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Feedback comments for LD46
Duke's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Duke's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 21 10:04:47 | Run for their lives | ♥ 1 | Hey, great job on the aesthetics. Very clean and well thought out. I like the main menu as well, looks really polished. The gameplay itself was self explanatory, but it was really hard to fight against the ever growing amount of seagulls. The controls of the turtle could use some work. Going backwawrds would've been nice to adjust positioning more easily without having to turn 360°. Balancing was an issue as well. I guess the amount of gulls just increases overtime to an unbeatable amount? :) Some music would've been nice as well to reinforce the mood. Sound effects were good though! | |
| Apr 21 10:19:30 | 14m 43s | Silva | ♥ 3 | Interesting entry. Took me a while until I noteced that the dialog was the gameplay and that the fire was fading during the dialoge choices. Pro: + Music (great guitar stuff!) + Atmosphere (lighting effects, great use of ambient sound, good job) Things that bugged me a little: - The text crawls were too slow. I'm a fast reader and had to wait for each sentence to switch to the next. A button to manually progress the dialoge would've been nice. - The characters had names,but it wasn't clear who was who. For immersions sake, it would've been cool to have speech bubbles at the characters or something :) All in all a cool little text adventure |
| Apr 21 10:38:38 | 19m 08s | Sleep-Rolling Pangolin | ♥ 4 | Awesome! Really polished little puzzle game. The controls are intuitive enough, took my a moment to find out, that right click removes the placed fields. Seeing the little thing roll and jump around the fields is really satisfying :) I'm not a fan of the genre in general, but I was entranced the whole time I played. The Song was catchy as well. Really great composition. |
| Apr 21 10:53:47 | 15m 09s | Key Saver | ♥ 1 | Good entry! The art seems polished and the little tune was catchy and energetic. The jumping sound was a little loud and obnoxious after the first jumps, but bearable :) I didn't like the hefty camera sways when changing firections. It was hard to navigate the jumps when the camera flips out like that. I didn't really see the theme (aside from the 'don't die because it's a video game' logic) though. There was something with the key icons at the top that I didn't really get. 'A' seemed enabled while the other two were greyed out... but I could use them all. Strange! I found a gem and the game was reset... Was I missing something? Solid entry nontheless! |
| Apr 21 11:09:03 | 15m 16s | Keep Fe Chicken | ♥ 1 | Superb pixel art! Too bad the presentation was not pixel perfect. Seemed there was some filtering going on. Aside from that, the graphical presentation was polished as can be. The gameplay itself was self explainatory and the difficulty did go up quite nicely. Especially the levels where reaction time was necessary with the switch mechanic. I'm not a huge fan of puzzle games like that, but I can still see the appeal. Good stuff! |
| Apr 21 11:21:03 | 12m 00s | Last Light | ♥ 2 | I liked the concept itlsef and the music and presentation was nice as well, but I had some problems with the gameplay mechanics and how the felt. The controls were very floaty and the enemies very overpowering. There semeed to have unlimited acceleration and were very fast very quickly. Once hit, I wasn't able to get away anymore, if there were two of them, even when turning off the lights. They drain your three health almost instantly. I couldn't even finish the first level and after three attempts and merciless deaths at the "watch out" part, I gave up. To jump over them, you have to turn on the lights, which makes them very aggressive and unrelentless. Even turning the light off after jumping over one, the others will still hit me and I will get stuck between them. I think the core gampley needs some rebalancing. The core concept was good though. Maybe you can work on a post jam version to fix some of the issues? |
| Apr 21 14:20:59 | 2h 59m | Rolling Chicken TD | ♥ 2 | Almost half of the games I played so far had chickens or eggs in it :D I don't really like Tower Defense games but I almost beat wave 12. The art was adequate und the mechanics worked well. No critique on that front. Some sounds would've been nice to really hit home the satisfaction of killing badgers with samurai chicken. THe tune in the background got old really fast, had to lower the volume a bit. All in all a solid tower defense game. Not my cup of tea, but I hope you can reach your audience with it! |
| Apr 21 14:27:25 | 6m 26s | Keep IT Alive | ♥ 2 | Okay, that was a very stressful experience :D Took me a minute to understand, what I had to do. The core gameplay was very simple, what interesting enough to keep me busy for a few minutus. The sound effects were a bit annoying at times (especially the bluescreen one, had to turn down my audio). The art was very nicely stylized. GOod job an that front! |
| Apr 21 14:39:20 | 11m 55s | Snail Guard | ♥ 1 | Whaaaat, I made it to something that looked like the finish and then it said "the snail is dead" :( there wasn't even an enemy around. Was there an invisible time limit? Aside from that, I really did enjoy the game. It was fun to develop a good strategy to handle the jar und the stick at the same time. Fast movements of the mouse did however interfere with the grabbing ability. I often lost the grabbed item on fast swings. When an item was lying directly on the snail, it was even harder to pick it up. I guess that the snail snatched the click events. Art and music were fitting the mood and humour of the game very well. good job! |
| Apr 21 14:51:50 | 12m 30s | Sheepdog | ♥ 2 | Simple premise with a very good execution. The art is simple, but it does it jobs and helps with the humor as well. Some music would've been nice to shake things up. The second level was already very long though and the game overstayed it's welcome pretty quickly. There wasn't enough gameplay variation to keep me hooked for more than a few minutes. Good entry though! Try to mix up the gameplay a little more when you have such a simple premise. |
| Apr 21 15:03:19 | 11m 29s | A Very Fishy Game | ♥ 4 | The artwork really did stand out on this one. Very well done! Nicely animated. The soundtrack was very soothing as well, good choice! The gameplay was simple, but kept me entertained long enough. I'm almost surprised that this was the first tamagotchi-esque game i played so far. I expected a lot more to be honest. It's good that you twisted the mechanics a little. Good job! |
| Apr 21 15:53:04 | 49m 45s | LD46_Charger | ♥ 2 | Very well done! The best visual presentation I've seen today. Very clean and slick pixel art und nice lighting effects. The gameplay was smooth as well and the controls were very responsive. I'm not a huge fan of the (tower)defense-genre, so I was a little let down, that the core gameplay revolves around fending of waves of enemies with automated lasers and battery-walls. But I'm sure your target audience will love the core loop :) It's not for me though. Still, I can see, how much effort was put into it. Good job! |
| Apr 21 15:55:52 | 2m 48s | StarMart | ♥ 3 | Found your correct download link now! The game looks amazing and the gameplay seems fresh and innovative. Kudos for this compo! The only problem I had was getting enough energy from the people-to-battery-machines. They barely charged me up at all. I guess that I missed something or did something wrong, but it's not clear gameplay wise, what the problem is. Also, the kid seems to mind his own business and it's a hassle to go and find him when his battery runs out :D By the way: Should take the old download link offline. A lot of people might still use it and will not play your game if they do not read your description carefully. |
| Apr 21 16:10:14 | 14m 22s | Luna Blanca | ♥ 4 | Very cool! Not much to critisize gameplay wise. It's a hassle at first because you have to return to your ship very quickly, but other than that, a solid entry. I'm a little confused though, since it looks like that the game was an entry to another gamejam? At least that's what it says on the game page. The theme does not really fit either (which is not really a problem per se). The other jam even ran 10 days. Could you make it clear in your decription and/or disclose under which curcumstances this game was originally made? But assuming that the game was made in the three days that were targeted here, I'd say this is a very good entry! Polished gameplay, big world and lot's of upgrades. Cool stuff! |
| Apr 21 16:33:19 | 23m 05s | Exstare | ♥ 1 | The game looked very promising according to the screenshots. I love games like this, but the gameloop itself did not live up to my expectations though. The art was very fitting but the controls were lacking and couldn't make this an enjoyable experience. I didn't like, that the spacecraft was endlessly circling around the planet. It made hitting some meteors completely impossible. Also, the shooting was not satisfying enough. The rockets were very slow and made guessing the right timing not a feasible option. Just spamming the mouse button worked way better. Also, there was no incentive to shoot the meteors. My planet never died even though Id didn't hit anything and there was no score or any other indication regarding my performance. the missing sound was the last straw. Sorry if I sound too harsh, but I was really looking forward to your game :) Lots of the entries I played were tower defense variations which I don't like too much. Yours seemed to fit my taste perfectly, I'm just a little disappointed that I couldn't get the enjoyment out if it, which I craved. Hope you can use my feedback to make the next game a better experience! Cheers! |
| Apr 21 16:45:47 | 12m 28s | Outlet Hero | ♥ 1 | Very nice! The most action packed and adrenaline pumping game I played today. The soundtrack was awesome! The only change I would made is A: Make the game shorter or B: Bring more gameplay variations to the table. The way it is now, it overstays it's welcome a little. After entering the City-Level, I had the feeling, that I've seen everything the game has to offer. Weapon variations would've been awesome. The weapon you have is kindo overpowered with it's range, speed and accuracy. It's basically a walk the park. Add some challanges, keep the player on it's toes :) Nontheless, awesome entry. I'd say it was even the best I played so far today. |
| Apr 21 18:07:14 | 1h 21m | Friendly Fire | ♥ 2 | Hey there, I was curios how the other "Friendly Fire" named game looked like :) Feel free to look up ours. The gameplay loop was simple but worked well enough. I like the simplistic art style and the lighting effects work great to increase the mood and actually matter gameplay wise. The little looped soundtrack works aswell. Nice touch to have two different version of it for menu vs gameplay. Reminds me heavily of Nier Automata. The level itself was a bit barren and the enemy spawns become predictable very quickly. A more intricate dungeon design would be awesome. Finding the ladder after getting 100 gold was a hassle, but after a while, I was able to get out. I think that could be solved better somehow than pure try and error. Solid entry! |
| Apr 21 19:31:39 | 1h 24m | Cat Dad Redemption | ♥ 2 | What a great surprise! You guys really nailed the presentation, wow! The voiceover and soundtrack were on point. Every other aspect of the audiovisuals also fit perfectly. Great job! The core game-play may be simple, but you really made the best of it. I always restarted a duel if I didn't get the bottle as well :) |
| Apr 21 20:29:46 | 58m 07s | Social Distancing For LadyBugs | ♥ 1 | Congrats to your first compo :) The gameplay may be simple but it works well! Feels polished and is bug free. You even got a soundtrack and effects, which is not taken for granted! One thing to improve the satisfaction of killing those pesky bees would be a nice animation of the fly swat... coming down on the little critters :D |
| Apr 21 20:39:38 | 9m 52s | The Dragon's Curse | ♥ 2 | That was a unique experience. Cool idea and well executed as well. There isn't really much I can provide as constructive feedback aside from that the game could use some more polish in most of it's departments. The soundtrack was awesome, but sounded crisly and glitchy. DonÄt know if it was just me or the browser. The art was cool but could be expanded more. Especially to provide more context to the stuff that is happenening in the sequences. Aside from that, really good production! Not too long, not too short and a lot of replay value. |
| Apr 21 21:52:20 | 1h 12m | Pirabbit | ♥ 1 | Nice twist on the flappy bird formular. The art is on point and works really well. Nothing to complain here! The game progression speed is a bit slow and boredom sets in pretty quickly, so some more variations in enemies, obstacles and level layout would've been nice. Other than that, solid entry! |
| Apr 21 21:58:07 | 5m 47s | platformEGG | ♥ 1 | Cool game, looks and feels very polished. The art is on point and gameplay wise, it ticks all my boxes. The only issue I had was the gameplay speed. It felt very fast and the jumps were often times too difficult in consequence. There MIGHT be an issue with framerates higher than 60. I run on 144hz monitors and the browser games in will therefore run in 144fps. Even the asset animations are faster than in your presentation gifs. |
| Apr 21 22:07:13 | 9m 06s | Bakeneko no Ko | ♥ 1 | Nice art! I'm not too much into visual novels but I did enjoy the artwork. |
| Apr 22 08:02:11 | 9h 54m | untitled | ♥ 0 | Really interesting. Even though I had no idea, what I was doing (some kind progression feedback would be cool), I was mesmerized by the mystery. The background track fit perfectly. The art and graphics looked really polsihed for a jam entry. Good job! Effects and Feedback when using items was also very nice artistically. Running spee of the character was a tad slow for my taste. Getting around the skill to check for items takes too long. Also, the camera choice (far away with zoom) holds it's own kind of problems. It got stick behind scenery often and I couldn't see anything. I wasn't able to solve the game before I got frustrated. There were a lot of other characters like me after I clicked every item on the scene (at least every I saw) but the skull was still did nothing. So I guess I missed an item or something. Like a said, some kind visual help regarding progression would help to keep possible player frustration to a minimum. Good job nontheless! |
| Apr 22 10:18:07 | 2h 15m | Life Of Sparky | ♥ 3 | I am positively surprised :) loved how much effort you put in your game. You got a backstory in form of a visual novel, musical score and cute/creepy soundeffects for your spark. The gamplay premise is simple but effective, even though I find the standard version too difficult. There's almost no room for error and will ultimately lead to frustration. All in all a nice change of pace. Keep it up! |
| Apr 22 10:29:54 | 11m 47s | Whalestrom | ♥ 2 | Really nice visuals in the 3d department. Already looks pretty much fleshed out. The UI and rest of the visuals do stand out as not polished as much though. Flying was a little clunky and slow, especially turning around. Shooting felt satisfactory enough. I played two levels after the tutorial and and felt like i've seen everything. Didn't really felt the need to upgrade anything because the enemeies didnt't feel like a threat. Maybe that changes in the later levels. The background score was cool and pumping. fit the theme of the game very well. I also liked that the space god was a whale :) very mysterious Very good job all in all! This jam could use some more space dogfighting games |
| Apr 22 10:36:26 | 6m 32s | Keep Pit Alive! | ♥ 3 | oh man, there seems to be something wrong :( I booted it up and cannot jump high enough to get out of the starting hole... Maybe there is a framerate issue? I got a 144hz monitor which runs the game at 144fps. The horse animation looks really cool though. The art is rough around the edges but its very clear, that you know, what you're doing. I will only rate the game on the stuff i can see. Maybe there is a way to fix the jumping issue I encounter? |
| Apr 22 15:54:13 | 5h 17m | Across the Lake | ♥ 1 | Awesome, great entry. Love the art and mood. Sound effects and music are minimalisic but fit stylistically very well. The core gameplay loop is even simpler, but addicitve. Creative implementation of the theme. Good stuff! |
