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Feedback comments for LD45
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | ArmchairArmada's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 8 23:58:04 | Fast Bastard | ♥ 3 | There is quite an impressive amount of polish for a first-time game jam entry. The art is beautiful and easy to read. Controls were easy to learn. And I liked the card flipping animation. I felt there were a lot of information that I missed on my first few playthrough. For example, the first score I got was 0, since I didn't know one needed to click each card twice to actually steal. I also couldn't make out what was considered a trap, and what wasn't. Getting kicked out from stealing was bizarre for this reason; the card values didn't match, so why did it happen? I'm also not sure how traveling from one person to another added to the experience. ETA: I forgot to add some bugs I encountered. This includes walking into objects, which (correctly) forced me in a 45 degree or so direction to avoid said object...then kept doing that well after the object was out of my walking path. I also learned the icon to steal remains even when your character is not within the bounds of stealing. | |
| Oct 9 19:07:01 | 19h 08m | i don't know what to feel anymore | ♥ 0 | I took the game as an interactive audio piece, and while I found the visuals and the audio as an interesting experiment, it very quickly became loud and grating for it to be enjoyable. Searching for the mine itself was entertaining at the beginning, but with a lack of ending or progression, felt repetitive very quickly. It's a cool experiment, and I applaud for trying something new. I do think it's a little too minimalistic, and the one that that makes it interesting (the audio) wasn't very strong, either. Oh, and hello, fellow New Yorker! I...don't live anywhere near NYC, but hey! |
| Oct 10 05:59:06 | 10h 52m | Green Dragon Inn | ♥ 3 | The detailed language depicting the world is a nice polish that really encourages the player to explore more of the story. Given that very little details are given at the beginning of the story, I definitely thought these extra flourishes were necessary. That said, I also felt the story was really linear. If I understand correctly, there are, like, only two wrong choices you can make, and they're very early in the game. Past that, the player is railroaded to a specific quest with all branching paths circling back to the main plot. I didn't enjoy this bit much. The writer clearly has talent, so I suspect much of this had to do with time limitation than anything. Looking forward to see what's next! |
| Oct 11 04:11:51 | 22h 12m | Primordial | ♥ 1 | Daw, it ended just as it begun. Knowing your schedule at the time, I'm pretty impressed by the final product. The story is really cool, and the writing kept me interested; however, given the lack of choices the player could make, it did feel like reading a story than a choose-your-own adventure I've come to expect in visual novels. Hope to see more from this project soon! |
| Oct 11 04:37:57 | 26m 06s | Sluggish Grind | ♥ 1 | This was a decently fun metroidvania game, that was pretty generous in its level design. It was pleasant to play for the most part, and the level was compact enough to not feel like a slog exploring. I felt some extra animations or particle effect would have helped convey more information that seemed sorely lacking. For example, I couldn't tell if a bullet hit registered properly on the larger enemies, as nothing indicates whether they actually got hurt or not. The jumps are super-floaty, which while generous, combined with the slow movement did make traveling feel monotonous. The recoil on the gun is, while interesting from a traveling perspective, did make it a bit difficult to learn and understand at first. And the repetitive sound effects could use some work; I usually like to randomize the pitch before playing a sound so the player doesn't get tired of the sounds as quickly. |
| Oct 13 19:29:26 | 62h 51m | Terminal | ♥ 1 | Very cool idea. It was probably good that the number of commands to run were limited. That said, confession, there was a bit of a learning curve using the Open command, as nothing indicates why it doesn't work without standing on top of an orange file. I did think the platformer controls were sluggish and uncomfortable. A huge problem I encountered was that I had no idea how large my character was, and how large each platforms were, felt unfair towards the last, final level. I really did enjoy the idea, though, so I strongly appreciate it for what it is. https://youtu.be/wkzhmrjM_28 |
