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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | pkenney's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 13 23:16:18 | EVOLUTION | ♥ 2 | Wow, the way everything squished and bobbed and jiggled really made this game feel ALIVE, and pushed the already-good art and sound up to an even higher level! Nice work. It's very simple mechanically. At first this threw me, because I was seeking to understand the different behaviors of the different types of buildings, as if it were a strategy game. This was fine, and in fact kind of pleasant... I enjoyed that the game snuck up on me with an unexpected turn. At first I was like wait, didn't the picture just change? Then the sound changed character a bit. The gradual descent into a dark place was very well done. After seeing how it was going, I tried to reverse course and brought it back to a happy place, and then changed direction again and plunged it to the max until it all broke. You really captured a ton of experience out of such a simple idea, well done. | |
| Aug 13 23:57:48 | 41m 30s | Raiders of the Lost Beer | ♥ 3 | Nice, tight little game. At first I thought my favorite was the machine gun, but later I came to appreciate the shotgun as well. The way the lava constrained me meant that I would adopt a strategy of not moving much. Enemies shoot straight at me, so the pattern is: crosshair on enemy, fire a burst, then move a few steps orthogonal, and I'm safe. Complex moments came when being fired on from multiple directions, that got intense a few times. Instant gameover from a single mis-step meant death was watching over my shoulder the whole time. I tested the lava after my game went long enough that I felt I could not commit more time without knowing the rules, so I stepped in willingly and learned the consequences, and played in earnest on my second run. I got a bit north of 200,000 score. The pickup that increased my speed was a startling fright in a world where the wrong foot placement is doom. Top-down room battle has been done before, but I felt like you did a good job of achieving a nice level of intensity and required care. The art was nice, especially the lava, and the action was really clear, I appreciated the nice fat bullets. If I could suggest one area to explore it would be in the mechanics of which tiles go. This aspect felt a bit disconnected and made me wonder if a more intriguing experience could be had if the enemies or my own actions somehow were the things that wrecked the floor. For example, a tension: I want to shoot this enemy, but not THERE! Nice entry that I enjoyed, well done. |
| Aug 14 00:20:53 | 23m 05s | Space Collapse | ♥ 2 | Nice work! I managed to save the Earth. Now everyone will know my nam-- But wait... is that more Asteroids!? I always enjoy experimenting with unusual control schemes, so I liked the fluid crazy spaceship physics here. One problem with these sorts of space games is when the player goes flying off into nowhere, or collides into things, so I think you made a very good design decision to add the outer ring constraining my movement, and letting my just bounce off the sun without too much punishment. There was a lot going on in the first few moments for me to sort out, so it took me a an adjustment period. I think it was nice to include Mercury as a sort of early warning/lesson to let me see how it plays out before losing the Earth! One thing that caught me though -- the spacebar shoots, but it also skips past text, specifically including the end of the game. I didn't even quite realize I had lost because I was hammering spacebar to shoot and skipped right through the end! I liked the graphics and sounds, and felt like it came together in a nice cohesive feeling. Overall I had fun bouncing around and learning the ropes, then battling some asteroids! Nice job and congrats on a successful LD. |
| Aug 14 02:50:46 | 2h 29m | Nuclear Arms 6: Waste Wizard's Tricks | ♥ 4 | Never in all my Killbaning have I deserved a Meltdown like I deserved this one. Your games exist on this impressive knife's edge of difficulty where it's never too easy, but also never so hard that I can't see victory with just ONE MORE TRY. I just can't walk away without winning. Usually I've managed a win in something like a half dozen tries. But this time... Well, they say that surfing is a demanding activity, and I surfed so much I can still feel the soreness from the tension in my neck as I battled those trashbots again and again. I came SO CLOSE so many times. The design is dense with good ideas. The larger basic trashbot forces you to learn to dash if you don't want to take hits, and while he seems like he can be ignored when lots of trash is around, he is relentlessly pushing it toward you, closing gaps and boxing you in. Then his buddy comes, with those damned rockets that ignore the trash obstacles! If not for him, you could shield yourself in a trash igloo and ignore all but what's right in front of you. But no. And overall there is a wonderful tension between taking care to avoid hits, and the gradual accumulation of trash on the battelfield acting as a clock and forcing you to play briskly. The end boss has a wonderful escalation of the tension between trying to hit him and trying to clear space to not keep eating the