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Lumos

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TimestampSince previousGameLumos's comment
Oct 7 10:26:09 My contribution for this ludum dare 45 ♥ 1 With a title like this, I _had to_ take a look. Neat little spin on the theme, even if the little lamp-droid is a pain in the arse to command. The 45-second levels start getting a little difficult. Otherwise I can't say it's anything groundbreaking or inspiring, but it's a solid entry nonetheless.
Oct 7 10:37:41 11m 32s Money Management Simulator ♥ 0 Ah, I love realistic games: buy high, sell low both in real life as well as in the game. The lesson I seem to have learned from this was to make sure my salary goes up; and to never date and marry a literal gold-digger. I mean c'mon, spending 2 grand on a date and 10 grand on a wedding?! Holy shit! Anyhow, this is a fun little game. It'd've been nice if the investment options displayed value gained/lost since the time of purchase, as -- not really paying attention -- I quickly lost track of whether my investments had grown or shrunk as time went on.
Oct 7 10:46:46 9m 05s Oh！My God ♥ 0 What a bizarre offering. I didn't know I had to remove my own ghosts, and wondered why my score had anchored itself at 1000 points. A quirky premise, looks like time's been spent on the art and animations, and it's not a 300-meg download like all those unnecessarily large Unreal games. That's a boon in my book.
Oct 7 11:11:59 25m 13s Purpose: Unknown ♥ 1 Holy shit, this is the best game I've played so far. What's this? A _narrative?!_ HELL YEAH! It's rather like Dark Souls; navigating Lordran is less confusing than this interconnected maze, and having your position reset when you run for a fight is a very clever allusion to the bonfires of the Souls series. The MIDI soundtrack takes me back 20-odd years, and is much better than the sorry excuses for audio that some people _(i.e. yours truly)_ rely on. The spin on the theme is also nothing short of ingenious. On my mission to rip the tin cans a new one, after discovering Prof. Ihrenglass's (a name itself laced with subtly hidden meaning, as I'm sure you all can see) secret message pleading with me to save humanity, I accidentally encountered the final boss and tore it to bits with its own mega-laser. Good job, me, and great job, Frogman, for creating this fantastic entry!
Oct 7 11:29:06 17m 07s Bob Bobinson's Revange ♥ 2 All right, gotta give a 5/5 for the theme here: you literally start with nothing, not even clothes. Can cheese the final boss using the platform though. The premise is ridiculous and nonsensical, and is only reinforced by the deadpan "OW" and blatantly-spoken "ATTACK" lines that is present in lieu of a real sound effect. Apparently we also seek to liberate the world from rabbit oppression only for our titular main character to declare himself "inevitable" and apparently destroy the world...? Add in the rabbit goons' tendency to get stuck on platform edges and their lack of animation, and you get a hilarious, complete package that evokes thoughts of a particularly odd fever dream. It's certainly a memorable and amusing entry, I can state that much with confidence.
Oct 7 11:46:21 17m 15s No Room to Move ♥ 1 Crisp visuals and a sleek execution, as well as wonderful audio (even though it's rightfully supposed to go unrated). The twist on the theme is interesting, and the experience is solid once you get into the swing of things (and notice that cannonballs don't hit you when you're on the platform "beneath" them. Unfortunately, the game suffers from a couple of major flaws: unlocking a new platform sometimes requires making a leap of faith into the depths, and in some level configurations you're able to activate a platform that's _above_ you, making this leap both necessary and 100%-deadly if you jump from too low; there's no guidance as to where the next platform will spawn. Given that you can take 10 cannon blasts, give or take, but falling into the void is an instant death, the game suffers once again when it forces players back to level 1 upon dying. (Even if _the game_ doesn't suffer, _I,_ who never play platformers, suffer. It's largely one and the same.) This ends up marring the experience, or at least artificially imposes a higher difficulty than one would normally anticipate; note that this isn't a bad thing or a downside, it's simply a note that your mileage may vary. All in all, this game is a solid entry that may or may not be to your tastes.