| Oct 13 20:22:47 | 53m 21s | Fall of RS-17 Icarus - an Akaban Tale | ♥ 2 | The audio design is really great, and I did like the slow build in the story. Even if amnesia is a cliche start, it's effective enough to encourage the player to start seeking for more information on their environment. Most of the UI was pretty clear and easy to navigate, which given their importance in puzzle solving, is pretty critical. That said, some visual elements were hard to read. For example, I didn't know wires next to the panels could be repaired with an item. ETA: It would have been nice if some indicator appeared when either hovering over it, or just having an exclamation mark to things that can be interacted with. As mentioned in the stream, it was a little difficult to tell what other items can be interacted with as well, such as wires (tape recorders were more obvious). It would have also been nice to see more items to interact. Pretty neat! ETA #2: also, the item to repair wires looks a lot like chopsticks. I had no idea it was meant for repairing any wiring. https://youtu.be/wkzhmrjM_28 |
| Oct 13 21:51:31 | 1h 28m | Ammodillo | ♥ 1 | Had a lot of fun playing the stream! A lot of clever game design decisions makes this a very pleasant game to play throughout, including tight controls, easy-to-predict bullet patterns, HUD that follows the character, etc. I did think it was a little hard, but not in a way that I thought was unfair. Some polishes include an easier way to aim the dodge roll, as that proved to be the hardest thing to learn in the game. Some foreshadowing on the attack patterns would have been nice as well. Overall, strongly enjoyed the experience! https://youtu.be/wkzhmrjM_28 |
| Oct 18 05:04:35 | 103h 13m | Ritual | ♥ 1 | I really like the slow, gradual reveal of the game as one slowly walks downwards to discover what's coming up. The audio does a fantastic job of creating an ominous and hostile atmosphere. It took a very long while for me to figure out all the controls, as well as discovering what materials were necessary to create my own bonfire; but in a way, that frustration sort of enhanced my experience as things slowly become clearer, and the narrative slowly unfolded in front of me. Still, I do think having an actual tutorial on teaching the controls would have been really nice. For example, instructions on how to bring up the inventory would have been nice very early on. It would have also been nice when one had enough materials to create a bonfire, and where it would be created when the right-mouse button was clicked (where the mouse cursor is). I definitely felt like I died a lot from too much experimentation, and once I realized how simple the game was, felt a bit bummed by all the things I could have learned earlier if the game just gave me hints at what buttons to press. |
| Oct 19 05:21:47 | 24h 17m | Kawhatzithon | ♥ 0 | I like the part where you collect 3 Triforce pieces. And 120 stars. And... |
| Oct 20 02:37:04 | 21h 15m | BlockRockin' | ♥ 1 | Given the mechanics, I was wondering what prevented the player from just creating a horizontal line, placing a block on each end over time. It appears from experimentation that the game has a limit on letting you place blocks beyond a certain dimension or speed? I wasn't able to tell, but after see-sawing for a couple of times, around the 67th block or so, the game didn't let me place the blocks horizontally again, which I guess is an interesting way to kill an exploit after a while. It would have been nice to see a few bits of extras to add some complexity to the gameplay, perhaps a different level layout with unusual hole placement. As it is, I thought the game was easily exploitable given its simplicity. |
| Oct 20 03:18:43 | 41m 39s | Beggars Can Be Choosers | ♥ 1 | Oh, no! I was on a roll with this until the apple showdown! Beggars_CAN_Be_Choosers 2019-10-19 (22163).png ETA: at least it saved my last progress, far enough for me to see this screen: Beggars_CAN_Be_Choosers 2019-10-19 (22164).png What an epic showdown with the apple scrounge. |
| Oct 20 04:13:45 | 55m 02s | Contraband | ♥ 0 | I was wondering where the obligatory Ludum Dare Metroidvania went. Found it here. The general method of unlocking things as you go along is really interesting, and traversing through the maze-like level is pretty cool. The graphics is beautiful, of course, and the audio, while could use more variety, is enough to set the mood. Writing was minimal enough to give enough character, but not to a point where it was annoying. And the ghost platforming is highly appreciated. That said, boy, I often felt the level design and gating really needed some work. It is incredibly easy to soft-lock the game. I was able to identify at least 2 parts: 1. The early section if you miss the boots entirely and just don the jacket, the rest of the level becomes impossible to traverse. 