trash-skipping rockets coming at you. (Tho I really wished for a better indication of when he was allowed to be hit vs not, it felt a little raw that this escalated his difficulty so much) How you find these balances, I don't pretend to understand. But once again your ideas have come together into a blast of a game that really tested me. That's why, when I finally saw the Wizard's face erupt into a series of explosions, my hands shot up in victory. YES!! I DID IT!! It was at this moment, in this pose, hands held high and off the keyboard/mouse, that one last rocket hit me in the back and killed me. That's right... no meltdown. Just more surfing. That would not do, and so I rolled up my sleeves and buckled down to get a REAL meltdown. I had to learn the ways. This was when I figured out how to master the dash to attack the big bots (I could have used a little on-character animation cue to indicate a full charge btw), and I learned that the shadows predict where fists and trash will fall, and must be avoided. I studied my kung fu, and upped my game. And finally, I earned it -- a REAL meltdown. I have to say that I've enjoyed your previous entries, but this one steps it up a level in quality. Some of that punk-rock basement rawness and minor technical issues you used to have seem replaced by a growing skill level in terms of tech chops and little details. The art and sound are all working together with the gameplay toward a really cohesive package, and all of the interactions felt good. I'm not quite sure what the guy says when you speed up and he says "He's so fast! Thanks, _____ _____" But the game is metal enough that I decided it must be "Judas Priest." I also cracked up when Killbane was like "What trashstar?" What a guy. I think maybe the knife's edge tipped a little way toward the difficult side this time, so I made you a little present: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ7PcQSOSTM |
| Aug 14 03:03:01 | 12m 15s | Runneth Over | ♥ 0 | I ran this but only got a blank screen, even if left for a while. It spins the CPU a bit but I didn't see anything happen. This is on Windows 7. Let me know if there's a workaround and I'll be happy to give it a shot. Didn't rate since I didn't play, of course. |
| Aug 14 04:25:25 | 1h 22m | Apparatus | ♥ 2 | Very cool - I love how there are zero instructions outside the game's narrative. I enjoyed the feeling of discovery and building. I didn't realize at first that you can hold shift, and then move orthogonal as opposed to just push/pull as in many other block-puzzle games. It was cool that this little block-puzzle was used as a base layer for a larger machine-building puzzle, too. An impressive amount of design scope for an LD compo! I did get dinged by dead ends. First I ran out of a electronics and couldn't make the electronics-maker. It happened because I hit space when I meant to hit shift, and I discovered the battery before the second set of schematics was unlocked. I really wanted to open the second lock and see more, but after I had built some automation I ran into a problem and trapped myself. Setting up an array of electronics production units along a treadmill, one of them slipped onto the treadmill and ran away from me. It get ran down the line to do the doorway, but there was a control unit there which stopped it from being affected by the treadmill. This also turned the production unit back on, which in turn blocked the treadmill. That caused a pileup logjam and soon my map was crowded with electronic blocks that were meant to ship but were't moving. At first I underestimated the extreme danger of this situation, and spent some money to dig out a new zone so I could come around at another angle. The problem was I could not get to the units to move or turn them off, and when I moved blocks to get through they would instantly refill with electronics. I tried to time a pair of quick moves, but wasn't fast enough. I hadn't computed the consequences of failure in advance, and that was it. Here is my final state: https://imgur.com/cxVnp6b I guess I took your implementation of the theme all the way to the extreme there, huh? That's a pretty cool game that this disaster emerged from the systems! But it was slow paced enough - which I enjoyed - but slow paced enough that I didn't want to repeat the early game a third time to get to the end. At least, not right now as it's getting late. I felt like the art supported the game well, and the controls were thankfully smooth, and I was hammering out my turns pretty quickly. It's actually pretty easy for a turn-based game with animations to frustrate me, but you avoided this problem nicely. Very nice and unique entry here. You accomplished your goal of makes a Zachlike I think. Well done!! |
