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Feedback comments for LD42
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | triplefox's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 12 23:47:26 | Ice n Fire | ♥ 0 | The graphics work great as still images, though the characters would really be more lively with a three-frame walk cycle. The scenario needs some more context for me to get pumped up about playing it. The interactions with elemental powers are cool, but the rest of the scenario doesn't build on that, so it ends up feeling like most twin-stick games, most of the time. | |
| Aug 13 00:02:28 | 15m 02s | Running out of RAM - an 80s BASIC programming simulator for C64 | ♥ 2 | For the folks who need an emulator, here's a link to [WinVICE](http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/windows.html), [CCS64](http://www.ccs64.com/) and [OSX VICE](http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/macosx.html). There are also versions of VICE available in the package manager of most Linux distributions. Interesting sim game although I was able to crash it: "string too long error in 35055". It would be fun if there were side events that happen when you write code, or it involved solving literal puzzles like in programming games(e.g. Shenzhen I/O). There is potential for a game here with interesting characters and storytelling, even. |
| Aug 13 00:09:21 | 6m 53s | mosquito girl | ♥ 1 | I like the concept. When I started, it was difficult to understand how the mosquito repellent worked. |
| Aug 13 00:11:00 | 1m 39s | Claustrophobic Muscle Man | ♥ 1 | Your itch.io page is giving a 404 - maybe it isn't published? |
| Aug 13 00:17:02 | 6m 02s | Major Tom, Can you hear me? | ♥ 0 | Nice concept! I didn't read the directions on my first try so I was a little bit mystified at the opening menu and first puzzle, but once I got what was going on, I was impressed, although I don't have two people with me to play through it properly. |
| Aug 13 00:29:49 | 12m 47s | Slime Sumo | ♥ 2 | I deeply appreciate the fact that I don't have to press a button to shoot, cause it makes it possible to play on a trackpad. Nobody expects to be crushed by slime until it happens to them 💥🤢💥 It's great that they have physics, but the realistic way it works right now is chaotic enough that it makes strategy hard to execute. A good concept that can probably be better with a more abstract implementation. |
| Aug 13 00:35:56 | 6m 07s | Mob Floor | ♥ 1 | I'm getting this error at launch: ___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ FATAL ERROR in action number 1 of Step Event0 for object oPlayer: Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [0,-1] out of range [1,12] - -5.gp(100029,-1) at gml_Object_oPlayer_Step_0 ############################################################################################ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stack frame is gml_Object_oPlayer_Step_0 (line -1) |
| Aug 13 00:48:03 | 12m 07s | Going Up! | ♥ 1 | I'm impressed that you put so much into this game! The quantity of UI plus the time pressure makes things very overwhelming and it didn't get better when I played for longer. There's a ton of things to track - 3 elevators, 10 floors, and destinations per person, and I can't come up with anything more than a basic pattern to handle that. My suggestion would be to figure out what part of the UI adds the most complexity and either automate that away or make it user-programmable so that the player can focus their attention on a smaller set of things, and then add some characterization and day scheduling("rush hour") so that I have additional reasons to prioritize some guests or perhaps learn things about their lives. There are several different ways in which this concept could be expanded upon and I wouldn't let go of it just yet. |
| Aug 13 01:03:16 | 15m 13s | Arctic Arctic Adventure | ♥ 0 | This game had me playing for quite a long while! It does have some issues with the collision: the character doesn't have any way of sliding against edges, so it's hard to access curry when it's in a nook. And when I finally died, I lost all three lives instantly. Besides those issues, I would suggest adding some more detail to projectiles, like an arc on the curry so that tossing it is not quite as simple. Also, give the movement patterns of the walruses some more predictable elements so that I can form a plan. The game uses a lot of RNG right now in places where it could have some kind of chaotic pattern, something that varies but follows a predictable logic. |
| Aug 13 01:09:47 | 6m 31s | Room for love | ♥ 0 | I might have to come back to this one since I can't figure out the solution yet, it always ends badly. |
| Aug 13 01:21:21 | 11m 34s | Petra | ♥ 2 | This is a great example of block-pushing puzzles. I have one technical complaint which is that all the music feels like it was arranged and mixed aggressively for loudness while the actual compositions are calm and soothing. I ended up turning it off and putting on something else. |
| Aug 13 01:46:04 | 24m 43s | Anxiety | ♥ 1 | Very effective audiovisuals. I could imagine a larger game built around the anxiety/space metaphor like this. |
| Aug 13 01:53:16 | 7m 12s | Black Star | ♥ 0 | I tried playing twice and both times, the black holes weren't very threatening. I didn't notice the connection between their growing and the asteroids because I was shooting down every asteroid I saw. Perhaps I am too good at these games. |
| Aug 13 01:58:59 | 5m 43s | ROoS | ♥ 1 | Very nice presentation and game concept. I was initially confused by "collecting space" because I was going too fast and trying to jump like I would in any other platformer. I'm sure there's more that can be done with this idea. |
