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GenTel

Feedback comments for LD44

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		GenTel's comment
Apr 30 21:37:01		Transaction Packed	♥ 0	Love the concept. Really fits the theme well, and the game has a good mix of the real-time dungeon shooter genre and something more tactical like a board game. The number of options for purchases were good, and the loot box aspect really added a lot to strategize around. The health gain rate was well balanced with the enemy damage and the cost of upkeep. It's got the Minecraft style infinite mining feel to it. Things to improve: - Enemies being simple and infinite makes camping to farm hearts the best strategy. You can get infinite health and money this way. A time limit, a limit on enemy heart drops, or some different types of more aggressive enemies could fix this. - Some of the upgraded arrows were never very effective like the fire and diamond ones. - I want bulk discounts on dollars!
May 1 01:39:17	4h 02m	Zombie Rush	♥ 0	Good concept and I like the enemies. They're a bit scary but still in the fun cartoonish way. It's got some maze aspect but without cutting into the running and shooting part. The hat and machine gun was a pretty cool top-down visual for the player, as top-down visuals are often very minimal. I agree with the other commenter that zooming the game out more would be great, as soon as the enemies show on screen it's often too late to kill. This meant I was able to win the crown most effectively by avoiding all enemies and charging to the right.
May 1 05:55:06	4h 15m	Our Mechanical Life	♥ 2	Good commentary on modern work culture. The messages in the background really sent the point home, and the way that you had to sort of pay attention to them as you play the game is just how those toxic norms and ideas occur as a background noise in real life. However, I don't think hitting 100 money should kill you. I get the idea but getting rich in real life doesn't kill you, it's just a trade off with other things like time and happiness, which I think should've been reflected in the game.
May 1 06:40:18	45m 12s	Cyber Radiation	♥ 3	I liked the wide variety of enemies, all of which which had good art and animations. I especially liked the quadcopter enemies. The enemy AI seemed good in general. The boss with the expanding and contracting rings had a cool look. I think the levels are procedurally generated, and that's a great and complex feature to add. To improve, I'd say that the floaty movement and wall drag made dodging a bit hard, and the enemies seemed to sometimes multi-hit and sometimes be hugging me forever with no damage. Overall, well done!
May 1 07:52:27	1h 12m	Wu-Wei	♥ 2	Good work, I managed to beat all 20 levels! When I beat the game I had never seen the final sawblade zone fully so it was awesome getting to the end scrambling on the fly. The music and art were on point. Both were subtle but detailed and fit really well with the philosophical theme of the game. The main place for improvement is that some of the jumps can be hard in a frustrating way. And a bug: On certain levels you can go off of the left or right of the screen and can't escape or do anything there. You get softlocked.
May 1 08:18:08	25m 41s	Register Revenge	♥ 2	Funny literal take on the theme, and the levels were very big for the amount of artwork and detail that went into them. All in all good animations and a generally challenging platformer. For suggestions, I never found the change shooting that useful. I'd also recommend including infinite lives at least as a mode for a jam to make things easier for the reviewers. Also, restarting made this absolutely hilarious bug where I could clone myself: Register_Revenge_LD44_2019-05-01_01-01-02.png
May 1 09:14:10	56m 02s	The Insured Man	♥ 1	I like the GTA vibe this game has going on. The level's huge and must have taken a long time to draw. The concept of the gangsters converting the civilians is cool (though I don't think I've seen a conversion on screen so I don't know if it's actual gangster interaction that does it). The NPCs are pretty good and the cars are amazing. Getting them to wait for each other at intersections and do realistic intersection turns is a huge accomplishment. The main place for improvement is it's too hard to find the enemies which just led to me wandering around randomly. Aiming is super hard so I get killed by the gangsters - I would rather do the turning and aiming with the mouse.
May 2 07:17:04	22h 02m	Deadly Dungeon	♥ 1	I like the Mario Party aesthetic, the game was very colorful, and I like the dialogue. It's pretty impressive to include minigames given how short the contest is as well. The merging of the board game and the boss fight was cool, and it had a story surrounding it as well. To improve, some of the sounds were a bit loud, and the level gave so many coins so the boss was really easy even though I was on a track pad and not playing well. Ideally I'd need to play smart on the board game and play well in the fight.
