Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Feedback comment stats → PeachTreeOath

PeachTreeOath

Feedback comments for LD43

PeachTreeOath's games and stats for all events →

Timestamp	Since previous	Game		PeachTreeOath's comment
Dec 4 06:31:38		Slithering Dark	♥ 3	Untitled.png Phew, took me several tries til I started developing better strategies. You nailed the theme so organically. I was playing by splitting up the group and playing carefully one by one. But when I died in some spots, the monsters would see the rest of the group as they passed by and carnage would ensue later. At some point I finally realized the genius of the empty 3-wall rooms.......that if you get spotted (which you inevitably will), one of the best things you can do outside of crazy micro, is to just park your guy in that room and let him die in peace. The 3 walls will basically seal in the monster for the rest of the group. Pure genius man. Of course there's the other sides of sacrifice which is figure out which people need to be left behind because they're being chased but you don't want to jeopardize the group, and also if you see the stairs and don't want to risk searching for an extra life. I saw a lot of parallels in our games where you kind of have to juggle having more people for more safety, but juggling all those people against the risk of more obstacles became a delicate scale you really had to pay attention to. So you effectively had 3 sacrifice mechanics organically built into the game, without any explanation needed. Overall I really liked the game feel. My favorite coop game of all time is Monaco, and the sneaking + the running away is a bit similar to this game, because when you run away from cops in Monaco, you also don't want to jeopardize your teammates. It's a very hectic chase where you're quickly trying to plan an escape route based on where your teammates positioning is. Of course, that game has a lot more mechanics like bushes to hide in or traps, but the same realtime chase planning is there which is awesome. One thing I did during my chases was to really pay attention to the order my tab was working in. Though @foxor is right that it's hard to know which character you'll switch to, it is possible with some planning. For example I would put a character next to the exit button so if I'm chased I can just run onto the exit, quickly tab and then push the button. It's hard for me to think of improvements but I'll give it a shot. My first thoughts are if there can be more use of multiple people rather than acting as a lives mechanic (if you store them by the start, or the exit if you're lucky to find it early). I don't have a specific idea for that though. The other place that could be interesting if there was more than one person to rescue on each floor. Like a random chance for another person or another item. The reason would be to add a choice to continue exploring and weigh the risk against just going to next level after a rescue. Just some thoughts, the game itself is just great.
Dec 4 07:20:16	48m 38s	Organic Harvest	♥ 2	I am super impressed with the systems and concepts you've built. That's a lot for a jam. The different minigames must've taken a lot of work to get all working, but you managed to squeeze them all in in ADDITION to a tutorial. In general you did a really good job coming up w pretty innovative systems, yet tying all of the economy together very coherently, where making one choice affects another resource in a meaningful way, and you're trying very hard to juggle all those #s. You certainly have to make sacrifices after a quick calculation of what goal you're trying to achieve at the time, well done.
Dec 5 05:57:34	22h 37m	Holly Jolly Trolly	♥ 1	Hah, thought it was gonna be a straight ethics test at first but got caught off guard with the immediate switch up in choices. Something that would be super cool for a game like this would be something like the Telltale Walking Dead results screen where you can see the what other people chose and if you were in the majority or minority.
Dec 5 06:52:35	55m 01s	To the Last Drop	♥ 4	Really great experience and I'm now aware of Spring's existence, makes me want to try it out in a side project. Easily one of the most on theme games I've played yet. I thought you did a good job balancing out the spells and making the player think quickly about which one to use. I LOVE how the fireball killed your own units, so that spell had a built in sacrifice mechanic where you had to carefully choose the position of the fb to kill the least allies. In addition to that, the map itself was designed in a way where you had to make decisions on which side you want to hold off at any given time. Since you used a single avatar to control rather than traditional RTS controls, you could only really save 1 side at a time so logistics and positioning became another factor to consider. My general strategy was to (2) big groups of isolated enemies, (3) them if I had to run somewhere else, (4) if it was a super mixed group or the boss itself. (4) was a total boss killer so maybe that one should've had a lower duration effect on it. I tended to not do personal combat since the payout didn't see worth it so I didn't use (1) much, and I couldn't tell if (5)'s poison mechanic was in the game or not. I know it blew away orks but (4) took care of that scenario for me. Those ragdoll physics are excellently satisfying though... In general if I had to summarize my thoughts, the game contains some real, organic sacrifice gameplay and the addition of the spell cost ups the ante on the formula. The game made me make a lot of quick decisions on the fly about how to spend my towns resources and it just felt great in general. Awesome work! saved.png
Dec 5 07:05:44	13m 09s	Etherium	♥ 2	Back in the day when I played Mario 3 battle mode a lot, one of my favorite mechanics was the berzerk mode. We used to just intentionally berzerk everything and then start playing just because it made things more hectic. I loved how you added that additional mechanic to the SCB formula, it made me think a bit harder as I played. I liked the variety of enemies in general but wish they could somehow attacked me from different angles or timings. If you play it safe, you can usually tackle any scenario because of the strength of the shield. Perhaps a shield resource could add to the decision making and force the player to implement dodging or positioning to their playbook. Needless to say, @tay-elenberg does incredible art and is one of the reasons I always check out your games. Very polished game overall, well done.
