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pkenney

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		pkenney's comment
Oct 8 02:55:58		PROJECT BIND	♥ 2	The art for the intro scene really caught my imagination, great job. Overall this is a cool entry, I liked the twist on a classic shoot-em-up, and I had some fun figuring out the right way to snap new pieces on. I usually went for a straight left-to-right line since it seemed to let me kill guys in quick tight bursts. I was also glad I could just hold down space bar instead of hammering it! I just held it down the entire game I guess. If I could tweak one thing, it would be to have a faster restart time that didn't make me switch my hand over to the mouse. I think I would have played the game longer except that the beginning is pretty slow... so when I died like the 4th time, I felt like, well, now there's a long restart, and then a long build-up time, and I called it quits. But nice job - a fun entry with some cool things to think about, and some eye-catching art!
Oct 8 03:39:35	43m 37s	Nothing to Everything	♥ 1	Victory! Wow, great job building a whole card game for the compo! It even has little mouse-over tween-pops, a groovy music tune, and lots of cards and features. Well done! The strategy had a couple of little holes in it - for example sometimes I would get flooded with defense cards, or my opponent would, and the game felt like it would stall for a bit. And once I got the "everything" ability recurring every turn it completely broke the game because I just picked "nothing for enemy" every single turn and the enemy would never get to take a turn. I think the final fight the enemy played 1 card total and then I just had to click through all of my bandages and rests and blocks until I got enough damage cards to kill him. But it's impressive to have a strategy game at ALL, and I had some fun moments of feeling clever, like using a split to clear their block before hitting with my sword, or holding back rest cards so I could double-sword. Very nice all-around entry, congrats!
Oct 9 02:26:58	22h 47m	Ragin' Racers	♥ 0	Pretty cool stuff, a nice grooving tune, and the art and gameplay work well together with a slight-goofy slightly-madmax mashup that I liked. The first few races were real tough for me. Race one I was figuring out the keys and because the car points in a random direction, even though I guessed the controls right I went backwards. The next 3-4 races I was still confounded by the random start direction, and as soon as I fell behind in those first few seconds that was it, I never got near another racer again unless I drove backwards for laughs and some interaction. I also struggled with the walls, because the collider doesn't really align super-well with the sprite in some places. But, after some races I started getting the hang of the controls, and also got a few upgrades. I learned how critical those first few seconds are and was prepared to be facing the wrong way. I got semi-okay at cornering, releasing gas as I approached the turn, and being extra careful about not hugging the walls.... and I was able to finish in 4th in my best race! A big improvement from "always always last" that were the first maybe half dozen races. Cool little rally-rumbler with some panache - nice work!
Oct 12 00:31:06	70h 04m	Rag Racer or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bump	♥ 1	I won! Here was my experience: I was in from the start. So I got up from the couch, went to the bedroom, in the closet there is a bag of change, and I felt around inside for a quarter. 1967! A classic. I put it on the PC, even before the threats. But the threats were still good, an indication of where we were going in our journey together, this game and me. Then I started th-SMASH. I started the r-SMASH. Wh-SMASH. SMMMMMAAAAAASMASMASH! There was a period of adjustment. Even after learning my lesson, I had to learn it again. And again. I just had a really hard time not pressing "Right Arrow Key" in the followingly pictured scenario: DontTurnRight.png So I only got second place finish... THAT TIME. After my not-turning skills were a little bit better honed, (SMASH!!) I wrecked some dudes stole their shit and finished first, then underwent some of the world's best medical care. I mean, this game works because it owns it. It walks what it talks, and it talks what it walks. Charming and enjoyable, well done.
