Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Feedback comment stats → Yaen

Yaen

Feedback comments for LD44

Timestamp	Since previous	Game		Yaen's comment
May 1 21:32:34		ORBid	♥ 1	Really nice game, man. I enjoyed playing and upgrading a lot until I died to the fast enemies that caught me off guard. Because I wanted to hop right back in, I hastily clicked the restart game button, not knowing that it would erase all my progress. That's such a shame and I think that such buttons should be placed elsewhere and with a warning since I don't think that most people want to ever wipe their progress. It was a really nice and satisfying game loop until then though! I also liked the complementary colour scheme and in general you built a cool and interesting atmosphere with this game. However, I think the 8-bit sound effects took away from that atmosphere quite a bit. It's as if the game audio is actively trying to remind me that I'm just playing a video game. I think 8 bit sounds mostly belong into 8 bit games to serve the aesthetic such games are going for. This game didn't give me 8 bit vibes though so the sounds didn't really work for me. The music was great though, loved that part of the audio!
May 1 22:10:54	38m 20s	They ran out of mana	♥ 1	This was a lot of fun! Played many rounds and still wanted more :) The graphics were a mixed bag: I really liked those cartoony sprites but the graphic design work on both the fonts as well as the kind of ugly gradients could be better in my opinion. That didn't really matter though as I cared more about the fun game loop. Choosing which cards to play in which order was really fun and made all the difference. I lost some fights but generally it was a pretty easy game to win against the "AI". The fact that you made the AI so predictable was actually kind of cool though as it turned it into more of a puzzle game. It'd be super interesting to play this game against a real human being. I'd love to have a local multiplayer mode. Anyway, great submission! I enjoyed it a lot :)
May 1 22:31:58	21m 04s	I Burn	♥ 0	Only saw the thumbnail and was really surprised when there was a face on the candle after opening the build. I was surprised again, to note that none of the controls that I tried worked until I "got it". It was kind of shocking and sad to see that face melt. Overall it fits the theme very well and was executed quite well too. It has no interactive element. It's not a game. But who cares if it's a game or not? It wasn't fun but it made me feel and that's what matters. Fascinating work! My only real critique would be that the flame looks way too detailed for a candle flame. It looks more like a campfire-sized flame. All this detail kind of distracts from what's important here too so if I'd change one thing about this, it'd be that.
May 2 19:14:12	20h 42m	Carl Currency - Expert Exchanger	♥ 2	Brilliant little thing, this game :) The graphics are super charming and do exactly what they need to do. The gameplay was quite tricky to figure out in the beginning but at some point you can calculate everything. It's great though, because you have to come up with the correct maths equations yourself which makes the challenge in this puzzle quite creative! It'd make more sense gameplay-wise if there weren't as many "useless" exchanges that can't tell you anything new. It could be interesting to have the NPCs giving you multiple different currencies in the late game, as that would add another dimension to the challenge. It's a little strange that they're angry if I give them too much. They should be glad haha! I'm a bit sad that there's no audio.
May 2 19:44:13	30m 01s	The Circle	♥ 1	Cool take on the theme and awesome graphic design! It was a bit weird at times when I didn't get any feedback on negative consequences of my actions that "went wrong". Like, ok, it didn't go too well but what exactly happened if I gave the diabetic his soda? Did he die on the spot? :D
May 2 19:54:32	10m 19s	The Giving Thing	♥ 1	Wow, that was quite something! I'm not quite sure if I can agree with the message that I took away from this. At least, from my personal experience, helping people has so far been a very positive thing in my life. That's not to say that other experiences are invalid of course! Very interesting take on the theme for sure. Makes you think...
May 2 20:08:25	13m 53s	Over	♥ 2	Such a beautiful submission! You've done a fantastic job with the mood here. I wish there was some audio feedback for gameplay events such as collecting soulds, wandering into the void, ending the game, footsteps. Would have made the mood and atmosphere even stronger in my opinion. There's a lot of potential here. This game with more levels and some sort of story progression would be pretty amazing :) But it's cool as it is too!
May 2 20:28:05	19m 40s	Life is precious	♥ 3	Wow, that's a pretty tough game! I couldn't beat it after several tries but I generally enjoyed my time playing it. In no small part due to the kickass soundtrack! Unfortunately the rest of the sound design didn't do it for me. I don't get the appeal of loud, crunchy 8-bit sounds, especially if the game doesn't otherwise have an 8-bit aesthetic. It's just hard to listen to and decreases any kind of mood the game might otherwise have had. The camera was quite tough to work with for me since it moved around so erratically with my aim. A smoother blend would have been cool, I think.
May 2 20:39:27	11m 22s	Bloodia	♥ 1	Loved your graphics, you went for a very pleasing colour scheme here. Nice! The theme is also strong in this one and that becomes clear very soon after starting the game. I wish the movement speed was at least twice as fast, everything felt so sluggish, especially with the large level size and the constantly ticking timer of my life. I died to one of those mimics without knowing that they even existed in the first place. That felt so bad and I felt so cheated by the game that I stopped playing lol.