Dec 6 07:03:45	23h 58m	Sacrifice^3	♥ 2	I always know I'm going to get visual + audio performance whenever I play your games. The collisions against the targets was super satisfying. Very good combination of sound, light, and shatter effect to create juiciness. Personally I've come to rely on screenshakes (probably too much) and I'll have to add some of your techniques to my toolbox. Hard for me to dissect the audio process you chose, but there seemed to be some dynamic audio that got peppered in there. I know you're an artist and you want people to have their own interpretations of your games, but I'd love to hear your thought process from going from the theme to what you came up with since it does seem pretty abstract and probably above my head.
Dec 6 08:15:38	1h 11m	Documentia	♥ 3	I'll share my experience as I went through the game. In all honesty I rarely like narrative games because I'm mildly impatient, and when I saw the gorgeous art I just figured it would be a pretty game with simple gameplay. I skimmed the initial dialogues but I got hooked once I actually had to do a sacrifice. At first I thought ok, that's a pretty clever mechanic, and was curious how it would continue to play out. As I kept playing, I was shocked that I reached a point where I actually felt remorse, particularly with Rikka and the lumberjack. I think it hit me when I first saw a dialogue from the blacksmith that said things got bad after I had arrived, and for some reason I felt like that was directed at me, rather than my avatar, probably because you created that file manager mechanic. The remorse continued growing after that, and when it was down to 2 people I could really feel it. I was very impressed with game, probably will be a top 5 for me this LD. You guys had a keen sense of creating emotions in the player, not just with the dialogue but also the art. The hanging heads and somber music were genuinely effective at creating the right atmosphere and guilty feelings. Concept is top notch and I'm curious how long it took you guys to come up with it. I've seen some variations of it in previous LDs but never as well executed as this one.
Dec 6 08:45:38	30m 00s	An Adventure within a Deep Forest	♥ 0	I've seen several reverse metroidvania games this LD where you have to sacrifice powers, but this is the first one I've seen that put it into a tight, coherent package. I think the puzzles are VERY well designed, I can't imagine how long those must've taken to make. One thing I liked about this game is that you didn't pull any punches. I tend to be a little wary of puzzle games on LD because I feel like the early levels are a bit boring while the devs are trying to teach the players how to play, but you had such a great, in-lore tutorial that it didn't take long to pick up, and that we could dive right into the juicy parts of the game asap. Tbh I usually tackled the puzzles by trial and erroring a little first, before figuring out the basic chains of events to clear the level. I figured that generally you want to clear trees before giving up the sword (depending on the puzzle) so I liked the feeling of getting better at your puzzles by recognizing level design patterns over time. Very impressive game design, I really hope people don't judge the book by its cover on this one because there is some real good stuff here.
Dec 6 09:18:50	33m 12s	Nature is Harsh	♥ 3	Super clean and cohesive package as usual! The initial impression is one of the best I've seen from a solo game, it's hard to imagine how much work it was to get the art, narration, and UI to all look so good for the player right off the bat. At first, when I saw the first sacrifice level, I did think it was going to be very similar to other "die to keep going" types of games, like where you have unlimited clones and keep using their dead bodies to jump on and continue. I was really glad to see the arrow mechanic though! That was unexpected and added a lot of depth to an otherwise tame genre. I feel like you always consider putting speedrun mechanics in your games because there are some clever tricks you can do to go fast in this game, like immediately grabbing an arrow as soon as you bounced off a monkey, and the fact that levels have multiple paths depending on good you think you are. This game was an excellent evolution from your previous. I'm impressed you can keep pushing your genres forward while still applying a high level of polish to your games. Great job!
Dec 7 08:16:55	22h 58m	Gnome Man's Sky	♥ 0	I hate you guys, I was planning to knock out at least 10 reviews tonight and this is the only game I played lol. Super addictive game that was right up my alley, I love turnbased resource games and you did a wonderful job with the design. Like any good simulation design, every resource you gain puts pressure on another system, and you keep juggling all the different sources and sinks til you get a satisfying equilibrium. It took me several tries before I had a system down to reach the mushroom generation building. Phase 2 is the road to the launchpad and that's a whole nother deal that I never was able to solve, but I got pretty far. There are so many layers of sacrifice it's unbelievable. You sacrifice floor space, built up skill points, buildings to scrap up enough resources to build something else. I am super impressed with your team's game design abilities and have played this game more than anyone else's so far.