Oct 12 00:47:03	15m 57s	A Fishermans Friendly Island Builder	♥ 1	I DID IT!! My game also turned out half-finished this LD, so I decided to dig into this one a bit and set my own goal: Combos. It was pretty easy to get a wood-wood combo, but my real goal was to get a wood-leaf combo catch. And after a while, I was able to do it, here it is: CCCOMBO.png It was a pretty long cast, almost to the corner of the screen, but I've shown it here reeled in on land so you can clearly see it was a combo. So I had fun with this! Can't rip out a ton of stars on a not-so-finished entry, but knowing what it was going in, I found some fun. The casting mechanic was a cool idea, and the tempo of the action made it just barely hard enough. It was the right level of difficulty to create a chill fishing mood. Nice start! (Edit: I want to second the suggestion about that the controls should be on WASD and not on arrows. Arrows are fine alone, but arrows+mouse is not the right way to go imo)
Oct 12 01:23:00	35m 57s	Little Robot Run	♥ 0	This was cool! There's a lot of little things going on here. (UPDATE: The problem I am about to describe is caused by playing on the web in fullscreen, I leave my confused description for completeness but will explain what really happened after.) I felt a little betrayed by how I died though. I'll walk through my experience: I figured out the first challenge of dodging the turrets, and was on board. I went to the bottom and got the spring, and while I was down there I was careful not to fall off the bottom of the map since I figured that must kill me. Then I went back up to the top and learned I could not open the red door. I didn't see any key, so I went back to the bottom but there was no key there either. The only thing left to try was to jump off the bottom of the map, so I did it and was surprised that I could walk around down there, so I went under the wall and found the key. The the duck area, same thing: had to go off the bottom of the map, but this time I just didn't even see myself when I got the item (read it was a duck in the description), but then I could duck. So two challenges taught me I had to go off the bottom. Then the third time I went off the bottom when I couldn't find the next item, and poof I instadied. Not having made a clear mistake I called it quits there, even though the game is otherwise fair, and very charming/fun. UPDATE: I loaded it up again to verify this, and I learned that the problem is that when I go into fullscreen, I don't see the whole screen. There is part of the map on the bottom that I just can't see, but need to go into. I solved this by zooming my browser out and not playing in fullscreen. FIXED! I played another ten minutes and killed the guardian. But it's akward to shoot. I either have to right click, or else hit Alt key. But both of these keys confuse the browser in not-fullscreen mode, and move my selection out of the game, meaning that my inputs don't go to the game anymore. So to shoot, I have to hit alt/rightclick, THEN left click to return my focus to the game. This got awkward and I fell back down after killing the sentry and trying to dodge a turret shot, and then I got hit by a sentry in midair where I couldn't duck. So I figured that was it. This was pretty charming and I enjoyed the distinct challenges. The platforming was a good tough-but-fair, and I never felt ripped off by the controls except for the gun. So I know you were not super-happy with your controls, but I found them mostly fine! If there were checkpoints I definitely would have finished, but after getting so close to the end, and dying twice to weird technical issues, I didn't have the heart for a third. But overall a nice entry, dug the music, liked the sound effects, graphics solid and the controls solid too even if not perfect. A very nice all-around compo entry, congrats.
Oct 12 19:17:58	17h 54m	You remember nothing.	♥ 0	Very cool system, with the mix of free-typing and dialog choices. I moved around a bunch, checking things out and having fun, but I got stuck in the tavern. I got coal and a goblet, but I couldn't proceed or leave, as far as I could see. It said the guard stopped me, but then it said there was no guard if I tried to interact. Overall the feel is nice, but if I could tweak one thing, it would be to clear the text line when I type something no good. The way it is now, I very often had to backspace 10 times to delete my text after making a bad guess, so it was like a small splinter on top of a possibly frustrating moment. I also tried some abbreviations (l for look etc) but didn't seem to work. Overall nice job! I wish I had gotten a little further to see what happened...