| Aug 13 06:00:26 | 4h 01m | The Okinawan Samourai | ♥ 1 | My score doesn't get reset when I start over. It took me a few tries to understand how to do the movement and I agree with the other comments about the choice of mouse buttons being problematic. I usually try to sample game jam games on just keyboard and trackpad first and that always catches a few games that try to use elaborate mouse controls or were designed with a gamepad plugged in at all times. I really like the idea and motif. Swordfighting in a constrained space is a really creative idea for working with the theme and easy to expand upon, the only thing holding back the game is the technical stuff. |
| Aug 13 06:24:36 | 24m 10s | The Amazing Shrinking Game | ♥ 3 | The final result is actually a really good prototype considering the timeframe. It's just a little too RNG-heavy. When I see RNG-heavy games, I suggest my article on applying [chaos theory](http://ludamix.com/dive/chaos/). The distinction between randomness and chaos makes all the difference in turning a fine basic concept into "I really want to play this game". In this case, the item spawns could be based on "something else" - like a second character that's moving around, tossing them out. |
| Aug 13 06:41:53 | 17m 17s | Running out of Platformers | ♥ 2 | I adore that this is hosted on MediaFire in an age when most people seem to have gone to itch or GameJolt. The platforming is OK. In some of the levels I was able to wall-kick off the gaps in the shapes and skip a few parts. I love the part where the key is huge. The room shrinking into the void doesn't add as much as I had hoped, it's kind of a time limit on each room but it doesn't affect how I think about the platforming stuff. What if it were more like the room changing over time, opening some possibilities and closing others? So I have to find a route that reaches the right places at the right times, as well as having a time limit. |
| Aug 13 06:49:24 | 7m 31s | Snake Reduction | ♥ 1 | This is simple, but it turned out pretty well! I also did a game of this type. If you'd like to see how I approached it, I did a whole devblog - [here's the first post in the series](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/zero-grace-megadrive/ld42-live-blog-from-theme-to-design). |
| Aug 13 08:00:27 | 1h 11m | Bay Area Traffic: Disaster Simulator | ♥ 0 | This is really fun to look at and I am all for more transit sim games(I put quite a few hours into Cities in Motion 2). Are you folks Bay Area locals by any chance? I help run a gamedev group and our next big meeting is [this coming Saturday](https://www.meetup.com/SF-Bay-Area-Game-Jamming-Game-Design/events/nxzzmlyxlbxb/). |
| Aug 13 08:14:07 | 13m 40s | Party Simulator | ♥ 1 | I got the game running OK in the webGL player using the itch.io fullscreen button to work around the window size issue. It's very simple, there isn't a lot of strategy beyond memorizing the right response. One way this could be improved is to borrow an idea from visual novels and RPGs and add some kind of "flag condition" or "stat based condition" that makes it possible or not possible to select an option. Also check out *Reigns* for an example of a really good use of a game all about this kind of simple dialogue. The world and characters also need more development and this can suggest ways to make the dialogues interesting. For example, maybe the main character has some kind of comfort device like a teddy bear that they can use to regain composure. Or there is a friend that they can call over to save them from a difficult conversation. I think the concept is good, it just needs a design that fits everything together better. Most of these kinds of games rely on having lots and lots of dialogue which make them hard to execute in a game jam. |
| Aug 13 08:37:19 | 23m 12s | The Killer Blue Tiles | ♥ 5 | That was a surprisingly scary download because the game has almost no identifying information, not even a screenshot posted, and it triggered not only the "may be harmful" warning on Chrome, but the Windows Smartscreen warning, AND the administrator "allow this program to modify files" warning. Next time, please just put everything in a zip file. It won't trigger all these false positives from anti-malware tools, and most people rating game jam games expect to play 20 games a single time, so they would rather not see 20 of them cluttering their desktop. For those wondering: The game is a plain Unity3D game wrapped in an installer. The installer is what set off all the alarms. Now, the game itself. The game is very simple but it's OK for a first effort! You seem to have a decent idea of how to use Unity's UI, now the challenge is for you to develop some more advanced techniques. For example, the game doesn't seem to notice when the ball thing(?) has already fallen outside the edge of the map. That makes it unfair because then I can't win anymore. So there should be a feature that moves it into a place I can reach. |
| Aug 13 09:38:59 | 1h 01m | Mike the adventurer | ♥ 2 | It's really hard to evaluate this game because it is overflowing with features: scrolling map traversal, combat, enemy AI, stats, animation, cutaways for when you walk behind trees - and yet the thing that would presumably define it, make it unique and finish off the game loop - the inventory management - is a placeholder. So do I rate on what it is, or what it proposes it could be? With a lot of jam games, placeholders can happen - time constraints and all - but it's just really annoying to be put in that position with this one since the game is plenty effortful enough. The art style is cute. The music has a nice jaunty flavor to it. It's doing very well on the technical aspects, but the game design isn't there. It leads me to this hypothesis: "this game's design substituted scope for a coherent premise." If you'd like a little more background on why I get to that conclusion, I suggest the [devlog I made for this LD](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/zero-grace-megadrive/ld42-live-blog-from-theme-to-design). It's based on the hard-won wisdom of trying to do exactly this, regretting it, and making a system so that I never do it again. Rant over. Welcome back to LD! I am coming off a break too. |