May 2 08:09:53	52m 49s	Stretchy Cat	♥ 1	I like the game and it really feels like something you'd find on the real app/play store. The art really fit together with the yarn balls as the obstacles for the cat and so forth. I agree that the end-of-level animation was a bit slow because I already know from the counter if I have enough segments or not, so I don't want to spend time re-counting.
May 2 08:34:18	24m 25s	HAMMO	♥ 1	I like the speedrun aspect the most. I managed to get 16.260 on the 2nd level. Rocket jump challenges are fun in Quake and TF2 so it's good here too. The fast reset really helped for the speedrun sentiment. To improve I'd say make it more clear if you have killed all the enemies, like a sound or something. And the health-ammo connection needs to be more present with more serious enemies and such.
May 2 08:59:09	24m 51s	cut'n'align	♥ 1	The music really fits with the chill puzzle style so it was very immersive. I played for a long time for this reason. The new symbols that started to come down were a bit confusing at first but then made sense. The main thing I'd say to improve is to fit the theme more. Maybe have there be some $ meter and you spend money to drop one block at a time and you die if it runs out.
May 3 00:36:25	15h 37m	Hajime no Botto	♥ 1	I like the style and the fast-paced variant on the typical turn-based combat. The sounds and screen shake improved the experience a lot. The art and style definitely had the RPG feel going. There are definitely a lot of possibilities for the strategy to go with different weapons and enemies. The main thing to improve would be to make it more clear when you're doing well or badly. I had a hard time telling and sometimes was going nowhere and sometimes doing big damage really quickly and never really understood why.
May 3 02:22:52	1h 46m	Dr. Lud Umdare's Revenge	♥ 0	I like the character sprite and the retro sound effects. Ludum Dare's short timespan is tough, so getting a game that works well from start to finish is good even if it's really short. One thing to improve - the walls look more like boost panels than hazards IMO.
May 3 02:55:02	32m 10s	Root Maker	♥ 1	The chill atmosphere on this game was very addictive. I managed to come out ahead which was fun. More generally I liked analyzing the trends in the market and seeing what to buy and sell. Those extra side benefits and having a cult was pretty funny as well. To improve, I found it hard to see any connection between the influence system, the news system, and the prices. And the prices seemed to bottom out at 1.00 which made certain things too predictable.
May 3 03:55:40	1h 00m	BatteryWars	♥ 2	Good work, faking out the enemies to dodge them was fun. Upgrading the gun is definitely important, at the start I was doing nothing but over time I got lots of kills. I was able to survive but it was often pretty close and tense. To improve, I'd make the upgrade system cleaner (I wasted bullets clicking the upgrade button). And it seemed like the screen got a little too full of robots where more varied combat could be more interesting.
May 3 04:43:51	48m 11s	MoneyBag	♥ 1	I liked that life was both currency and a weight modifier. That added a lot of complexity to the mechanic compared to the typical life-spending mechanic that so many games (including mine) have had during this jam. To improve, I'd say more complex levels that take more advantage of the mechanics would be the biggest thing.
May 3 06:13:42	1h 29m	Space Shooter Redux 2D	♥ 1	Highlights: - The background and the stream of player bullets looked good. - Player movement was very smooth. - Good sound on the player's bullet stream. To Improve: - Bullets stopped doing damage after a certain level - Enemy AI doesn't need to be crazy complicated but mirroring the player moves isn't the best option either. - The health-costing upgrade was forced, this should change to fit the currency theme.
May 4 22:21:10	40h 07m	Return of the Roguelike	♥ 1	The take on the theme you've done is very original. My game and most others involved a straight trade-off of health points for something else. What you've done still fits the theme but is very different. I like randomly-generated dungeons and that's always a challenge to develop, so that's a big plus. Seeing how many enemies you can kill before cashing out is a fun risk. I'd say the main thing to improve is the melee combat. We're clicking with the mouse, but the position of the mouse doesn't affect what direction you swing which is a bit confusing. Also, after the first death if you don't have anything it's sort of a suicide mission and I just hit the refresh button to restart instead.
May 4 23:02:02	40m 52s	Lifeless	♥ 2	Interesting game with a lot of outside-the-box thinking clearly going into it. The music really made the experience work, my opinion of the game would have been a lot worse without it. Interesting puzzles and message. Very unique game.