| Apr 22 15:58:59 | 4m 46s | Keep IT Alive | ♥ 2 | Interesting concept, but veeery stressful :) had trouble keeping the boats afloat after the first 5 or 6. It's very hard to keep track of the boats and the water directions. Art und Music fits well und control wise everything works flawlessly. Good job! |
| Apr 22 16:06:01 | 7m 02s | The Keep! It's Alive! | ♥ 1 | Cool Idea! Love the twist on the theme. Gameplay wise, it's pretty simple but solid. The difficulty is a little easy, but that's ok. The grabbing mechinic worked well, even though sometimes it seemed like it was a little too specific and i wasn't getting the people even though I thought should have. The art is nice and I like the addition of music and sound. Helps the mood and immersion. All in all, a good entry! |
| Apr 22 16:43:06 | 37m 05s | Keep it burning! | ♥ 4 | Had a lot of problems with mouse sensitivity. even at full settings, it was still a pain to look around. Couldn't really play it like that. Made it to level3, but the gameplay loop doesnt't seem to vary much. Is it just random fire and crystal placements? Just having the darkness as an enemy can get boring after a while :) some more gameplay in that department would've been nice (good old bats or rats, fending them off with the torch!) The graphics looked nice. Music and Sound were ok, but didn't really fit the mood in my opinion. Especially the music seemed a bit out of place. But still nice that you made an effort to include music. The core loop couldn't really hook me, so i couldn't motivate me to play more than the first few levels (having the slow mouse issue didn't help either) |
| Apr 22 16:53:28 | 10m 22s | Save The Egg | ♥ 1 | If you know how the game works, it's ok! But I had to look up in the description how the spring placements are done. This could be made clearer in game or even have the spring placed by drag and drop with visual help. Would be better than ahving to blindly click the mouse button a second time for a replacement. Also, the egg physics seemed to be a bit off. Looked like they didn't really adhere to physics of this universe :D thats also something you had to keep in mind while trying to clear the riddles. The length of the game was good though and the progression the three levels introduced, as well. It was a bit frustrating to wait for the whole egg to pass the stage to see if the changes at the last spring worked now. So that might be something else to consider to reduce player frustration. Art was adequate but seemed a bit intermingled. The tileset and the rest of the art didn't seem to have the same level of art direction (contours on the pipe and nest, but not on the rest of the tileset) BUT I did play through all tree levels because I could get some fun out if it :) So that's that. Keep it up! |
| Apr 22 17:30:11 | 36m 43s | Kaoamaru Kaiju | ♥ 2 | Interesting... but a bit overwhelming and confusing. Was there any gameplay or was it basically just a cinematic? I liked the idea of the aesthetics and the Lovecraftian mood. |
| Apr 22 17:39:52 | 9m 41s | Battery Life | ♥ 1 | Could beat the game in the third attempt. The art is really nice and works great with the atmosphere. Love the sound and design of the monsters. Good stuff! The core gameplay is very simple and requires some try and error to get through, so that might be a problem for some. If I wouldn't have found the exit after the third attempt, I would've given up I guess. All in all, great entry for a compo. Has a really polished feel to it. No obious bugs and even sound etc. Awesome! |
| Apr 22 17:49:31 | 9m 39s | Magic Mirror Delivery Service | ♥ 2 | Cool little puzzle game. Liked the core mechanics and kept me hooked for a while. The level variation was nice and you even introduced new game play mechanics later on! Here some feedback: * Don't reset the music loop upon death etc. It's really nerve wrecking :D |
| Apr 22 18:09:47 | 20m 16s | Woodpunk | ♥ 2 | Impressive entry! The art is gorgeous (reminds me alot of zelda 3) and the soundtrack kicks ass. Really adds a lot to the mood. There isn't really much I could critize on those merits. Game play wise, it wors great as well. Shooting is satisfying and the craftig mechanics work fluently. The main issue I had was the mostly barren world. Would've been awesome to have more content in it or have the content, that is there, a little more dense. I never knew if there was a possibilty to get through an obstacle or it wasn't part of the experience. I was running around alot only to get into a dead end. Enemies are rare and I only encountered one type so far. On a technical level, there is also something I could provide as feedback: * The frame in the website where your game runs is not fitting the native resolution of your game, so the pixels are distorted a little. The pixel art is so beautiful so it pains me to see it treated like that * Some of the objects in the map have z-index issues (signs or some pillars) where the pc wasn't rendered behind it correctly Awesome entry nontheless. Great work! |
| Apr 22 20:24:57 | 2h 15m | Unicorn | ♥ 2 | I really love the production behind the game :) great that you could make this a family effort and work with your kids on this. That aside, game play wise, there are things that can be improved of course. First thing would be the one-hit-kill-mechanic. Give that princess some hit points! Running speed is very slow so jumping into enemies happens regularly. The platforming physics can be improved as well. There are some strange glitches when running or jumping into or against walls. I guess asking for animations on the self drawn assets would be a bit much, though :D loved the enemy designs by the way. Kid's drawings are the best! |
| Apr 22 21:13:24 | 48m 27s | Keep it Fire | ♥ 1 | After a couple of runs, i'd have to say that the game is still very rough around edges. The Platforming feels a little strange due to some physics and collision quirks. I had no idea how to get to some of the wood. Looks like you needed a double jump or other special powers to get to them, which I didn't find. Respawning was bugged sometimes and would spawn me right in the middle of the floor. Also, it wasn't really clear, what the goal of the game or the motivation of the player was. The art was alright but the music was great! Really loved the backrounds song. It added so much to the mood and was good on the ears. all in all, a decent entry that still needs some touching up to be a really good! Hope you can work with the feedback (even if I'm sounding a bit harsh). I think honest feedback is worth a lot. Also, I immediately clicked on your game when I saw the Cover art :) We developed a fire/wood-related game as well. Gotta stick to the stuff you know and love! Cheers |
| Apr 22 22:35:48 | 1h 22m | Sunlit | ♥ 2 | Really interesting and unqiue idea, I like it :) Took me some minutes to check, what I was supposed to to and that i was able to scroll the map upwards. |
| Apr 23 11:17:57 | 12h 42m | Operation Asteroid | ♥ 1 | Cool! I went in blind and had to lose the game on easy two times until I got all the gameplay mechanics (like buying and build defense structures on the planet) after that, the game was a breeze and it was satisfiying to see the planet obliterating everything that was coming it's way. It was a little TOO easy :D I guess that's why there is a second, harder lvel. The art is nice and the presentation of the defense systems are cool to lok at. The ui kinda covers some of the game view which seems a little unnecessary. the buttons could've found a place at the bottom of the ui instead of covering a fifth of the bottom left screen. Game play seems relatively bug free (didn't find any at least) Good job! |
| Apr 23 16:13:02 | 4h 55m | It Alive | ♥ 1 | I went in completely blind and tried to find out the game mechanics by what the game gives me. The throwing mechanic was not ovious but after trying out all buttons, I was able to shoot by accident :) Also, I didn't know, what the aim of each levle was... somehow it just ended when I went to a specific spot. There was nothing there though. Seems like a bug? It was really strange. The art is adequate, nothing too special, but it works! The platforming was a bit strange. running seemed like the pc was glued to the ground. Jumping was a lot faster. The game play itself got a bit stale after a short while. A little more variation in level design would've been great. Music and audio was missing as well. too bad! The game would benefit a lot from audio support. Keep it up! |
| Apr 23 17:18:39 | 1h 05m | My Mother is a Caravan? | ♥ 1 | Not too shabby, not at all! I really was craving some good old action adventure gameplay. The fighting was a bit clunky but I god used to it pretty quickly and the fighting was a good mix of strategy and reflexes. Collecting Loot and dragging your motherly cart through the screens was also a nice change of pace. Got to the ending on my first try after almost dying and having only one heart left. Some item (I think) did refresh my helth though. After that, I was unstoppable! Liked the music too. The art was a bit rough on the edges but worked. Sound effects were helpful too. Also, great to have such complex animations on the enemies. especially the ones that were shooting had an animation to telegraph the attack, which helped a lot to reduce random hits. All in all, very well thought out little game. Kudos! |
| Apr 23 18:28:43 | 1h 10m | Bouncy Battlegrounds | ♥ 1 | Couldn't really get much fun out of this, I'm afraid. The art was very much reduced to almost nothing and the gameplay loop and it's rules were a little too intransparent and obscure for my taste. I never was sure, what would happen if one army was hitting another. It felt like some soldiers were stronger than others and the size of the army wasn't really the main focus. Aside from that, the slinging mechanic didn't click for me in the context of some derivation of a round based strategy game. Still, it's good to see that you have a game with a closed game play loop that works. That's always good to see with compos. Kudos for that! |
| Apr 23 19:55:38 | 1h 26m | Keep this heart alive | ♥ 1 | Awesome! Very good use of the reduced color scheme and it's obvious that you took your time to polish the animations. It looks gorgeous. The game play is rather simple, but doesn't overstay it's welcome. The jumping feels a little clunky. I thin others mentionied this as well, but the jumping delay after hitting the ground feels a little off, but that's an easy fix. All in all a nice little jumping game with cute reduced art. Good job! |
| Apr 23 20:19:12 | 23m 34s | Rekindle | ♥ 5 | Cool gameplay look. works great, but got really really hard at the two minute mark. I loved how the sheep was ultra aggressive against the wolves :D The art nice but looked kinda generic due to it's "minecraft" look. The throwing mechanic hat a good interface and was easy to understand. good job on that! |
| Apr 23 22:43:45 | 2h 24m | Keith's Flint & Steel | ♥ 1 | Okay, what a trip! I think the game ran too fast on my 144hz setup. It was like a roller coaster :D The mechanics were simple and self explainatory even though I didn't really see if the animals did something to me or not. I just went from tree to tree and chopped them down until "WIN" greeted me in the morning. So I guess I was doing alright :) The art looked good and the soundtrack and sfx were awesome. A very good compo! Kudos |
| Apr 23 22:53:39 | 9m 54s | Pug Panic | ♥ 0 | The idea is cool and I like the general twist of the lemmings formula. But I thinkt you went a bit overboard with the difficulty... There is no real progression, just after a few dozen played seconds the game will crush you with popups and stuff. A very stressful, but funny experience :) Would be cool to have levels with difficulty progression to learn the mechanics and buttons first. I didn't even know what half of the buttons did because the whole screen was filled with popups half the time. The art was cute and made the premise very silly (in a good way) Soundtrack was pumping enough to keep me hooked for a few rounds. Good job! Just... let the player play for while before completely obliterating him ;) |
| Apr 23 23:06:46 | 13m 07s | Blood Oath | ♥ 2 | The art looked nice and very polished, good job on that! Like the soundtrack and sfx as well. The core gamplay is a little rough around the edges, which dampens the fun a little. Hit detection seemed a little random at times, especially with enemy attacks. The Boss killed me with his projectiles and I didn't even really understand how he hit me. But it was a nice change of pace to play an action game amongst all the other more games. |
| Apr 24 11:05:27 | 11h 58m | SAVE THE DINOS! | ♥ 1 | yeah, why not. Nice implementation of the theme. Played a few others with related game play ideas. The art was nice, but backgrounds, comets and dinosaurs did clash a little in regards of their style. The song was surprisingly catchy and upbeat. Felt really authentic. The destruction of the comets felt a little unresponsive or off. I wasnt'r really sure where the hitbox was, so I always aimed a little down. Still, the feedback could be better and more satisfying. Maybe adding a slight camera shake, more sounds effects and better shooting graphics would help. all in all, a nice little shooter. |
| Apr 24 11:12:21 | 6m 54s | Wanted: Alive! | ♥ 3 | Short, but fun! The graphics and art looked their part and felt cohesive. Soundtrack and sfx were nice and fit the general theme very well. Controls worked fine and felt very responsive. Nothing to complain on that front :) I was surprised at the attention of detail. I liked how the environment was part of the game (like the bottles bursting etc) The moving hole felt a little out of place, but I guess that's video game logic for you ;) The only thing I would criticize is the amount of content. The game play mechanics were fleshed out to an extent, where I would've loved to play some more levels with more difficult obstacles. Maybe more than one enemy to dodge the bullets from. I'm very delighted. Awesome entry |
| Apr 24 11:23:15 | 10m 54s | Enshrine | ♥ 1 | I first tried the web version, but the performance was really bad, so I downloaded the windows build. Great visuals! The wall animations look really cool. I didn't really enjoy the game play look that much. I found the controls to move the walls a little clunky and got caught by the enemies often without really knowing why. Some more visual feedback would be nice (aside from the "view cones" when in wall moving mode). Liked the general mood you presented with the lighting and models. Good use of the 3d engine. Like I said, the core game play wasn't for me, but I bet there are players out there, who will enjoy it :) |
| Apr 24 11:36:43 | 13m 28s | Duck Crossing | ♥ 4 | I went in completely blind and tried out to get the core game play by what the game gives me. Seemed like I had to find 5 chicks and bring them to the nest. I did find smaller birds which responded to my quacking, but they didn't follow me. Scaring people didn't seem to do anything too (aside them from being scared :)) The bird catcher was pretty clear, tried to stay away from him. After I found the street and saw how funny the people drove, I was hit by one and died. So, I couldn't find out, what the game wanted from me to reach a winning state. I still had fun running around, jumping and flying around town. The art was great and the level was huge. Performance in browser wasn't so good... I think I had around 25fps. I liked the sound effects and music. You haven had some voice lines, nice! all in all, great entry that could be a little more specific with it's goal |
| Apr 24 14:19:39 | 2h 42m | A Cold Walk Home | ♥ 1 | Wow, seriously? What a great entry for a compo. So much content. Not only is there game play variations, but also a story and a progression system. The background track really does add a lot to the mysterios nature of your little survival action adventure. I really don't have much to criticize, but i'll add some issues I encountered when playing through your game: - The written story is awesome, but due to the nature of your game play loop, it was hard to read the texts and simultaneously deal with all the survival stuff. The player will ultimately miss some of the written pieces (I did, at least) - the last bridge upgrade did not trigger for me. I thought I was doing something wrong and tried to kill the boar without minding the hunger or fire meter (expecting a game over) After dying, the bridge upgrade was there and I could finish the game - Was the boar killable? I tried it two times, but it seemed to be pointless. It did take damage though, so I don't know. - The art is pretty rough, but that's not really a criticism in this context. It's baffling how you implemented all this in such a short amount of time. Kudos! |