| Aug 13 10:09:25 | 30m 26s | Super LD42 | ♥ 1 | I like the look and feel of the game. The dialogue was confusing in part because it's hard to distinguish the "characters" - so you don't know who's talking, or even which ship is the friendly. It's satisfying to fire at the enemy ships, though. They have an interesting movement pattern, that's the important part. Shooting games are so reliant on making the enemy waves do interesting things. |
| Aug 13 10:38:28 | 29m 03s | Mindblocked | ♥ 0 | This game is very well executed. However, there's something on my mind. I see this game design appear in every game jam of sufficient size - sometimes with variants and new puzzle pieces, but generally following the same rules and same kinds of puzzles. Is there an original game that these are all derived from, like Sokoban for block pushing games, and why have I not heard of it? |
| Aug 13 11:56:05 | 1h 17m | Boxed | ♥ 1 | I really adore the graphical style. Time management games seem like a challenging design problem because they're so easily overcomplicated with things to keep track of. Usually when I see these games expanded it tends to focus on characterization, like in Papers Please. In this case, there might be "a story in every box". |
| Aug 13 12:17:33 | 21m 28s | In Roll The Waves | ♥ 1 | I was hoping it would keep going and give me more challenges! The atmosphere it has is really good. It might make for more interesting puzzles if the flooding was more like a gradual expansion along the shore instead of a "curtain" covering the map, or if the snake had others tasks to do, like pushing blocks or eating apples. |
| Aug 13 12:40:28 | 22m 55s | Bitter Litter | ♥ 0 | I like this idea! I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong because it seems like it bombs me with more pieces than I can handle in a short period of time. (but also, I started playing it on my trackpad which means I can't be doing any fancy mouse-slinging) It might make for more interesting gameplay if some of them didn't just fall to the surface but instead orbited a while at a certain level, breaking off gradually. This is basically like a shooter game in sprit, and with those it's always about finding cool AI behaviors that are just predictable enough to plan around, but still varied. |
| Aug 13 20:04:11 | 7h 23m | you have a fish bowl defend it | ♥ 0 | Congrats on finishing! The title explains the game pretty well and yeah it's balanced such that I can play forever if I hold down the fire button and don't move and if I do anything else I lose instantly. You might be interested in my article on [chaos](http://ludamix.com/dive/chaos/) which has some ideas that could be used to help generate varying waves of enemies. |
| Aug 13 20:49:03 | 44m 52s | Purple Void | ♥ 5 | This game is well-produced for sure, and I wanted to play it just based on the stuff I was seeing in your devlogs, but when I see a well-produced game I end up critiquing the design more harshly. So I'll be the odd one out in this sea of deserved praise. The thing I'm generally looking for in giving game jam feedback is "how could it be expanded on?" and you've cut off the possibility of that by using a scenario that is built on pragmatic convenience: boss fight in void, the boss fight is the whole story, the abilities of the characters are generic, and the characters don't really play off each other or suggest anything more - I don't even know what that boss *is*. There are a lot of games that achieve roughly this quality of design in LD, just with less polish - simpler graphics, less refined boss patterns, etc. I can't think of anything to say like, "maybe you could add this or change that," because the concept is so unstructured, it could just go in any direction. And that means that if you were to have a meeting tomorrow where you're like, "let's turn this into a commercial product", you'd probably have to start over. The game leaves a great "product impression," but a good prototype will also excite the imagination and make you say, "and then we could also add all this other stuff and take it even farther". If you'd like more of my thoughts on design process, take a look at my devlog, I blogged my whole process for this past compo. |
| Aug 13 21:10:15 | 21m 12s | Chrono Caverns | ♥ 1 | The game is very playable, but the puzzles are too easy! I went through the whole game and five random levels before I made a mistake. The "draw a non-overlapping path" puzzle is a kind of genre of topological puzzle, and its usual constraining factor is with entry and exit directions, e.g. the [7 Bridges of Königsberg problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg). For an example of a recent game of this type that used some interesting constraint rules, [Galaxy Express](https://cosmicexpressgame.com/) is a good model. In this case, since you have a dungeon and lava there's an obvious incentive to add a bit of dungeon crawling stuff with keys and doors and monsters and lava being used to destroy stuff. Tons of things you could do with this scenario! |