May 5 07:26:54	8h 24m	Pay With Your Blood	♥ 0	I like the music and art, they fit together well. The movement was smooth and I liked the mouse aiming. The enemy AI was pretty good and I definitely approve of having multiple types of enemies in a level. The sound effects were also on point. Unfortunately there was a pretty big bug for me on both Firefox and Chrome - I couldn't switch weapons at all and would get stuck with an empty gun and killed. I'd say the basic club weapon should maybe have some changes so I can win fights by skill instead of just trading damage for damage. Also there was this pretty funny bug here - the enemies can push you outside of the level: chrome_2019-05-05_00-06-39.png
May 5 09:22:17	1h 55m	Click Heartbeat	♥ 1	Very interesting concept! I love math puzzles and like dealing with the number theory and this seemed especially related to the Collatz series which I like a lot. One criticism I have is that there's no backspace button, so some big number turned out to be divisible by 3 and then you're destroyed and can't do anything about it. I strategized with pen and paper around the number 4 as the input and managed to beat the game that way.
May 5 20:39:57	11h 17m	Card Boxer	♥ 1	This is a really good format and well-executed for the timespan. The life trade-offs really matter and that makes the game fit the theme a lot more. Having a serious in-game tutorial is a big deal as well especially with the shorter 48hr timespan. Good dialogue on the fight and such as well. My main issue is that the life pool doesn't increase between games or restore much mid-match so eventually I can't use uppercuts and such, but the enemies have a lot of health so I need to do that damage.
May 5 21:07:50	27m 53s	Master of Lifeblood	♥ 1	Making an RTS game for Ludum Dare is a bold choice in itself. Really it's one of the hardest genres you could pick. The player unit AI was quite good. I liked the two different types of enemies and the enemy mechanics were themselves well done. The controls were familiar enough to Starcraft that I could figure them out with no major issues. Getting stuck on enemies and a somewhat confusing unit build system were my two biggest issues. It seemed like the progress bar wouldn't start until like 5s after I clicked the button and there wasn't a construction queue. Fixing these two issues would unlock a ton of potential in the game.
May 5 21:33:15	25m 25s	Loot Goblin	♥ 1	Pros: - Smooth movement that was neither too jerky nor too floaty - Nice gold drop on damage - Music fit the pace of the game well Cons: - A bit too simple on the dodge mechanic, like Asteroids is slower but there's a ton of stuff to navigate around that forms new patterns every time.
May 5 22:34:00	1h 00m	Minus	♥ 1	Really great work, this'll be the highest ratings I've given out so far. The mood was incredible with both an extremely appropriate music track, great text, and artwork all matching up well. Level design was also good, especially the part where you have to go from the high platform to the low one and back all in the air. To improve: - The back side of the sideways spikes kills when it should just be a wall since it's not the sharp end - Movement could be smoother - On reset, retains your end-game score from the last run so you have to refresh Also here's my current PB, might improve later: chrome_2019-05-05_15-43-05.png
May 6 00:02:35	1h 28m	Between Light and Shadow	♥ 1	The graphics and story are great, and the music also fit well, and the sound effects on losing a heart were good too. The girl getting older through spending her lifepoints made it all hit home so much more. The general amount of content between the levels and the dialogue is absolutely enormous for such a short timespan. I'd say the walk-around was a little bit slow. And I'm still not sure if the enemies' rock-paper-scissors is random, for some reason I was losing consistently through both random and scissor-heavy strategies to take advantage of the upgrade.
May 6 04:13:18	4h 10m	Heart Sacrificer	♥ 1	The levels are the real highlight of this game, it's a lot of content and the levels are tuned very well for such a short timespan. Challenging but definitely doable, and I got to the end for the nice message. The wall enforced a fast pace and added intensity but it was a fair pace too. To improve: - Sometimes I couldn't shoot despite being in shooting position for no reason - After buying from the shop I couldn't buy again after dying and I don't think I still had the power-ups - Minor weirdness like dying again instantly after respawning and general control smoothness could be improved some.
May 6 05:08:11	54m 53s	KNIFE=LIFE	♥ 1	The controls and physics are on another level. Even most big-name studio games don't have controls this good. I like how you got a very minimalist aesthetic to still look good. The sound and music were likewise very understated but were very tasteful and appropriate and all worked very well. My main criticism is that enemies often made a wall of bullets that was essentially impossible to dodge.