| Apr 24 14:27:39 | 8m 00s | Open Fire! | ♥ 1 | Nice game! It wasn't really a challange and losing some of the men didn't really have an effect other than that it got easier, since i didn't have to mash that many keys anymore :D The art was nice, but the pixel scaling on the web frame was a little off. The cutscene at the end was a bit slow, too. Other than that, nice little button masher. |
| Apr 24 16:05:41 | 1h 38m | It's About Slime | ♥ 0 | Simple core gameplay, but executed fairly well. I liked the slime explosins, felt very satisfying to let them explode. The webview in which your game was opened was very small though. Don't know if it's a problem on my side or it was by design. The color scheme was pretty dark and the purple blobs were hard to see on the dark background at times. Plus, the games difficulty suddenly exploded into in unbeatable mess, including a hard framerate drop after unlimited slimes were suddenly rushing towards me. Unfair! :D The character selection was a nice twist and adds to the replayability of the game. Good job |
| Apr 24 16:58:14 | 52m 33s | Polygons of Light | ♥ 2 | Cool idea. I think the execution is still a bit rough and the lighting and shadow effects could use some work to look a bit better, but the core gameplay works pretty well. Had some problems with strange light hitboxes that killed me but all in all, it works as intended. The music is low beat but soothing. Some sound effects would've been awesome to wrap things up. The art itself (I guess mainly the main character) was fair enough, could be improved a bit to give it a little more personality |
| Apr 24 17:10:20 | 12m 06s | Is anybody out there? | ♥ 3 | That was kinda depressing :D and creepy. Loved the use of ambience sound. The writing helped to convey the state of the character and the slight change of lighting and color was good visual feedback. I was able to beat it on my second try and I'd say it's a little too much of try and error game play. I basically just ran from side to side to find the next trigger item. The controls worked but didn't feel very platformish. Also I didn't like the design choice to reset the camera on landing. Going down stairs was really nauseating that way. The art was adequate, but could use some more variation and details. All in all, a pleasent surprise. I'm a sucker for creepy games :) |
| Apr 24 17:54:15 | 43m 55s | Station Keeping | ♥ 1 | Played it a couple of minutes but couldn't really get into it. The game didn't really click with me, nor did it really tell me, what it's about or what the goal was or obstacles I had to overcome. Seemed kinda complicated and the user interface was never clear what is doing what. Even just standing there and doing nothing seemed to be fine for the longest time. The running and jumping controls seemed off, like I was on some kind of frictional ice. I'm not a huge fan of those kind of strategy/survival games so I guess maybe I wasn't the actual target group. The art was nice though, no complaints on that front :) some chilly ambient sound would've been nice |
| Apr 24 18:00:32 | 6m 17s | Soul Survivor | ♥ 0 | Hah, what a lie. The ghost's favorite hobby is to take a walk around the level instead of following me to safety :D that's how I lost... it just went straight into a group of enemies and I wasn't fast enough to shot up, because I didn't see them yet. The game is pretty cool, though. I like the reduced art, animations look nice. The shooting feels satisfying and the sound effects help as well. The bgm was a little too funky for my taste, especially considering the theme of ghosts. Something eerie would've been nice (but that's just my taste) Cool stuff! |
| Apr 24 19:45:31 | 1h 44m | Space Exodus | ♥ 2 | Great! I really enjoyed it. And I found a second earth on my last bar of oxygen :) The 2D (can it really be 3D on a 2D plane?) sound feature is awesome and is not just sugar coating but part of the game play mechanics. The art is simple but effective. I appreciate good 1 bit color schemes. The recharging sound was a bit obnoxios and I had to turn down the volume because I couldn't bear it after a while. Can't really find any valid criticism apart from some ideas to make the game play a little more intriguing. I think I would enjoy some gravity around the planets to make the fight for heat during sun flybys more interesting for example. Or some shooting mechanics to fight off aliens/metroids. Great game to build more upan. Good job! |
| Apr 24 21:58:41 | 2h 13m | Eggs With Legs | ♥ 3 | First of all, awesome! I think that's the game I played the longest this jam so far. I love dual stick shooters and the absurdity of this on (eggs with legs, come on!) only helped sell this to me. The amount of content is great and the upgrade mechanic works great. I was very happy after I was dual wielding machine guns, mowing down farmes and factory workes. Very satisfying :P . Sound effects were nice too. The pee-shooter effects fit the mood very well. And as much as I loved the time I had, there are (of course) several things that bugged me. I'll skip the missing musical score, because I guess you wanted that too, but didn't have the time for it. No big deal! - Running speed was too slow for the size of the maps. There was lot of backtracking involved in finding all the precious eggs and it felt like my time was wasted a bit. Increases to the running speed would've made great upgrades! - The bullets were WAY to small. I had to squint to see them on top of the floorboards. Since getting hit can get troublesome very fast, clear visuals for the bullets is a must have. - The enemies were very good at shooting the robo-egg, a bit too good. They were already starting to shoot from off-screen and, with the way the shooting works with the robo-egg, it was almost impossible to hit the enemeies back with accuracy, since the bullets targeted the mouse cursor. Also, I don't like getting shot by enemies off-screen. I think they should adhere to the same visual limits as I have to :) they may shoot, but the aim should off! - The flamethrower was not a good weapon. It basically killed my run after purchasing it, because I had to get in relatively close. In the last level, that was the last you want. I instantly died after three of the factory workes ganged up on me. - Some checkpoints or save spots for when you died would've been great. The game is pretty long for a jam title and death awaits behind the next corner. It was a but frustrating to die and having to start all over (especially with the slow running speed) So much for feedback. Loved your little game nontheless. Thanks! Cheers |
| Apr 24 22:12:07 | 13m 26s | JarHeads | ♥ 1 | Wow! Awesome. Very cool gameplay concept and executed almost flawlessly. I'm impressed. I'm a sucker for skill based rhythm games and this hits the spot all right. The art is great, good selection of colors and the music is pumpuing, especially when the bpm increases. I made it to place 5 after three attempts (as for now!). I was a bit overwhelmed at the beginning because I didn't fully understood the mechanics yet. Afterwards, I was hooked. But I still think that some of the obstsacles were almost impossible to overcome. Sometimes I had to carry IT a longer way to not have it take damage and I always dropped him because the stamina ran out. Maybe there is another strategy to this, but it seemed like I had no choice but to take damage. Great game! Thanks for makeing this |
| Apr 24 22:21:14 | 9m 07s | DANGER! Alien Cow Thieves! | ♥ 1 | The art is astonishing, very polished professional! Great job on that. The core game play itself is also good, self explainatory and punching alien creates against walls with a glorios explosions always satisfying. The main problem was the controls. They felt really laggy and unresponsive to an extend, that I wasn't able to get much fun out if it. I had problems planning my jumps and I missed almost all of my wall jumps because of that. Since control is one of the most important things in an arcade platformer like this, it really stands out, if something is off. I hope you can still work on the controls and fine tune them so they feel responsive and tight. |
| Apr 24 22:53:50 | 32m 36s | SideKick | ♥ 1 | Nice entry, I like the general concept of this "baby sitting" simulator :D It was a bit problematic that the game is practivally over, if the little guy jumps on top of a building where a ufo is waiting und you miss a jump and can't get on the buidings fast enough. Some kind of double jump (or higher jump) for the main hero would've been nice. It was pretty hard to follow the guy around at all times. The art is a bit rough but works to convey the visuals for you game. Same games for music and sfx. Still a lot to improve, but works as it is! |
| Apr 25 14:33:36 | 15h 39m | The Last Guardian | ♥ 3 | Good game! not much to complain really. I liked the mechanics, how you ad to juggle the clouds the to keep the tree alive, but also having enough puddles to grow your friends in. The fighting mechanics were rudimentary but worked. If anything, the game felt pretty slow. Fighting wise, as well as movement wise. The tune in background was catchy and added to the mood. I played for some time until I got bored, so I guess there is no winning condition? Also, I didn't really get, what the cones were for. I collected them, but didn't use them in any way. I guess I missed something in the title crawl or some key to throw them. |
| Apr 25 14:47:52 | 14m 16s | Penance: A story of Resistance | ♥ 2 | woah, where to start. First of all, it was nice to have a run and gun game for a change. Seems almost like a forgotten genre :D The musical choices were good and the used tilemap looked it's part. It's nice that you found the time to implement a story and even dialogs, but the main issue with the game is it's controls and main game play focus. I'll try to bring everything up, that hindered me from having fun with yoour game: - The controls and platforming physics were the biggest ofenders. It felt very stiff and unresponsive to control the main character. Seemed like there were a lot of issues with friction. It's really hard (at least for me) to implement a good platforming engine with the standard Unity2D-Physics. And this felt just like that. - Shooting also felt very uninspired and there was little to no hit feedback. The enemeies were just shooting away and the player didn't really have possibilities to dodge or aim. So I ended up just standing there and taking the shots until the enemies turned to red blobs. See 'contra' or other retro run and gun games how to get player satisfaction from shooting pixel people :) - It was clear from the start, that you took free resources for your tilemaps and sprite assets, and it shows, I'm a afraid. The map and the characters don't mix and match well. That way, you will always get that "cobbled together" look. Maybe you can find an asset set from the same artist next time? (or at least assets that fit in terms of pixel resoltion) Those were my main issues. No need to nitpick other little things, that bugged me, since those up there are major and critical. I hope you can use some of the feedback from the community to improve upon your games in the future! Cheers |
| Apr 25 14:57:45 | 9m 53s | The last plant | ♥ 1 | Ohhh ok :D really had to check t he perspective of the game since jumping behaved really strange. I thought maybe I was in some kind if isometric map that was skewed downward... But I guess the jumping mechanics just seem to be bugged a little (or was is so by design?) The game play loop itself is pretty simple, but effective. If you make an action packed shooter, then shooting and defeating enemies should always feel rewarding. Just making them disappear without a trace (or soundeffect) just seems a little off. I never can get much satisfaction out if it like that. Also, the map was a bit uninspired and could use some more variation to shake things up. The powerup system was a good idea but seemed a little unbalanced. A couple of the "faster shooting" items and I could fill the whole map with a barrage of my bullets in no time. All in all, a little rough around the edges but still a fun few minutes. With a little more work towards presentation and player feedback, this could be improved a lot! |
| Apr 25 17:21:09 | 2h 23m | Little Red Riding Hood And The Good Spirit Of The Woods | ♥ 3 | Awesome! Very polished look & feel. The visual style with 2d sprites and 3d environment works great and looks amazing. The mood conveyed is very eerie and creepy and the soundtrack and sfx fits perfectly. The gamplay is rather simple in comparison and feels kinda slow, a little too slow for my taste. The enemies don't vary much and I couldn't find out, what I had to do with the berries on my own. After a while, enemies overwhelmed (there were a LOT) and the attack speed is rather low, so I couldn't fend them all off. All in all, I enjoyed the little adventure. Really moody piece of jam art. I'd say with a bit of work, this could be an aswome little indie game :) |
| Apr 25 17:51:29 | 30m 20s | Movin' and Keepin' Alive | ♥ 1 | The game didn't really click for me. There were a lot of issues with the physics and platforming engine. Jumping often did not trigger, the sound effect for it did though. With no feedback when getting hurt, it game just kinda off. I also didn't really like the auto running mechanic. Made the laggy platforming even more tedious. After getting to level 3 and having to jump over enemies that give you damge on contact and I had to jump down a platform without being able to see what was down there and directly jumping into an enemy, I quit. The used tilemap is a good pick, but the musical choices were very off putting (zelda / mario remixes etc are not the best picks in my opinion) But since the core game play mechanics already are not a satisfying experience, every other criticism is kinda pointless. That's the most important part of your game and everything revolves around it. So you should make sure, that that part of the game works and is fun! Good luck for your next projects, I hope you can use some of the feedback :) |
| Apr 25 18:09:36 | 18m 07s | AMT: Alien Medical Technician | ♥ 1 | Wow! Really cool game. Didn't know what I had to expect by the screenshots but I was pleasantly surprised to get a rhythm game. I'm baffled how you managed to get SO much art into the game. The quality is a bit rough, but the sheer amount makes up for it. Really great to see a diffrent character for each level and even in different versions (sleeping / awake). You can tell that you had a lot of fun making all the character designs. Loved the banana :D The music was cool as well. Loved how you managed to alter the music depending on the performance of the player. Very polished experience all in all. One one the best games I played today. Great job! |
| Apr 25 18:33:55 | 24m 19s | Alien Convoy | ♥ 2 | Awesome! Great job all in all. This feels like a thought out and well executed jam entry. The art style is simple but coherent. The music was great as well! And you even have sound effects for all important things! The core game play is rather simple as well but executed to an extent, that it's fun and doesn't overstay it's welcome. Three levels were enough for the kind of mechanics you introduces, so good call on limiting the game play time. People often stretch their game play unnecessarily with a lot of useless padding. I did encounter some visual glitches along the tile seams, so that might be something to look into. Very good entry all in all. A complete package. That's something i can appreciate :) |
| Apr 25 21:53:51 | 3h 19m | Back Four Seconds | ♥ 1 | This was, by a pretty big margin, the best entry I played so far. The game play really caught me off guard. You really did a good job on introducing the mechanics via dialog with Stewart. I all felt very organic and easy to grasp, while still having the illusion of actual control. The time travelling mechanic worked good on both story and mechanical level. The dialog was witty and kinda reminded me of the game we made :) not thematically, but in terms of the attitude of some of the characters. And awesome voice work, by the way. Had this "Stanley Parable" vibe going. The graphics and art were also really good. The whole presentation worked perfectly. Seeing, that you made this by yourself is astonishing. Pat yourself on your shoulder with my best regards. I really enjoyed myself playing this. There is but one criticism I have: The mouse sensitivity in the browser version (that I played) was way too high :D That's all |
| Apr 25 23:37:05 | 1h 43m | DON`T DIE STAY ALIVE! | ♥ 0 | Simple but effective game play loop. Seemed to me like the spears spawn at random with an increasing frequency, which ultimately may lead to undodgeable combinations of spears at some point, I guess. That's at least what happened to me. The music had a nice ring to it and was catchy. Loved it! The art was basic but worked in this context. Solid job on a one man entry. Keep it up! |