Oct 7 15:42:35 3h 56m nothing but everything ♥ 4 Neat little story, but the lack of the "ready?" prompt miffed me a little when the "largest possible rock you can imagine" was requested. The biggest issue this game... assuming we can call it that, as that is a debate for another place and time, has, is that it's fully silent. Audio such as pencil-scribbling sounds whilst drawing, and perhaps having the late Christopher Lee narrate it would've been ideal. :)
Oct 11 13:35:30 93h 52m From Nothing ♥ 0 Never found a weapon nor a spirit skull, and the game desperately needs audio, but it just _feels_ like you could get a good hack-and-slash from this. I enjoyed the style, the lighting works very well with the simple unsmoothed models. Those pillars also look pretty great, I'll give you that.
Oct 20 18:20:48 220h 45m Unfinished: The Game ♥ 1 I won and the game apologised. That's a first...
Oct 20 19:19:16 58m 28s Scope Creep ♥ 0 I liked this one a lot. It does nail the feeling of improving skill as you reiterate sections, and the sudden realisation that you've found an unexpected shortcut is exactly on point as well. The game desperately needs audio, but other than that, this is the second-best game I've played this contest. (The first one also had Souls-like elements, even though that was unintentional in that case). Great job!
Oct 20 19:49:56 30m 40s Caravana ♥ 0 Graphics are on point, and I enjoyed the audio track. Nice to see Soliel, the goddess of healing, make an appearance. I can imagine this takes place in the Malazan world, at some point long, long ago. Even though I don't think that planet had two suns... You'll excuse me if I don't extol the virtues of the story. It wasn't amazing because there was pretty much no story whatsoever, just the smallest kernel of one. What's on offer is _promising,_ don't get me wrong, but there's not enough of it to qualify. I want longer dialogues and choices. :P Combat: attacks are too slow and too weak, which, combined with the high number of enemies in the second fight, as well as the lack of any "retreating" move, mandates exploitation. You can swing whilst walking away from enemies, then instantly turn to deal damage, then turn again. This minimises the damage you receive in response. Consider making the enemies immobile during their attack animations -- this should remedy the issue at least somewhat.
Oct 22 12:08:31 40h 18m Jesaouf VI ♥ 0 Pretty funny, even if it seems to be from the "LUL SO RANDOM" variety. Rabbits and bees? Why? The theme doesn't make any sense at all, but it is rather satisfying to blow up entire screens once you luck out and stack a few spread and fire rate bonuses. However, I am NOT giving you a high Audio score for a Depeche Mode track. (At least putting Personal Jesus there does fit thematically.) You're supposed to at least use "derivative works", not other people's content.
Oct 22 15:10:00 3h 01m Little Something ♥ 0 Neat little idea, although it's just about that in the end. No object rotation and no player synchronisation make the addition of multiplayer a fairly trivial feature, as it's pretty much equivalent to continuously polling a JSON file somewhere on the web. Still, it's neat, and I wish there had been a sort of minimap or zoom-out feature so I could see what else was there beside the few ponds I placed. :)
Oct 22 18:08:58 2h 58m Nothing ♥ 2 _Ordo ab chao_ Well well well, this is one of the better games in this batch. Reminds me a bit of "Little Inferno", but this delves far deeper into philosophical ideas. From literal nothing you produce items, seemingly at random but yet in a logical sequence -- such as an anvil appearing immediately after the porcelain vase, betraying underlying intent. This appears to be rather an anecdote on the idea of creation itself, perhaps influenced by the philosophy in the worke of Terry Pratchett, whose description of the formation of the universe (I'm afraid I don't remember the specific book| was amusingly similar. The player, perhaps embodying God Himself -- this in a sense as metaphorical as the individual reader's understanding of theology requires -- thus produces Order out of Chaos, something out of nothing, in a short but poignant treatise on existence. It is no accident that the first item to appear from the proverbial "void" is an apple -- the fruit normally associated with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Biblical Eden. The other objects are also symbolic in their own right: a ball, a rubber duck, soap bubbles, delicate vases, anvils. Items related to childhood and ones featuring a variety of properties, again echoing the same concept as the Biblical story of the Ark. And indeed, if we were God on a quest to master our power of creation, would we not create objects differing from each other? Woult we not be in the symbolically-childish stage of our development just then, in comparison to the omnipotent and omnipresent deity we are to become in our maturity? But suddenly, as we are so immersed in this divine work -- for what act is more divine than the act of creation? -- our work becomes undone, with proper fanfare, by the emergence of a black hole. Only after that are we granted the ability to freely summon any object we require, including a black hole. This is a perfect symbol of the power of entropy and a wonderful compositional frame in its own right. Order out of chaos, but this order cannot be maintained for all eternity; "all good things come to an end". Indeed, only after mastering destruction can we appreciate the value of creation. Whilst simple, this game bears a deep meaning that can stay with the observant and intellectual player for a long while. Bravo! I also managed to break a vase on soap bubbles, which isn't something you see every day. Great game. The first for me to award a 5 in the majority of categories to, and likely the last as well.