Dec 7 09:00:22	43m 27s	Quest for the West	♥ 2	As soon as I fired up the game you already got points for the presentation. Anything attempting to put an LD twist on Oregon Trail attracts me immediately. The art and sounds are extremely cohesive for a compo game so the overall first impression was way better than most compo games. Our team has run into your problem of creative well drying up before, but instead of writer's block, we had puzzle game level design blocks so I know how tough that can be to squeeze out those final lines of inspiration. Nonetheless I thought the writing was pretty solid and I enjoyed seeing my posse meet its misfortunes in so many ways. Someone here mentioned it being pretty reignsy. I think the first playthrough certainly feels like you don't have too much control over your caravan and it's hard to pick up on any gameplay patterns if there are there. As a thought experiment have you considered how the game would play if it was more like Reigns where you could see the results of your actions before you make them? It would certainly give more power to the players in determining their fate, but it's a big design change and you'd have to make sure there was a lot of balancing involved. You'd really have to find an interesting way to push and pull on all your resources to make the player feel like they were making big sacrifices. That's just a suggestion on where the game could go in the future. With that said I'm just overall impressed with the breadth of the game and look forward to seeing your post-mortem of the game. I think there's such a nice core game built here that you can take it into some really cool directions.
Dec 8 05:32:07	20h 31m	Model Trains Inc	♥ 2	Hey, looks like we brainstormed some very similar ideas... hectic vehicle multitasker + running over people + obituaries, high five! This game is super challenging, like a hardcore version of Flight Control. I tried my best to make loops simple to follow and keep track of but I can only do so much protecting the pedestrians. I will say the first time I had 2 trains collide made me lol pretty hard, there was some fantastic build up there. I think the art, colors, and UI work together really well and present a pleasant game to jump into. Aesthetically it's just very pleasing to watch it all play out, and I'm glad you weren't too brutal with the resources so that I could play for a while w/o worrying about mass deaths tooooo much. I think this kind of gameworld lends itself to upgrades and stuff super well (like Mini Metro), and can have a lot of potential in future versions.
Dec 8 05:47:02	14m 55s	Shadow Lands	♥ 1	Good use of a single resource in many different ways. I especially liked the parts where you had to place them on a wall, grab them then quickly jump cancel to get higher w/o wasting a resource. I think further exploration of those kinds of mechanics could separate the game more from the pack. Tbh I didn't see the mice as a sacrifice as much as a resource to progress, though the parts where they just explode in blood and unlock a gate were super well done. Overall, I was surprised at how many different uses you piled onto them and was actually pleasantly shocked when the boss appeared.
Dec 8 06:13:13	26m 11s	Blob Time	♥ 3	Well designed game with some REALLY tight levels. It looked like you guys did some good playtesting and tightened the timers on the levels really well. I'm not gonna lie, I got stuck at Jungle Staircase and gave up after many tries. I eventually had to just watch @mrjoshuamclean 's stream to see what the rest of the game looked like. I really enjoyed the experience regardless though. You guys didn't hold back on difficulty, had lots of parts that just felt fun, like doing midair sacrifices onto buttons and just booking it through a lot of sections. I think you guys stick to the theme very well, and very organically.
Dec 8 06:29:40	16m 27s	King's Last Stand	♥ 1	Can't beat wave 7 but enjoying it nonetheless. I actually disagree with a few comments on here about the pacing. I really like the "slow" shoot and how you stop to attack. In a way I kept seeing the game utilize the theme in several other ways. - You gain distance by kiting then sacrifice your spacing to take out groups of enemies - You sacrifice health to run through groups of enemies (or tank hits) - I was trying to start waves at the top then slowing work my way down to the castle to refill, so I was sacrificing territory to allow kiting I know these are looser interpretations but the slower pacing made me think more about my shots and where I needed to be to make them safe, as well as should I shoot forward to clear a path vs clearing the pack behind me. I thought the game overall was very solid and the rolling astra animation alone nets this a lot of stars in the graphics category. Fantastic polish for a compo game too!