2. When powers are removed, if one bothers to platform all the way to the wall-grabbing character, they lose the wall-grabbing power, and the rest of the level becomes impossible to traverse. I've encountered numerous cases where the knock-back caused my character to bounce between 2 lasers very rapidly until death, which also given the game's lack of checkpoint placement towards the end of the level, created some very frustrating experience. While I think the game concepts are nice, both the lack of ability to restart the game or at least, reverse some decisions, as well as flawed level progression, made it difficult to appreciate the rest of the game's polish. And, yeah, I, too, think wall grabbing controls needs some work. |
| Oct 20 04:32:35 | 18m 50s | Nothing is my car ! | ♥ 0 | I thought the polygon graphics were nice, and the music helped the silly nature of the game. The arcade gameplay was simple and easy to understand, and a little fun, too. That said, given the jam version doesn't speed up more over time, it was pretty clear to me there was only one way the game would increase in difficulty: throw more elements to crash into. As such, it was pretty frustrating to end up in situations where super-human reflexes were necessary to get further into the game later on. This is, admittedly, a problem with the genre itself, and a bit of a pet-peeve of mine, but I would like to see some measures to at least give the player an illusion that with more practice, they could feel they can further into the game at certain points. |
| Oct 20 04:52:55 | 20m 20s | Eleven Days | ♥ 0 | ...I don't get it... Writing is fine, and brings about some excellent poetry skills. I actually do like all the thread of the story barging in very suddenly, with seemingly no reasoning. I'm not sure I understood the purpose of that setup, though, as I couldn't tell how the ending wrapped all those threads up. I agree with above comments that the story is a bit slow in pacing, and that does tamper the enjoyment of the game. At times, while in the middle of swiping between transitions, it would kick in very early between 2 text sections, that the first text becomes obscured and difficult to read. As such, I ended up skipping parts of the story since I couldn't read a paragraph or two anymore. ETA: also, I get many of those artworks were drawn and depicts images of ye olde times, but a few were...yikes. And I guess Tom was already ahead of the times for watching Simpsons and playing video games in an era where neither could have existed. |
| Oct 20 19:41:56 | 14h 49m | The Empty Jar | ♥ 0 | The graphics are great, and and I like the central mechanic implemented. I can imagine with extra jars and more movement options, the game can become a very interesting puzzle game. As it is right now, the limitations makes the game super-linear and repetitive. I also found the act of refilling, walking to a pit, then pouring the liquid, and repeating that process over to solve the puzzle boring and repetitive as well. More time spent on the games level design and controls would have probably made this game more interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq_qRoOOl-s |
| Oct 21 21:17:39 | 25h 35m | Zmaaone | ♥ 1 | The music is fantastic, and I really like the graphics and the concept of the game as well. The tone was generally consistent, both in writing and the dreary and satirical aesthetics. Throughout the livestream of us playing below, and admittedly as a non-electrical engineer, I never quite felt like I "solved" a puzzle so much as stumble into a solution, and not knowing why it was the right solution. While I recognize the genre of these games require some level of trial-and-error to understand, quite a large number of elements were either unexplained, or poorly explained to feel satisfying. I really think for game like this, a tutorial would have been nice to help overcome the keyboard-shortcut-heavy controls. In fact, I'd argue most of these keyboard shortcuts should probably have a toggle radio button equivalent on-screen. Another poorly-explained mechanic is when the electricity generator emits electricity: neither the timing of when the first burst comes out, nor the regular intervals bursts will be emitted were explained, and thus, made the solutions to the puzzles difficult to compose. The purpose of the diodes were very confusing based on the tutorial alone, since wires aren't described to automatically generate a grid-like layout. More importantly, the purpose of the collisions weren't explained, which understanding that would have made the final level much more easier to solve. Overall, while the game design is mostly fine, the mechanics in the game are poorly explained, making it difficult for me to design solutions to each one. Solving a level, as a consequence, simply felt like luck rather than the usual "aha!" satisfaction. With a more gradual explanation of how each element worked, I think this game would have been more fun to solve. https://youtu.be/qq_qRoOOl-s |
