the long run becomes close to impossible. Getting the three "purple particle systems" extinguished -- i.e. losing -- can happen in about a second. Since there doesn't appear to be a score penalty for replacing a placed box, the best strategy I found is to simply spam right-clicks in the middle of the area, and place any extra boxes carefully if the time/input volume allows it. The score keeps ticking up, and we are absolutely immortal. All in all, I'd say this has potential, but I can't say much more than that. I like the particle systems when boxes are destroyed though, and the placement feels nice and "solid". Tiny details like these are very nice to see.
Aug 23 16:00:04 12m 25s Dot Connector ♥ 0 Reminds me of "dots and boxes", or that one game where one player attempts to build a chain from one end of the grid to another, and the other player attempts to prevent that by building "walls". The build files archive has issues, with both the Data and Mono folders actually being inside _empty_ Data and Mono folders, which require manual replacement to work. The game also opens in what seems to be a fixed-resolution window, which doesn't scale up on a 4K display. The game itself is simple enough. You have to build a "chain" between a pair of dots, but you can mark as many extraneous dots as you like. All marked dots disappear, and you get one point. Obviously, shorter chains are better, as you don't get any benefits for making a chain longer than necessary. Cutting through the middle means shooting yourself in the foot, as dot pairs appear to be chosen arbitrarily and a required chain may quite easily be impossible to build. In one of my goes, I ended up with two dots only (as a result of building chains far longer than the theoretical minimum, in order to "kill" as many dots as possible), and I only got the "ending" dot (the green one) of the pair. In other words, the final chain was impossible to start by virtue of a bug. With all this in mind, I can say that the idea is interesting and simplistic (maybe by virtue of being simplistic), but the execution could probably be improved in a lot of ways.
Aug 23 16:07:26 7m 22s Running out of Space ♥ 0 Tough to play on a 4K display without overriding DPI scaling manually. Other than that, I like this a lot. As bare-bones as they get, but really makes you think about space debris. :D I like the style, I like the background music, I like the little thrusters and the little particle systems that they've got. Gives me some _"Super Amazing Wagon Adventure"_ vibes for some reason (buffalo?). 98 seconds on the first go. I'd obviously recommend more gameplay mechanics -- I really can't give this game a high "innovation" rating, but I quite enjoyed my brief time with it nonetheless.
Aug 23 16:13:43 6m 17s Spatium Vivendi ♥ 0 Zero explanation of what one's supposed to be doing. Stickmen randomly became red, and clicking on them appeared to delete them. I have no idea _how_ to pump that oxygen into that room. Hey, the elevator-style background music isn't bad though.
Aug 23 16:23:18 9m 35s OutOfSense ♥ 0 I hate to be "that guy", but because _I am_, here's a reminder that "loosing" and "losing" mean different things. After clicking on a tiny box (the UI doesn't scale itself for a 4K display), we find ourselves in a black void, where a Metrocop tells us to pick a can up, the can being illuminated by a spotlight. I think we then have to carry it over to a couple of boxes. Doing that appears to trigger either an endless loop of "pick up that can" lines, or maybe not endless, because additional illuminated boxes and/or cans appear to spawn in the void. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing or what the goal is. I'm afraid the "message" might just be 3deep5me.
Aug 23 16:32:59 9m 41s Mishap (Garbage LD42 Game) ♥ 1 I believe my clicks per minute are decent, maybe even above-average. Less than those of a Cookie Clicker addict, but more than sufficient for most purposes. Alas, even a Cookie Clicker addict would be unable to crawl fast enough to escape a smashing demise. I stopped when my mouse complained to sue me for battery. Wonderful introduction though. You know you're in for a treat when the first line of the author's description contains "This game _fucking_ sucks."