| Apr 26 00:04:22 | 27m 17s | Keep Me Breathing | ♥ 3 | Awesome! Very simple premise but great execution. Loved the part where you had to match the rgb color code correctly. That was by far the hardest mechanic of the game. Very stress inducing but fun! The art was very clean and polished, a marvel to look at. Soundtrack was top notch as well. Great job! Was able to beat it on my first try, which is nice :) didn't overstay it's welcome, so I'd say the length of one run is perfectly balanced. Don't really have much else to say or criticize. Looks like you had enough time to polish and get everything working fine. Marvelous entry! |
| Apr 26 00:20:44 | 16m 22s | Ubergine | ♥ 3 | Great entry! Had a very polished feel it. The core mechanics worked great and the controls felt super responsive. I also liked the twin-stick-twist to control two characters at once. Good way to get some hand-to-brain-workout going :) The art was on point, really enjoyed the creepy/strange nature of it. Stylistically, everything seemed to be thought out. The upgrade system was a nice touch to and helped make progression a real thing in this small scope. The game is rather short and the level itself is pretty straight forward. Would've been nice to have some more intricate levels with nooks and crannies and maybe a real skill upgrade tree. Lots of potential to build upon. I enjoyed the ride. Keep it up! |
| Apr 26 09:50:54 | 9h 30m | Burned by the Poi | ♥ 1 | Really nice. I like the whole atmosphere and mood building with the dialogue in the beginning. The use of light and shadow was well done and was a great way to improve your game play. The red glowing eyes in the shadows were a really cool detail. Great work on the AI there. The weapon modes on the torches were a nice touch as well. I had fun swinging them around :) The graphics were a bit rough and could use some more work (especially regarding animations) on the player character. What I didn't like was, how the camera had a fixed pivot point and wasn't changing distance to the player depending on how far I pointed the mouse. It was pretty irritating to play it like this. Furthermore, I had some issues with the balancing. It was really hard to kill the enemies and they, on the other hand, could just gang up on me and club me to death in a short amount of time. I saw that you uploaded a re-balanced version, so I guess that you already know about the issues. Nontheless a great entry. Creepy mood with atmospheric lighting and some meele combat. I'd appreciate if the combat could be a little more responsive. Hit feedback is missing completely, if I remeber correctly. |
| Apr 26 10:35:05 | 44m 11s | Angst | ♥ 6 | A very cool experience you got here. First all of the good things: Really cool, that you have a main menu, I appreciate that :) The art seems a bit rough at first, but fits like a glove in the head space part. The character designs. The visuals there area really good. I love the use of 2.5D parallaxing of the Map assets. Adds a lot the mood. The musical score also fits very well with the general theme. Really creepy and unsettling. That goes for the rest of the presentation too (and will be relatable for most people working an office job) I got some successes on day 2 with the head space but was killed by some entity on day 3 while I was reading the initial dialogue :( unfair! That's a good transition to some criticism: - It seems like you "only" have one map that is recycled for each game play session. Would've been cool to start out with a smaller one and get bigger each day. That way, the player isn't overwhelmed with the sheer size of that labyrinth (I was, and didn't know what I had to do) and you have some natural progression in difficulty. - It wasn't clear, what I had to to in the head space. Sometimes collecting coffee did the trick, other times I couldn't get out before the panic attack. A little more transparency would be nice to prevent player frustration. - The web version was presented rather small and I wasn't able to read all of the texts. Especially the jounrnal was a problem that way. - Since the maps are always the same, the initial fascination dwindles pretty fast. I lost motivation at day 3 because I thought, that I've already seen all the game has to offer game play wise. It wasn't clear how many days there were or if it even has an end. All in all, a very good entry! Very polished experience, great art and eerie mood! Good job |
| Apr 26 10:44:15 | 9m 10s | Hell Yeah! | ♥ 1 | I had grieve problems with the minigames. I wasn't able to make ANY points. The only thing, that worked, was removing tiles with a single click. I tried every combination with the dragging motion without any success. The Tutorial on the right didn't help either. I don't know if I encountered a bug or was doing something fundamentally wrong. This is really disappointing, because the game looks really cool. Loved the aesthetics and the pixel animations and lighting were top notch. Maybe you can look into the mini game issues. Seeing other people having problems as well, I might be a general game design flaw/bug. Edit: I just saw the screenshots explaining the mechanics. Man, I didn't even recognize the upper part of the target combinations as a relevant asset. This is a easy fix! Why not make them both assets in the reference the same style? It's way easier to recognize it then as the target combination. At least now, I can play it :) |
| Apr 26 12:10:31 | 1h 26m | Pupper Truckers | ♥ 2 | Yeah pretty cool! Love the graphics and the general game play twist. The music and art was awsome. Very well thought out and implemented. The story sequence in the beginning was cute. Loved the dancing animations when they talked about the music :D I had some issues with the upgrade mechanics though. It was never really clear, what I was doing. I also didn't see, how much scrap I had at the moment. My eyes went over the UI and everything seemed to be some static information and/or tutorial stuff. Pressing "e" did something to the vehicle, but I didnt't understand the consequences. A normal upgrade menu would've been better I guess. You really lost me on the way, so making the mechanics clear to the player is a must. Some improvement on that aspect would be nice. All in all, a nice entry with some flaws in player experience. Keep it up! |
| Apr 26 12:16:01 | 5m 30s | Flippy Fish | ♥ 3 | Ha! What a delight. Simple mechanics but great execution. The art is awesome the background sound as well. The whole japanese styled audiovisuals work great with the sushi themed game play. Best game I played today. The difficulty progression was well implemented and even loosing at some point was fine because of the cute animations. Awesome! |
| Apr 26 13:06:35 | 50m 34s | Sun up | ♥ 1 | Hey there! It is pretty obvious, that the game isn't finished or in a state that it will be fun to play more than a couple of seconds. YET, there is a cool game concept burried. I like the idea and as a prototype, it works fairly well. The art style is interesting and the sun controls nice and responsive. The light and shadow effects help to transport the underlying game play mechanics. Keep it up! I hop you can submit a finished game next time! |
| Apr 26 15:03:45 | 1h 57m | Blood and Snow | ♥ 0 | Hey! Not too shabby. I was surprised how much thought went into the game play mechanics. From the initial impression, it didn't look like too much. The art is pretty rough and reduced but game play wise, it's very lush. I love the ambient soundtrack. Really hits home with the mood of isolation. A little more variation would've been great. Just punching trees and shooting deer will get old after a while. Kudos to the idea to include footsteps. It really helped to find deer and came very naturally. Maybe you can include some kind of experience and/or upgrade system to keep the player invested. Or maybe some random events to shake thinks up? Snow storms oder avalanches. Add more animals to hunt. Maybe even dangerous ones like bears. Man, there is a lot that can be added :) Do you plan to work on it post jam? I had fun with it and will play a little more. Ha, just as I wrote this, I won! So there was a winning condition after all. Thanks for making this! |
| Apr 26 19:25:47 | 4h 22m | Space Mercenary | ♥ 1 | Nice, I always appreciate top-down space games. The theme felt kinda tacked on, but that's fine. I had some issues with the controls. They didn't really feel very intuitive somehow, I can't really explain it well. For example if you're fighting one-on-one against another ship that shoots at you: To not get hit at the same time, you had to fly perpendicular to the enemy ship and then aim at it, which means that you cannot change course anymore because giving thrust would again change your flight direction towards the enemy. Maybe I'm spoiled by twin-stick-shooter controls, but I missed that here :) The old "Astroid" way of making space games doesn't resonate much with me anymore. Side thrusts could make this easier. Basically a way to dodge enemy shots head on while still being able to have your own fire on them. It's playable the way you implemented it, it just feels like more work to me. The music was very soothing and nice. Great tune. All in all, a nice little space shooter with a "save-your-son" instead of a upgrade-system. |
| Apr 26 19:38:49 | 13m 02s | The Flamethrower | ♥ 2 | Wow, did you guys make the art from scratch? The tile maps look gorgeously depressing and bleak. Great choice on color. The Animations of the Characters are awesome too. Especially the fire in the jar. Very well made. The whole production oozes professionality. I'm also suprised how well layed out the maps are. The platforming and the environmental puzzles get harder with each passing screen (but never too hard). Color me impressed. The only thing missing to improve this experience would be some good writing. Some kind of story context. The music fits perfectly to the bleak map design. And the ending is awesome as well. Man, there are so many similarities with our game (ending, carrying and throwing npcs), it's almost creepy :D Goo job guys! |
| Apr 26 19:43:40 | 4m 51s | Basketball memory legends | ♥ 0 | Can't really say much, because the game seems to be in spanish (or a similar sounding language). Since it's very stroy driven, I can't really give an honest rating. I guess you could say it's very bold to publish the game in your mother tongue, but also very risky. A lot of people will and/or can not play it this way. |
| Apr 26 19:49:05 | 5m 25s | Save The Game | ♥ 1 | Very simple premise and game play mechanics, but does it's job! First I didn't know how to get rid of the virus. In the second run, I clicked on it out of curiosity only to see that some kind of hp bar went down. But even after that, it seemed that that is all there is in regards of game play. The game had a hard time to keep me interested more than a minute. The presentation style was a good idea, the art itself was a bit bland though. The music I liked! And it was good that you included sfx. |
| Apr 26 20:01:24 | 12m 19s | Aqua Vitae | ♥ 2 | Cool experience. Really enjoyed myself. It felt very natural to manufacture the device with the help of the journal. The graphics were really cool and I liked the small apartment room as a set piece. Enhanced the mood a lot. The sound effects were very good as well. The story could've been expanded more to make a greater impact, but thats all I can think of as criticism. Great entry, keep it up! |
| Apr 26 21:56:11 | 1h 54m | Genki | ♥ 1 | Okay, seeing that you made this in 7h relativates the amount of content a little :P It's still more than some other entries that used the full time of 72h, so good job on that! The game play is fluid and responsive and runs well on 144fps. The mechanics are very simple and there's no real progression, so dying is the only way to end the game. The theme isn't really addressed in a way it's actually relevant. The art and style seem a little random (shooting smileys and stuff) But still, for just 7h, you did a good job! I still think you could've added a winning condition. After a while, there were so many enemies on screen, my fire rate could not deal with them anymore. That would've been a good time to let the player win :D |
| Apr 26 22:05:59 | 9m 48s | Sleepwalker | ♥ 1 | Took me some try and error to figure out the controls. Afterwards, I was intrigued. Really cool puzzle platfomer with a twist. The art was reduced but effective, if not a little too dark for my taste. A little more contrast would've helper, especially on the main character asset. The sound effects got really obnoxious after a while. I'd settle for something less painful to the ears. Other than that, the controls worked great, there was a lot of mechanical freedom and the level was huge and filled with content. Great stuff! |
| Apr 26 22:32:07 | 26m 08s | Keep It Alive | ♥ 0 | Oh man, that was way more interesting than i thought. It's like a tamagotchi-choose-your-own-adventure-thing. Very well written, absolutely hilarious and cute. The pixel art accompanying the texts was spot an and made it even funnier. The sound effects were a bit loud, so I had to turn down the volume a lot. The sharp sounds of the retro hardware was hurting my brain. I played to sessions to see how different it got even that was refreshing. I really dont't have much in terms of criticism. I fully enjoyed myself. A job well done! |
| Apr 27 08:04:09 | 9h 32m | VITAMAN | ♥ 1 | Solid entry! I didn't encounter any bugs. The art style was coherent and I liked the fleshy look of the tilemaps. Enemy variation was a little thin, but I guess that's what we all had to deal with :) I love how you took your time to implement hit feedback to increase player satisfaction when killing viruses. There's nothing worse in a twin stick shooter than missing hit feedback. The core conept reminded me of "The Binding of Isaac", which I do like a lot. The main issue with your game is the game play speed and the lack of upgrades. The game feels rather slow and each room takes too long to clear. Weapon damage is rather low, so it takes some time to clear all viruses. It isn't even particular difficult, it just takes patience, which will in return lead to boredom rather quickly. When there wasn't really any breaking changes in room 3, I stopped playing, since I felt, I already saw everything the game had to offer. Nice entry non the less! |
| Apr 27 08:27:15 | 23m 06s | Spoon | ♥ 1 | Very simple premise (reminds me of the Chrome dinosaur jumping game) and still a little rough around the edges. Especially the art and animations could use some work to make this feel more immersive and responsive. The obstacles were placed in a way that seem seem to be in the foreground and not acually in the way of the player. I ran head on the first cactus because of that. Afterwards I was all the wiser :) Found it funny btw, how the ostrich's jump power was so high, that he always hit the invisible ceiling :D Game play wise, it got boring rather quick. Some more variations in level design and/or obstacles would've been great! Solid entry non the less |
| Apr 27 09:07:09 | 39m 54s | Until Sunrise | ♥ 2 | Very well done! The graphics are gorgeous and the details on the animations are very impressive. The lighting and shadow effects add a lot to the mood, as well as the soothing soundtrack. The core game play is a bit slow and lacks some variation. Having an upgrade system helps, but If found, that the last two upgrades are kinda pointless if you just stay at the fire after the first two upgrades and defend it from the sprits until the timer runs out. Which brings me to the last point: It takes too long to reach the winning state. The game does not have enough content to keep the player invested that long. At least that's what I felt. After having all upgrades, the timer still was at 12 minutes or so. That's way too long. i think there's room for some re balancing there. OR you add more game play mechanics to keep the player on their toes. Aside from that, this entry is great! Really enjoyed it. Keep up the work! |