| Aug 14 23:34:59 | 19h 09m | Last Days on Mars | ♥ 1 | Very cool! Nice little hex builder strat game. You say I couldn't win, but after a few times losing early and never getting a toehold, I figured out the systems and built a thriving colony. Of course, in the end it didn't last -- new people came, and instead of simply throwing them out the airlock for the good of the many, we decided to let them doom us... but still, the high-water mark of my society wasn't too shabby: https://imgur.com/dV8Wb24 I thought the systems were cool, and the art was really clear and nice-looking. I don't know the term MOXIE but the picture very well communicated what it was all about, which I really appreciated. Interface-wise the shift for multi-drop was a nice touch. I did struggle with the arrow keys. There were two issues with them: first that arrows + mouse is an awkward body position, which is why usually WASD is also offered. Second, the browser as well as the game both responded to my arrow key strokes, which meant I was scrolling within the game (wanted) but also scrolling the web page down and pulling the game off the screen (very unwanted). This wasn't much of an issue in the early game where I was functioning in a limited area, but later when was utilizing the whole map and scrolling very often it was a real drag. The sound effects were minimal and simple, but important and good at communicating important game events. Overall I think this is a really nice entry, especially for a first LD! Congratulations. |
| Aug 15 00:24:12 | 49m 13s | Boop's Space Adventure | ♥ 1 | Lots of cool ideas here in this difficult puzzle platformer. I liked the vibe, the art, and the concepts. The design and puzzles were really clever. But I want to critique the controls, because they kind of trolled me pretty hard. Is it okay if I unload on the controls a bit? I do this not because I want to say "bad game." I want to say "very good ideas with a lot of potential, but a few tiny choices in the controls that threw up too much interference for me to engage." I hope this is helpful, and not hurtful, okay? My apologies if I cross the line, I'm trying to point out a few things you could keep in mind next time. #1 - The Clone Line Problem In general, it can be a problem when the player has to RELEASE a button within one frame. In this game, I often wanted to surgically place a single clone in midair by jumping up and hitting the clone button. But sometimes I would accidentally get three clones. I'd hit the button exactly when I wanted to, but I didn't RELEASE the button within a split second, I let my finger linger just a split second too long. The punishment was often severe, as you see in this example here: https://imgur.com/a/ov6fzbp The highest of those three clones is EXACTLY where and when I wanted it, and solves the puzzle. But it's death by restart for me, because I accidentally got a line of clones that block my way. #2 - The Clone Delay Problem There is a slight delay in between when I press the clone button vs when I get the clone. This slight wonk wrecked my ability to fluidly and precisely clone mid-air. An example is the very first tall climb in the game. In my mind, I wanted a solution like this: I will jump. 70% of the way up I will hit clone. I will produce a clone and then keep rising above him for the rest of my jump height. Then I will land on his head. I will repeat this to do the climb. However, the clone would come out a little late, and it would come out then at the PEAK of my jump, and push me down. And I would be below the clone, unable to proceed. Game over by restart again. Sometimes I could compensate for the timing but it was unreliable enough that I found a reliable but super-grinding alternative strategy: I would hit click-wait-space. This would start cloning, wait until it was about to appear, and then jump up. So I would only climb one single block this way, but it was guaranteed. I climbed this way most of the time, and so it made each death that much more punishing. All the time I was wishing I could play what you probably intended, but the delay threw me off so hard I couldn't. #3 - The Clone's Not-Blocking-Stuff Warmup Moment The clone can exist on the screen and yet not block hazards. Here is an example of this screwing me: https://imgur.com/a/1qENr7u I solved the puzzle: Ran out, put a clone down the block out some safe space. But the hazard went right through the clone and although I retreated in time, there is no way forward from here - death by restart. This kind of situation happened to me a bunch of times. Now, if these three are all intended aspects of the difficulty which you did on purpose then plz ignore me! I might just suck at these kinds of games and you can say "git gud" and that's fair! But in case these are not aspects you meant to have, I wanted to drill into them a bit in case it helps for your next one. To return to the positive, I felt like you got a TON done here. Five levels of interesting and difficult puzzles, a novel mechanic explored in depth, and a cool art style with some pizzaz. It was also really clever to have the signs come up after I'd struggled, a super-slick touch. So don't take this too poorly, please - my ratings I left are balanced even if the comment here focused on the critique aspect. This is actually a good entry for just having learnt unity 2 weeks ago! If this post is something you don't want on here say the word and it's gone! |
| Aug 15 00:48:02 | 23m 50s | Underground Trip | ♥ 1 | Cool little combat arena game! Environment and enemies looked cool. I wished for a bit more interaction, the intersection of chainsaw and skeleton could have used a bit of oomph and the jump felt a bit weak. But I liked the rising tension of the ever-diminishing land mass as I tried to delay my inevitable toasty doom! |