| Oct 21 22:17:03 | 59m 24s | In Time Like These | ♥ 1 | The setup of the game creates quite a claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere that works really well with the general narrative of the game. In addition, the scarce resources and the randomness of all events creates a hostile environment, which again works in favor of the narrative. I think when it comes to setting the mood, the game succeeds. That said, I also felt the player didn't have *enough* control over their situation. The only significant decision I can see one making is either to risk adventuring or just keeping their stack of food and water supplies by staying home. That said, given how scarce resources are, and how many outcomes on adventuring leads to loss of resources, I never felt the incentive to save food and water. Instead, I favored using both food and water almost immediately, making the decision of whether to go adventuring or not trivial. More control over the outcome would have been appreciated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq_qRoOOl-s |
| Oct 21 22:44:48 | 27m 45s | Appeasing the Quadopus | ♥ 1 | Great game, 10/10. OK, unhelpful review aside, some actual constructive criticisms. The game is, for the lack of better words, very buggy with some fundamental game design flaws in an otherwise solid (if, a little too safe) basis. To me, this actually added to the charm of the game, to a point where I started enjoying the game for being "it's so bad, it's good." As you can see from our stream below, we basically just cheesed every boss and exploited any bugs we can find. I did think the game could have used some significant polish in a number of factors. For one, I always felt either the player's hitbox was too large, or the boss' attacks were too large to dodge. It would have been nice to have the gravity boosted slightly to make it much easier to jump between the Cola bullets, or at least add some hold-jump-button mechanic for taller heights to make it easier to execute short-hops. The player seemed to have a clear hit animation (though rudimentary), but it would have been nice to see a similar effect appear on bosses as well for successful hits. The current visuals for the axes being launched made it difficult to predict its range, and arguably since it's so close-range, it doesn't always feel effective. Also, the flip point of the player isn't quite centered properly... Finally, the bosses really needed a large amount of animations (or at least, some sort of visual effect) to provide a "tell" for when certain attacks are coming. As a player, it was difficult for me to predict what the next upcoming attacks were, and how to work with the new situation the game has thrown at me. This was why cheesing was more satisfying to me than trying to play the game the "intended" way: I didn't really feel the Cola and Doughnut bosses were "fair" (Hamburger was just strange). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq_qRoOOl-s |
| Oct 21 23:02:07 | 17m 19s | LD45 | Scrap from Nothing | ♥ 0 | The *Kirby's Airride* City Trial concept is pretty interesting, and the graphics are really nice. The controls felt mostly smooth, and easy enough to learn. A lot of struggles we've dealt with had to do with the difficulty of figuring out how to attach parts to the player, as the location one needed to "touch" the factory was seemingly different for each factory. In addition, having the game played on a single keyboard was probably not a great choice, given that most keyboard have a "press at maximum 3 buttons at the same time" limit. It was a little harder for us to judge the combat in the stream below, since the two of us who played (@allbetsareoff and I) were badly off-balance. That said, a few things were clear to us. For one, firing projectiles to a shielded player took too long. The turn-speed for each player, combined with a rapid-firing gun, often made propulsion not very useful. It would have been nice to see temporary blockades on the combat course to help the player avoid taking damage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq_qRoOOl-s |
