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Feedback comments for LD42
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | piscythe's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 18 23:38:58 | 1066; The Viking Conquest of England | ♥ 1 | Really cool idea, but the lack of polish cripples it. It took me until nearly the end of the first fight to realize that I had a character because I spawned offscreen, my dude didn't seem to do a particularly good job of facing the cursor, and I had no idea what was happening in fights due to a lack of healthbars. There's the core of a solid risk/reward game here, choosing between buying more income or more upgrades, but there isn't enough information provided to make good decisions. Also, upgrade prices seem to persist across resets, but the upgrades themselves do not. Also, I honestly don't see the theme connection. Good work! | |
| Aug 19 00:16:02 | 37m 04s | Inadequate Ark | ♥ 2 | Really interesting balancing act happening here. It took many attempts and some knowledge about what sorts of animals to prioritize to succeed, and I lost a couple runs due to the few liars that slipped through. It did seem a little strange when I got the "turned too many animals away" ending after losing my last morality point to a liar - perhaps that should be its own ending condition. There is a little bit of luck-of-the-draw with the animal types - bees, for example, always seem to be amazing. Also is it really lying when a chicken or dodo claims to be a 'bird'? Good work! |
| Aug 19 00:45:03 | 29m 01s | Screen Space Defender | ♥ 1 | Really cool game! I kept trying to drag the pop-up windows to different parts of my screen, so your fake OS is reasonably convincing. Having the real system time in the bottom right is a nice touch. Learning the game takes a bit (my first attempt scored all of 20 points), but once I got the hang of things the gameplay and music came together for a really meditative experience. You've confirmed my suspicion that the difficulty wasn't scaling at all - once I got the hang of the mechanics and memorized the puzzles, I felt I could hold the line indefinitely, so I left after about 300 points. Good work! |
| Aug 19 03:32:52 | 2h 47m | Nuclear Arms 6: Waste Wizard's Tricks | ♥ 2 | I saw the 'Nuclear Arms' and knew I had to see the latest entry in the series. I was disappointed, but only because it ended too quickly. The voice acted lines are excellent, with my personal favorite being the 'that's not loaded, right?' for the shotgun powerup. Gameplay-wise, the garbage mechanic works perfectly, resulting in an escalatingly claustrophobic playing field. I'm always pleased to see proper bosses in an LD game, and the ones here did not disappoint. Good work! |
| Aug 19 05:14:01 | 1h 41m | Astrum Dare | ♥ 1 | Very engaging. Y'all did an excellent job of cultivating the feeling of intellectual panic that comes with having to solve a technical problem with the clock ticking down. I did find a way to shenanigans part of a puzzle piece onto the red part of the bar, which caused a fatal error when I hit validate. Later, I tried to deliberately fail all three puzzles to see the worst ending, but clicking validate on the third puzzle without even touching the pieces somehow counted as passing it. The art style is excellent, especially since the characters actually changed expressions. Good work! |
| Aug 19 18:45:42 | 13h 31m | Parking Lot Simulator | ♥ 0 | My 'organization' system was basically just a pile of cars. Is it any wonder I had so much trouble finding the right cars for the right people? I wasn't really sure what the loss condition actually was, though. Good work! |
| Aug 19 19:00:05 | 14m 23s | Space Trap | ♥ 1 | I picked this up and instantly understood why the post-jam version changed the control scheme. I really like the idea here, but I had so much trouble adapting that the room size never even became an issue - I would always die beforehand. The controls really forced me the think about every movement I made, and while this certainly made the game more interesting, I don't think it made it more fun. The health indicators made sense once I realized how they worked, but they'd be more intuitive if the bars shrank as well as changed color. Good work! |
| Aug 19 23:11:06 | 4h 11m | Monster Girl Chaos: Hollow Apple | ♥ 0 | It's not that often I see a proper turn-based strategy in LD, so this was a treat. I liked the different characters. The rules for which actions could be performed after which other actions seemed a little arcane - why can I move->attack->divebomb but not divebomb->move->attack? Once I got the hang of each character's abilities, I was able to clear the game without losing a character. The combat does feel a little sluggish, and I found myself wishing for damage number popups. It doesn't seem like there's anything stopping Peregrine from being able to kite down melee enemies by attacking them normally and then using divebomb to get out of range. Felina didn't seem overpowered to me. She felt strong enough to reward the effort of moving her into position, and 16 damage isn't that much heavier than Fang (11) and Peregrine (7 + 5). It seemed intuitive to me that Fang's webs should have some kind of slow or disable effect instead of just clearing terrain blocks. I think she's the least powerful at the moment, so adding that would bring her up to par with the others. Good work! |
| Aug 26 19:03:21 | 163h 52m | Dice Blackout | ♥ 1 | Really cool idea. This feels more like a test of rapid situational analysis and mouse precision than a straight puzzle game. Good work! |