Aug 23 16:39:23 6m 24s Trapped ♥ 0 Not a bad little puzzle! The trick appears to be in moving vertically, as moving two spaces vertically will produce a barrier either above or below you, allowing you to move two spaces to the right. I have a feeling that some levels are outright impossible though, if, say, two barriers spawn on lines 2 and 3 in the penultimate column. All in all though, I do like the idea.
Aug 24 15:39:02 22h 59m Gnome Miner ♥ 0 Not bad. Mining requires some strategy to maximise efficiency, and one has to suppress the natural urge to grab whatever ores are immediately visible. Neat little game! Scales itself well on a 4K display as well, which is a bonus.
Aug 24 15:48:05 9m 03s This Game doesn't have a title yet ♥ 1 I spent a lot of time running from the flying ghost, but it did nothing to me. There doesn't seem to be a goal of any sort, and the game also requires manual DPI scaling to be set in order to work properly on a 4K display. Unfortunately, this looks like a completely generic platformer, and I don't even see how it fits the theme. The "ghost" is too easy to avoid to be of any issue, though I'll admit I didn't wait to see if more "ghosts" spawn. Presuming they're supposed to be hostile, that is... Better luck next time?
Aug 24 15:58:03 9m 58s Out of Space Inc. ♥ 2 The walls and floor are completely invisible on Firefox for some unknowable reason. Works fine on Chromium, but positioning the two thrusters on the sofa is a royal pain in the arse. I really enjoy the concept though. Unfortunately, the best I managed to do was a sofa that whirls around at amazing speeds. 10/10, would attach thrusters to furniture again. EDIT: Forgot to mention that I don't see how you run out of space in this one, though perhaps the walls grow more restrictive in later levels.
Aug 24 16:17:23 19m 20s The Server Room ♥ 2 So far this is the game I've spent the longest playing, maybe because it reminds me of real life. Premise is simple, fits the theme quite well, works fine on a 4K display: very nice! However, it suffers from one devastating bug: picking up a 1024-meg rack upgrade is the last you'll see of it. Dropping the 1024-meg rack or inserting it into a slot will produce a 128-meg rack in its place. Lost 30 grand doing this, and at that point it became clear that I should be quitting. But aside from that, I like this a lot. Good job! @falzock: You're probably dropping the rack with RMB. I did the same on my first go, because you intuitively assume the "drop" key is what you need to use... that got me to glitch an upgrade in one of the servers. You have to use LMB instead, then all works as intended.
Aug 24 16:22:32 5m 09s Project Super Ultimate Democracy Simulator (LDJAM42) ♥ 0 Nice one! The Reds kicked my arse; I guess unprepared speeches only get you so far in life.
Aug 24 16:31:01 8m 29s Slime Janitor ♥ 0 Very nice. The UI is a little tiny on a 4K display, but other than that, the game works great. Slime janitoring appears to be a rather dangerous occupation to have! I like it a lot, especially the way that replaying levels gets you to instinctively "speedrun" them in order to save yourself the most amount of trouble. The background music is also quite nice to see. Good job! The only "con" I can think of is that I wish diagonal movement was a thing... :)
Aug 24 16:46:42 15m 41s Narrows ♥ 0 It's a game. I'm afraid that's about as many positives as I can give. The game comes packaged with a broken shortcut pointing to a "test" folder on Evan's desktop, the screen itself is tiny on a 4K display and can't be scaled at all (and I'm not playing games with the magnifier, that's for certain), there's no sound, and the link to the developer's discord server is a blank space. In addition, as someone whose dad and little brother got hit by a drunk driver once (fortunately sustaining only light grazes), I find your giving points for ramming people to be utterly offens... nah, I'm pulling your leg. Giving points for roadkills is fine, you just have to decide what the point of the game is. :P Honestly though, I really don't see how we're playing a drunk driver. I expected the controls would be wonky and unreliable, and that ramming people would be an instant failure or something. The Dark Souls of drunk driving games, if you would. I'd recommend making the screen a little larger, so us with higher-res monitors can see what's going on, and maybe make the controls bad, so it feels like you're trying to drive whilst drunk.