| Oct 21 23:27:57 | 25m 50s | Ludarium-45 | ♥ 1 | A quick disclaimer: fetch-quests are my biggest pet peeves of mine. This game clearly isn't meant for me. The presentation stands out in a good way, and the controls feels *wicked*. The thrill of just traveling around at high speeds is fantastic, and is easily what I enjoyed the most in the game. I was disappointed, then, to see the level focused on collecting things rather than parkour or racing experiences. Given the strong speed-running potential, the current level doesn't do a good job of, in my opinion, justifying the super-satisfying controls of the game. As it is, I thought the collectibles were hard to make out from the flashy background, making the task of finding them tedious and frustrating. The lack of any guides or markers on where to find the next closest (or really, just any) collectible also didn't help in this regard. I also felt the timer was quite cruel, as I never really felt I had enough time (and distinct land marks or minimap) to map out the optimal route of collecting everything. Still, the polish on the game is really quite impressive. I just thought the objective clashed with the general feel of the game. https://youtu.be/qq_qRoOOl-s |
| Oct 23 03:57:58 | 28h 30m | Spellody | ♥ 0 | The graphics and audio are clearly the main draw here, and I think both are well done. I appreciate the game's attempt at making the controls of the game cohesive with the music-based theme to support its aesthetics. I don't think the game did a great job of teaching how to make spells, and how effective each ones were. When I did figure out how to cast spells, I still felt the game relied on too much trial and error. I couldn't make out which spells were effective against which enemy, and the screenshot images didn't describe them well enough for me to figure it out. I recognize there is an audience out there that likes to experiment and memorize which spells does what, and what to cast, but that style of gameplay simply isn't for me. |
| Oct 28 02:42:40 | 118h 44m | PIPO THE GHOST | ♥ 1 | I think this is a mostly solid implementation of *Chu Chu Rockets*-like circuitry game genre. I really appreciate the tutorials and level design that allows the player to learn and explore each game mechanic. The progression of difficulty on each level felt fair and natural. At the same time, I also felt the game was....really generous? I didn't feel too challenged by the game, and often, the first solution I came up with was the solution to the game. In fact, in a few levels, I just ended up using a lot less blocks than what was given to me. On one hand, I sort of like it when games don't demand perfection, and encourage multiple solutions to a puzzle. On the other hand, it kinda felt like some levels weren't thought through. That somehow made the game...less fun for me? I have very mixed feelings about this. ETA: as an aside, the behavior of portal and jump blocks were the least obvious to me. I had to deliberately experiment with them to understand how each behaved, which tells me the given video tutorials weren't informative enough. https://youtu.be/No9PjQTpi0s |
| Oct 28 02:57:41 | 15m 01s | Small Town | ♥ 1 | It's nice to occasionally play a low-stake, feel-good narrative game. I did enjoy the introduction of the game, as I, too, closely relate to forgetting important dates. I feel things got a little hairier mid-way through, though. At points, it was difficult to tell what to click to progress the story. I've had difficulties during the mobile phone screen, for example, to make the game progress to the selection of which store to visit. I thought the point-and-click portion with the cat store was pretty cool, but I didn't share the same opinion with the game and book store. The game store felt a bit like a guessing game, as we tried to click nearly every single element in the game, as there were no visual language to tell us what can and cannot be clicked. This was worse with the book store, where every book's silhouette looks exactly the same, and their colors don't stand out from the rest. I felt like I was pixel-hunting on the latter screen. From our short playthrough below, we couldn't see which items would result in a different ending, so we ended up assuming the player will always get a good ending. Given the low-stakes of the story, that felt...unfulfilling. https://youtu.be/No9PjQTpi0s |
| Oct 28 03:06:53 | 9m 12s | Bob the Brawler | ♥ 1 | The game is really quite polished, both in game feel and presentation. I don't have any major complaints of the game. Nitpicks that comes to mind is the repetitive nature of the game, as enemies don't behave any differently from each other. As such, the game starts to feel a little boring rather quickly. Also, as endemic of the arcade genre, there was a point in the game where I simply felt like giving up because the number of baddies becomes too overwhelming. This did make the game less fun for me. On the plus side, the typical game length didn't feel too long or too short, so the spawning progression felt pretty good. https://youtu.be/No9PjQTpi0s |