| Aug 15 01:10:31 | 22m 29s | Elevator Maximum | ♥ 1 | Wow those animations! I mean the pixel art is already really nice, stylish, and cohesive just as a still, but those animations really make it come alive with action. It was a shame the enemies didn't want to throw down because I would have loved to see a pitched battle animated with this liveliness and power! |
| Aug 15 02:30:03 | 1h 19m | Polar Panic! At the Disco | ♥ 2 | Wow! There was like an immediate "joyous celebration" feel going on here that smacked me in the face right away and then stuck around. Everything worked toward it: the fantastic grooving tune that made me start bobbing my head, and which starts with that awesome long climbing note before the bass drops; the sparkling faceted water that's really interesting-looking and almost dancing itself; the disco ball; the grooving animals with their silly dances and sounds. Everything works in harmony around this feel. Gameplay-wise I did struggle a bit, and even after a lot of tries I could only get "Disco Inferno" level, which is only second-best. I felt like something was off a bit, and conducted some quick experiments on the first block, and I convinced myself that the mouse click was actually registering about 2 inches lower on the screen than where I was clicking, but maybe it was all in my head. If I could have added an enhancement, I know hands down what it would be: the water, which seems to already oscillate on a wave, would reflect the impact of my click. I'd love that if I could click and see the wave ripple out, as I think it would get me much more grounded in the mechanical interactions. Allow me a second enhancement and I'd have the ice discs pitch a little with the wave, even if it was only cosmetic. Oscillate them to the beat and get those things dancing!! I also struggled a bit with the way that when 2 discs join, yes their area gets bigger but the outermost perimeter edge I think snaps in a little, so sometimes the act of joining is exactly what drops your dudes in the water. None of this really mattered because the jam was ON here, and precision tactics were not the point. Mission accomplished, because I definitely groove out big-time to this one, well done and congrats! |
| Aug 15 02:46:19 | 16m 16s | SPACEFORCE! Funding Secured. | ♥ 1 | Very cool - I got 29 but my greed kept screwing me. There was even one time when I was like yeah I'm gonna get a better high score this time because I'm just not gonna be greedy, I mean look how well I'm doing just keeping away from them over here in safeland not , well actually maybe I'll just grab THAT one right ther-- GAMEOVER. Well played, game! I loved the super-minimalist tutorial. I loved the background audio, which fit super-well with the minimal graphics. The controls were tight and responsive. I experimented with both click-to-move and also a little with hold-it-down but the holding style is not so great when you get super-close to the guy so I went back to click-to-move which is really surgical at times. Very nice. I also managed to get a x2! I was like wait look at that, very interesting... I tried to get some more but it killed me. An intriguing idea, I wonder if you could take it even further by having that ultraclose range be like x5, but there are also lesser bonuses with slightly further grabs, so sure no problem to get a x2 but let me push it for that x3 and well gee if I'm THAT close might as well go for -- GAMEOVER. Really a lot to like for such a tight scope, nice design work. |
| Aug 15 03:29:52 | 43m 33s | The Void | ♥ 1 | Very well done. This has a great vibe. The music and sounds are really nice, and remind me a bit of FTL, which is a good thing. I also really dig the art with the floating clouds around the planets giving a ton of character. The art is also really clear in terms of gameplay, which is important in a game like this. Queuing commands was an essential feature once I had a lot going on, and I really appreciated that. I made it to Sector 10 and evacuated 100% of my population there. The game was a cool mix of intense time pressure and puzzling things out, so it kind of drained me and after 10 sectors I called it quits because I just didn't have another 10 in me! Strat-wise I definitely focused on pop vs resources, since that was the immediate gameover threat. But maybe I should have built up my tech by being a bit more ruthless? I didn't get too many of the ship upgrades, though I did get the mine/factory ones, and that fed into me getting the ship ones. I did focus early on that +1 ship since that's kind of key, but it wasn't too much of a commit. Very nice combo feeling of pressure vs planning, wrapped in an excellent and tasteful presentation. Well done, this is an entry you can be proud of! |
| Aug 16 02:58:32 | 23h 28m | Human Powered Rocket | ♥ 1 | A fun zany idea, with a cool sense of style and humor! I was a little confused how to do a really good job launching: I watched the video, tried a bunch of times. I was able to do some launches but nothing as high as you did! So it was nice to see the full potential pulled off in the vid. Y'know what lemme go try one more time... OK I got higher that time! 74 meters. Before I wasn't re-adding humans after the rocket setup, which had killed a few of them. I don't know how to stack the multiple rocket guys like you do in the video though, since when I send a second rocket, it seems to just kill all the people including the previous rocket guy. Sorry if I'm being slow! But funny idea and cool style! |