Oct 14 01:07:18	29h 49m	Survivor Slots	♥ 4	I really like this, it's a great combination of luck mixed with the consequences of your own action, except those consequences are kind of rippling forward in a cool way, too. I won my first game, but it was really pretty lucky. I was initially confused, and I think there were two key parts that I didn't get immediately. First, I didn't get that the slots list on the right was a map that I could use to figure out how far and which way a certain thing was. I just thought I had a 1-tile vision and sort of blundered around. Second, I didn't understand that my actions were impacting the tileset. For example in my first game I spent my early days trying to build rat traps even though I had no rats. I didn't realize the rats were tiles, and could be seen on the map. After a bit it suddenly dawned on me how it worked and I was like "oh cool this is gonna be fun!" I assumed my first game would be a loss, but then I got a lucky spin on day 14 that I didn't really deserve: slots1.png So of course I was like well next time I'm going WRECK this game! But the sword of variance cuts both ways. I felt smart by staying on top of vegetation, but the my mid-game bogged down, I was late getting the others on the team, and suddenly time was up: slots2.png That pic shows something that is maybe a little splinter in the experience: It's a bit of a drag to count out the possible future moves, cross-indexing between the goal to view the list, the faces to confirm the order, and then the map to see the spaces away. I'm like "ok this guy can go here, that's 3, then this one goes 2 and that one... okay not gonna work." A second feelsbad is the "nuttin you can do" moment. Like, you have 2-3 moves left but nothing can be accomplished. Those are probably unavoidable and they weren't a big deal, but figured I'd mention them. In that last screenshot you can see I threw up my hands and just went for it because there was only one useful thing to do. A couple of times I found myself wishing for a "bonus move" consumable, maybe I could make a certain combo to save a coconut for later and then drink it for a 1 move energy bonus or something. So I played a little bit more, and here is my best run... I got a nice early start and kept my slots wheel clean: slots3-1.png After that I invested in a beach party, caught a second one by luck, and that let me force a third! Here I am walking off on Day 10, leaving the island nice and neat: slots3-2.png Overall this is really solid! I think it could use some cool sounds to take the interaction with the machine to the next level, but it's definitely the kind of thing that makes me want to take it for one more spin. The gameplay flows really nicely from the theme, and it's such an unusual use of the slots idea, making it really novel. Great job on your solo outing!
Oct 14 01:23:52	16m 34s	From Nothing, To Nothing	♥ 1	Wow 3 games is 16 hours is really something, congrats. I know they're really smallscope, but I enjoyed the way that you packaged the three of them together in a string. You kept me feeling like I just barely understood, and then as soon as I was acclimating I was onto something else. So it left the whole thing with a bit of an air of mystery. Yet it avoided making me feel panic or stress about the confusion, it was still somehow all a bit chill, perhaps because the punishments for failure were swift but minor. I think I agree with the comment above that the first game drew my eye up toward the indicator and thus away from the nice things to look at, so I opted out of that part of the experience about halfway through by just rolling around the keys and watching the result. No big deal! I also felt like seek shelter was unfair, but it was pretty upfront about that, and diagonal keys were definitely being inputted by the human over here, but the game wasn't about that. I think ripping out three small games like this is pretty cool way to spend an LD. Nice work with each, but even more so with the overall presentation of the total package.
Oct 26 15:28:38	302h 04m	Timed Cave	♥ 1	Cool game! I like how determined the miner looks when he is punching rocks and blood is coming from his hand! That guy is hard core. I think my experience was a bit degraded by a weird technical issue - I could not see any of the text in the game. Here is a screenshot of what it was like on my machine: cave-notext.png I played through this issue the best I could. When I got time over and went to the buy screen I would just hit 112233123123. I knew 2 was time from the screenshot in the game description, and 3 was bombs. I feel like 1 was "rock-breaking speed"? Anyway I got past the coal and got a pretty good sense of how it plays out, pretty cool! I seemed to stall out there, so maybe the items I was trying to buy were sold out or something? Whatever I had to do next I couldn't quite figure out and I seemed to keep ending on the same spot. Then I must have fallen behind the economics because the game went to the blank empty screen I see for game over. Issue must be on my end, so I won't rate it according to the text problem! Just wanted to mention it happened. Cool entry.