May 6 07:13:08	2h 04m	Little Dead Riding Hood	♥ 0	I see the graphics as the main highlight, with well-fitting music and good sound effects as well. I appreciate the difficulty being about right for testing and reviewing purposes as well. One issue was that there were ghosts stuck outside the walls and they'd have weird teleporting behavior. And it seemed a bit random whether I got hit or not when swinging at enemies.
May 6 07:40:42	27m 34s	Hand of Death	♥ 2	It's really creative and it's really the only time I've seen a 3D engine put to good use in Ludum Dare. The mix of 2D and 3D was something I'd never seen outside of Paper Mario. The story and dialogue were interesting and engaging. Unique characters are a bit of a rarity in these contests. The music was also good. Falling out of the world to exit was a really creative and funny addition as well. It was a bit easy to get lost as to what to do next at some points and I would've liked some more content and challenges but in general it was all very well done.
May 6 07:55:11	14m 29s	Apothecary's Piggy Bank	♥ 1	Very cool unique concept. It's like a live-time Plague Inc. The upgrades seem pretty well-balanced, and the gameplay in general is engaging. There's some strategy of who to go for and how to cordon off areas and so forth. Eventually there are just so many enemies compared to healthy patients it seems impossible so that's my only complaint.
May 6 21:05:57	13h 10m	Mana Loss	♥ 1	I think this is the second card game I've seen in this contest, the general card game mechanics and rules are really well-done. Not just the card interactions but the dragging and UI really worked, the cards even rearranged through dragging. That whole text log gives a lot of explanation and makes it easy to understand but at the same time it shows how much complexity needed to be managed in making the game work. My main criticism is that there should be a bit more strategic depth. But overall the game is well-built.
May 6 21:14:03	8m 06s	Mr. Mewsifer's Malevolent Market	♥ 1	I love the feel and aesthetic and it's all very original. The pace can get intense and you really feel it because of the artwork and the music supporting it as opposed to just having a fast timer. My one criticism is I couldn't really understand a lot of the hints. The color one is the only thing I could decipher consistently so I mainly just guessed based on that.
May 6 21:48:05	34m 02s	5 Minute Dungeon	♥ 1	The game worked well - I chose the speed power up and was able to beat the game first try with it. I like how there was the indicator to tell me where to go. Having the big selection of powerups and a good system for choosing them was a good idea. It almost doubled as a tutorial for the game. I would have liked some more challenging enemies with better AI, just running away while shooting seemed too effective.
May 6 22:54:19	1h 06m	Coin Bois	♥ 1	Wow, that's a crazy amount of smart levels to come up with in such a short timeframe. A lot of LD games have maybe 3 tutorial levels and 1 that takes real advantage of the unique functionality, this has a ton that take real thinking to figure out. I like the parallel controls and also the fact that the health-currency relationship was very present and important in terms of winning and losing the level.
May 6 23:25:41	31m 22s	Conway's Currency	♥ 1	I like the bringing in of smart concepts like the Game of Life. The dungeon crawler aspect of the game was itself well done and a good challenge. The art and general mood of it all worked well. With a bit more tutorial I think there could be a lot more potential unlocked with regard to the strategies. The main thing I got strategically was turning coins into a ton of hearts with the potion which was a lot of fun figuring out and also very effective. Ultimately despite being familiar with the Game of Life and looking up the patterns I still got confused unfortunately. Like a 2x2 is supposed to be a still life but for some reason stuff would still change when I expected it not to and it really felt more like I just lost items randomly.
May 7 02:01:20	2h 35m	Force of Nature	♥ 3	Great artwork, good sound effects, and it's generally a very difficult genre of game to implement on such a short timescale. It's not 100% an RTS game but it's in that area, and getting all the graphics and collisions working well in that 3D-2D environment can't have been easy. The game really made a sort of a "life economy" work so in that regard it fit the theme much better than most. There were only 3 types of enemies I think but it wasn't a problem, the waves were appropriate in difficulty and they had great AI making them interesting to fight. My main issue was how slowly the forest energy meter built and how cryptic it was. I built buildings whenever I saw the flowers (often couldn't find them when I wanted them) and I got to like 49% but had a hard time getting any further. One other thing is the escape key - in RTS games the escape key is deselect, for undoing a q/w/e's transition to casting mode putting you back to the default mode. It should follow convention here too.