| Aug 14 00:58:02 | 3h 47m | VOXSOLAR | ♥ 1 | This is top notch. It reminds me a lot of [Sentris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4r0mJtNENc), if you've ever played that, but the puzzle mechanic in this actually sits more comfortably and doesn't need a heavy tutorial. It might need an extra mechanic to be totally fleshed out, but everything about this game really does work as-is and the only thing I want is more of it. |
| Aug 14 01:18:48 | 20m 46s | CRUMBLE | ♥ 1 | This is an interesting game. It shows technical prowess but the design needs more of a direction to it for everything to come together. My strategy for this game relies a lot on being lucky. I didn't notice any info on when tiles will fall, so I'm playing assuming it's random. Elements like the different items to collect and the teleport function work as abstract mechanics, but they don't have any grounding in the game's scenario. I suggest looking at both my own devlogs for this past compo and my [chaos](http://ludamix.com/dive/chaos/) article. They might give you ideas of where this design could go. |
| Aug 14 01:34:18 | 15m 30s | Mouse Trap! | ♥ 0 | This game shows a lot of potential to be developed into a kind of Pac-Man style maze chase. I like that there's even a "bonus round" part. Once I got a handle on how it worked I cruised to level 11 and then encountered a bug where I hit the level exit at the same moment that an enemy moved on top of it, triggering both the level end and the death sequences. I suggest dialing down the number of random elements. They aren't out of control, but they make the strategies to win each round more generic, which is why I was able to get so far. I wrote an article on [chaos](http://ludamix.com/dive/chaos/) and it discusses what makes chaotic elements in games(which we usually want some of) different from simply random ones, and how to achieve them. |
| Aug 14 02:37:51 | 1h 03m | Crushed | ♥ 1 | Another PICO-8 entry! Nice! I think the design is good, but I have some technical remarks. The crush detection would probably benefit from switching to this algorithm: Build a placeholder tilemap that copies the level data just for crush detection. Each time a wall grows, superimpose the rectangle bounds of the wall onto the tilemap as if it were tiles. Then plot the position of the player on that same tilemap. If the player is surrounded on all sides by collision, they're crushed. I see something about an OOM bug being fixed but the game still has some performance issues. I can't see the code but there is probably a way to optimize wall drawing so that it's lighter - in general PICO-8 performs better with respect to its "virtual CPU cap" when the code uses fewer symbols to do the same thing, with the exception of function calls. Fewer function calls are better. |
| Aug 14 02:45:42 | 7m 51s | Meow Moves | ♥ 1 | I was able to break the UI somehow - I think it might have been by moving the cards from the right side back to the left. The game has very appealing visuals but the card game design is hard to pick up because it's very abstract/mathematical. The scenario has a lot of possibilities for specific game elements, it's just that the visuals aren't being applied to help the design. Maybe a different approach to this game would be to draw on classic puzzles like the [Simon Tatham collection](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/) and create a variation on one of them that adapts all the "stage performance" elements. e.g. instead of scoring, when a puzzle is complete, a new trick is performed. |
| Aug 14 05:11:06 | 2h 25m | Get Comfortable | ♥ 0 | Another PICO-8 game spotted. I got 202! I love how there are different names for all the kinds of overlapping positions. It's just about perfect as-is. |
| Aug 14 07:25:27 | 2h 14m | Killer Bytes | ♥ 1 | Clicked this cause my avatar is from "Killing Bites". I think this one turned out very well! I've been planning to use Godot for projects, but haven't found the time to really sit down and jam with it for a while. It's nice to see folks working with it. There isn't too much strategy to this game, but the shooting is still challenging since it's balanced to be very difficult. It would be good to see a version that fleshes it out with more enemy patterns and distinct waves. |
| Aug 14 08:02:31 | 37m 04s | Backspace Bouken | ♥ 1 | I was impressed with what the game did with its concept! I didn't end up playing all the way through, though, because it started feeling repetitive very quickly. Most of the time seems to have gone to combat encounters but I'm not convinced that that's the best way to leverage this mechanic. What if the game were about puzzles where erasing parts of the text opens and closes locations, replacing the switch puzzles you usually find in dungeon crawlers? And then tying that in with some kind of "the walls are closing in" type of thing where you can trade letter space for physical space? |
| Aug 14 08:37:26 | 34m 55s | Inventory Wars | ♥ 2 | This game has creative gameplay ideas but reads a bit incoherently for a few reasons: - A UI like this is going to be assumed to be a convenience function, and not the focus of the game. - When that UI is combined with a timer mechanic like the conveyor, it looks like it's going to be a fast-paced time management game. - Then the per-item rules come in and it starts to feel much more complex than usual time management games, where everything you need to know can be seen and understood immediately. - The game focuses on "scoring" instead of "solving," which when combined with the conveyor kind of implies that my strategy is to sit there waiting until I see as many items as possible, calculate an optimal score, and then quickly move every one of them. All of that means that I can't think at my own pace and relish in a decision. There are a lot of ideas there that all work in isolation, and then end up fighting for time and player attention. The solution is almost