| Apr 27 10:30:20 | 1h 23m | The Lightwielder - Ludum Dare 46 | ♥ 2 | Intersting. The art was gorgeous as well as the animations. Very detailed and lush. The tilemap too, artistically, this has a very high production value. good job! Loved the audio as well, especially the music was very atmospheric. Game play wise, I had some issues. It was never really clear, what was happening and why. Shooting seemed to work automatically but the enemeies just spawend endlessy and therefore there was no satisfaction in killing them. The screen was so cluttered that I didn't even see when I beat one. Not that it mattered anyway, since there was an endless army of them. So i just ran around the map like a maniac colleting dear and touching those shrines. Then, I found some kind of boss in the corner, which I couldn't beat. Standing next to him and attacking did nothing to his healthbar, but his attacks killed me in just a few seconds. The projectiles were hard to make out and, again, so many of them that dodging was not an option. So I ran away and died shortly after because my light went out and I already touched all shrines in the proximity. That was my experience with the game. If you can balance out the game play a little and make the combat more transparent and satisfactory, this would become a really awesome entry! The rest already clicked naturally, but game play is king! Keep it up! |
| Apr 27 12:12:53 | 1h 42m | A Walrus Dreams | ♥ 1 | Happy 20 Votes! :) I enjoyed the game. The game play was basic but the graphics, sound and absurdity did elevate it to a fun enjoyment level. Good job on that! I'd say it's a bit frustrating, that you can't actually catch all falling cats since the movement speed is pretty slow. So letting the cats die is a part of the loop (unfortunately) I did mange to beat the game on my first try by just staying in one place, dodging all obsticales and just catching the cats directly above me. Worked like a charm. Strangely, the last level was the easiest. Good job nontheless! |
| Apr 27 12:20:42 | 7m 49s | Hive Alive! | ♥ 1 | Generally, I do like the dithering effect you used... But in you context, it really is a problem. It's very hard to tell, what is going on and a great strain on the eyes. It does not add to your game. Even worse, it subtracts from the enjoyment. The graphics seem to look nice... But it's hard to tell through that pixel pattern :D I therefore wasn't very motivated to learn the game rules and actually play it like you intended. Strategy games like yours are not my cup of tea in the first place. Having to deal with the visuals on top of that was not helping. A tutorial would've been nice. I'm not someone who enjoys reading through a manual before playing a ldjam game. I guess that I'm not alone on that. Hope you can use that feedback. And good luck on your last vote to reach 20 :) Keep it up! |
| Apr 27 12:28:10 | 7m 28s | Turto! Virtual Pet | ♥ 2 | Holy moly, that was a bit much to deal with :D That guy was eating his feces as soon as they hit the ground. I found it really hard to check all the numbers and simultaneously go through the menus and find the right functions. I think the UI needs a good old remodelling to actually work with the needs of the player to keep things going. When you have to fight with the UI, it takes away from the enjoyment from the actual game play. Some better feedback, what tool is currently selected etc would be nice too. Maybe have the item be the mouse cursor or something. It felt kinda strange just clicking the turtle and vaccinating it with an invisible needle. The art was adequate but I really missed some sound effects. Those tamagotchi games really benefit a lot from cute sound effects to help bond with the little critter. Still, I liked the complexity of variables you introduced, but things went to hell too fast. Especially in the beginning, it was hard to juggle everything without knowing, what was doing what. |
| Apr 27 13:58:37 | 1h 30m | Metagame | ♥ 1 | Cool concept, but needs some balancing to really tickle out the potential. Every level seems like a puzzle in of itself but the game will be reset on each failure. That's really frustrating. Why not let the player retry the level? The levels themselves need some work as well. Other than some enemy spawns, everything was the same. So just putting the flag at 6 o' clock helped me beat most of the levels and it took only a couple of seconds. I would be better to show the player the level beforehand, letting him think where to place the flag and then let the level play out and see, if it worked or not. Then it will get a strategic element as well. As it is currently, the player will hove no time to think, since the enemies will just start running and every millisecond counts. The art was adequate and the music was ok, but a tad loud. All in all, a nice entry with a fresh take on the theme. Good job on that front! |
| Apr 27 15:57:04 | 1h 58m | Beacon in the Dark | ♥ 1 | Couldn't really get into the game. Had problems understanding the mechanics. My build defense towers never seemed to be working properly, even after I put them first on the blue energy and then afterwards on the purple engery. They always seemed to reset again and needed new purple energy after they were finished. It seems like the mechanics are too complicated for their own good. It wasn't really fun to micro manage the energy tracks all the time when build a new structure. Felt like work. I'm not too much into the real time strategy genre and I don't like tower defence games too much, so I'd guess that I'm not the main target audience after all. Still it seems like the core mechanics were not intuitive enough. The art was nice though. Sound effects as well. I hope other testers with a higher strategy game affinity had more to say regarding the game play than I did. Keep it up! |
| Apr 27 16:18:26 | 21m 22s | Magic In C | ♥ 1 | Interesting experience. I liked the "interactive" (only by repositioning oneself?) musical composition and that's what you were going for, I guess. No idea how the theme fit though. Calling it a game would stretch the definition , but I still appreciate the entry :) |
| Apr 27 16:28:47 | 10m 21s | Virtual Fish Tank | ♥ 1 | I never understood the fascination with fish in a tank... and the game didn't really teach me otherwise. Game play wise, there wasn't really much variation and I got bored pretty quickly. Watching the fish go from one side to the other trying to eat the pellets didn't really resonate with me. But I guess there is a target audience for this. I'm pretty sure, that I'm not one of them :) The fish animations looked cute though... how they floated about, crashing into the walls of the tank. The tank itself could use some more interesting stuff in it. Most aquariums have cute little pirate stuff and plants all about. I think that would add a lot to this simulation. All in all, A good entry, I think. Just not for me |
| Apr 27 17:35:41 | 1h 06m | Dumbulance | ♥ 3 | Interesting concept and nice clean pixel art. Wasn't a big fan of the actual implementation though. The difficulty was a bit random due to the sinus nature of the ambulance movement and how fast the animals were moving towards the car (at least some of them). In some cases, there was basically no time to react or move out of the way without hitting the car. Couldn't get much enjoyment out of it, I'm afraid. The missing sounds and music didn't help either to sell the concept. The core game play needs some re imagining to be fun, I think. Just dodging an immovable object, that goes up and down in a un-car-like fashion isn't enough to keep the player interested for more than a few seconds. Keep it up! Hope I'll get to see your next game in the next jam :) |
| Apr 27 17:46:12 | 10m 31s | Marx's Graffiti Squad | ♥ 1 | Cool little game. Liked the clean pixel art. Nice color schemes. The missing sound and/or music is a bummer, but time is money. Making a game alone is though, I'm sure. The first level was pretty easy, but from the second one on, the difficulty really takes off. It was very easy to lose, beacause the police was very fast and hard to shake off. If the sprint timing was off by a little, you basically are game over. This could be re balanced a little to allow more ways to get away from the police. Maybe even have an item per level that allows to stop them in their tracks for a short amount of time. It was a bit frustrating, because it could be over so quickly after working hard to spray a lot of walls. Aside from that, the mechnanics worked pretty well. But I didn't like the button placements. W and X as action button were awkward to press together with the cursor keys. All in all, good entry. Keep it up! |
| Apr 27 20:56:29 | 3h 10m | Future of Delivery | ♥ 1 | What a strange concept... :) But it was fun while it lastet. The mouse sensitivity seemed to bug out at very slow movements, had some problems making verly subtile aiming changes. There is little variation in game play though, so after the first 5 or 6 levels, the novelty factor wore off and it got kinda boring. Some different settings or levels would've been nice. Maybe even being able to move positions a little. The throwing mechanic was fun. Hitting people with shopping baskets never gets old. Good job! |
| Apr 28 10:28:45 | 13h 32m | Germ Warfare | ♥ 1 | I like the "The binding of isaac" core game play. Even the maps seem randomized. The controls and game balancing is a bit rough though. So much, that I didn't bother playing a lot since it got frustrating very quickly. I'll give some feedback an possible changes and enhancements at the end of the review. The art looks nice enough, the color scheme fits very well with the theme. Music was cool and pumping as well. Hit feedback on the enemeies was nice as well. The little detail with the stuck needle is awesome. The map layouts could use some variations though. - The physics of the main character were way to floaty for such a difficult game. When i entered a room, the guy slides halfway through the room, hitting 3 - 4 enemies on the way. That's a no-go. I don't know if it's because I'm running on 144fps, but the controls were VERY sensitive. Subtle movements were almost impossible. Also, changing direction killed all momentum of the character, which felt very off and unpredictable. - Shooting speed and/or damage need some rebalancing. It took way to long to clear a room of all viruses. It ends up feeling more like work than fun. - There often were TOO many enemies per room. They often float about randomly and you basically have no change to avoid damage when they gang up on you. The characters hitbox was a little in-transparent too. The missing damage feedback on the player did not help in that regard either. - I did not play far, but it seemed like there were no upgrades and/or player character progression. Depending on the length of the game, this should be included to keep the player invested. In conclusion, I really wanted to love your game. Twin stick rouge-likes are one of my favorite genres. That's why I want this to be better :) Keep it up! |
| Apr 28 10:42:18 | 13m 33s | Birdie Burglars | ♥ 1 | Wow, great entry! From beginning to finish a very polished expoerience. Awesome and cute art, a lot of sound effects and even different musical tracks for the levels. There's really not much to criticize here. The core game play was rather simple but worked very well. And it was very satisfying to shoot the burglars with cats. I also didn't encounter any bugs on my playthrough. Kudos! What an entry! |
| Apr 28 10:55:39 | 13m 21s | Dragon Egg | ♥ 1 | Nice concept with really cute art and animations. The music and sound effects fit very well. Good job on that front! The controls were tight and worked good. Only when you push the egg against the wall, there seems to be no way to get it out again. Unfortunately, I ran into a lot of bugs regarding level restart and progression. So much so, that I gave up after the third try. The game freezes, when you lose and/or you progress. I think you are already aware of this issue, so I don't need to go into much detail on this. It is very unnerving though, especially on failure. Still, a nice little puzzle platformer with good production value all around. |
| Apr 28 11:03:34 | 7m 55s | Blobbysitter | ♥ 2 | Oh man, this needs some re balancing... :D This guy just sprints towards the oven on the first frame of his live. Even if I pick him up and put him somewhere else, he just storms right back. Seems to be that the ai just can't take it anymore and want to end the game as fast as possible. The rest of the meters deplete SO fast, that there is no time to do anything. I managed to spray him once while he ran towards certain death. I have no idea how this is supposed to be played. But a little leeway would be nice. If I pick him up, he dies from all three meters at the same time after a couple of seconds. That doesn't seem fair to me! I love the whole backstory and the absurdity of the situation and would've loved to play this a while but in the state, it is in now, I can't really. Way to frustrating and stressful. Still, good job on the character design, the level structure and all assets in general. Looks really nice. |
| Apr 28 11:21:43 | 18m 09s | Catch the Worm | ♥ 2 | Cool and fresh concept. I really enjoyed it. The graphical assets were a bit rough, but that's excusable. I still worked out pretty well. The flying was fun and colleting worms and feeding your children fit the theme very well. The music was very chill-out and hat a nice catchy tune. The only issue I have is the missing game play variation. The first minute of the game the same as the last, so I quit after having like 11 or 12 little bird babies. Collecting worms didn't work anymore at some point but I had enough to keep going for another couple of minutes. The fighting against the other birds was a nice touch, but seemed a bit pointless. There were enough worms for everybody :) In conclusion, I really like your entry. Fun little bird simulator with some issues on long term motivation :) |
| Apr 28 11:41:11 | 19m 28s | Friendly Fire | ♥ 2 | Hey fellow "Friendly Fire" game creators ;) I liked the concept and was intrigued in the beginning. Searching for flame fuel and feeding the fire. I liked how the growing fire had an actual impact on the world. Great love for details! The main problem was, that the game got tedious rather quickly. The distances you have to run to get items increases with each iteration and the walking speed gets really slow if you pick stuff up. It was very frustrating near the end. I had the at over 200 when I had enough. I think the game would benefit from a more compact level and/or better means to get around more quickly. The UI was a bit strange with the bubbles appearing the actual level. That often lead to clipping issues. But aside from that, the art was rough but adequate. All things considered, I did have fun for the time I played. It just over stood it's welcome a little. An upgrade system to travel further and quicker would be awesome! |
| Apr 28 19:44:38 | 8h 03m | Feed The Fire | ♥ 2 | I appreciate the silly humor, and it did kinda work out, but I found the game play a little unbalanced. There was a huge issue with cutting trees and how fast the fire went out again. It seemed like it took forever to get wood from a tree, especially the bug ones. The fire went completely out in the time i finished one tree. Since the fire was so sensitive, I didn't really venture far from it to not let it die out. I guess that there's more content hidden around the map, but i never felt incentivised to go looking due to the fire dying out in a few moments. Maybe give the player a little more leeway to explore without punishing him so quickly. The controls worked in general, but I didn't like that I had to manually scroll through the inventory to pick up items in free spaces. That's something that can improve the user experience heavily. The art was good in a silly way (of course ;)) and the soundtrack fit that theme very nicely. Good job on that. All in all, the game was all over the place, but I think, with a little tweaking, can be made into a rather fun experience. Keep it up! |
| Apr 28 21:01:33 | 1h 16m | Guns N' Violets | ♥ 1 | I'm a little split on this one. It's really fun on the surfuce, reminds me a lot of "into the gungeon". The shooting is satisfying, the movement is repsonsive and the aiming controls and mechanics work well. The art is alright, but some of the pixel art seem to not fit quite into your pixel raster resolution. What I didnt't like was the difficulty and the design choice to make your character only able to kill, but not to defend. Especially because of those shooting enemies, that will automatically deal 3(!) damage, when not killed immediately. Sometimes they spawn in packs and it's almost impossible to get all of them before one starts it's projectiles. I'd really appreciate some mechanic to deflect shots. Or at least sacrifice your own health to avoid damage to the plant. It got really frustrating because of that. I still made a couple of runs trying to figure out, if there was a way to prevent this issue with game play alone. But not before long, the same thing happened again. Nonetheless, great entry! Good to play a good old pc-twin-stick-shooter again. Disregarding that I've seen the same theme interpretation like a gazillion times already :) Ours isn't that innovative either. |