Aug 24 17:13:27 26m 45s Ancient Artefacts in Egypt ♥ 0 Wall-climbing beats the first levels easily. Level 8 (more accurately, level ")(") is a load of bollocks, because come on, movement is flighty, fine, but having to judge a landing arbitrarily is infuriating. Level 9 appears to be broken, because the game over screen triggers when the closing walls are halfway through, and/or after touching a wall for a bit of time, and/or when descending a little after ascending, and/or there seem to be invisible spikes wider than the visible ones on the first "middle" platform? The big issue I've got with this game is that the jumping is, in one word, awful. It feels like whenever I try jumping near an edge, there's a 33% chance of it working as intended. Unfortunately, it's probably working _exactly_ as intended, and this "type" of platformer simply isn't my cup of tea... Alas, I shall never know why exactly the young Prince of Indiana Jones got himself into that situation... Other than the frustrating controls and the seemingly-broken last level, I like it. It's okay.
Aug 26 12:16:41 43h 03m Garden ♥ 0 Heeey, it's like Stardew Valley! I don't think the idea is bad, but the inability to sell crops when they're ready -- and having to wait until the week ends -- really hurts one's expansion speed. As a result, the player never really runs out of space; the limited shop inventory also helps keep things "in check". Not bad though! Some tweaks and expansions and you might have an interesting little challenge game on your hands.
Aug 26 12:24:46 8m 05s Crowded at the runway ♥ 0 I've got to say that I really, _really_ liked this one. Setting courses with the mouse, the planes' immediate response to my orders... very intuitive, very enjoyable. And very easy, at least on speed level 1. From 3 onwards it feels like a challenge, and 7 is just hectic. I'd play the shit out of something like this that had more mechanics and a bunch more things to worry about. Right now (on speed 1, let's say) planes don't seem to spawn _too_ frequently, and the spawn rate doesn't seem to increase as time passes by -- at least I got to score 20 or so before ramping the speed up, which led to my demise -- so that might be worth considering as a potential change. Anyhow, I really like this game. A lot. Great job!
Aug 26 12:35:02 10m 16s The crushing room ♥ 1 Simplistic and intuitive idea, most likely not particularly original. Vertical movement in particular seemed to have some issues registering input, and the lack of diagonal movement was a thorn in the side. The impossible "ending" room also wasn't the best. Not bad, but unfortunately nothing special. Making everything sleeker and introducing more mechanics could make this an interesting game indeed.
Aug 26 12:50:52 15m 50s Lethal Lava ♥ 0 The download archive doesn't appear to contain the 64-bit version of the Unity Player DLL, and also lacks the Mono folder, making it unplayable. Copying "UnityPlayer.dll" resolved the first issue, but since I use C# 6 for my projects (creating a "MonoBleedingEdge" folder), I couldn't copy the Mono folder over properly. Repackaging is necessary to render this playable for the end user.
Aug 26 13:03:17 12m 25s Grid Jumper ♥ 1 This game is fantastic. It's an actual game! It introduces mechanics! It's intuitive! The walls shrink in the direction that you move in, meaning that it's more of a puzzle game than anything. It's easier to grasp than to explain, in all honesty, and there's an almost mathematical precision to it all... maybe because the author is German? :P Memes about Germans aside, the readme file has no extension and the chart seems to describe another game, but you really don't need a readme at all. This game is great. I love it. Beat it on the first go, making one mistake once. Deserves a LOT more attention.
Aug 26 13:14:12 10m 55s Slug Invasion ♥ 0 I get JNI exceptions, and honestly can't be bothered to pop IntellJ open and to compile it myself. Just package an .exe, jeeeeez. May update this comment if I find the time.