Oct 26 15:40:37	11m 59s	Fruit Mamba	♥ 0	I loved the turn-based physics and the way I was left to explore the rules on my own. The art is super-charming and very effective, and the sound effects were also pretty nice. Level 2 was a miss for me because I had to stab randomly out in each direction, sometimes off onto whole blank screens. I would have preferred some indication of where the goal was. After playing, I see from another comment that you can zoom out to see it, but the very nice art style really doesn't look nearly as good zoomed out that far. The large chunky art was a strength, and that one level felt at odds with it. Level 1 was great though - a nice intro to the mechanics though, with the way it sets you up for that subtle stumble that's easily recovered from, making you realize "on I can't just go up, there is actually gravity here." And I enjoyed the various little iterations for all the other levels. Overall a nice puzzler with some cool rules and a nice presentation - well done!
Oct 26 16:01:31	20m 54s	Alphabet	♥ 1	I jumped in without reading the page first, so I didn't know you could shoot for quite a while. I think I almost like the game more without shooting, because once you can shoot the game can sort of lose strategy in favor of keyspamming. Playing a while without shooting, I have a little feedback. First on the early game: If I could change one thing about this game, it is how the restart works. I have to take my hand off the arrow keys, move it over to the mouse, and then in the second it takes me to reorient my hand back on the arrow keys it can already be too late and I'm dead. This got me steamed, it happened over and over. I would change the restart to a keypress since the whole game is on the keyboard except restart, and then I would also make it MUCH FASTER, basically instantaneous. The early game is also hard - at least when you don't shoot! You need to shield your core, but to do that you need to move in the direction that's most dangerous! This is actually really interesting, but difficult, and so it was GAME OVER, GAME OVER, GAME OVER. Last thing about the early game, I believe the character has a bit too much inertia when small, and it was a little finnicky to line up with a block enough to snap it. It's like, HERE COMES THE ENEMY but I'm frantically trying to line up, and I overshoot, and it's game over. Second, on the late game: Here the game really changes, because I can suffer hits for a while. I think with shooting, the strategy is just to keyspam. But without that, you kind of have these interesting choices about what parts of yourself to use as a shield, and what to pick up. The problem is that I don't know which letters are important. I can't run the process of elimination in my head to see what letters in the field I don't yet have, or what letters in my body I have only one of, vs expendable duplicates. If I could change a second thing about this game, I would add some graphical indication of that. So in the field, letters I don't have yet would appear different (maybe solid?) and for letters on my body, letters I have only one of (and thus shouldn't lose) would also appear different (maybe the same, solid?). That would allow me to have moments like "oh look, there is the letter I need, it's guarded by a # but I can slam this unimportant part of my body in for the trade, and then snap up the new letter!" Anyway, that was a lot of rambling, but maybe maybe something in there is interesting. Overall I think there's some cool stuff going on in this game, but maybe you haven't quite found the right way to capitalize on your raw material. Still, a nice entry that I had some fun tinkering around with, nice job!
Oct 26 16:15:58	14m 27s	Kruzhok	♥ 1	Top Score was 25260, I'm sure people will do a LOT better but that includes the learning phase where I died a lot experimenting around. I stabilized on a pattern of kiting a huge ball of the red guys around and picking up dots opportunistically: redguys.png Wasn't even using my slash weapon. (Actually I wasn't really sure how that worked, or when I'd get a slash vs wounldn't) This mass kiting worked for a while, but then the game threw another challenge at me with those small fast guys with the green core. That upped the danger level and for a while I was managing, but then they got me and reset my combo. Liked the jamming background tune. The swooshy movement trail was super-important, because with the blank background it was the only indication of movement when I was alone on the screen - it was nice and effective though, I really liked it.
Oct 26 16:43:29	27m 31s	Nullefense	♥ 1	Intro was nicely flavorful with the shaky text, and exploring the system of the game itself was pretty interesting. I eventually ended up in a stable state of making more than I lost, although I didn't have the perfectionism to go after it quite like @space-wumpus did above (very cool). steadystate.png Cool entry with a lot going on, nice work! And very well-rounded for a compo, with music and sound effects as well.