| Aug 26 19:08:24 | 5m 03s | Quest for freedom | ♥ 1 | Interesting idea. The arena falling apart seemed a bit inconsistent to me, and the combat didn't feel particularly intuitive - I wasn't sure what the strategy was, aside from 'spam click.' Also, I'd suggest supporting alternative control schemes, such as using w instead of space to jump and using the arrow keys. Good work! |
| Aug 26 19:33:17 | 24m 53s | Invasion of The Jelly-Aliens | ♥ 1 | Really interesting ideas here, especially the cars getting bigger with more guns. I could not find a middle ground between getting wrecked in one hit and sent back to start and effortlessly un-existing all of the enemies with the plasma gun. The upgrade system favors specializing in one weapon, but as a player trying out a jam entry I'd rather be incentivized to use all the weapons so I see everything the game has to offer. Having upgrades for things other than just weapons would be nice too. The music is good, but the gun noises can get grating, especially with speed-boosted minigun/laser. Good work! |
| Aug 26 20:21:47 | 48m 30s | Gel Break | ♥ 2 | It's not that often I see an LD puzzle game that really pushes what can be done with the puzzle mechanics and expects the player to think. I think players would have an easier time learning the mechanics with stronger visual indicators - for example, have the jelly somehow indicate how many turns it is away from expansion and have a visible countdown timer on the bombs. I stumbled my way to the end (8400 points / 3 gems), but that still meant missing half the content. Good work! |
| Aug 26 20:53:06 | 31m 19s | Box Beatdown | ♥ 1 | This was great. The mechanic of knocking defeated enemies into others made combat satisfying, the different enemy types were interesting, and the boss fight at the end was creative, challenging, and interesting. The sheer number of enemies cluttering the screen constituted an apt interpretation of the theme, and the game's strong soundtrack added to the appeal. It was hard to use the dash well with all the clutter. It took me several attempts to make it to the boss and several more to beat it, but the ending was well worth it. Excellent work! |
| Aug 26 22:03:19 | 1h 10m | Robo Revolt | ♥ 0 | I didn't find the difficulty curve to be that bad. I liked how you could use the sweep move as a second attack. Trying to strike a balance between sweeping and fighting was fun, and the game made me think a lot about kiting and positioning. My scores were 340 (first attempt) and 680 (second). Good work! |
| Aug 26 22:07:44 | 4m 25s | Dodge and pray | ♥ 1 | Interesting and challenging. My first two attempts I lived for less than 3 seconds because the enemy shots caught me off guard. Maybe the enemy shot pattern should scale with time instead of being that fast from the beginning. It was fun trying to avoid the two complementary enemies once I got the hang of it. Good work! |
| Aug 26 22:28:46 | 21m 02s | They Came while I was jogging | ♥ 1 | Really interesting idea. It took me until halfway through the second level to realize that I was on Pac-Man controls - the control scheme didn't feel intuitive at all without that knowledge. Each level was its own puzzle with a different objective, but those objectives weren't always easy to discern. It took me many attempts to figure out that I was supposed to turn on the laser, then switch its direction near the UFO to shoot it down, especially as there was no clear visual indicator that this actually damaged the UFO. The final boss at least had the decency to have a healthbar. Also, I frequently died getting stuck on objects that I felt like I shouldn't have. I think a grid map might have improved the controls. Good work! |
| Aug 26 22:44:20 | 15m 34s | Treasure Room | ♥ 0 | Really interesting. I seem to have had an easier time getting into the mindset that the gold is a hazard than most of the people here. The different enemy types really complemented each other. The boss was cool, but it really could have used a healthbar. Good work! |
| Aug 27 00:11:11 | 1h 26m | SteamRush | ♥ 1 | Really cool individuals pieces, but this game feels unpolished. The sprites are individually cool, but the lack of animation holds back the art style. The character powers don't feel intuitive or satisfying. The 1-width gaps are a pain to navigate the character through, and there isn't enough protection against enemies spawning on you and killing you before you can react. The music is, as others have said, excellent. Good work! |
| Aug 27 00:16:08 | 4m 57s | King Midas | ♥ 0 | Really cool idea with the inventory mechanic. This game messed with my intuition, as treasures that I would ordinarily be gladdened to see became both inventory and map clutter. The current implementation is minimalistic, but there's a lot of potential to be developed here. Also, the pixel art is on point. Good work! |
| Aug 27 00:26:47 | 10m 39s | At the lab | ♥ 1 | HTML5 version is super glitchy. This was a cool sandbox to mess around in - I can only imagine what kinds of puzzles you could make with these mechanics. Good work! |
| Aug 27 00:39:58 | 13m 11s | Evil Forest Battle | ♥ 1 | Interesting idea. I could see something like this as a popular casual mobile game or a more in-depth puzzler depending on how you decided to expand the mechanics. I'm not sure if trying to powerlevel only a couple of spells was the best strategy, but those tier 2/3 spells certainly make a huge difference. I cleared the whole game and never quite understood the growth rules. Good work! |