Dec 8 06:48:04	18m 24s	A Town of Questionable Morals	♥ 1	This game lollllllll Honestly one of my favorite LD games ever. The concept is hilarious and unique, but most of all the gameplay is solid. It's a crazy mix of Elevator Action, Ghouls & Ghosts, and uhhhhhh, some kind of baby management sim. I think 42 babies is doable but I can't quite get there, I can get 35 at best. Correct me if I'm wrong @caseyh but with some patience and some more planning I think I could achieve a ton of babies. My strat is to build up babies by just tossing them onto the floor when I get a hold of them, and only sacrifice a baby when it's as close to sac time as possible. Then when you're ready to cash in, you start tossing them like crazy and get ready for the absolute onslaught of enemies that's about to run you over. That's the hard part, and in some ways requires a bit of luck in using your doors properly as a resource and racing across town. I think I'm a bit too impatient and either accidentally chuck some extra babies prematurely into the pit, or I threw them too far from the pillars to be useful during the crazy portion. I may revisit this later this jam after I've gone through reviewing other games. Brilliant gameplay though, I loved this.
Dec 8 07:17:38	29m 34s	ImminENT Danger	♥ 2	Really good twist on the formula! It made me think of traditional shmups with bomb clear mechanics, except now the bombs are tied to gameplay difficulty. Instead of just bombing every time you are near death, you kinda have to weigh the bomb vs losing visibility, brilliant. I think that really hits on the theme of sacrifice, and with your gameplay being as tight as it is, it really put the game high on my charts.
Dec 8 07:32:18	14m 40s	Dog Dog Dungeon	♥ 0	Absolute fantastic game! You don't hold back at ALL and you had me trying hard right off the bat, I loved that. The puzzles were all very interesting and required tight execution and less about trying to figure out what to do, kinda like Celeste's game design. Like others said, the game felt genuinely satisfying to solve because you have to plan out your routes and button timing. The presentation is the proper amount of whimsical and I never got tired of that music. I think there are many things you could do with the core mechanics and should definitely consider pursuing this further.
Dec 9 07:19:28	23h 47m	hiJack	♥ 1	I think you did a really good job giving the player a reason to keep playing in the form of introducing new ships as a progression model and then having them upgrade their current set. I think one thing you had a bit of was that ship choice was actually a decision to make, and that bigger wasn't always better. Sometimes you wanted the smaller ships to clear things out for a while, but when things got too messy you'd jump onto the turtle ship for safety. I think continuing to push that kind of game design will really make the game stand out some more for the post-jam. Overall I think the game has a really good feel to it. The situations you end up in require a good analysis of what you should be prioritizing, because you have such a variety of enemies and obstacles. Things like where to move, what to shoot, are all basic twinstick concepts but when you add in the hijack, it adds another dimension of when to time it, and who to not shoot so that they are full hp when you jump on them. I wonder if it'd be possible to design some situation where you needed to repeatedly hijack/swap between 2 ships a lot to beat and encounter or boss, like if 1 ship had missiles and another had guns and for some reason you needed to keep both around. Could be tedious but could be a way to take the hijack idea further.
Dec 9 07:48:08	28m 40s	The Orion Trail	♥ 3	I really loved the presentation of this game. For a game with a lot of resources you really made it intuitive what the goal of the game was and how you were reaching it. I've always liked FTL but tbh, I thought the combat got tedious after a while so I liked how you made a streamline version of that that just focuses on decision making, sort of like Reigns. I agree with others, it was just hard to know what outcome actually happened on the rolls but it's not gamebreaking. I just trusted the #s and hoped for the best lol. Again, really great, streamlined concept that definitely made you weigh RNG vs the resources you had on hand. I think a place you could take it further is toss in some REALLY unique items like idk...something that lets you skip an encounter altogether, or halves fuel drain during travel, and then make the player decide if they want to sacrifice a ton of resources to get those bonuses. I think that'd be a nice addition that could make those sacrifices just a little harder :)
Dec 9 08:01:44	13m 36s	Demon Rising	♥ 1	I was pleasantly surprised when I got my first upgrade, I actually didn't expect that + when the gun enemy got introduced is when everything clicked in my head as to what this game could be. Even though it was a simple twist to the formula, the sacrifice mechanic immediately fixed one of the worst things about twinsticks - the fact that you always pretty much just kite in a circle and shoot, with little variance. With this game I added in the corpses to my positioning, and changed my routes a bit to knock them into the goal while killing things. Now I do agree with @kamekai , if the corpses despawned this would solidify the decision-making even more and up the ante on positioning, but I'm ok with it as is. Another thing you could add to keep differentiating your game is to make the zone move around, so the player doesn't get too comfortable with 1 route and maybe have to think on the fly a bit. I think this game has a lot of potential and when I got that 2nd upgrade hoo boy, I felt SUPER powerful.
Dec 9 08:15:22	13m 38s	Views	♥ 3	Definitely an eye-catching game and concept. I highly doubt I'll see another game with this theme for the rest of the jam.