Oct 26 17:08:39	25m 10s	Modular Mayhem	♥ 1	I didn't mind the slight motion sickness of the unlocked camera. It gave me this floating space feeling that was totally in-line with the game. The music, the controls, the parallax background, everything was working together to create that feeling, and it did make me a bit woozy but it was pretty cool anyway. What I really needed though was a space compass! I got lost in space very early, before getting the laser, not realizing modules were inside the rocks. By a miracle of luck I re-found the "base" thing by using the parralax background to determine my absolute movement and taking a lucky guess at which way to go. That left me petrified of straying from the edge for a while. Traversing the edge of the base, I found the laser, which is presumably also the place to drop off cargo goodies? Soon after I found blowing up rocks yields cargo, and I think I got how the game works: go out into space, get cargo, chill, bring it back to base, etc. But as soon as I lost contact with the base another time, that was it. I was lost. I rolled with it, and blew up rocks, had some fun attaching things, found a rocket launcher and some underpants, and was chillin. Eventually I had some cargo, but no clue how to get it back home. Then I got hit by a rock that scattered my cargo everywhere and that was it for me. Great atmosphere that's coming through each element of the game: feel, art, and sound, all set up with a nice intro, and working well with the lack of explicit failure state (woulda been a mistake imo to make the ship explode and restart for example). So overall a very nice entry, I just wish I could have dialed into it more by having an indication of the direction and distance back to the dropoff point... if that even was a dropoff point. I think I would have enjoyed that "head out to space to gather stuff, and then return" gameplay loop, but I didn't quite get there.
Oct 26 17:15:53	7m 14s	Explore the Dark	♥ 1	Very cool mechanic and the look, feel and sound all come together for a nice mood. Not a ton to do, but because the environment was nice I explored the dark for a little extra time.
Oct 26 17:27:23	11m 30s	Slime Slayer	♥ 1	I won in 254 seconds. Pretty cool the way the game progresses. I thought I had set up an infinite farming opportunity here: farming.png But nope! The game was smart enough to eventually stop spawning green slimes, and started spawning tougher ones that weren't one hit, and thus would get knocked away and cause me to have to chase them. This broke me out of the farming, and made me run all around the map to find untapped areas where greens had spawned early but not been mopped up yet. I ran all around, saw the whole thing, and just about there I hit my 500, which was perfect timing. Cool how the character progresses in look. Of course fancy animations and sound effects could make the game feel a lot more lively, but that's how goes in jams! I thought you did a good job of covering the basics by having the weapon swing, and I appreciated that I always knew when I was hit because of the flashing. Nice work.
Oct 26 17:44:00	16m 37s	Fall of RS-17 Icarus - an Akaban Tale	♥ 2	Nice and moody. I really really wanted a jog button or just a generally faster walking speed. Or a smaller interior. I know the pacing is languid and that really works with the mood, but it became a barrier to my enjoyment of investigating. I got out my cell phone to time the commute, and while I was looking for the stopwatch, I turned back to the game and saw that it said I waited so long it was game over. Wow, I guess I'm the slow one after all? Haha, nice twist of the knife! :) But really, you got a great mood and I was very intrigued by the story. Nice job.