Aug 26 13:26:00 11m 48s Spirits of Semb ♥ 0 Very intriguing. Some sort of a JRPG-type game where you upgrade your "heroes" by defeating their copies and merging them up into more powerful versions. Very interesting indeed. It also scales itself perfectly for 4K displays, which is always a (large) bonus. I couldn't figure out how to exchange party members, as it seemed that you're stuck with whomever you "merged" last. In addition, healing powers are far too strong, and rounds usually consist of "You deal 8 damage, X uses Revive to heal 12" over and over again. I also got ability overlaps, where my guardian of light would have two healing powers with the exact same effect, except one was stronger than the other. This leads me to believe that the "spirits" are procedurally generated as well, which is fun to see. I could see this as a full game once properly expanded though!
Aug 26 13:40:43 14m 43s Destroy The Virus ♥ 0 Unfortunately, the shared "Windows" folder appears to be empty.
Aug 26 13:48:56 8m 13s connect the dots 3D ♥ 1 I like it. It's simplistic and intuitive. But honestly, I concur with @tbeakl: There are so many dots that "running out of space" is never an issue, and given that points are transferred between levels, I had 500 at the end of level 5, where the target goal for that level was 210. Far too easy. The 3D aspect also seems to introduce virtually nothing, as turning the camera only helps establish the longest possible lines... which isn't of much use anyway, as you can just spam connections and rack up shitloads of points. My recommendation would be to disallow "double dipping": once a point is used for a line, that's it. The point can't be used for any others. Perhaps point targets ought to be reduced if that's the case, but that would introduce and element of strategy and require orbiting the camera around the cluster to establish the most beneficial approaches. All in all though, it's not a bad game. It's pretty neat.
Aug 26 13:54:35 5m 39s Venture Tri ♥ 0 Waiting for Google Drive to zip an unzipped folder for half an hour isn't my definition of an entertaining game to play. Sorry, but one only has so much time to wait. Please package it up before uploading it next time.
Aug 26 13:59:28 4m 53s f ♥ 0 I can't seem to collect resources from anywhere except the first planet I click. Subsequent clicks appear to do nothing. This is unfortunate, as the premise seems rather interesting, and I'd've liked to see how I'd fare. In addition, the UI is tiny on a 4K display, which requires the game be played at lower resolutions... though that's not a _massive_ drawback by itself.
Aug 26 14:16:08 16m 40s Nighttime Fortress ♥ 0 I like the concept... on paper. The execution, alas, leaves a lot to be desired. On my second go, I managed to warp through the wall of darkness and remain in the first room. The prices of the light grenades and light farms are unknown, and whilst the former costs 7 light, I have no idea how expensive the latter is. The shooting mechanics are unfortunately uninteresting... the mouse sensitivity is fine.
Aug 29 14:34:21 72h 18m Heirs Kingdom ♥ 1 Great job. It took me a few seconds to understand what I'm supposed to be doing, but once I did, everything was intuitive and simple. Fits the theme perfectly, and has the added bonus of being hilarious. Spamming vertical planks as quickly as possible seems to produce the best results, but there's certainly a lot of potential for experimentation in layouts. My best attempt achieved 94 years, the last decade or so of which saw my king partially dunked in the water. A chain reaction of heirs fighting each other caused the queen, heretofore neatly tucked into a cave, to end up falling into the water, which catapulted the king into the sky, finally sending him plummeting into the water. Wonderful little game. I can certainly see it expanded in the future, maybe with more character types and interactions.   In addition, since you asked for a "rate exchange", I'd love it if you [dropped some feedback on my own game](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/requiem-for-the-postman). I don't normally advertise like this, but hey, I'm about one rating off from being scored, and you did invite us to do that. :P I enjoyed what I saw; I hope you have it likewise.