| Aug 16 03:20:08 | 21m 36s | TeTrans | ♥ 0 | Interesting puzzle machine here. I appreciated the way that information about what parts are available for pickup is changing over time, because this prevents me from needing to plan way into the future. I found the game rules clear and any questions were easily self-answered. Lots of good small choices in the design, too: The highlight of the destination when I moused over a piece, the very brisk pace of actually driving, the right number of nodes so it was enough but not a chore to scan and plan. I made it to 3rd on the leaderboard for your home. Oh and a quick note - I see you have submitted this in the compo bracket but there's no source code linked. If I could tweak one thing it would be the color palette. Yellow ? on white background is a bit too little contrast for text imo, and same goes for some of the block shapes. But this was not a serious nuisance, merely a light straining of the eye a couple of times. I liked the spare but direct art style, a good mix of abstract vs real, and even better I very much liked the sound effects. Well done! |
| Aug 20 12:48:29 | 105h 28m | Super Tetron | ♥ 1 | Elegant and effective! I tackled over a dozen, maybe even close to twenty. I like the spare but clean and clear presentation. The controls were solid, although having both flips was kind of a mind-bender and prevented me from being fluidly in control. After the first few, I was able to tear through some of them quickly, especially where there was an awkward piece that could only do one thing. But others were still getting me stuck... especially if I was burned by my own assumption about where something "must" go! The experience would have been enhanced with nice audio of some sort, and I lacked a feeling of progression or a goal to be moving toward. Maybe count my puzzles solved, and begin with fewer shapes allowed but every 5 or 10 you release more? (Or did that already happen, since some of the bigger/awkward pieces only appeared later?) I was unsure if there was a silent goal or infinite. But those are just additional scope -- what is here is quite enough to entertain, and a solid puzzler that gave my brain a workout. Well done! |
| Aug 23 03:54:09 | 63h 05m | Freezing Sky | ♥ 1 | Wow, nice atmosphere, especially with the audio. The mix of working, audio cues, dog barks, and the music, really brought the place to life! I managed a win, and I felt like the game ended at just the right time. I had experimented a bit and figured out the rules, and was just about to start just repeating my plan each level to get down one more, and I was just starting to feel like maybe I was done when the game congratulated me. I did have a few graphical issues. Some of the game graphics would appear above UI elements, I grabbed a screenshot of an example: https://imgur.com/3gs53gz I also felt like I was supposed to be able to use some of the slots at the edge, here is a whole-screen shot: https://imgur.com/1DZkEqX I don't know if that black zone to the right was intended, but there seemed to be a slot there I could almost build on (I built a farm there on the top layer) and then on the left I cannot select that pile of rocks to clear it. Nevertheless I was able to make a working system with just the available slots, although it helped that after my initial farming I didn't need to do any more. I had 2 houses, and 3 more slots. I'd do a sawmill + quarry, and then the third would switch depending on what resource became the bottleneck. It was usually wood but sometimes I would demolish the second saw to put a second quarry in. It was interesting to navigate the tradeoffs between assigning crews to resource creation vs drilling (which consumes). I usually tried to do as much drilling as I could in order to get down to the lower level early, so I could have the rocks cleared out in advance. It was cool that I felt like I was ahead, but then suddenly the freeze would come and it seemed like I'd just barely made it in time to rebuild without being homeless for a night! I really got drawn into this one, very nice job! |
| Aug 23 05:23:36 | 1h 29m | Loot Keeper | ♥ 1 | Wow this was really well done. It's an interesting idea backed up by strong execution. I usually don't like tutorials but yours was charming and well-paced, I actually enjoyed it! The art was great, the sound was really engaging. The gameplay hooked me pretty good. I played until level 12, here is a shot of my build not long before death: https://imgur.com/fI6dtQb There was a nice moment of panic when I got a chest and it overlapped some of my key items! Early in the run I tried hot-swapping during a chest, to change from a sword to a hammer to alter my build to better suit the next monster. I missed by a cell and ended up going with neither main weapon for 3 guys straight! That may have ended that run, actually. So a few times I was wondering, why not allow the hot-swap with a brief ability between fights, but maybe that's not a good idea, I'm not sure. I definitely got into the whole inventory fiddling, and felt pretty clever a couple of times when I realized I could re-org a layout to free up a slot in a certain shape to accommodate a particular new item. Very cool, and very well done. |