Oct 26 18:13:31	29m 31s	Abstractio	♥ 1	Pretty cool vibe, I really liked the intro which lets you know something is up. I also enjoyed how you mostly have to figure the rules out yourself, although this threw me a few times. I was frustrated when I was demonstrating to myself that the game is not deterministic because matching the same thing twice didn't produce the same outcome... sometimes it would work, other times not. Other times it would even DELETE something! Exploring this further, I eventually realized I was up against two rules I wasn't aware of: There is a max of 4 of an item, and there is a period of time of holding after which your command switches from "try to match this" to "delete this." I think I was trying to dig into the mechanics of matchmaking because I was stuck pretty hard at this spot, and wasn't sure if my attempted matches were failing because they weren't matches or because I didn't understand how to even attempt a match: stuck.png So I failed real hard to click for quite a while. After I experimented enough to be certain how matching operated, I eventually broke through that spot to unlock progress, and had a bit of fun tinkering. I think I wasn't quite on the wavelength of the word usage either, so I was pretty poor at predicting how things would match, and was glad the cheat feature existed to tell me what matches, simply so I cold progress. I guess this kind of puzzle isn't really my thing, then? Doesn't matter - the aesthetics are on point, the air of mystery is nice, and I think you achieved what you were after. Nice work!
Oct 26 18:23:11	9m 40s	ZomPunch	♥ 1	A little rough around the edges of the "buy" screen / gameplay transition, but who cares when the feeling of smacking the zombie is on point! The music keeps it jamming, and while I was initially confused by the double-hit guys once I figured out the groove it started taking on that almost rhythm-game like execution-timing-exactness and I started really enjoying it. It was almost a little too short.. but better to leave too early than to drag on too long. Nice work!
Oct 26 18:34:34	11m 23s	Generic Shooter Game	♥ 3	Exactly what it claims to be! It certainly created some nice moments of "OH NO TROUBLE" followed by a quick dodge between huge chunks of enemies. It was really nice the way the terrain made the enemies chunk up rather than glomming into one enormous mass to kite. The guns weren't too varied, but that was okay for such a simple direct experience. Another thing I think you did well was deciding to not block the player's movement on hit, I tested and you can just walk over an entire mass of guys. This seems like a good choice, because otherwise the player could get trapped and have a sort of instant gameover no matter how high their health was at that point. If I could tweak one thing it would be to add a little pointer to the next gun or something to direct the flow of the action a little more. Also, the resolution of the game was a bit awkward for my machine, and the bottom of the screen was off my monitor a little. Overall, sure, it's generic but it was well put together and fun for a few. Nice work.
Oct 26 18:38:01	3m 27s	Skeleton Quest	♥ 1	Dang, sorry, I downloaded and tried to play, but couldn't get past this error: cooked-content.png Because I was unable to play, I won't rate.
Oct 26 18:47:42	9m 41s	Nought - Procedurally Generated Dungeon	♥ 1	I love the instructions where it tells you about WASD or arrows, very cool idea that fits so well with the overall look and feel of the game. I had some cool throwback memories bubbling up from this one -- the smileface guy reminded me of playing original rogue on a PC with the ANSI extended character set, where smileguy was your main character, and the cracked tombstones reminded me of the graveyard in NES zelda. I loved the minimap, a key feature in this game, and I had a fun time exploring and diving deeper. I did okay, but eventually the rooms came to feel a bit repetitive. The arrows were an interesting mechanic, although I didn't feel I had a ton of decisions to make about when to use them, and the enemies were all a bit too much the same after a while: just back up and kite. Eventually I started sprinting through the rooms and not even fighting, which of course eventually led to my death (as it should). The procgen was very nice, I never hit really bad moments, and it kept things fresh. Nice work!
Oct 26 18:53:43	6m 01s	Aggressive Realtor	♥ 1	Best game made in 76 minutes! Well done, haha. Something about it is strangely compelling.
Oct 26 19:02:35	8m 52s	Something to Remember	♥ 0	Beautiful art, and the music works well with it to create the mood. Gameplay of moving left/right didn't really capture me but I'm not sure it was important.
Oct 26 19:17:51	15m 16s	Goblin Keeper	♥ 0	Wow there is SO MUCH going on in this game, I'm amazed you have this many features in a jam, nice work. It's maybe too much because I understood most but not quite all of what I was up to... I had my little town rolling along, some knights were about to put my construction crew to the test of combat, and then unfortunately I had a bit of a crash: crash-goblins.png :( So I didn't get to see how it turns out. But very cool entry here, with maybe a touch too much complexity of systems for a jam, but really ambitious and nicely done with the graphics and sound effects, and the variety of UI and systems, it's kind of awesome you got all that done.