May 2 20:58:06	18m 39s	Cat#	♥ 0	I came here because I absolutely adore your thumbnail key-art. That looks beautiful! I wish the entire game had gone for this style. Instead, it is unfortunately not unified enough and feels like your artists didn't really talk to each other. Wish you guys could have added some more feedback since I was super confused by the game due to the lack of visual feedback or any sound effects (except for the quite nice BGM). I think the game would have been a lot more enjoyable and easier to understand if there were some particle effects, flashing materials, more UI, animations etc..
May 3 19:36:31	22h 38m	Precious is Life	♥ 1	Beautiful creature art here, loved those drawings! The twist at the end was super cute, nice payoff. It's cool that you even managed to get in a world map into a game jam game. Audio and some more feedback in general would have been really nice and would have elevated the game to the next level, I think. I wish there was some more strategy involved in using the 3 different creatures - they all felt a bit too similar in my opinion.
May 3 19:48:28	11m 57s	Blood Chest	♥ 3	Haha that was a pretty fun game and I enjoyed the "combat" mechanic as it felt quite different from other games. It was only a bit frustrating when there were too many enemies around and the tongue would just collide with everyone and it was almost impossible to get a good throw. Resetting the player back to wave 1 after losing is pretty mean. I would have prefered if it just gave you back a bit of your treasure and let you retry the wave you failed on.
May 3 20:03:37	15m 09s	Generation: Why?!	♥ 1	I love the graphic style and you came up with a pretty cool narrative twist on the theme. The game itself does feel a bit clunky however and the game concept doesn't tie in with the theme super well. It's essentially a standard collecting-platformer with a narrative and cool art attached to it. That's totally ok, just not super unique. The controls and physics felt a off though since it was very easy to get stuck on the sides of platforms. The moving platforms can also be a problem when trying to jump off of them. These two things made me lose several times so that I could never manage to make it to the end. Cool submission and great art nonetheless!
May 3 20:25:30	21m 53s	Value of Life	♥ 0	This is super pretty, I like your art style and your choice of colours a lot. I can't really say that I understood your narrative but it was a beautiful experience still. It's quite impressive that you wrote it all in python, seemingly without an engine. Respect!
May 4 09:58:30	13h 33m	Leap	♥ 1	Fun game, pretty hard! I wish that rounds would last longer and let me use the health-sacrifice mechanic more often. So basically, there should be more hearts! Maybe a flag could also give you a heart if you're at 1 heart. OR you could have independent heart pickups. That way, upgrades would be more frequent and flags would be useful more often. The way it is right now, I only ever get 1 upgrade at max per run. I like the graphics by the way, game looks pretty cool!
May 4 10:43:40	45m 10s	Seaway	♥ 0	Beautiful game! I loved the art, feel, simple controls, sound design... It's all really well made! I'm not sure if there's an end goal to the game... I wish it didn't reset you to 0 after death (bit too punishing and demotivating). And finally, it's missing bullet trail feedback once my bullet speed exceeds a certain value. Other than those things I absolutely adore this game and I sure had a great time playing!
May 4 11:54:56	1h 11m	LAZERBOI	♥ 1	Enjoyed this one a lot once I got the hang of it. I tried to "get" it for a long time by just playing the game but I had to give up and go to the LD page in order to understand what I was supposed to do. Some final win condition would have been nice. I'd also have liked some more UI letting me know how much a body will let me upgrade the mechanics and how much I already gained from the respective coffins. Other than that, big props for the visual fidelity, the city models, vfx and post fx. Looks amazing, especially for a game jam game!
May 4 12:59:28	1h 04m	Escape from Hell	♥ 1	Appealing art style, especially in the woods. The souls-system was pretty nice except that it was possible to get locked in, unable to progress due to having 0 souls early on. That way, I had to reload the page several times before I understood why this was even happening. The combat did feel a tad clunky because it always stops you when hitting, breaking the flow of movement a bit.
May 4 14:13:19	1h 13m	Danko	♥ 0	Wow, what a great game! Pretty much loved every aspect, wish it was even longer with more enemy types etc. But it's already pretty damn good! I loved the atmosphere and setting along with those really nice pixel art graphics.
May 4 15:32:59	1h 19m	Board Life	♥ 1	Very cool entry! The game design is quite original and different. Unfortunately I managed to get stuck with my dice leaning onto each other and the game couldn't go on. I'm not sure if having those "realistic" dice is really necessary, since a simple RNG would have done it. Pretty cool and fun game regardless! Lots of cool ideas to be found here. Snap 2019-05-04 at 17.29.07.png
May 4 15:38:06	5m 07s	Zap Signal	♥ 0	As cool as the premise to this game sounds, I couldn't get past the calibration stage because it didn't get any input from my mic (even though I enabled mic input in firefox and my mic itself works). Really sad, I wish this worked for me!