| Aug 23 05:36:23 | 12m 47s | Stepping Stones | ♥ 1 | I beat it! This is a tight little game. The concept is clear and self-discoverable. The art and sound effects are a bit basic but have a good feeling of life to them. The controls are really tight. And the concept is introduced, then expanded on. I liked how I would stop and think through the problem, decide on my path, and then hammer out the keystrokes. The game responded quickly and accurately as I was pretty rapidly smashing in my inputs, and it felt satisfying. Really nice work! |
| Aug 30 13:37:40 | 176h 01m | Bath Time | ♥ 1 | There's a huge amount of charm and polish here, with cute art and really nice sound and music. Really well done. The sound is also great at providing cues for the various state changes that need to be managed. The art has many nice details as well, for example I love the way the water looks, with the flat layers at first, but then the round circle when I'm cleaning correctly. I played the compo version first, and hit a wall at level 5. I eventually forced my way through. I'll try to detail a few of the points of struggle, in case that is interesting. I lost a few times trying to experiment with different modes of scrubbing, trying back-and-forth rapidly instead of around in a circle, for example. Or concentrating in a small area rather than spreading it all around. I didn't really learn much from these experiments, and it felt a little un-transparent to me when/if I was being more/less effective. Eventually I returned to the round-and-round and didn't concentrate on any specific cats, and I finally bulled my way through to level 6. That rabbit-hole of experimentation aside, the place where I still lose time is definitely the moment where I transition from scrubbing to clicking the clean cats. For example, in this moment here: https://imgur.com/b4XCwJD I have a hard time visually parsing and then hitting the target. It's not that it's unclear or unfair or anything, it's just that this becomes the hole in my game where I leak time. My strategy for handling it became spam-clicking indiscriminately and trying to wait until I had a few extra clean cats to move into that mode. But that might explain why I struggled to get through the full compo game. I went back to check out the changes, and was able to beat the post-compo version from the start without any game overs. Without really understanding the rules for cats becoming clean I simply obeyed the instruction to use broad circular motions in one direction. I think another nice aspect was making it cat-count based instead of time-based. This is a cool attention-splitter game that balances a nicely conflicted feeling of relaxing panic. The post-comp version better achieves that mix, whereas by my fifth retry of level 5 I was no longer chill. Really nice entry. |
| Sep 1 16:52:35 | 51h 14m | DETRITUS | ♥ 2 | Nice jam entry here! I like how ambitious it is, it really tries to get to a pro polish, and tackles some really hard gameplay-design challenges. I liked the slick production and graphics, as well as the sound/music and voiceover. I did run into a couple of odd tech issues, for example once I warped while the lady was welcoming me, and this seemed to reduce the volume but it never came back, so the game stayed really quiet. It also crashed when I exited. Gameplay-wise you did pretty good, but you ran up against two of the toughest design challenges around. First, it's really hard to orient in 3D space. This is just an inherent problem with the sort of game this is, and you did an OK job of reducing the problem by locking me inside the sphere and putting lots of objects in there. At some point, if there is enough stuff around, the gameplay stops being Tie Fighter with the orientation problems, and becomes Descent, aka Doom in a spaceship (indoor spaceship?!) which has no orientation issues. I felt like your game falls someplace in between. I often got really disoriented when I used a lot of thrust, so I adopted a style of strafing and mouse-looking, and trying to keep a sense of where I was. If an enemy did a fly-by I never really got the hang of spinning around with the mouse to track them if it was quick. I felt off all the time: unsure of what was behind me, imprecise in my spinning and tracking. The most confounded I got was when I hit the barrier unexpectedly and got spun around by it, which wiped my mental model of my orientation and left me confused for several moments. I think this is a really hard problem to solve, and your game does a decent job but not perfect. I'm not sure what would fix it. Certainly higher visual contrast between the small fighter enemies and background would be an improvement. Some clearer indication of taking damage and from which direction might be nice. You could consider creating some durable scenery by which the player could orient, for example the sphere could be three colors: top mid bottom, just to create a feeling of "where am I?" Even better if this is gameplay-relevant somehow, giving a shape to the game. But when I wasn't feeling disoriented, I did enjoy the freedom of motion, and I found your controls pretty intuitive, although I mostly only used AD+mouse and a bit of WS. I tested QE but didn't use them. The second