Dec 9 08:33:25	18m 03s	Identity Crisis	♥ 0	Definitely a top 3 game for me so far. I think clone games are ever so slightly popular in indie puzzle games, and then having to play multiple at once are even rarer, but still a concept I've seen. The part where you TRULY shine is with your realtime elements. Instead of just putting a timer in you have organic elements like sweeping lasers that'll end you if you don't manage your clones quickly enough, and that mechanic alone just takes your game to another level. Avoiding bullets, trying to hide behind pillars, and managing the formation of your clones is all under pressure and it gives a gamefeel I don't get in too many games. If you plan to take this further and want to give it a coat of paint (kinda like Narbacular Drop -> Portal), the game kinda reminded me of The Prestige (spoiler alert). Check that out for some story inspo.
Dec 9 08:50:13	16m 48s	As Of Yet Unnamed	♥ 1	As with your previous games, your polish is truly insane. Not just at a game level but your blogposts are also all super professional and have a lot of attention to detail. Our team actually initially talked about a similar concept of bodyguard sacrifice, but we couldn't find a good way to put it all together. The way you did it is excellent, since even though the mechanic is relatively simple, the execution makes it so interesting. I found myself juggling the general positions of my guards to help with certain angles even in downtime, and the idea of a realtime angry birds is something I haven't quite seen. In terms of polish, everything just comes together so well. The particle effects everywhere blend in super well. The guards coming back w casts was AMAZING and I wanted to keep piling them up. The helicopter completely caught me off guard and added to the chaos. I even appreciated the little megaman slide sprite when they skid. I'm not sure what else I'd add to this game other than more enemy types. Perfect game to port to mobile and I hope you do. 5 stars easy.
Dec 9 09:10:00	19m 47s	Vitality!	♥ 1	The gameplay and concept is solid but I wish the health to spirit change wasn't as brutal. The reason is cuz the max spirit shot is SO satisfying to use. I can see it being hard to balance though, if you drop more hp orbs just for that, then the no-spirit shot build will just get stronger unless that's tuned too. Others have already pointed out how additional enemy types could force the usage of spirit, like anything that just runs faster than you, and I'm sure you can figure out some other ideas for that. All in all, the core is good and the basic aesthetic is coherent and consistent. The tie to the theme is there and a few more mechanics to force decision making on the player will spice this up nicely.
Dec 9 09:32:23	22m 23s	Cook	♥ 3	Evading the veggie police while juggling my restaurant popularity was super fun! I think there's a build that's a bit too strong though, it's when you focus on carrots for an early start but then do full onion and ignore everything else. I made it to 15,400 pts before my schemes ended! Not gonna lie I initially clicked this game cuz I love cooking games. I was happy with what the game ended up being, and it was an interesting perspective into that type of 'protagonist'. You know, the cooking kind.
Dec 9 10:33:52	1h 01m	Crush/Burn/Sacrifice	♥ 0	Top notch art and effects as usual. I know you had more planned but I'll review what I can. When I first played the game, I experimented with the different moves until I realized I really only needed the sword and shield. The sword is a longer range stomp (though worse recovery) and the jump just is really risky. It would be cool if there were more uses for the other attacks, and I was thinking something like Karate Champ: https://youtu.be/RCq3AjLsrrw?t=423 I think the core game is pretty satisfying and the walk/attack animations all feel very good. I'd love to hear what ideas you had on the final version!
Dec 9 11:06:31	32m 39s	Gorth	♥ 2	HS.png I'm a simple man. I see Gas Gas Gas I upvote. Couldn't beat your score but I actually thought there was some nice strategy to the game. I treated it as a quick memory game where as you traveled left and right you made a quick note of the items that are over there and try to remember them as Gorth gave out his requests. I think it's a super cool concept but it gets tough when the well starts drying up and you have to run pretty far or hope the rng saves you. To focus on what I think is the fun portion of the game, you could maybe have 4 paths instead, 2 each side where you can jump up or go down, and then make sure you spawn things just a tad closer to Gorth. That could emphasize the memory aspect of the game and make it frantic as you run around trying to remember which path had that giant meat collection building up. The game itself has a good pacing to it. I really had fun especially grabbing those cows and tossing them in. I think if the throw had some distance on it that could make the delivery of the food pretty satisfying too. Overall a pretty complete experience and well done for a first jam!