certainly not to add more UI, because that gradually leads down the path of "training" the player to play in a form dictated by the computer based on its calculations. You lose all the immediacy of just clicking on things and seeing what happens. That's where incoherence really damages a design: It leads you towards adding scope to fix your problems, which creates new problems. One of the thing I discuss in my devlog for this past compo is how to make sure an idea is coherent before implementing. It might help you think about how to make this design accessible. I've seen plenty of games in past game jams that do the "inventory management as puzzle game" thing. They work best when they're presented in a way that carefully emphasizes the puzzle aspects, but I don't think any of the ones I've seen have really nailed how to make it into a game that defines the genre. A lot of the time, video games work simply because they have a core interaction that works - like Mario jumping or shooting a gun in Doom, and with puzzle games, a similar thing applies. It has to feel good from the beginning. |
| Aug 14 08:58:00 | 20m 34s | Slime Escape | ♥ 1 | It's possible to clip into walls when I mash the dash and jump buttons. I really like speedrunning games though, I'm glad you did one! |
| Aug 15 02:26:51 | 17h 28m | Shelf Life | ♥ 0 | I wasn't sure if this game would deliver, but it's such a good, self-contained execution of a humorous concept and it even has an element of tragedy to it. Could it be expanded? Maybe, but it doesn't need to be! |
| Aug 15 11:18:20 | 8h 51m | Falloor | ♥ 1 | Neat game concept and I liked the music, at least until the 100th repetition. The basic mechanic is solid and produces many interesting situations, but many of the elements around it are a bit generic and don't "play into" each other, this is something where if you had not just one but several themes that all work together, the game becomes a lot more interesting and easier to expand on - in my devlog for my compo entry I play a "coherence game" to brainstorm such a set of themes, and then used that to come up with all of the major ideas of the game. For example here the whole idea of food and eating is a very good match for "running out of space", but the obstacles and puzzles aren't doing anything to build around that concept. |
| Aug 15 20:06:55 | 8h 48m | Deep Heat | ♥ 1 | The 1990 DOS game Pyro II came to mind when I saw the screenshot: [Pyro II](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEc4SDDsxGA). This game is more like a circa 2010 Flash game that would have gotten 1,000,000 plays on Newgrounds or Kongregate back in the day, though. It's mostly because of that shop screen and the game loop constantly forcing you to want the next item so that you can progress. That was a thing that really characterized Flash games around then and looking back on it I think it's a dark pattern - it compromises the design, diminishing the intrinsic reward factor. That said, I'm impressed by the concept overall. There could be more going on with the scenario and characterization, but as-is, it basically gives you a cool variation on a twin-stick shooter. |
| Aug 15 20:14:57 | 8m 02s | Dragon Cave | ♥ 1 | Hi, it's extremely difficult to download this game in the form you hosted it: Ordinarily Github has a "clone or download" button but because you put everything on "develop" branch and never merged that, the option isn't there. So I would have to download every file on its own or coax a local copy of git into pulling the develop branch. I suggest putting up the build on itch.io - it's free, and you can add a theme etc. |
| Aug 15 20:49:01 | 34m 04s | Insufficient Storage | ♥ 2 | I think the concept is good! It's a cool idea to have "waves" of spam emails coming after me. I like the sounds and music. Those work pretty well. The game is very confusing at first, for a number of reasons: - The art style is harsh and leans on being "low res" without really developing distinctive shapes. It would benefit from using a more balanced color palette, for example [DB16](http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12795). Traditional art skills will always help your pixel art! - The HUD elements are large to the point of obscuring the action, and they don't follow a coherent [information architecture](https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/information-architecture.html). The analogy you are going for is something like a notifications feed, but the layout you have doesn't resemble any application I've used, and the font is very difficult to read with all the letters merged together. It would work so much better simply by starting from an application you use and trying to copy that look. - It's not clear at the beginning that the game is a twin-stick shooter type of game, or what resources are available. You can figure them out through some interaction, but it feels jarring. If the graphics were all scrambled I would have almost as much idea of what is going on as I did on my first play. When graphics in games work well, they are the so-called "pictures that say a thousand words". The game I did for this past compo also deals with an "inside the computer" theme, and it took extra effort to build up characters and symbolic content that helped it make sense. You might find my [devlog](https://ldjam.com/users/triplefox/feed) interesting to read, it goes through my whole design process. |
| Aug 15 22:07:21 | 1h 18m | TrackBlasters | ♥ 1 | The game is a really good idea and I was impressed, but the mechanics are missing something. The pace gets slower and slower the farther I get into a track, when I think it should feel fast and risky! Maybe the bombs should blow you across the pits, so you have to do more and more damage to keep going. |