Oct 22 22:54:24 4h 45m Fall of RS-17 Icarus - an Akaban Tale ♥ 0 Four endings? More like 1 ending and 3 softlocks (all of them being: "Stargate Universe", engines, antenna, using both wires for engines and comms on the first playthrough and ending up with no route to the main computer, and I couldn't pick up the axe to sever connections..). It's faster to walk backwards whilst strafing. The walking speed isn't an issue, though my LShift didn't seem to do anytning, considering the game is about 2 minutes long. You get a high mood score and a middling theme score. I liked the name of the virus/entity/thing, "Mrezhek", loosely Russian-sounding for _"networker"_, and the term "amnestic" as well. Decent game... if you made it in five hours. For three days? Not quite. Sorry.
Oct 23 08:42:28 9h 48m All Aboard ! Thousand portholes ♥ 0 Well, I _did_ have all the VC redist packages installed, but I still got the error with the missing DLLs. :(
Oct 23 08:55:12 12m 44s Mahjong Drop ♥ 0 Not bad. The first time around I was under the impression that tiles _do_ have to be ordered, so you can imagine how well that game went; I then read the instructions again. I appreciated the soundtrack in particular, and I like how smooth and easy-going the whole experience is. Good work.
Oct 23 18:48:11 9h 52m Angry Words ♥ 1 HORSE. Great game. Wonderful execution, the audio is brilliant. Magnificent. A few of the levels actually got me in a bind for quite a while. A level reset would've indeed have been great. Also, level 10 might be broken. It's impossible to solve.
Oct 23 19:39:26 51m 15s KOLENdor ♥ 2 Spectacular game. I wasn't a big fan of the fourth-wall-breaking moments, but the game is fantastic nonetheless. Gotta admit I really enjoyed the writing style, even though the English wasn't quite correct at all times. That actually helps the mood on occasion. I'd also like to see a real combat system. :) Other than that, this is one of my favourites for this round. Magnificent job, друзья!
Oct 23 21:46:34 2h 07m Alphabet ♥ 1 Delightful idea. Brilliant.
Oct 24 09:05:56 11h 19m The Land of Milk and Honey ♥ 1 I'd love to check it out, but I won't install a JDK or JRE or whatever it's called these days just to run a game. Please consider building executable releases that bundle their requirements next time.
Oct 24 09:40:04 34m 08s Chronicles of the Mattock ♥ 1 I was very impressed with the amount of work that must've been put in this... until I saw the credits for used assets. That said, it's commendable that you managed to implement a third-person action game combat system, although Dark Souls or Blade of Darkness this isn't. On combat, the best strategy was to dodge-roll through all enemies and kill the boss, as you can actually _dodge_ the boss's attacks and the pathing of the regular skeletons is easy to abuse. This is mandated by the fact that it seems impossible to hit a regular skeleton without at least trading hits -- whilst the player is stuck in a long swinging animation that prevents movement, the skeletons glide freely. Moreover, dodging doesn't appear to grant any i-frames whatsoever, making it treacherous. The system needs a bit of _hard_ polishing, but it's a reasonable one given the time constraints. Whilst humour is subjective, I wasn't amused by the fourth wall-breaking dialogues. Worry not, so far this has been the case with all LD games I've seen that have attempted it. On the whole, this is a solid entry. Good job.
Oct 25 13:34:22 27h 54m Handee ♥ 1 9631, time taken 12, zero murders. I like it a lot, sans the fact that the game doesn't reset. Love the punching and that you can literally tear people apart unwittingly. Naturally on the first try I went peaceful, but decided to murder everyone for XP and got called a monster. (Then fell out of the level and restarted.) Nice idea, sound execution, and a 5 for humour, but it'd need more to be a proper game. Good work.