May 5 00:31:58	8h 53m	Coin Puzzles	♥ 0	Fun game, frustrating "End"-level, agonizing music :D I like how you ran with this idea, it turned out really well and you've got some pretty interesting puzzles in there. Yeah, just the non-extra end-level took me WAY too many tries lol
May 5 09:04:42	8h 32m	Heart of the Grove	♥ 0	I like what you did with the theme! Though with an environmentalist theme like this, it's kind of hard to take that you're basically doomed to lose sooner or later - and in the real world, nature can't even fight back! Quite original mechanics in this game too. It's a pretty different take on the tower defense genre. Only thing I wish for is some more variety as it does get pretty repetitive for its playtime. But it's a game jam so what you got done is already really impressive! I liked the look of the game but I'm really glad that you had those graphics options in there because even though I have a fairly powerful machine, it lagged like hell with the standard settings. Even with low settings it was still a bit sluggish but at least playable.
May 5 09:56:57	52m 15s	SHROUD (Synthetic Human, Radiation OUtput Determined)	♥ 1	It was fun exploring the wasteland and finding items here and there. The mood was quite nice in this one and I felt like I was always in danger. However I beat the whole game and never had to sell any body parts. It was simply never clear why I should even give my body parts to the robots as they just told me something like "hey, I want your kidney, sell it to me?" without offering anything that I'd need in return. The combat had some weirdness to it since the game depends on using the mouse to use items and the combat requires me to put both hands on the keyboard. I think you could have gotten the same shooting mechanics done with just the mouse buttons. As others have said this is a very ambitious project for a game jam so I'm impressed that you got so far with it and made it feel like a fully fledged game.
May 11 12:59:15	147h 02m	EXO	♥ 2	This is a quite interesting take on the tower defense genre. I don't think that I've seen a tower defense game in first person view where you have to defend YOURSELF before. The concept worked remarkably well too and I spent quite some time playing before finally being too outnumbered. Gotta watch out for that positive feedback loop which makes you less able to improve towers after being hit previously. Some catch up mechanic would be cool but I'm not exactly sure how I'd do it... In the audiovisual department it's a bit lacking in my opinion. Some things just have no sounds, the monster noises are overly loud and not rooted in the world and the ambient background sounds didn't really suit the theme and setting that well I think. The graphics could have been improved a lot by just choorsing a more appealing colour scheme in my opinion. I find it very impressive how you managed to get multiple animated 3D characters into a Ludum Dare game though, hats off!
May 11 13:25:14	25m 59s	Xochipilli's Trade	♥ 1	What a nice looking game, I especially like the look of the outside area. I wish the inside had some more colours like that too. It was very pretty nontheless and had a great presentation. At first I tried to do it without sacrificing anyone but I had no chance. Then, after sacrificing half of my party and getting all the upgrades, the boss was a piece of cake haha. It really does matter a lot how many you sacrifice. I loved the sword slash sound, very satisfying. The platforming could have felt a bit nicer if you weren't stopped with every little step and the character would just climb over it automatically like in dead cells instead.
May 20 20:04:33	222h 39m	Lifelust	♥ 1	Really cool game, this one! I love your colour choices, and the pixel art that goes along with them. The music was totally kickass! I wish that there was a bit more of a tactical element to the combat system. Right now it just feels like mindless button mashing and getting hit or not mostly seems to come down to luck.
May 20 20:47:08	42m 35s	Insert Coin	♥ 1	This was one of my favourites from this LD so far! I can tell a lot of effort and passion went into this little project. The atmosphere is dense, the graphics look really nice and different, the music is moody and helps developing this thoughtful, melancholic atmosphere. I also really like that I had some choices at the end of each stage even though they may not have mattered all that much in terms of my progression through the game. The little letter at the end was a nice touch too. Overall it really feels like a complete game more than just a game jam game and that's super impressive.
May 20 21:12:27	25m 19s	Teller Me More	♥ 0	That was a lot more fun than I expected it to be! The characters all had a unique personality to them and the dialogue was quite funny. Though, in the beginning it was a bit hard to focus on any one thing and I failed miserably, not getting that I had to throw money into the hole and throwing all of it onto the floor (though the game would also give me the tip at the end not to throw it on the floor even if I hadn't). Anyway, fun game, very innovative, wish it had some sort of in-game tutorial rather than just a text file on the main menu.
May 20 21:25:03	12m 36s	key, knife, flower.	♥ 2	Fascinating entry! I like that you went for something unconventional with this series of micro-interactions where the game becomes a bit of a puzzle, trying to figure out how to interact with each screen presented to you. It's clear to me that there's a deeper meaning to every screen but it wasn't clear enough for me to "get it". That's unfortunate because I'm quite intruiged by it and I think you have something interesting to say. Nonetheless I enjoyed my time with this game and hope you can get across the 20 ratings-mark soon.