Dec 9 19:23:07	8h 16m	Catrifices	♥ 1	I've rated a lot of games already but surprisingly haven't seen any "throw characters at zombies to slow them down" concepts yet. The plan did backfire a bit on me though, as the cat eating animation is slower than your pickup speed, so it was better for me to run around and lead the aliens to a pack of sleeping cats than it was to catrifice one of my own in order to pick up/drop off. Perhaps if the cat throw was a little stronger it could encourage me to toss it around a box easier to lead them down a bad path. I actually REALLY liked your usage of a diagetic UI to show the drop off. It's a small touch but putting the UI as a part of the world instead of just an overlay is a nice touch I always appreciate. Overall, I think people already covered some of the core changes to help the future version of this game so I think you're on a good start.
Dec 9 19:34:15	11m 08s	PeonCraft - Sacrificed	♥ 3	You get a huge amount of innovation points from me, though probably because I was a massive wc3 fan. When I fired up the game I got the concept immediately, and it brought a wide smile to my face. The gameplay is simple, but it was such a brilliant pov to have that no one ever considers. Loved the giant characters to make it feel like you were playing on a WC tabletop battlefield, and it made me miss things like orc burrows and all the peon quotes. One concept that might be interesting to add would be to have 3 possible locations of the enemy and you have to figure out where their base is first. Tbh I'm not sure how to make that fun since it'd be another trek if you ran into the wrong base but that's just one of the core concepts of scouting 4p maps. ngl, the whole time I was thinking there's no sacrifice if I can just send spirit wolves out :)
Dec 10 03:54:46	8h 20m	Long Live The King!	♥ 2	Totally awesome entry, did you actually recreate all the lemmings mechanics/sprites or was there some sort of library to help out? I've always wondered how to do the pixel by pixel destruction w/o it being computationally expensive. I'm always impressed with these kinds of entries but this was the first one where I had to multitask a bit and think about how to transfer abilities from one window to the next. I agree with some other comments, I'm super impressed you did this all bug free, did you already have experience with this type of tech?
Dec 10 04:10:20	15m 34s	Dungeon of Lost Items	♥ 1	Super tough game at first til you play a bit and then look over the rules again. In terms of sacrifice and decision-making, there are certainly a few points where you get a little stuck and you debate between a couple paths to take and guess which one's the safest, but for the most part you try to find the path that has the most items you can collect to get through in one piece. The game is almost like Desktop Dungeons where you can just sit back and calculate for a while on how to progress and I like that, and a few more rpg mechanics could really put the player in the position of analysis paralysis (a good thing). Cool concept and I liked how you really made this as a game you would enjoy playing daily yourself.
Dec 10 05:27:34	1h 17m	Octli 2 Step	♥ 1	This game certainly makes you think on your feet. The game is quite brutal and there's not a lot of room to maneuver. It sounds like you already know what balance changes to make though so I'll cover the rest of the game. I liked the unique artstyle, you took the Aztec traditions and mixed it into your own style. The javelins feel awesome but I was always scared when I got a melee weapon. Perhaps get it to feel more like Zelda and it'd have a better feel, or maybe if it could knock arrows away. I think the traps were one of the things that really stood out in this game, and if you could hone in on that mechanic and have more traps that worked on the enemies it could add to the game and maybe even the sacrifice theme.
Dec 10 05:41:12	13m 38s	No Brakes on the Train of Life	♥ 1	Really good take on the trolley problem, I had trouble myself finding a way to make the idea interesting and more than just trial and error decision making. I didn't think to have realtime execution elements to it to create the fun. 3 levels stood out the most to me: 1. The first level that contains 4 exit points, and you need to hit 3 levers. It is actually hard to get the last lever in time because you can't start the level out holding diagonal (for me anyways), so I had to time that initial start Mario Kart style to get all levers in time. Probably my favorite level because I felt like I had to do an optimized speedrun to complete it. 2. The level that looks like the pound sign and has the train wrap around sometimes. I was actually hoping there would be more levels like this because you could really make the player think hard on them. 3. The final level. Awesome idea and brought a smile to my face. I think the rest of the levels can be relatively straightforward. Usually I just tried to hit all the levers in order and it would work out for me. Again, I think if you focus more on those top 3 ideas you could push level design boundaries here. Regardless, the game is super well executed. The POV animation has no real gameplay meaning, but it is a VERY nice touch. Overall art and sound is fitting and the game just feels so solid. Great idea and great entry all around!
Dec 10 05:53:08	11m 56s	Benefice	♥ 1	Pretty in depth game you made. I'm really glad you included a sample screenshot of a town so that I could piggyback on that to understand how to build a good foundation. Once I got that going I was able to make a lot of progress. Getting hit by a pirate is super brutal and pretty much game over, but that's ok, I assume that's part of the design. One throwback I got from this game was Dune 1. In that game, you were constantly hounded by the emperor asking for an increasingly steep tax and I haven't seen that used all that much so that was a neat idea. I'm impressed with how many little systems you put into this game, and as a compo game on top of all that! Cool game with some neat ideas.