| Aug 15 22:45:39 | 38m 18s | Memory | ♥ 1 | My thoughts on this game are actually very similar to the ones I left for the game @griz made... It's a design that is technically impressive, but "substitutes scope for a coherent premise". In this case the game is more well-rounded and finished overall, but I was actually turned off by the idea that I was going to have to sit through a bunch of dialogue and level grind for the sake of following convention before it could get to the part where it distinguishes itself from any other action RPG...and then it didn't end up doing much with the premise anyway. The more stuff you add to a game, the less you can think about polishing it...hence stuff like the game's tuning/balancing being off is more like a symptom of not finding the point and focusing all your resources on getting to it quickly, than an actual problem in your execution. It pains me when I see this happen to jam games because I know what it's like to put yourself through the wringer to build all that stuff. |
| Aug 15 23:41:30 | 55m 51s | SpaceOut | ♥ 2 | This game is visually striking in screenshots, so I was looking forward to playing it. However, I am coming out of it with a phrase I've used on a few other comments: "this game substitutes scope for a coherent concept". It has a ton of features and mechanical ideas that do not have an fluid thematic relationship. That's why you have to rush around building tutorials to try to explain how it all works - the game isn't showing, so you have to tell. This is one of the aspects that really divides board games and video games. If I play a new board game, I expect to have to "learn the game". It is OK if it is somewhat abstract: I'm sitting there moving around the pieces and talking about it with friends. But as a video game player, I want to go in mashing buttons and seeing stuff happen - and if it's going to require training, it has to be something I believe is worth the effort to learn, which leads to themes and scenarios that support the learning process, and in-game behaviors that cohere with what I know about the world. That doesn't mean "an abstract video game is not allowed" - just that the abstraction is very immediate and convenient for discussing what the scenario is about. Things like "lives" and "hit points" make scenarios with frequent damage and death easier to grasp, for example. Ball and paddle games make sense because they look like the physics they represent. And so on. When you have a game like this that mashes up genres and ends up being crammed full of rules that are basically only there to serve the game on the level of "interesting decisions"(which the game is good at - I can tell because it provoked my deep-think habit of chewing my fingers), either the player is eased into it really slowly(which has the common downside of "the game is boring, who cares if it gets better") or they will leave remarks like "I am so confused, my brain hurts now". It's often a lose/lose, even if you have things tuned and tutorialized such that they are clearly capable of playing the game successfully without understanding it. But if you get the scenario elements to align well, they will either get it immediately, or feel like it was obvious all along and they are merely incompetent, or remain blissfully ignorant. And all three are OK. They're playing and having fun. |
| Aug 16 03:34:19 | 3h 52m | Backpack Goblin | ♥ 2 | The "inventory puzzle" genre sees a new entry: They tend to appear frequently in game jams and I saw one of them in this LD earlier. This is one of the better takes on the concept that I've seen. The spatial manipulation aspect of both "next item" and "item in bag" is a good way to keep the interaction clean and straightforward. It might even be fine to focus only on the bag, and then add piece rotation and various clearing combos to move it even closer to Tetris and put additional focus on the items and their different qualities - despite all the games that try to ape Tetris, the idea space is still rich with possibilities. Modern Tetris lets you hold a piece in a swap position and functionally speaking, that does nearly the same thing as moving the character into a different item, it's just simpler for the player to manage. The goblin theme is still good and would work even if it were made into a second screen/level select kind of thing. Maybe a reason to clear pieces would be to overcome hazards or defeat foes by pulling out the right item! It would be fun to have different roads to travel on, a sequence where the goblin goes in to sell all these items, etc. The game loads extremely slowly, you might need to check that out. |
| Aug 16 04:35:09 | 1h 00m | Weltraum | ♥ 3 | Props for the voice acting and that robot animation, I got here from your post on how it was done. The storytelling suffers from being mostly exposition. Almost all of the time is spent on building up the world, leaving nothing for knowing who these characters are and giving them opportunities to connect with the audience emotionally. This is a problem related to the work being short, but it's often encountered in science fiction and fantasy stories just because those settings allow the author to spend so much time going into details about weird alien races and magical gadgetry. Excessive exposition also frequently appears in games, not necessarily because it's hard to portray meaningful character interaction, but because the premise of most games means that they always have to spend their story time setting the stage for another combat scenario: "the bad guys are coming! see, they're really bad, they just kicked a puppy. better pick up a gun and trade witty banter with your AI buddy" and when you are telling that kind of story, it doesn't have to build up to anything in particular, because the rest of the gameplay will take over the experience - worrying about your health and ammo and feeling triumphant when you win and so on. One of the appealing things about aiming for a visual novel kind of aesthetic is that you don't have to go for the combat scenarios. But if you put a giant robot in, then combat is expected as part of the genre(I tried doing a giant robot game once and learned that partway through). And then if you extrapolate from that to "ok, we'll add interactions that make for satisfying combat" you end up with some kind of strategy or action game. It takes some careful work to find a good mix of themes/scenario/interactive parts and make it all work together. |