| Apr 30 11:13:35 | 38h 12m | Unnamed Balloon Game: Video Game Edition | ♥ 1 | I had fun with it :) The physics were implemented well and trying to somehow find a way to optimize the score by doing as least as possible kept it fund for a little while longer. The voice overs were a nice touch to add to the absurd conecept. The art was polished and fit very well with the rest of the game. All in all, a rather short lived, but fun little skill based "keep the ball up" game. |
| Apr 30 11:22:57 | 9m 22s | The Land of The Consumed | ♥ 1 | Really good! I had a fun time. Fresh concept, at least I haven't played something like this in this jam before. Liked the automatically generated labyrinths and the fighting system was supringsily satisfying. I exclusively used the spear because I found it to be more fun than the sword. The art a little flakey. The sprites and animations looked really good, but the levels themselves were a bit bland. But I guess that comes down to the random nature of it. The music was a nice addiation and the sound effects worked. Though, they don't sound as polished and high quality as the asset art. The only issue I have is with the game play balance. It seemed that my character was invincible. I could just pick up the water container and just run through all enemies until I found the target patch. My first impression was, that the enemies were a little too aggressive and many in numbers, but after I found out they all die after one hit and don't really do any damage, that thought was thrown out the window. Nice touch to have a different tile map on the later stages, but since the core mechanics didn't really change, I lost interest upon finishing the first level of world 2. Still,a very pleasent experience. The fighting was my highlight :) Spears ftw! |
| Apr 30 11:28:57 | 6m 00s | LD 46 - Guinea Pug | ♥ 2 | Very cool. The graphics look very polished and the core game play works really well. The collision detection and jumping mechanics feel good. It's great that you added challenges to your randomly generated levels, as well as special fields and collectible items. The random element of your game was the one thing, that frustrated me the most, though. Often times, some jumps were annoying due to arrows pointing in the wrong direction, making progress very difficult or even impossible. So even if I had no problem navigating the levels when everything fit, once one of those arrows appeared, I was done for. Still, very fun skill based runner with a lot of details and stuff to to. Great job! |
| Apr 30 11:36:48 | 7m 51s | Get the Barky Started | ♥ 2 | That was fun :) Didn't really know what to expect, but you did a great job explaining the game to the player. The mechanics were simple but effective. Also, the length of the game was perfect. Didn't overstay it's welcome. The art was a bit all over the place, but that's alright. The whole concept in of itself was pretty absurd but fun. I like when game concepts don't take themselves too seriously. There wasn't much challenge though, could beat it in the first try without any real problems. The dog was fast enough to basically keep everyone happy without much waiting time. Still, great little micro management game :) Bark! |
| Apr 30 11:45:42 | 8m 54s | Saving Emperor's Chick | ♥ 1 | The art of the assets seemed very well drawn and high quality. The rest of the game mechanics were very rough and not really clear to the player. I had to find out the mechanics by sheer try and error after which the game was so easy, since there was no challenge left. It's pretty obvious that this is still more of a rough prototype than an actual "finished" product, so there isn't really much to say than: Keep it up and I hope you can publish a more round and polished experience the next time :) Always think about player involvement. Never stop to question, if the currently implemented mechanics are actually fun for players. Just moving a pointer from left to right in the correct height is usually not that involving and/or fun. Even great art cannot hide that fact. Keep it up! |
| Apr 30 15:28:45 | 3h 43m | Revenge of the Woods | ♥ 3 | I looks kinda cool and the rolling physics seem like a good game concept at heart, but especially the controls and how the physics behave are really rough. So much so, that I stopped playing after a few attempts to make some progress. Like I said, the art looks pretty polished, especially the ground looks great. Has some Sonic vibes :) The music was very loud, so I had to turn that down a lot. My main issue lies withing the core game play. First of all, it was very slow. Rolling feels very unrewarding. Even if you gain some momentum due to a slope, if you stop pressing "S" and press "A" again, the inertia is killed and the velocity is back to the slow standard rolling speed. Very frustrating. Then I tried to just keep pressing "S" as long as possible, only to find out, that pressing SPACE does not seem to work in that state, so I just rolled directly into the enemies. I think that the controls need to be way more intuitive and fun to carry a game with such a concept. The physics have to be on point and comprehensible or the player will just be frustrated. All in all, cool concept and art. Love the idea behind it, but execution wise, there's still some sanding needed to get rid of the rough edges. Keep it up! |
| Apr 30 20:07:32 | 4h 38m | 9Lives | ♥ 2 | Really cool, unique concept and well executed. I loved how you maintained the theme in terms of graphics and items and such. The graphics were cool as well. I also liked the soundtrack and appreciated the sound effects you put in. Helped a lot to create the general mood. The items and their powers complement each other very well. It really shows how much thought you put into the game design. Great job! I had some problems in the third level to get the cat jumps lined up correctly. I thought I was standing right behind the cat but then it jumped at an angle and always fell to it's death. That was a but frustrating, especially because you have to tediously get it back to the spot again, only to fluke the jump... again. All in all, well thought out game with cool unique mechanics. Awesome! |
| Apr 30 20:14:54 | 7m 22s | Taberu Bakemono | ♥ 2 | Could elaborate how to play the game? I tried all sort of things, but I couldn't build anything. The water instantly killed me. After clicking the ladder or the box, a circle appeared around me, but I couldn't place the items anywhere. I guess I'm doing something wrong, but I have no idea what. The art looks cool and I love the traditional japanese score. The art would look better, if the pixel resolutions would fit perfectly though. It looks very stretchy like it is now. I'll wait for a possible answer, before I finish the rating. |
| May 1 10:53:30 | 14h 38m | Dying Flame | ♥ 2 | Not too shabby! The art and mood (thanks to the lighting) was very good. The size of the dungeon was also well chosen. The fighting animation looked a little silly, but that's something that can be easily improved. The little touch with the floor switch riddle was a great call. The fighting mechanics were very rough, though. Didn't really add much to the fun of the game. It was just button mashing until the enemy disappears. No strategy, skill involved and hence no satisfaction. But it was good that you didn't make it too difficult, would've gotten very frustrating otherwise. Made it through in the first try :) Cool cutscenes by the way. It's rare to see those in jam entries. Keep it up! |
| May 1 11:58:14 | 1h 04m | Keep it afloat! | ♥ 3 | Well done! Great entry. I really had a fun expierence with it. The core mechanics were interesting worked very intuitively. The music was awesome and fit the theme very well. The art was nice as well and I liked the whole "cut-out" look. The only thinks I didn't like were the very slow nature of the game and some ui decisions. Since you have to wait two after you made the inputs makes everything a little "laggy" and slow. This might be hard to fix since I guess that it was a deliberate design choice. Maybe when progressing, you could increase the bpm to make things faster and more challenging? The second thing I would improve would be the placement of the beat indicator. It was very small and at the top of the ui, so my eyes were usually up there and only occasionally wandering down to what was actually happening. Maybe it would be possible to include the beat indicator in a way, that it can be seen subtly from everywhere (for example in the background over the full screen) That way, the player doesn't have to concentrate on the tiny ui element. Other than that, very good, rounded and polished entry. Fantastic job! |
| May 2 11:58:45 | 24h 00m | Icy Mountain Hot Potato | ♥ 2 | That was awesome! Very cool game play idea and the execution was also very polished. The controls felt intuitive and response and the bouncing mechanic was very satisfying. Good job on making it that predictable how the ball will fly after jumping against it. The art was very basic but worked in the context of game play. Some goes for the sound effects. Very bare bones but with a stark emphasis on retro gaming charm. I guess that was, what you were going for :) Also, considering, this was a one-person-job, the decision maybe even made itself. Still, it looks and sounds very polished for what it's presenting itself as. The random generation of the map made progression rather difficult at times, though. I had troubles to get on higher ground with some of the platform constellations. Either because I couldn't jump on the next highest platform, because the jumping height did not reach, or it was very hard to make a detour and keep the ball live without destroying all the upper platforms on the way. One could say, that this is the actual challenge of the game and it felt very rewarding to get through a difficult part with a well placed ball bounce. I'd agree on some of the other reviewers, that the screen looping mechanic wasn't all that transparent. And even after knowing, it was there, it was still hard to use it to my advantage. Also, it was very easy to lose due to one jumping mistake or a misplaced bounce. Some kind of one-time-use skill or something would've been cool to have at ones disposal to clear a very difficult part or save the ball from falling once. Maybe even have collectible power ups on the way. Since this seems like a infinite climb, it's always a good idea to give the player some kind of motivation to play further. All in all, still a very very good and polished little skill based juggle platformer. Great job! |
| May 2 12:46:43 | 47m 58s | FlameOver | ♥ 1 | Rather simple, but fun while it lasted. The game was really elevated by the art and great sound design. Loved the atmospheric sounds of the rain and wind. Great job! The core game play itself was already fully explored after 10 seconds or so, therefore it would be a good idea to vary the events a little to keep the player on his toes. Other than that, already a very good and polished experience. Great sound and art to round things up. |
| May 2 17:29:17 | 4h 42m | Scrambl'd | ♥ 2 | Really blows my mind that this is actual game boy software. Awesome! The aesthetic is really nice and polished and the tune is very catchy. Too bad there's no sound. The game play itself was interesting as well, though, it was hard to see at which height the egg would break or if there was damage building up even from the short drops. Sound would've helped in that regard. Or some visual changes to the sprite itself. Still, awesome entry and very interesting from the development side of things. |
| May 2 17:43:54 | 14m 37s | Companion | ♥ 1 | I liked the core concept and the art looked very nice and fitting :) I'm always in for a zelda-like action adventure. I couldn't really enjoy it for long though, since I think the game ran too fast on my 144hz monitor. The characters basically flew at high speed and reacting to the enemies in time was almost impossible. Maybe you can look into that and make the movement framerate independent? (at least if that IS what the issue is) Other than that, I only have a little nitpick: The key-label in UI was not in a nice looking pixel font. It's always a shame to see anti-aliased fonts in otherwise great looking pixel art. Keep it up! |
| May 3 09:31:04 | 15h 47m | Cytokine Storm | ♥ 2 | Wow, well done! Great game play mechanics. felt really fresh and innovative. I'm not usually someone who is gripped by a round based strategy game, espcially not in the jam context, but I played yours quite a bit. Loved the simple and intuitive nature of the controls. The art was nice and fit very well with the sound effects. The upgrade shop was a nice addition. The only thing I would have to criticize is the balancing of progression and difficulty. For all the levels I played, I was the only one who destroyed the cells by shooting at them :D the viruses were pretty timid the whole time, wandering around and doing their thing. Since all my little troops were shooting simultaneously, some of the cells had to be sacrificed to win, which seemed to work nicely. It just seemed that the random nature of the avialable actions and the rather toothless nature of viruses killed the challenge a little. That's all! Great entry. Had fun with it :) |
| May 3 10:32:23 | 1h 01m | You Reap What You Shoot | ♥ 2 | Rather cool. Way too easy though. Even without any upgrades, it there was almost no game play challenge. The enemies were pretty toothless and could be taken care off with a few well placed shots. Just going around the labyrinth and collecting the bio full got old pretty quickly as well. Played 6 or 7 stages or so until I quit. Felt like it overstayed it's welcome after a while. Other than that, the game play loop itself worked pretty well. The upgrade store was a good idea and would, in theory, help with player motivation. In this particular case, I didn't make much difference though. The upgrades didn't really seem to change that much. The level generation seemd to work quite well as well. There were some holes in the walls here and there and one time, I was put in a square space with the car blocking the only exit (I could weasly my way through though), but still, pretty impressive. The controls worked nicely and good call on supporting gamepads. The running pyhsics seemed a little off and strange though. I like it better when such games have tight arcade physics intead of more "realisitic" physics like a GTA 4 for exmaple. The 3d assets looked cool as well. Kudos to the amount of details you put in. All in all, very impressive entry for a one-man-show. Keep it up! |
| May 3 10:44:50 | 12m 27s | Keep it Lit! | ♥ 1 | Not too shabby! I had to check twice to see, if I hadn't played this already :D There were a couple of other entries I played already, that had the exact same premise and/or game play mechanics. The pixel art looks very coherent and polished. The player animations as well, good job on that! The sound effects you used are also very well mixed and sound great. The core game play mechanics explain themselves rather intuitively, which is always a good sign. The collecting and throwing was kinda satisfying, so that's also a job well done :) loved the sound effects different items made when thrown in the fire. Also, I find it rather dangerous to throw plastic, rubber and even used batteries into an open flame :D I thought I had it all figured out and then the game over screen suddenly appeared around the 1 minute mark. The fire was going fine and I went out to collect more stuff and then, bam: game over (the fire went out). No idea how I was supposed to prevent that from happening. If the fire dying rate increases to that extent in the last quarter of the game, it seems kinda rushed and unfair to the player. Sill, nice entry. I enjoyed it while it lasted :) |
| May 3 10:49:41 | 4m 51s | Unsplashed | ♥ 1 | played a couple of rounds and it seemed to work pretty well. It was not always clear how far the cut or the star would go when making waves, so a little try and error were needed (at least for me) Since there seemed to be no punishment for just spamming waves, the levels were pretty easy to beat. The art was very nice, loved the isometric voxel look. This game could definitely use some sound and music :) Would help a lot to increase the enjoyment. Nice entry all in all. Good job! |
| May 3 11:11:16 | 21m 35s | Guardy_Bird | ♥ 2 | Great game! There was a lot of details and little mechanics to explore. The art was nice and fit the theme you wanted to present very well. Of course, it was kinda depressing but with a little glimpse of hope at least :) The controls worked great and due to the automatic nature of the item drops, everything felt very responsive. The sound cues were also spot on, very well designed. The only thing I had problem with, was how you picked up the ornages. I saw the "arrow down" symbol, but I guessed that "S" would be fine as well, since the game can be controlled with both directional keys as well as WASD. But in this special case, only the actual down key worked. I almost lost the game due to that. The birds were already crying in hunger pain until I used the directional key out of sheer desperation and it worked. Great job nontheless :) |