Dec 10 06:02:14	9m 06s	Not Me!	♥ 1	I'm gonna go against the crowd here and not call it a Reigns-like :). If anything, it reminded me of https://store.steampowered.com/app/501320/The_Shrouded_Isle/ which is a murder deduction + sacrificing game that has a similar concept. I think it would be neat to find 1 more game mechanic to add onto the deduction-side of the game to push it just one step further. Overall this game was still pretty fun, and finding the killer per round was very satisfying, especially when you had 1 heart left. Unique idea and execution for this LD, good job!
Dec 10 06:28:34	26m 20s	Death Metal Crowd Pusher	♥ 4	I had a couple thoughts before coming to the conclusion the others did. When I first loaded up the game, I actually thought the goal was the opposite, to fill the stage with as many people as possible without having them fall in, so I was actually carefully choosing my shots each time. After I noticed the score I still was a bit careful, since the game reminded me of those redemption arcade games with the coins you have to push in to the bucket. I'm curious how you guys will end up stopping the spam meta, though something quick like limited resources should be a quick thing to try out. The game itself is very eyecatching and absolutely why I clicked the game in the first place. Excellent presentation and idea, just needs that 1 tweak to solidify it.
Dec 10 06:41:26	12m 52s	Goat 6	♥ 4	Very pleasant game to experience, both in terms of graphics and music. The animations were solid especially when the sacrifice happens. I have to say the game is quite easy. Even in the double digits the levels were generally pretty obvious how to approach them, so I'd say don't be afraid to up the ante sooner for the players. Pretty good puzzler nonetheless and I'm impressed how many levels you packed into this. Did you just have 1 teammate knocking out levels the whole time? Small note, the main menu doesn't scale well with ultra-widescreen and I couldn't see the buttons to start the game until I dropped the rez to a more normal one: ss.png
Dec 10 06:49:42	8m 16s	Detritus Walks	♥ 2	The character alone is an amazing tech demo and something I haven't really seen before. Normally I shy away from qwop-ish games but the game was just so unique I kept plowing forward. I think the game can be quite punishing if you fail a level by missing a throw though. Not sure how to remedy this though I did see you had toyed with the idea of just making the character a bit faster which would help with returning to your last point. I enjoyed the lore and especially the character, it kinda reminded me of https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DrhfmklWkAEeWCl.jpg. I am quite curious how long it took to code up that character, from the trash summoning to the jump mechanics.
Dec 10 07:02:23	12m 41s	Baby Grenade	♥ 0	Suuuuuper hard game. The game is pretty satisfying to play, at least when you have a few grenades ready. The speed of the enemies is pretty insane though and you can only play so long. Please tell me how you guys came up with this idea lol
Dec 10 07:32:50	30m 27s	Bow-wow Before God	♥ 1	Super ambitious game as a solo dev, the game reminded me of https://www.kongregate.com/games/gazthomas/tangerine-tycoon which has a different play area for each subsystem as well. Your game is super hectic on the first couple playthroughs but I did get a hang of it once I reread your game description. Like @swanijam said, you combined the UI of Tangerine Tycoon with a realtime resource juggling game and came up with something unique. Some more polish and tutorial should get this game up to where it should be.
Dec 10 07:54:13	21m 23s	Sacrifices Must Be Made	♥ 1	I can't believe you pulled this off in a weekend. The presentation is so good and the game itself is super addicting and I wanted more. For such [relatively] few cards you mustered up a lot of strategy focused around the sacrifice mechanic. Very fun game and impressive game design.
Dec 10 08:05:57	11m 44s	Fruity Madness	♥ 2	Very well made game, 4477 points here at best. It was a bit of Overcooked mixed with physics game with an excellent presentation. Definitely big humor points here for having such happy fruit mixed with the brutal blender action. I also think you get extra points for playing on the sacrifice theme twice. Once for the blender, but again for the pit in the middle of the screen. Those poor fruit falling in the middle cuz they weren't worth of your ingredient list. You guys even put some extra love into your ldjam page! Lots of goodness overall.
Dec 10 08:20:09	14m 12s	The Pink Slip	♥ 1	I'm actually gonna rate this one pretty high on graphics. For a pretty basic UI, I really liked the squiggly animations for personality. It honestly bumped up the look and feel of the game by a couple magnitudes for me...I'll have to put that one in the toolbox myself. At first I was wondering why I had to type employee #s when I could just click the portrait, but I understood once the plot started unraveling. PS. I was hoping the dog was behind everything :)
Dec 10 08:31:33	11m 24s	BRIAN'S ELEGY	♥ 1	Interesting concept, the execution was a little crazy though. The thing I liked the most was that using grappling hook reset my jump count and I could do some cool hook cancels as a result. I was ok with the controls, I think a lot of people here must've just been using dash too much like I did on my first run. It's fine otherwise. The sacrifice portion of the game looks truly awesome. You did great making the choice seem ominous like there was an evil force guiding you. I think you did well for a solo game and also trying a genre you hadn't attempted before!