huge challenge games like this hit is what to do about projectile velocity inheritance. I'm an old Tribes player and we know this issue well. If you inherit 100% velocity, your shot never hits an unmoving target where you aim, while if you inherit 0% velocity you can aim at unmoving targets but not in relative space. There is no answer that doesn't leave a player feeling a little awkward in one situation or another... It seems like you went with 100% inheritance, which is imo the right choice. But it feels weird to aim at the unmoving ships while slowly drifting strafe-wise right, and then miss my shot wildly. After adjusting to the orientation of my movement, I had a huge adjustment phase for my aim. Mostly I tried to still myself before shooting anything still. I think you may have made your projectiles a bit too slow, though. The amount of lead I have to put on a moving target is HUGE if they are anywhere near me. However, I did eventually get a feeling for the amount of lead required, and the movement orientation, and it was really fun to start shooting down the enemies in that case. I took this video of the second time I played through. I think I killed like 370ish enemies. This shows me trying to shoot things with the heavy primary weapon, so I'm trying to line up shots and get the lead right: https://youtu.be/jZ1X2nq2S38 So you see that eventually I'm able to hit a pretty decent percentage, but there was definitely a difficult ramp-up. Anyway, I enjoyed this and was impressed by the graphics, the overall package that really felt like a game, the variety of stuff. Nice work! |
| Sep 1 17:25:51 | 33m 16s | Running from ⭐⭐Space⭐⭐ | ♥ 0 | Really cool idea! I assumed I would play with speed when I saw it, but I ended up winning with care instead. I would carefully choose my next section of climb, use the floor to keep healthy and clear enemies, and then move on. I enjoyed how I felt a bit awkward with the hook at first, but later came to make some nice moves with it, that felt really satisfying. I remember a nice deliberate overshoot, the turning and flipping around to hook the floor I wanted, and shooting a demon as I came into the landing, like "This is MY rock, punk!" Very nice. The only thing was that maybe I should be encouraged not to play so slow, somehow. Because I was able to reload and shoot demons a mile away in the sky, I kept doing it because I "had to" since it was possible. Minor thing, though. Well done on an innovative game idea! |
| Sep 1 17:48:23 | 22m 32s | Slaughter House | ♥ 1 | This is a cool idea, and there's a lot of nice little touches. I have a few critiques on little stuff: - The gun feels a bit limp. I held the button the entire time. The screenshake on the gun shot is a nice idea in theory, but in practice because I am holding the button all day this screen shake doesn't "feel" like anything, it's just a nonstop pulsating camera, which didn't feel very nice to me. I think this may combine with the way the gun doesn't recoil and shoots really tiny bullets to disassociate the screenshake from the act of shooting. - The main mechanic of pushing the animals into the grinder to reclaim space is a really cool idea. I like the way it combines the sick narrative with strategic concerns: do I position myself to handle the waves, or to claim space? However I didn't feel like you capitalized on this potential in your idea. When attempting to push animals into the grinder, I found it too awkward. I would push in the few seconds between waves, but the circle colliders (I assume?) would slide off to the side unless I was exactly perfect. I just never got good at pushing animals in, so I basically abandoned the main idea of the game and simply didn't do it. I think the way the grinder "disappears" corpses instead of rewarding me with the spectacle I expected was another small reason I felt it wasn't worth doing. Since you have the bullets blocked by corpses, maybe you should make it so that the gun itself is a handy way to push corpses in. Another way is to prevent them from sliding off to the side so easily when I push them... for example by changing them to square colliders with rotation prevented maybe? Or maybe there is another button to kick corpses a bit. I feel something is needed to make it feel more fluid, fun, and effective to move the bodies. So cool idea for the theme, fun sick theme, and I appreciated the details like blood splats and other juice, but I couldn't help feeling like this had even more potential. (I played only the jam version). Oh - also, I totally walked myself into the meat grinder just as it went off, which was a hoot! |
| Sep 1 18:08:10 | 19m 47s | Speed-Shooter | ♥ 0 | Nice tight little game, well done! I like the greybox art assets, I think it fits well with what's happening here. The near-miss time penalty was another interesting choice that created a tension between blasting away and taking time to aim more carefully. I got diamond on level 1 but WOW the best score on the leaderboard was so much better. Crazy, I wonder how it's even possible!! Not exactly on target with the theme on this one, but well done nonetheless. |
