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Feedback comments for LD42
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | ArmchairArmada's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 15 20:35:33 | Personal Space | ♥ 2 | It took me a while to figure out the movement was locked to a specific spacing direction indicated by the bottom-left hand corner HUD. Since my focus is towards the player, I didn't notice this indicator until later. Perhaps consider moving that HUD below the player character, so that it's in the same place my focus is on? In regards to the gameplay, it's certainly stressful to realize how limited your movement are, and how it seems many NPCs moves towards your direction. It's funny how after some experimentation, my winning move was to sulk into the kitchen and hug the top-left corner. So, I assume I perfectly got the intended experience in the game? I like the concept, it certainly forces the player to reconsider the conditions the playable character is in. I was a bit bummed out that I couldn't walk out the door, but heh, I guess that's the price of a surprise party. | |
| Aug 15 22:13:29 | 1h 37m | The Gargoyle Landing | ♥ 1 | After having approached the game both from "survive as long as possible" to "match as much as possible," it's clear that the former is a better experience from the fun perspective, and the latter for scoring purposes. From that sense, I feel the game is rather inconsistent in experience: the scoring mechanism does not match with what makes the game fun. I also felt the precision necessary for the blocks to be considered a match-3 formation was too strict as well. It would have been nice if the blocks merely needed to touch each other. |
| Aug 17 03:12:04 | 28h 58m | Soggy Bunny | ♥ 0 | Doi, the game ended just as I was enjoying it! I definitely loved the water flowing mechanic and how that prevents the player from progressing. I also really appreciated the level progression that made it easy to experiment and understand some parts of how the water flow works. I do confess the water flow was less predictable when it was out in open space. It was pretty clever of you to make the blocking of water a more important objective than to have the player decipher the water flow movement. That said, I do think that made the solutions to the later puzzles that weren't tutorial material too simple. I think with more time, this could have been something very special. |
| Aug 17 03:58:07 | 46m 03s | Open Spaces | ♥ 1 | Excellent job, everyone! I know some of the stuff below are repeats of what I already said in person, but I hope you find the following feedback useful: I do think that for the most part, the progression of the story is smooth and believable, though a bit compressed. The presentation is excellent, with the sketchy penciling heightening the tension, and music that uses unconventional instruments. I do appreciate the majority of the character dynamics, but there's a line with Quinn that makes her sound like a Mary Sue (the "Nelly thinks she's helping, but she's really not" part), or at least a sudden and uncharacteristic author-insert. And while neither of these problems are immersion breaking, I managed to find a typo and a bug while pursuing all the bad endings (because I'm a jerk). For the typo, in the scene where you go to Quinn's party without a therapist's help, Quinn suddenly starts referencing themselves in third-person (was she secretly a cartoon villain this entire time!?): OpenSpaces 2018-08-16 (18787).jpg For the bug, right after choosing "You're right" when Nelly confronts you in Quinn's party... OpenSpaces 2018-08-16 (18789).jpg ...well... OpenSpaces 2018-08-16 (18788).png |
| Aug 17 20:22:25 | 16h 24m | Ice Interstice | ♥ 1 | Very cool puzzle design. The last level certainly had me stumped. I was most impressed with the creative audio, actually: it was a really nice touch to make each footstep play a different note. Most puzzles seems to have multiple solutions, which I tend to favor and applaud for. I did think the harder levels requiring a specific set of procedures to be more annoying, but that probably boils down to taste. I did think the ice shooting mechanic needed to be more reactive to the player's input, or at least provide a clear visual indicator on when the penguin needs to cool down before launching the next ice beam. To be fair, this wasn't a game breaker in any way, since it's already turn-based, so one had all the time they needed to wait until the beam was recharged. It does appear a bit glaring, though, after smacking into the same ice cube over and over until a projectile is launched. These are all nitpicks. Overall, I think the game came out as a nice package! |
| Aug 21 03:44:55 | 79h 22m | Unfamiliar | ♥ 1 | I'm reminded of a Skype call a long time ago my sister made when she was visiting Japan. Reconnecting with her cousins, aunts, and uncle, she invited our grandmother to the call. What was striking was that after marveling at the technology that is video-chatting from overseas, our grandmother would ask my sister, "who are you?" Each time, my sister would reply, "your granddaughter, remember?" This was in a span of 30 minutes. Back to the game, I'm pleasantly surprised at how well the narrative was written. It must have been quite a challenge to write from an Alzheimer's victim's perspective without sounding like there's a lot of gotchas (e.g. the frustration that the reader memorized something the lead character doesn't) and deux ex machinas from the reader's perspective. Having new, only-slightly-important details prop up later to re-contextualize the lead character's observations was a subtle, yet effective way to demonstrate her inability to retain memory. I did think the time skips were a bit sudden when the subtlety was lost in favor of the lead character being unable to distinguish past from present, but then again, I do understand that this is the natural conclusion of this disease developing. I sort of wished the transition was a little more smoother, like building on how our protagonist mistakenly identified her granddaughter as her adult daughter. I also confess I wasn't a huge fan of the music lingering a little too long than I would have liked. There's a lot of dialog to go through, and since the music only changes on scene changes rather than key moments, it got repetitive after a while. I'm a huge fan of the art, however, and enjoyed using the point-and-click format to encourage the player to collect as many memories as possible before our lead loses them. Well done! |