Dec 10 08:59:21	27m 48s	The Omicron Fleet	♥ 1	Reallllly great entry. I'd say this takes the cake in terms of hitting the theme because although of lot of entries show sacrifice, this is a game that REALLY made me consider what to lose and what I had to gain from it. There are many tough scenarios where I had to consider what to keep alive for the longterm and if it was worth the risk of keeping certain units around. Brilliant gameplay and presentation, never expected to see a game like this. The overall theme of the game reminds me of the Ender's Game movie. I loved how the fleet works together and sacrifices everything to overcome the enemy. Even the ominous music loop helped the atmosphere and I just had to play to the end. Awesome game, if not slightly painful whenever I accidentally let a bullet slip through and rip my formation to shreds!
Dec 11 04:56:38	19h 57m	Appease the Gods	♥ 1	Not a bad start to the game. Like others, I'm curious what you would've tried had you had the full weekend to work.
Dec 11 05:13:26	16m 48s	Sky Fortress	♥ 1	Nice twist on the formula. I loved the idea of constantly upgrading weapons and can only wish there were more upgrades and guns. I only got to fully upgrade 3 of the weapons, was it just me or did the rocket have homing on it once it was boosted? Either way, it's a decent shooter and pretty fun to rocket jump and blast away.
Dec 11 05:21:09	7m 43s	I don't wanna die	♥ 0	Woo a fellow giant team, and looks like your first LD too? I thought the game is very coherent despite how many cooks were in the kitchen, you must've had pretty strong direction right off the bat. I really loved the concept and was surprised I've only seen 2 games involving sacrificing to zombies to slow them down. I think with a few more event types in the game to force hard decisions on the player the game could really take off.
Dec 12 03:45:31	22h 24m	FTD : Fixin' to Die	♥ 2	Excellently made game, really unique experience and just seems like a complete game.
Dec 14 04:24:16	48h 38m	Machine Godz	♥ 2	Wow, VERY polished entry for LD. You definitely nailed the feel of Furi in this, from the weapon loadouts, the bullet hell, and even the look and feel. I definitely found myself playing it safe a lot and using the gun mostly, I didn't have too much confidence in my slash and dash abilities. I actually really like the cockroach enemy you created. Pretty unique enemy and you really kinda created your own world here, nice job.
Dec 18 06:59:02	98h 34m	Money Run	♥ 2	Actually a really unique use of the theme, especially using a car setting. You gave us basically 3 resources to juggle, cash, bullets and hp, and you had to make play by play decisions on how to handle each situation. I thought the cash+Gerald mechanic was BRILLIANT, because tossing cash to create mines was the optimal way to handle certain cars, but the difficulty in setting it up was higher since there could be other obstacles in the way (vs just gunning them down). Luckily bullets were fairly scarce so it encouraged being creative w your other resources. TBH, I could only get a bit further than the spike strips after a few tries so I couldn't actually tell how much more content was after that. I totally feel you on not having time to balance and polish the level progression. Our game ran into the same issue, and a last minute bug prevented players from noticing there is actually distinct level progression over time, and players were wondering if the game had just stalled out. I thought your game was excellent and had some really clever takes on the genre. I'm curious to hear what the other levels contain but alas I can't seem to get to them.
Dec 24 05:58:11	142h 59m	Hypnotized Jumpers	♥ 1	The concept is interesting, but the execution left me wanting more polish. Not only was I getting stuck in in the corner of the ledges, but even my tombstones were getting stuck there as well. Then sometimes you could dislodge the tombstones but then they would start sliding. I think a checkpoint system would help with game because it did get rather tedious replaying the same parts of the level over and over again. I rated you higher on fitting the theme because it was an interesting take on it where you literally used your tombstone as stepping blocks. If they had weight it could make the level varied if you also had to think of a tricky way to drop a tombstone on a button or lever to activate a door or whatever. I see some potential in your idea, but it definitely needs more fleshing out and polish.
Dec 24 23:17:54	17h 19m	Cappies vs Commies	♥ 0	Pretty fancy reskin on Go. I'm glad you went with a 5x5 grid cuz it does change the feel of the game quite a bit and convinces you it's an entirely different setting. It did confuse me why the game didn't end once it hit the win condition but I played it out anyways with my friend and got to the win screen.