Oct 26 19:33:52	16m 01s	Scrappy MC Spaceface VS the terrible tentacoolos	♥ 2	Top-notch work on the graphics, music, and sound. The whole thing had a great cohesive feel across the board. The controls were also tight, and damn those spacebrains shooting triangle spin patterns!! I was definitely in WTF mode for a while at the start, with absolutely no idea what was going on. things were flying into my ship, some of it was good and some of it was bad and I couldn't shoot even though I was clicking the gun reticle that wasn't a gun reticle and my ship was growing and shrinking and stuff was all over the place and I didn't know what any of it was. That slowly decreased, and after about 2 minutes I realized that I can mouse over scrap. Minute three I realized I could release the left click button I had been holding the entire time. By minute four I realized what clicking the mouse did, after running out of bullets forced me to figure it out. This was kind of fun, but I have a taste for being thrown right into the deep end. Eventually I knew all of the game's rules and that was about when it started ramping up the difficulty.. perfect. Just when I had kind of stabilized and was in control for a while, then there was the final boss fight, which I enjoyed, and the end. Perfect timing! Very nice all around entry, maybe a bit overwhelming in terms of input and state to manage all thrown at me at once, but I didn't mind.
Oct 26 19:43:36	9m 44s	Rescue Hamsters!	♥ 1	Very cool idea here, and a nice art style and cool sound/music. But it was a little too hard for me, with the combination of how fast the hamster comes out at the start, the very few bricks/etc I have, but most of all how the whole thing resets after I lose a few too many. The best fun of this game is the crazy experiments I can do, but I felt like it was too focused on making me find a proper solution and not about letting me enjoy the experience by doing crazy stuff. If it was a little less punishing (maybe infinite hamster deaths allowed?) I feel like I could have started out by having silly fun and worked my way toward a solution. But a very cool core idea here, with a nice presentation.
Oct 26 19:59:23	15m 47s	Starting From Nothing	♥ 0	I like the ambitious goal of anchoring a sort of familiar purely-abstract game form into something emotional and human. I like the writing and the generosity of spirit that kind of shone through behind it. But the screen was really tall and didn't really fit right on my monitor, and the stats zone below the play area wasn't that easy to see, and this kind of broke the connection between the concepts, and I was terrible at aiming the balls, so as a result I think for me it was a sort of a miss... but that doesn't make this a bad entry, I appreciated the attempt even if it didn't exactly click together for me personally. Keep going for this kind of stuff, because when it works it can be really powerful!!
Oct 26 20:17:02	17m 39s	Winter	♥ 1	I don't mind a game that subverts the usual expectations, and this game of wandering randomly through a blank screen at a skincrawlingly drudgerous pace might connect with me if it found me in the right mood. The atmosphere is there - the white, with the fading footsteps, and the little washout around the edges that makes far objects seem dim, combined with the wind and the blowing scarf. It's all very nicely done, and it unfolded well... in the start I am guided but develop a feeling like "wow I'd better not get lost in this game, if I wandered I might not find my way back!" And then the game MAKES me do it, which is cool. So I got to the third fire and spent some time looking for the third trinket, but after three or four failed forays into the unknown, without luck, I simply gave up. It's a really difficult and delicate balance you are striking here, and I think you did a pretty good job.
Oct 26 21:19:18	1h 02m	BLOB	♥ 1	Life-Off Achieved! Nice entry - a very chill peaceful mood encouraged by the background and silhouette art style which was very effective. I liked that it didn't explain too much, just enough for me to bootstrap and explore the systems myself. Liftoff was at about the right time, when I had explored what the game had to offer but it had not overstayed its welcome and dragged on. Nice work!