| Aug 16 06:35:35 | 2h 00m | Polterplot | ♥ 1 | On my first go I went in without reading directions just like a real player and losted because it was very hard to figure out how the different characters worked, what the seed bags corresponded to, etc. That's a thing where tutorials *might* help but I think that also, the scenario isn't supporting the mechanics well enough just yet. "they are all ghosts, it'd be a pain to reverse engineer how they work, guess I will just spam things and see if I win" is how I read it on that first try. I had f.lux running and making everything orange-tinted, so the colors weren't distinct and I couldn't use that either. I think this problem is an easy fix in the visuals though. Give the attackers big swords. Give the defenders big shields. The other two, maybe they could have additional symbols. Then make sure the animations and effects really convey the thing that each character does best. Maybe have a few levels where you can only use one type at a time and see what it does. On my second play I read everything, turned off f.lux, and had a much easier time. I was doing well, but then hit a crash - I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary triggering it: ___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ FATAL ERROR in action number 1 of Step Event0 for object obj_seed_reloader: Variable obj_seed_reloader.slot(100042, -2147483648) not set before reading it. at gml_Object_obj_seed_reloader_Step_0 ############################################################################################ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stack frame is gml_Object_obj_seed_reloader_Step_0 (line -1) Regarding the design, overall: There are many mobile games following this style of gameplay. I'm not familiar enough with the genre to know how this one holds up or what it does differently. I think it works reasonably well, but would benefit from having the scenario built up some more with some backstory and characters(why I am fighting over furballs, what kind of place is this that witches fight each other with ghosts etc.) so that I have that hook more firmly in mind. Its long term play value would depend mostly on whether it's a good competitive game, and that means you need really skilled players to push its limits. |
| Aug 16 09:19:12 | 2h 43m | Memory Mayhem | ♥ 1 | I'm glad you stuck it out and did this, having a character in there is a great sort of rethinking of a "Threes" or "2048" type of game and could be further refined by testing it with the whole array of "block-moving mechanics" - pushing, swapping, etc. The "can't add numbers greater than 8" aspect was a little bit un-intuitive but not unreasonable. And I noticed that while WASD worked fine, arrow key movement had some weird issue where one axis worked and the other didn't. Regarding grid movement, the compo game I made also faces the never-quite-resolved problem of mixing free movement with a grid. I've worked with this problem before and the way I dealt with it this time was to gradually interpolate to a snapped position as you move around so that everything visually lines up, just not instantly. However, there is still some unresolved stuff with how my camera works that affects how the movement feels. |
| Aug 16 09:54:03 | 34m 51s | Shrinkage | ♥ 1 | I read the words "score combos" and assumed that it meant something much more complicated than intended, like a particular pattern of blocks similar to other falling block games. The game never once spells this out, but all it would take is to get rid of all the introductory text(nobody reads) and use an image depicting the three patterns that are OK to match, and the one that is not. However, there's a more subtle issue underlying this, which is a belief-and-expectation issue, and this is make-or-break for casual puzzle games. Tetris works because the scoring system and core interactions reinforce the line-filling pattern at each step. If you are five years old, like I once was, and sit down with NES Tetris and play to pack blocks together in interesting shapes, you will eventually by accident match one line. And when you match one line, then you try to do it again, and by accident match two. And so on, until the goals of the game are clear and you are in the realm of advanced Tetris strategy. At each step, it's coherent with what you understood before: the game ends because the blocks reach the top. If I pack the blocks tightly, I can play longer. If I make a single line, I can play longer. If I make two lines, I can play longer... and it's all constantly reinforced, because it's intuitively satisfying to pack together the blocks. And in this game, the design pulls out the welcoming rug from underneath and goes, "hah, matching one line, what a noob!" Which in turn defeats one's desire to explore further. It's very hard to adjust how Tetris scores and reinforces play without disrupting player belief. In a lot of other LD rating threads I remark on how the game scenario could be reworked to reinforce the game mechanics better, or vice versa, because there's usually some thematic coherence to rely on, where you're like, "oh yeah, bullets do damage in real life, that's why touching bullets in this game makes my HP goes down!" When it's an abstract puzzle game, you're just going on more base aspects of human nature, and with blocks that usually means stacking, ordering, pushing them together. It's very hard to change the formula given everything else about how the game works. But all the same I really appreciate that you did this because although I had an understanding of Tetris being a form of the belief "it's fun to play with blocks"(which is broadly applicable to block-pushing games or building games like Minecraft), I didn't realize until now that it was also about reinforcing a specific way of playing with those blocks. |