| Sep 1 18:52:02 | 43m 52s | Temple of Ungrow | ♥ 0 | Cool entry, and nice idea for the theme. There were two things that created a problem for me. First, there is something wrong with the input handling. The buttons for jump and attack only work half the time. This makes it very hard to get into a flow state, especially for combat. There's no code posted, so I couldn't look to see, but I bet this is a case of checking for inputs in FixedUpdate, or else some other squirrely input checking thing. This is the bread and butter of game feel so you definitely should dig into what's wrong with the way you process input. Because the left/right works fine but the attack/jump does not, I suspect you are not dealing well with Input.GetKeyDown(). Second, the "is grounded" check for whether I should be allowed to jump does not interact well with the stairs. I first noticed this problem in the first room, but it was not a big issue: it just meant I couldn't jump on stairs most of the time. But later this was a complete game-ender for me because I got permanently stuck after completing two challanges and had to quit the game. Here's what happened: I went through the first room. Took me a while because I didn't know I could attack. I even tried all the keys but no attack. So I spent a while trying to get the boss to fly up and nudge the key off, because I thought that was the solution. I got him up there, but he didn't move the key, he just got stuck. No idea what the solution is. Later I tried random keys again to double-check and a sword came out -- whoops! Then I saw I could fight the boss. I guess the first time I tried the keys, the input processing happened not to work, bad luck. So I solved the first room. Next I looked at the names of the challenges, and picked speed. I solved the trial on my second try. First time I got into the pit w/ 3 balls on the way back, and problems with jumping made me stuck for long enough that I died. Second time I did it, but when I got to the sparkle-ball at the end I didn't realize I was supposed to attack it. I went back out into the main corridoor by running all the way to the left inside the challenge room, which teleported me into the hall. Then I tried the strength challenge, but gave up because it's frustrating to fight when my jumps and swings don't come out when I press the button. Last I tried the piano. It's really hard not to trigger a key twice when landing on it! I solved it eventually, although there was no feedback that I did so. I went to the right, and saw a lock on the ground and the ball open, so I thought I was good. Still not knowing to attack the sparkle-ball, I went back into the hall. The door to the speed challenge had stayed open after I beat it, whereas the door to strength challenge stayed closed. So I believed this was the indication I had beat the speed challange. But the piano challenge door stayed closed!? Now I got confused and went back to double-check the piano challenge was really beat. This was when I experimented and tried attacking the sparkle-ball and learned this was how to claim victory! Finally I saw the interesting aspect of the game, which is that you can choose what SIZE to be when you complete certain challenges. Very interesting idea. So I went back to the speed challenge room to hit the ball there, too. Then I would do the strength challenge to finish the game, I thought. Except that now I was bigger, and I got stuck in the pit in the speed challenge room. I could never jump because the isgrounded check doesnt' work on stairs, and I was on stairs. Here is the final state where I tried and tried to get out but could not, so I quit: https://imgur.com/VFlJA8x So in summary: You have a nice idea here. Some elements are nicely done. But you have to work out some flaws in your approach to controls, specifically with input handling and grounded checks. You also should probably signal more of the basics to player, because I got lost a few times. Good luck! |
| Sep 3 18:24:37 | 47h 32m | The Circuit Designer | ♥ 2 | Very cool. Nice display, and pretty solid controls. I struggled a bit at first with trying to click ON the pieces to bring wire to them, and accidentally moving or rotating components. But later I realized that you should bring them to the adjacent cell and then wires will auto-connect to the components. I could have used a little more feedback and fanfare for the test run, especially when winning. I felt that I didn't really SEE the events occur, and a win didn't feel as rewarding as it might have. This was especially true when I took a winger on a solution and hadn't carefully thought through but just tested, and it was like zoom next puzzle... my knowledge gained was not locked in or celebrated. Overall though I thought this had a nice interface, a nice challenge level. I got stuck on some of the later gate mimics, eventually bruted my way through "or from nand" but then I lost heart after that. Part of it was the way the wires drew themselves going into the nand, it looked like it went in three times not two, and without more transparency, or the ability to toggle inputs in a live-test mode, it was all a little hard to see if the layout I'd made was doing what I thought. I could infer it from test runs with some tinkering, but it felt a little more indirect than necessary. That was more critique-heavy than I meant - I liked this and spent a good chunk of time with it! A solid entry with cool concept that made me think, and a nice presentation. |