Oct 26 21:28:42	9m 24s	La incroyable vie de Skjewich Sciktosjiy Pswkeskek, le vice-roi en l'ebanissment	♥ 1	Nice grim, gritty mood achieved by this one. Please don't put me in charge of villages, I am not the one to lead them into prosperity. That is the lesson I learned here today. The art and the sound work well together. The non-english title makes it a bit alien to me, which works well with the icon-only gameplay that had no explanation. When you are in charge of the village, you need to learn on the job. Or just fail. Like I did. Very nice moody entry here, with a totally unusual mechanic that I enjoyed exploring.
Oct 26 22:03:45	35m 03s	Cowquest	♥ 1	I was really enjoying this, and I loved the rough and crazy look and feel to the movement. It obviously takes more effort to make it crazy like that, than plain. I enjoyed the camera shifts, the confusing nonsense of trying to figure out how to RPS properly, and then in training camp (why is that catchy song reminding me so much of a tune from tyson's punch out?) I sorted out how to assign cows to gather, then craft gear, then put the cows on relax, and then deploy them into gear. But once I had outfitted my entire cow platoon... what was left? How to do proceed to the Great War? I went out exploring and RPSed a few more conscripts, but after that I called it quits. Overall this is super-charming, it has a unique zany voice, and the first twenty minutes or so really pulled me in. As far as voting for LD, obviously the time constraint is super important for people who take it competitively, so I'll just drop a star from each score as a compromise. Nice and very unique entry here.
Oct 26 22:19:24	15m 39s	Bob the Brawler	♥ 1	I really like the mix of the continuous space for movement with the discrete cell-based attacks. It's a really interesting and novel design that I haven't seen much of, and the blend of brawling and interacting with terrain was cool. The system probably has a lot of potential for additional builds -- the first time I got range I was like "WOW this really alters the feel of the game, I wonder else could be done?" The potions thing was interesting, it was good the way it kept me moving around and forced me to take some risks. If there was one area that didn't shine that much it was the enemies. They were a little bland, and made a lot of different situations feel kind of samey, and I found myself wishing to be a bit more scared of them or have some variety. Beyond the interesting design, the aesthetics are on point, too. The song is grooving and the sound effects are great, and then there is nice art, and best of all the movement feels great and all of the interactions have a nice punchy juice without going overboard. All around very well done.
Oct 26 23:15:30	56m 06s	I Wait For Your Word	♥ 1	Very good job at pulling into the environment and straddling the line between text game and graphical game. I stumbled on a few of the puzzles, especially the one that was two words. I resorted to googling one that I shouldn't have had to, because I felt I had already typed it... but I guess I must have had a typo or something. The way it unfolds with more interaction than initially expected is a really nice property, and I think you've done a nice job of picking an aesthetic you can execute on, and delivering it nicely. Well done! The ain't no nuclear mutant punch-out, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Oct 26 23:27:33	12m 03s	Game Design Simulator 98	♥ 1	:~( I was all in on this and eager to see where it went. But my computer does not have a microphone, and the game is stuck at the sound recording part and I cannot proceed. Bummer, because this is a wildly different experience than many other entries and with this content I'm putting in, I am wondering whether there's some comic payoff at the end where it all gets thrown back in my face or something.
Oct 26 23:34:32	6m 59s	Soulcraft	♥ 1	Sprites were on point - slick space ship and creepy monstrous aliens straddling sci-fi and lovercraftian. The eerie background music brings us a bit deeper into that mood, and the sound effects are effective without getting in the way. Controls tight, and the trickiness of grabbing the pickups that fall quickly forces us to take risks, darting through a rain of danger to snatch victory. Only complaint is that it's a bit slow to get rolling which makes for a hesitation to start "one more game".
Oct 26 23:43:19	8m 47s	Nothing but Ghosts and Clouds	♥ 1	I love the painted background, especially that angry grey tornadofingerpaint looking thing on level 5. The concept here is cool, and the character is a bit stiff (stiff as a board?) but it doesn't get in the way of enjoying the environment and the nice background music. Nice work!