| Aug 16 19:46:22 | 9h 52m | Become a Monster | ♥ 0 | I like becoming a monster! The concept is great and could easily be expanded into a whole single-player campaign where you travel to different gyms, bodybuilding stages, etc. and do open-world style quests to get bigger and crush the competition. It does need more detail with how training and fighting works though, the current systems are very simple and easy to exploit. |
| Aug 16 22:35:36 | 2h 49m | Closing in on Pascal | ♥ 1 | The game shows a lot of technique on the coding end of things with little details everywhere. I actually wanted all the transition animations to go faster, especially after I die. The game design follows a very conventional platform idea and could help define itself by adding some more ideas that feed back into "running out of space". Pascal needs a good raccoon power like being able to dig up trash to build platforms. It doesn't just have to be the walls closing in, this could be an own-goal type of thing. |
| Aug 17 02:24:57 | 3h 49m | Dirty Duty | ♥ 0 | This is a great "intentionally taking the joke too far" piece, which puts it in a similar space to [Twinbeard](http://www.twinbeard.com/) (Frog Fractions et al). I would even say that it might not be going far enough yet - it has plenty of the poop joke part which was good in that it focused everything for LD and the theme, it just needs diversifiers, like how you can sweep items off the shelves in Catlateral Damage. A more complete "bad dog experience" where you dig holes and chase cars and howl to annoy people would actually be material for a sizable game. |
| Aug 17 08:00:00 | 5h 35m | MoodFood | ♥ 1 | My top is 2:18. The combat is basically good and the audiovisuals fit well, although each element has a few rough parts to it and there is definitely a learning curve to how combat in this game works. The weapons are powerful enough but don't feel satisfying yet(impact sounds, particles, etc.) and on my top run I got a sense of the game running out of things to show me. The game relies a lot on randomness when it doesn't have to, and this limits it right now. [See my article on chaos for details.](http://ludamix.com/dive/chaos/) You can probably make it so that there isn't a single random thing going on in this game, and still have it be surprising. I am particularly annoyed by the enemy spawns since it will just put them exactly where I stand and I have to find that out by getting hurt. Edit: And yeah, keep it up! This isn't one you should let go. |
| Aug 24 21:07:08 | 181h 07m | Box Bonanza | ♥ 0 | This is a difficult game to learn to play. It's a "physics game" which always makes everything feel a little bit clunky and imprecise, and there are plenty of options and controls, but they are only given the most basic indications - it took a few tries before I actually read the directions and learned all the controls I had. I feel lucky that I noticed that there were two character options on the main menu. I never feel like I know if I've actually picked up a crate, and crate pickup is also risky because it produces most of the clipping-through-walls bugs. I never got a feel for what the actual pacing of the gameplay was while playing. I tried a few different strategies, but all of them either produced too much chaos to control, ran into the clipping-through-walls bugs or took too long to execute. That's frustrating. The concept seems good, but in executing on this one you may have tried to surface too many features all at once instead of trying to make a few that really fit together well. |
| Aug 25 23:20:12 | 26h 13m | Escape from The Alliance | ♥ 1 | I won on my first playthrough with 193 alive - perhaps this is because I have won at FTL before so I kind of had a sense of the resource-management shenanigans - but it succeeded at producing the same kinds of tense scenarios I felt in that game. If it were pausable real-time, it would probably be too simple, but as-is it succeeds at being a streamlined time-management action game that cuts out all the stats and cruft. The criticism of the game getting simpler as you go along is one that could be reworked in an expansion/follow-up by making the refugees more interesting characters and shifting the focus away from battle scenes as you progress towards some kind of interpersonal drama. There is a starting point just in having writing to give context to everything and it's possible to go a lot deeper with that(though it can also easily blow up the scope to do lots of writing). |
| Aug 26 21:12:51 | 21h 52m | Chambers | ♥ 1 | The game is difficult to download. Google Drive has a "download folder as ZIP" feature but right now using it triggers a "leave site" browser prompt. To actually start the download you have to say yes, leave the site. This is confusing and off-putting. Please consider a better distribution method, at least packaging the game in your own ZIP. |