| May 3 11:18:40 | 7m 24s | Shelter the Flame | ♥ 1 | The core idea is nice and the implementation of it works to an extent, even though the mechanics are rather simple and won't keep the players attention for too long, I guess. But it's something that can be built upon. The art is very rough and simple as well, but kinda cute. It's good that you have at least two game play components in there. Just going around bashing space to kindle the flames would be too little. The sound effects were good and helped to convey the mood. Some in-game explanation regarding the controls would've been nice though. I usually don't check the descriptions beforehand and just dive in like I would with any other game, but couldn't play it because I had no idea what was happening. After reading the "manual", it was clearer ;) Nice entry nontheless, but still rather rough around the edges. It had a hard time keeping me invested for more than 30 seconds. Keep it up! |
| May 3 11:35:45 | 17m 05s | Shapes | ♥ 1 | Interesting. Keep me invested for a few tries until I had trouble with the boss which frustrated me a little. But let's not get ahead of ourselves :) The art was very nice, great use of shapes and contrasts. Also loved the architecture of the pillars etc. Great stuff. The background track was mesmerizing and added a lot to the general mood of the game. Very poetic. The same goes for the whole presentation, including the text passages etc. Very rounded and polished. The throwing and teleportation concept worked ok, I guess, but there's room for improvement. It got very stressful getting up some of the pillars where you needed two to three throw/teleportation combos. The gravitational pull on the ball was kinda off. Didn't feel like actual gravity but more like it was sentient and pulling itself down all of a sudden. I like slingshooting mechanics like you implemented them, but there was the issue with screen limits. It also kinda felt a little too fast for my taste. Basically everything. Maybe that's due to my monitor running at 144hz. Already played some games, that didn't have frame rate independent physics and the games were almost unplayable on my setup. Maybe this is the case here too. That brings me to the boss design. I guess it was a boss? I wasn't able to beat him because it was just too hectic and fast and death came very quickly. I had two goes at him, but there didn't seem to be a health bar or something to indicate my progress so I stopped. I didn't even know if tackling him with the ball was the right thing to do or not. He had a crumbling animation when hit, so I guess that it was correct after all. Just didn't know how much more abuse he would take. As I said, death came abruptly and even though I really tried to keep the guy moving and teleporting to reset the time bars on him. Still, a great entry with a fresh game play concept. Good work! |
| May 3 18:18:41 | 6h 42m | WHALE HOUSE | ♥ 1 | Awesome! The game play feels very polished and high quality. The controls are tight and mouse aiming works like a charm. The art looks great and the animations feel weighty and responsive. Damage feedback is on point and killing blood crabs is very satisfying. The upgrade system is a nice addition to keep the player invested. Jumping and jetpacking also works very well. You did an awesome job an all technical aspects, in my opionion. The balancing and wave progression has some (almost expected) balancing issues. The first wave was somehow the hardest with the weak laser and the sheer amount of enemies you had to juggle. With the first damage upgrade, thinks got a lot easier. Even the blue crabs didn't matter much. With each wave and an additional damage upgrade, the game almost played itself :) just go from cell to cell and kill all crabs. Rinse and repeat. Would be cool to have more and different enemies. Maybe some, that can even attack the player. Or changing level layouts would be nice. I got rather boring from Wave 6 and on, since nothing really changed and I've already seen everything game play wise. I guess that's all due to the time limit of the jam itself. Considering this is a one-man-show, it's pretty awesome to see what you could deliver. All in all, VERY good entry. More people need to play this. Make sure to play, rate and comment on more games to get more exposure. It's going to be grind already being so far into the rating phase, but you gotta pull through. Good luck! |
| May 3 18:27:32 | 8m 51s | Keeper of the Flame | ♥ 1 | Very very good. Tight controls, great platforming physics, awesome art and fitting sound effects and music to boot. Very polished all around. Great entry! The mechanics were fleshed out and the level progression very well designed to teach the player each and every new addition. Very impressive. The only thing that I would criticize is the difficulty. Failing is very easy and being reset to the start can be frustrating when being thrown in an unknown situation and dying. The levels aren't all that long but often include waiting and standing around which makes replaying the levels very tedious. Maybe adding checkpoints would help in some of the levels to reduce possible player frustration. But thats really a minor issue and easily fixed with a little more time invested in level balancing and play testing. All in all, very impressive entry. Especially considering you made this alone. |
| May 4 13:54:04 | 19h 26m | Cyto Killer: Save Our Cells! | ♥ 1 | That was a little much for me :) Real time strategy is not my cup of tea, even though this was more like a lightweight puzzle Tower defense game. I still had a lot of problems really understanding how to approach this. Everything happened really really fast, I couldn't actually think about how to place the units because the enemies eat up the cells in a VERY short time. So I just spammed the units where ever and hoped for the best. Once placed there wasn't really anything I could do so I just sat back and prayed that I would win. Some more involvement would've been nice. The art was cool and the soundeffects were mixed very well. Audiovisuals were top notch! The game itself seemed to work fine as well. I didn't encounter any obvious bugs. The amount of different scenarios/levels was also great (even though I could only beat level 1) All in all, not my cup of tea, but still a fairly enjoyable experience :) keep it up! |
| May 4 14:05:36 | 11m 32s | Keep it Olive! | ♥ 1 | Woah, that was pure stress :D why do these robots hate olive trees? The game play was self explanatory and I was able to find out the controls by myself in a couple of seconds. The aim was clear as well. It was still very stressful to keep the trees alive. Especially since there seems no way to win and the robots just keep coming. Shooting worked well, but the trees were in the way the most of the time so the player had to get really close to scare them away. I was able to get 239 points. No idea if that's good or not :) The art was nice. Love the Low poly look. The music also fit fairly well. Nice tune. The controls ware very tight and I had no problems navigating the orchid. Good job on that. All in all, a nice little arcade shooter. Maybe a little too frustrating without a winning state :) I really get stressed out when there's no way to win |
| May 4 14:12:17 | 6m 41s | Wayward | ♥ 4 | I liked this :) It was a awesome how you tracked the player and showed the whole map in the end. I was really intrigued to explore more of the map after that. Fresh idea and well implemented. The art and sound fit very well with the mood you achieved. The music was mesmerizing and the texts were fun to read. Very nice experience :) Thank you! |
| May 4 17:16:44 | 3h 04m | Keep It Alive Game | ♥ 1 | Not much game play substance but it got a beginning, some element of progression and an end, so that's that :) That's quite neat for a compo I'd say. The presentation was pretty rough but the controls worked quite well and I liked the stages of the monster and how it became more powerful in time. It didn't seem like the enemies were doing anything though. Also, I couldn't quite find a connection to the theme. Music would've been nice, but I guess the time spent was better used on game play implementation. The core loop wasn't really a fun experience since the whole game more less felt like a rough prototype of a game. Hope you can deliver a more rounded and polished experience next time. Cheers! |
| May 4 17:30:59 | 14m 15s | Space Station Alpha | ♥ 1 | I kinda liked this, but it was really hard for me to get into. The graphics were neat and really well made and the sound effects fit perfectly. Really cool retro vibe. The game play and it's controls were very complicated though and didn't feel very user friendly and easily digested. A lot of keys do something and sometimes even have multiple actions assigned to themselves and it was very hard to really understand what did what and why. Shooting didn't really do anything other than turning a "1" to a "0" in the user interface. I didn't see a projectile or did it kill the enemy that was standing right in front of me. It felt very frustrating pressing buttons, hearing a sound and then not knowing what effect it had on the game or the player. I wasn't able to have fun with the game in response. I tried two runs and both ended in frustration, even though I really wanted this to be fun :) Maybe this is how this is supposed to feel? I haven't really played a lot of those old dungeon crawlers. That's at least what this reminds me of a bit. Bit a bit too cryptic for my taste. Nice looking and sounding entry though. I hope other people can have more fun with it than I could |
| May 5 10:16:52 | 16h 45m | Meteorite Pig | ♥ 0 | Nice Compo! The mechanics were simple but interesting enough to keep me hooked until I ran out of lifes. The art was good enough, even though the platform seemed filtered, while the rest was pixelated. The soundtrack was surprisingly dramatic :) Some of the stone spawns were a bit unfair, though. Seemed liked they didn't spawn off screen but in the stage. They often hit my pig or the platform while spawning. Lost half of my life due to this spawning behavior. Some of the stones were just rotating in place, but that's just nitpicking :) Good job! |
| May 5 16:17:18 | 6h 00m | Medically Inaccurate | ♥ 1 | Really nice! A good old twin stick shooter with satisfying mechanics :) I really enjoyed this one. The aiming and shooting was spot on and was a lot of fun. Especially wit all those squishy sounds effects. The mechanic with the medic drops on the heart was also a nice touch and fit the theme of course. The graphics were ok, even though I wasn't the biggest fan of the general color scheme. Seemed a little uninspired and lacked some art direction. The soundtrack was a nice choice. Only the walking controls seemed a bit laggy, at least in the browser version i played. When I stopped pressing WASD after running for a bit, the character went further for half a second and then stopped. The rest of the controls felt very tight, so it wasn't a general laggyness. Maybe something with inertia? Felt off nontheless. All in all, enjoyable experience :) screenshot.jpg |
| May 5 20:49:44 | 4h 32m | Keep It Charged | ♥ 1 | The graphics look awesome and the whole presentation is very professional (starting with an actual installer for the windows build) The core puzzle game play is nothing new but fits the theme. I'm not a huge fan of such puzzle games but I won't say no if they can keep me interested. Though, your implementation had me frustrated pretty quickly. I played the original version, so I'd guess that you addressed some (if not all) of the issues already. But I will still point them out, because they are pretty critical. - The menus feel very unresponsive. Clicks take a pretty long time until something happens. It just feels kinda off and irritating. - I had some problems with the WASD controls and the 45° rotated perspective. I never really new intuitively, which key would do which movement (That's a general issue I have with all games with such a perspective) - The same responsiveness problem is also present on the actual game play controls. I lost my first game without the robot doing anything because I was moving against the wall. I lost a move but on screen, nothing happened. - The worst thing of all though, is that you throw the player back into the main menu after one failure. After failing the second level the second time, I had enough. The menus were so slow and going through the first level again was not an option, so I stopped. Getting the menus and the controls as responsive as possible (even if it means getting rid of fancy transitions) is an absolute must. If I feel, that my time is wasted (on purpose or not), I will stop playing. This applies especially for a Ludum Dare game, where players will not invest much time to begin with. If those flaws were not present, this would've been a really awesome experience. Hope you fixed some of it with the post jam version :) Cheers! |
| May 5 21:28:15 | 38m 31s | Living Light | ♥ 1 | That was a surprising amount of fun! I love little skill based games like these. The presentation with the light and shadows was pretty call and added to the mood and difficulty. The enemy behavior was well balanced and usually not that unfair. Even though I'd have to confirm some of the other reviewers, that the character hitbox was a little too big for some of the level architecture. In some cases, there was basically no way to survive, when the round enemies bounce around in an unlucky fashion and you have a triangle behind you. The soundtrack was subtle, but still a catchy, moody tune. The art was fairly good, nothing special and had some blurry edges when scaled up. The highscore system was a good idea to keep the motivation up. Was able to climb to second place with 409 points. Great game, all things consideres. Nothing new or innovative, but good production value and fun game play loop. Keep it up! |
| May 6 17:10:10 | 19h 41m | Tepkluth and the scared one | ♥ 2 | Really interesting. The mood is kinda magical and eerie and the background music is absolutely awesome. I loved the transition between the two levels as well. It felt like it was cut perfectly to the music (maybe that was just by chance, but I'd still appreciate it nonetheless) The game looked very nice as well, especially the entity in the second phase, the one above the main character. The other enemies and the main char were animated nicely and the running an jumping looked very natural. Good job on that! The controls were kinda strange in the beginning, but then I saw the energy bar n the top left. It explained why sometimes, the traps weren't triggered. The game play itself was a little slow and not that involving. Would've been awesome, if the game play mechanics were as awesome as the atmosphere, music and art. Though, I still enjoyed the first play through. It seemed to loop back to the start of the game. Dunno if this is in purpose or not. Since it looked and played identically, I stopped after reaching the second phase again. A job well done :) Could use some more punch in regards of actual game play but the rest is already pretty awesome. Keep it up! |
| May 7 21:20:40 | 28h 10m | iNanny | ♥ 1 | First of all good job on providing some kind of context or backstory to the game play. Always a nice touch to be not thrown into game play the second the game launches :) the humor of it all was nice as well and the absurdity of the premise hooked me. The art looks fine, but a little mixed in quality. Like it's taken from incoherent asset packs and/or made by different artist without proper art direction (which is fine though, seeing that you made this alone). The soundtrack is a good pick that fits the mood perfectly. The whole industrial revolution meets robotic future with killer lasers is well thought out :) The game play was a little confusing at the beginning. I tried to block the laser with my body, but it kinda just flew right past me, after which I thought that this wasn't a valid strategy. After 5 or 6 more failures, I blocked one shot by accident and recognized my misconception then. The blocking worked fine after that. I didn't really get the deal with the switches/traps and arrow floors, but I guess they're just there to be a hindrance for you to be able to properly block the lasers. After I came into a situation that wasn't solvable, I got a little frustrated. Having some RNG decide if you can win or not is not my favorite game design decision, to be honest. All in all, still a pleasent experience. The game runs fine, controls are responsive and there didn't seem to be any major bugs :) Good job all in all |