| Aug 21 04:02:11 | 17m 16s | Runing Out Of space - cakes | ♥ 1 | Oof, the platforming controls needs a little more work, in my opinion. It's currently very slippery: tapping the direction in the other direction has a small bit of delay that makes it feel less reactive than it should be. I felt the character wall-jumps at inconsistent distances, and couldn't figure out what would cause them to suddenly climb up a wall really high vs only bump into it. I also got stuck in the half-pipe as well, as I couldn't figure out a consistent way to increase height. There's a lot of great ideas in this game, especially the limited number of dashes, but without the tight controls, they make it difficult to access and utilize properly. |
| Aug 21 04:30:33 | 28m 22s | modbot | ♥ 0 | Wow, those spike hitboxes are really large. I like the idea of applying more mods on the robot and making it unwieldy, it's a clever risk-vs-reward mechanic. I thought the levels didn't do a very good job of demonstrating why this is such a novel idea, though, at least before the helicopter vs spike level. I may have missed the later levels where one would have to make careful decisions on what they attach, but at the current standpoint, it just feels like a novelty. A tutorial would have been nice. Had to read the descriptions to figure out what to do. |
| Aug 21 20:58:08 | 16h 27m | The SACCULOS Saga | ♥ 1 | I...Well...Um... Ya know, I always thought I liked absurdist humor a lot. There's a lot of appeal to the philosophy that we humans will always be seeking for meaning in things that clearly has none. This game series, which gives me the Soda Drinker Pro vibe is...quite a bit much for me to swallow. I mean, I guess it's a commentary on our obsessions with sequels? I rated high in innovation, though. There's a lot of potential in the concept. If anyone in the team plans to pursue this implementation further in future games, I'm all for it. |
| Aug 22 19:44:15 | 22h 46m | Ultimate Cave Of Dangers | ♥ 0 | I think the procedural level generation was pretty fun, but due to the slippery controls, and the poor wall-jumping that wouldn't be powerful enough to allow the character to fit through tighter spaces or treck up taller walls, there were frequently cases where my character would die for reasons beyond my control. I think a closer inspection with the controls of the character should be taken, then tightening the platform generation to work with the new control scheme. And for my part, outside of the kickback from shooting, I didn't feel particularly incentivized to kill zombies. They felt like bullet sponges and not worth the effort. |
| Aug 24 00:45:20 | 29h 01m | Space Farmer | ♥ 0 | I see no seeds on my 2880 x 1800 screen, either. I can tell from the screenshots it's off-screen to the left, so I'm unable to click on it. Here's the screenshot of it, in full-screen: Screenshot 2018-08-23 (18794).png |
| Aug 24 01:38:42 | 53m 22s | Little Bear Planet | ♥ 1 | I frankly do not know what one is supposed to do with the level, Lateral Thinking. Edit: Figured it out. Gah, I'm not a huge fan of these, "edit the text file in the game data to make it work properly," kind of puzzles. |
| Aug 25 01:39:40 | 24h 00m | Bunny Bazooka | ♥ 1 | The Ludum Dare build of this game is super-duper rough. From the excessive screenshakes, to infinite bullets and jumps, there's just a lot that feels like it needs more time and polish. To me, though, the most annoying thing was how the action-based nature of the game combines poorly with controls that's easy to mistake from left to right. I confess I wasn't a hug fan of the jump physics, either. |
| Aug 25 02:32:15 | 52m 35s | Super Responsible Parent | ♥ 1 | Extraordinarily fun! Bouncing alone is a ridiculously entertaining mechanic alone, and combined with the dash mechanic creates a very tight platforming-like experience. Fantastic job at laying out the levels to ease the player into the wacky physics and controls. |
| Aug 28 23:19:34 | 92h 47m | Stepping Stones | ♥ 1 | I thought the game was pretty fun. Figuring out what path kept the player from jumping onto 3 of the same colored platforms was entertaining. Personally, I think the levels could have been designed a bit better so the game conveyed its rules a little better. For example, start with a level where one can beat immediately with 2 stepping stones, then have a level with 3 (it's a trap!) to make it clear the 3rd stepping stone is the thing the player needs to pay attention to. From there, introducing new colors can be done more smoothly. Overall, enjoyed it. |
| Aug 28 23:44:21 | 24m 47s | Lancaster Electronics Ltd. | ♥ 2 | Oof, I confess I'm not a huge fan of these style of games (says the professional programmer). Anyway, while I realize time was short, I found the interface could use a lot of improvements. Parts that I thought were intuitive were clicking on and dropping modules onto the grid. I didn't realize, however, the game had different modes, and that the number keys or scroll wheel will change to each of these. I didn't like that linking modules had to be done in a separate mode. I also had difficulty deleting modules once selected, since there's no visual indicator a module has been selected, and the screen merely displays the properties of the modules, but no instructions to delete it (contrast that to a link). The delete key may not have been working, either. |
| Aug 29 00:01:13 | 16m 52s | Finger Noodles | ♥ 1 | On a retina screen the text appears very small, and perhaps because of that, it's difficult to discern what the next step is. I think some animations and more thorough instructions to indicate which hand and which key the hand is supposed to press would help. Also say something like, "don't let go of the keys until the next turn!" Anyway, cute concept, I really like it. |