Aug 29 15:08:11 33m 50s Final Push ♥ 1 Not a bad little puzzler there. I really liked the gradual introduction of new mechanics, and I did soft-lock myself a couple of times whilst I was trying to figure out what was going on. (The small level with the three guys beside a pit: didn't notice that the tile south of the "third" guy was a pit as well.) The screen doesn't scale itself automatically on a 4K display, but manual DPI scaling makes the game quite playable. It's not that big of a deal anyway, as long as the game is playable, and this one certainly is. The biggest con I've got in mind is the fact that the only "restart" hotkey restarts _the entire game_, and not only the current level, which, given that you can absolutely do something erroneous and ruin a level completely, is _a little_ more irritating than it needs to be. In the final level, I managed to put one of the moveable walls on the left edge of the playing field, and then managed to teleport both myself and Mr Robobo _inside_ that wall. I somehow ended up pushing the wall to the right, so all went well. The robot's teleporting mechanics were somewhat random, or -- more likely -- I couldn't establish a pattern from a single go. Good game though. Very good.
Aug 29 15:19:24 11m 13s The Infinite Hotel ♥ 1 I like the concept, but I found the game virtually unplayable on my end. Jars don't tend to scale themselves for 4K displays, and also can't be (that easily) forced to behave. In addition, I had immense issues clicking on buttons. The third floor never got added, and I never managed to hire an assistant as well. Odd and unfortunate, as I'd've liked to see how the difficulty increases as the hotel grows larger.
Aug 29 15:29:10 9m 46s Capacity System ♥ 0 I like and dislike this at the same time. The visuals started giving me a headache, and I gave up at the 5x5 stage, after fucking up the penultimate or ultimate tile thrice in a row. However, the mood is great, and the way the game fits the theme is damn brilliant. Good job.
Aug 29 15:42:59 13m 49s Amistad ♥ 1 I clicked for Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins, but alas, they were nowhere to be found... Who'd've thunk there was a bridge, too?! Jokes aside, I like the concept a lot, but the execution could use a little polish. Staying afloat seems impossible, buying items in bulk seems to be the only way to get a good profit going, and purchasing a colour TV or a stereo instead of a pack of smokes (because of a mis-click or the fact that after buying an item the marker resets to the top) truly makes the soul ache. Game feels impossible later on, as people's "impatience" seems to accumulate faster than the _one-way_ trip across the bridge, and given that you can be royally screwed by what appears to be RNG (the smuggler having four TVs and nothing else in the inventory when the three "customers" require cigarettes and stereos)... Yeah, being a smuggler 'cross that bridge is a dog's life. I really like the theme though. Great work.
Aug 30 15:10:13 23h 27m SpaceLab 42 ♥ 2 Yeah, what great graphics. Because tiling textures on everything really make the game look good, don't they. You've got a moderately cool menu, lads, but it's like going to the store for a bottle of beer and coming back with just the sticker on the bottle. @aevek above sums up everything that needs to be said about. Better luck next time.
Aug 30 15:29:54 19m 41s Space Cadet ♥ 1 ... Okay, this was interesting. 10/10, would offer spare space bars obtained from an eldritch artefact to my personal shrine to the Space Buddha again. I confess that it took me a while to realise that I had to use the Enter key to buy things from the shop, and that Space accumulated currency. To be honest, I clicked on this because of Space Cadet... You know, the pinball game from the old versions of Windows? Man, I wasted so many hours on that back in the day... Anyhow, this was interesting, but I find myself a little... puzzled by the whole thing. Not entirely sure what to think, really. You've certainly made something unusual, so you get good points for innovation, I guess... :) Oh, and you also definitely get points for the way the game fits the theme. Running out of _Space_... Bloody ingenious. Initially tried the webGL build on Firefox, and it seemed to perform awfully. Switching to Chromium, because FF tends to be arse when it comes to webGL games, made it work pretty much identically, but would not play sounds for no reason. Ultimately, I played it with the desktop build, which... well, I guess it worked fine, and I guess the slightly laggy controls, the terribly prominent motion blur (I hate that particular effect in general, but that's personal bias), and the general sense of things being... off... were done so by design. Nice!