| May 7 21:35:46 | 15m 06s | The Weeny's Quest | ♥ 4 | Fresh idea! I already played some games that had a similar premise but not to such an extend. The graphics and music were nice, no problems on that front! The game play loop itself was a little slow and could get frustrating fast when you spent minutes over minutes watching that little guy make it's way and a little error sends you back to the main menu. I guess that the general walking speed could be increased or there could be an option to fast forward. Most of the game play was just waiting around. The controls were generally fine, but there were some issues with the WASD camera movement. Diagonal scrolling did not work and some levels scrolled faster than others, which was a little tricky to control and felt quite off. Other than that, I liked some of the game design choices you implemented. The foreshadowing of the movement of each of the characters was a great help to deal with the choices. Kinda hat a pac man vibe going. I did play the first few levels but got bored at the third halfway through due to the slow and passive nature of the game. The pacing should be improved before all else. Keep the player engaged with more than just clicking some tiles every few seconds. Since the main guy had a predetermined path through the levels (at least it felt like it) it didn't feel like I had that much agenda and/or freedom. A little more involvement would go a long way! Still, a good game in it's core :) Just needs some polish and more game play mechanics. Keep it up! |
| May 7 21:47:11 | 11m 25s | MiniDrone | ♥ 1 | Really cool, awesome compo entry! The graphics are gorgeous and complement the game play very well. It's a nice touch to have everything randomized to give each try a twist (even if it's just a little one) The core game play was interesting at first glance but had some major balancing problems. The main issue was the battery. Some of the metor drops just straight out killed my battery when I ran over it. I couldn't wrap my head around why I was always dying the instant I started to harvest some points. The game really just disencouraged me from actually playing it and getting some points for upgrades :D And depending on how far the energy towers were apart from each other and/or away from the good resource spots, it felt like a hassle to go back and forth for some measly points. The game still looks and feels really promising and with a little work, this can be a really enjoyable experience. Like I said, still a great entry, especially considering this a compo. Keep it up! |
| May 8 10:49:01 | 13h 01m | Medic! | ♥ 0 | The general idea is cool and I've seen quite some other games already that went this route to interpret the theme. I still liked that you actually are not just a passive observer but an actual character that even takes damage and can die, leaving the soldier to his own devices, The core game play mechanics did work, but really need some improvements in terms of fun. It was quite intuitive to switch the items around and activate them with the space key. I would've rather liked that each power had a specific button (1-5 :P) which would activate the respective power directly (if in reach, of course). Also, the game would benefit a lot form a better ai. The immersion really suffered from the soldier just running from left to right, getting shot in the back. I know of course that this is obviously due to the time restraint of the jam, but maybe you can implement a more dynamic and involving soldier ai in a post jam version. Maybe even include things like an actual battlefield map in which you can progress and have an actual win state etc. The art is rough but works in this context. Some music and sound would of course improve the experience as well :) all in all, cool concept but needs some work to be fun for more than a couple of moments. Keep it up and good luck on the post jam version |
| May 8 19:28:23 | 8h 39m | Light of hope | ♥ 2 | A very moody piece. The highlight really was the sound design. The ambient soundtrack was great. In the first run, I was a little lost on what I had to do. I found one light stone and failed due to the dragon bar filling up. I didn't even find the dragon the first time around. After reading the instructions, things got a little clearer. Would've been great if all necessary information on how to play the game would've been provided by the game itself (maybe some kind of intro or expositional dialogue) The group of humans was a nice touch, but they felt so lifeless :D Hard to feel empathy or a connection with a lifeless sprite asset. The map wasn't too bug, which is a good thing. I still think that there should've been some kind of (audio)visual aid on to where to find the quest and survival items. Just wandering around the map wasn't that much fun after the first two minutes. Felt more like tedious busy work. I almost gave up when I saw, that the last pillar was by the dragon. Was able to beat the second try :) The art was ok, but really could need some heavier art direction to really hammer home the mood you were going for. The dragon looked cool though. Animations are expensive but go a long way. So at least having some kind of movement in the map (even if it's just a simple breathing animation of the humans and/or the dragon) would've been a good investment. Still, a good entry which kept me going! Keep it up |
| May 10 09:35:19 | 38h 06m | You Live Like This? | ♥ 1 | Nice twist on the tamagotchi formula. The art and sound is really well made. Especially the attention to detail in the map assets. The room really delivers the mood of a "hospital" room ;) The controls work fine, but there are some problems with z-indexing and collision bounds of some of the sprites. The aim of the game was clear from the start, but I had some trouble understanding, how the temperature and food gauge are to be increased. After some tinkering, I got it though. The little translucent bucket sprite under the chili dispenser when carrying the bucket helped a lot. Good job on that! The rest was pretty straight forward but got bland really quickly since it didn't seem to progress in any way. There was no score, no timer, and no increase in difficulty (at not that I noticed) So I stopped after having no trouble keeping the guy alive. Is there a win state? If so, you should really make this clear to the player. If not, there should still be some game play variation to keep the player on his toes. This is really the only and most important feedback I can give you, because the rest is already pretty good and well designed. Only the water bottle seemed a little weak. I constantly making water runs because it only increased the meter by 2 pixels or so. Felt rather tedious. The rest of the items seemed to be balanced well. The voice overs were a nice touch, but sounded like they were recorded from a really bad mic. I guess this was a design choice to imitate an intercom feeling, but it didn't really work for me. I'm no sound designer, so I have no idea how this could be pulled off better. All in all, nice little tamagotchi/survival simulator (with all it's boons or banes) with some issues regarding the end game. Keep it up! |
| May 10 14:15:42 | 4h 40m | Protect the Queen! | ♥ 0 | Not my favorite genre I'd have to say. I usually suck at games like these. I did had some trouble with it at first, but that was just because I didn't spam drones in the first row to farm honey. After that, the game collapses into itself since the balancing is pretty rough around the edges. The art is adequate but could use some more details to sell the premise. The sound effects and voice overs are pretty fun :) The theme is obviously taken care of, even though it's not the most creative choice. I didn't encounter any bugs and the core controls and game play loop worked will. Good job! All in all, solid entry. A pretty basic round based wave defender with a lot of balancing issues. It still was fun for how long it lasted, it just wouldn't work for more than that (at least in it's current state) Cheers! |
| May 11 10:46:52 | 20h 31m | Feed the Machine | ♥ 2 | I really like the concept and the art is quite nice, though, the main character could really use some animations :) I love the machine in the middle, looks awesome! The sound design is really well done as well. The ambiance sound cools and the sound cues help. I read through the tutorial briefly (a lot of text!) and tried my luck with the game. I still had a lot of trouble knowing what to do and why I should do it. Fixing the broken pipes and broken machines was one thing and was kinda self explanatory, but everything else was quite confusing. A little more feedback would've gone a long way. Pressing "e" on the working green house did nothing for me, so I always starved to death. It was also not really clear, what impact it had to feed the machine in the middle. I never know how much I should throw in or when it was time to do it again. Also, everything broke way to fast. I was just constantly running through the level fixing everything. There was no time to really explore the mechanics and understand them thoroughly because my oxygen and hunger meters went down rapidly. After the third death I was quite frustrated. This game would benefit a lot from an in game tutorial and/or progression of available machines while playing. So you can learn each machine one by one before having to deal with all of them directly. I bet the game is pretty easy to beat if you understand the mechanics, but at least I couldn't grasp them. Still, like I said, I enjoyed the concept and the random nature of the level was a nice touch. Aside from the difficult learning curve, an in game tutorial would really elevate the game play for new players. Keep it up! |
| May 11 11:14:38 | 27m 46s | Will of the Wisp | ♥ 3 | First of all, you should really include a loading indicator when having so many assets :) the screen was gray for a long time before the game started. Second of all: Wow! Congratulations. This was awesome. I was already blown away when entering the main menu and the great music greeted me. With vocals! You did all of this in the time of the jam? It didn't even end there. There were at least 3 other musical pieces in the game. What an effort. By far the best soundtrack I've heard so far in any game I've played this jam. Now I can wholeheartedly give a 5/5 for music :) The art was also very sophisticated. Great amount of detail and animation frames. The visual quality was top notch all way through. The platforming was good, but had some issues regarding ledges and the mushrooms. When standing on top of them and growing them, the player got stuck a little. Also, Screen transitions were a bit off, when the player was jumping while the transition happened and a wall was on the other side. But that's just minor complaints (we had our share of problems with the platforming engine as well). It was also good to see, that we weren't the only team to tackle some kind of non violent metroidvania style 2d platformer. The writing was funny and I liked the forth-wall-breaking and self referential stuff. It's always good to have a lighthearted mood when playing jam games. Keeps the player invested more easily :) The ui and controls were pretty much self explanatory and everything worked as I expected. The level design was simple but effective. You even managed to include some platforming puzzles, which is awesome. We didn't have time to add those. The end was a nice twist and paired with the music change, it was really fun to rush for the end. All in all, a very competently made game. Really good game design and absolutely amazing music and art. The love and care put into this really shows. |
| May 11 11:18:28 | 3m 50s | Lively | ♥ 2 | I like the graphical style and the concept seems interesting. Too bad you didn't implement actual game play to go along with the concept. The animations of the cat were cute and looked rather natural. I was really hoping to get a lighthearted point-and-click-style adventure game :) Maybe next time! Keep it up |
| May 11 11:28:56 | 10m 28s | Seeking Power | ♥ 1 | This game really needed some more hours of work :) It's rather rough around the edges, especially regarding the platforming engine. The controls feel stiff and the jumping doesn't work like expected. It seems like the player character is stuck in the ground. Walking speed is really slow the whole thing feels off. The art feels jumbled and incoherent. Some more strict art direction would really help to sell a game from an aesthetic point of view. I kinda expected to get a pixel art platformer but even that expectation was crushed when I saw the blurred and filtered sprites. The music was nice though :) a bit repetitive bit adequate. I got frustrated pretty quickly due to the controls not really working like they should've, so I gave up after a few tries (I played the original jam version). Due to the controls being very wonky, the game was also very hard since avoiding enemies was kinda impossible to do with precision. Would've been good to have more than two hit points then to actually being able to see more of the game without getting too frustrated. All in all, very rough platformer with a lot untapped potential in the art department. Hope you have more success next time. Keep it up! |
| May 11 19:02:23 | 7h 33m | Sachka, Heal-sitter | ♥ 4 | I actually enjoyed the concept. It looked like a round based rpg from the screenshots but turned out to be something completely different. That really caught me by surprise. I liked the dynamic between the characters and the drama that unfolds with each round. Though, I thought that the actual MMORPG game play part was a bit bland. I'm not a fan of the genre in the first place and this was even less involving for me. The lack of sound effects and good contols/user feedback for the spells did not help either. Of course, it would be kinda impossible to expect a polished mmorpg like boss battle in that kind of time frame, but a little more fun in the game play would've been nice. Also, it kinda drew itself out pretty hard. That's another thing I don't like about raids in the genre :) I couldn't keep up with the healing in phase 3 or 4 and lost. I was really interested how the story would unfold, but you can't get me to play another round of being a healer in a MMORPG. The art was adequate and the soundtrack was very fitting. No problems on that front! All in all, a very unique and interesting approach to the theme and good job on subverting my expectations. The game play was not my cup of tea, but I bet other people had fun with it. Keep it up! |
| May 12 17:29:05 | 22h 26m | Controller | ♥ 0 | Cool concept, one of the better I've played this jam with a similar premise. The art was nice enough, bit some asset didn't fit with the pixel resolution of the others. Felt a little jumbled together. Music was a little too theatrical for me :) A nice retro tune would've fit better in my opinion than a drama orchestral soundtrack. The controls worked fine for the most part, but sometimes, the dragging of the platforms felt a little off. I had to pull multiple times to get it to move short distances. Other times, it almost went too fast. Seemed like it was tied to the total distance it can travel (or something) Still, the challenge was nicely balanced and I was on my toes the whole time to not get the little guy killed. Was able to beat it in my first try. Good job! |
| May 12 17:42:21 | 13m 16s | KEEP IT ALIVE | ♥ 1 | I had troubles really understanding the mechanics of the game, even after lasting quite some time in the easy mode. I was just spamming capsules everywhere and sometimes, they would trigger and I would get points. I guess that black tiles were randomly spawning on top of the capsules and therefore also killing all surrounding black tiles (if there were any). But it everything was so uncertain that it was hard to really develop a strategy. That's also why I couldn't really enjoy playing it. It should be very clear, why the capsules are exploding and you get points. Maybe show the black tiles coming from above, so you can see where they land and why you get points. If they spawn and instantly vanish, it feels really off. The art was rough and a little uninspired. It would benefit a lot from some art direction. It's good to have sound feedback, thought the effects themselves felt kinda provisional. Basically the same feedback I had for the art. All in all, a somewhat obtuse strategy(?) game with too much randomness for my taste. Would be good to give the player some agency and room for strategy :) Keep it up! |
