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Feedback comments for LD46
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | LCStark's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 20 08:01:05 | Lone Cabin | ♥ 2 | Great game, but I believe it is a bit too unforgiving, especially given the slow speed of the character. I'd also give the player a little bit more feedback on their actions. When you gather resources, you could add an icon popping up for a moment when the gathering is done. The main problem for me was the food/water/warmth meters are not visible enough. They're tiny and attached to the draggable character, which further obfuscates information. I think placing them in a static location in your GUI would be much better. | |
| Apr 20 08:16:39 | 15m 34s | Don't Forget To Water! | ♥ 0 | Amazing game! I like that you've managed to put many levels and slowly introduce more puzzle mechanics as the player progresses. The art style is great. The music is maybe a bit short and repetitive, but it's catchy and fits the game nicely. One small UI addition I'd make - have the level number / name displayed somewhere on the screen. For now all I can say is I reached the one with two trees and cracked rocks between them and I'm stuck for the moment. But I will definitely play this again. ;) |
| Apr 20 08:37:49 | 21m 10s | Bugs And Glitches v1.0 | ♥ 1 | Nice entry. The graphics are good, but the animations make them look really great. Movement seems fluid enough to make this work nicely. ;) One suggestion - when you're spawning things on the map (whether it is the hope tokens or the enemies), try not to spawn them at the player's current location. A couple of times a glitch spawned right where I was standing and I couldn't evade it. Also, the hope tokens sometimes spawn right on the edge of the screen, so only half of them is visible in the arena. Not really a big issue, but it looks a bit weird. One bug I found - the game ends when the last enemy is spawned, you don't have to defeat it. ;) |
| Apr 20 09:20:36 | 42m 47s | Body Guards | ♥ 1 | Nicely done! I like the idea, we not only have to consider what to use to counter the enemies on the map, but also consider their placement carefully. One thing I don't like is that it's a bit too random - too often I find myself stuck with a group of larger enemies, with no cards or energy and really nothing to do but wait to die. As for the cards - I like the system, but their redraw animation is too complex to be informative. The player has to keep their eye on the game board, so the card respawn time should be immediately understandable. Perhaps leaving only the five colored drops lighting up one after another would be enough. The Gashapon is a nice addition. One thing I'd change about it it to balance it a bit better at the start. From my first run (I've reached level 3) I got enough coins to unlock all but 20 cards in the collection. I gotta say, though, I love the large selection of cards and units. Good job! |
| Apr 20 09:36:37 | 16m 01s | Don't Lose Familiar | ♥ 1 | A fun little game. ;) I felt happy when I managed to reach my first new hazard type (the fireball), only to lose because the cat got too close and got killed by the blast wave of a fireball hitting the shield. Also, the little furball seems to love wandering around just as I've set up a shield for incoming blasts. Not a problem with the game, such is the nature of randomness. :D |
| Apr 20 09:47:08 | 10m 31s | Harvest Season | ♥ 3 | Nice and relaxing! It takes a while to figure out the rules, but it was a time well spent. I can see this being expanded into a really good game. As for the randomness, I agree with @SeriouslyCrunchy, it can be too unfair at times. Perhaps the plants shouldn't die instantly, but rather have something like hitpoints? Each turn without a water takes away a hitpoint, until the plant dies. When you harvest plant with fewer than max hitpoints, it gives you fewer points (or the other way around - harvesting fully healthy plants gives you a bonus). |
| Apr 20 09:59:20 | 12m 12s | Dave's Birthday Party | ♥ 2 | Great game, I had a fun time playing it. One thing I'd change is to increase the strength of your air gun a bit - right now I've either had no way of reacting to some dangers and lost pretty quickly, or I've played most of the game with the gun pointed downwards, constantly shooting to slow my descent. Other than that, a really solid and fun entry. :) |
| Apr 20 10:27:52 | 28m 32s | The Battery | ♥ 1 | Hey, congratulations on finishing your game! For your first LD attempt, this is amazing! One thing I'd add to the light timer is some sort of warning - it can be pretty easy to miss when the progress bar starts ticking down. You can easily find yourself a long way from the light source with the lights already fading. I've got one question about the light source and batteries - is there a maximum amount of power stored in there? If I keep throwing in more batteries do I get more time from all of them, or is it possible to have too much power (and thus waste batteries if more are thrown in)? |
| Apr 20 10:38:39 | 10m 47s | Moluski | ♥ 2 | Good game, I like the idea! It could use a little bit more of feedback for the player. The part with disturbing the birds nest - it would be better if the birds flew towards the cloud instead of a random direction. At first I clicked on the tree at least two dozen times and nothing happened, because not a single bird hit the cloud. I thought that either I've been doing something wrong or the game was bugged. Also, I think I've managed to heal the old man, but the game could use some sort of information you've completed it - whether it is a message saying "The End", the old man rising up and moving around to show he's healthy before the screen fades to black, or something similar. |
| Apr 20 20:20:08 | 9h 41m | DDoS is coming | ♥ 1 | That's a very interesting idea! Using the services makes me feel almost like I'm playing some sort of reverse-Arkanoid. ;) Though I'm not very good at it, I think I'm slowly learning enough to survive longer each time. There are, however, several bugs which I've found: 1. It's the same as @chloeofarroyo has already mentioned - after one game was complete and I started another run, it automatically started firing the throttling service until I was out of money (and as soon as I've earned 20$ it shot another one). After that game was done, I started another and the bug was gone. 2. I think your game remembers the game speed instead of resetting at the beginning of each round. I play for a while, I lose when the game becomes too fast for me to keep up, I click to start again and there it's super fast from the start. Refreshing the page resets the speed back to standard value. 3. I don't even know how that one happened, but one moment I was very low on cash and the game was running at a medium speed (I've played for maybe 20 seconds since the start), and suddenly the game sped up and all counters started to increase ridiculously quickly: ddos.png Bugs notwithstanding, I liked it! Seems like a cool concept to expand on! |
| Apr 20 20:32:02 | 11m 54s | Death Trap | ♥ 0 | A nice little game, which somehow is very addicting. It's gonna take me a lot of time to get over 2 minutes, but I will do it! :D |
| Apr 21 07:47:07 | 11h 15m | Pug Panic | ♥ 1 | Amazing game, I just wish I was better at it. ;) Perhaps it could use a bit easier difficulty curve, ramping up the challenge as time goes by. A simple tutorial to show how every system is operated would be nice, too. Other than that, I love everything about it. A well-thought-out indirect control platformer with great graphics and sound. |
| Apr 21 07:54:30 | 7m 23s | Beeeees | ♥ 1 | Nicely done! As other have said before me, the balloon physics are great. Not only looking good, but also contributing to the gameplay itself. I'm not good enough to survive for long each time, so I probably haven't discovered most of what it has to offer. Did you add (or have you considered adding) powerups that temporarily modify balloon physics (like invert gravity so the baloon flows down instead of up, or maybe sideways, or reduce/increase balloon weight)? |
| Apr 21 08:08:51 | 14m 21s | Crop Time | ♥ 1 | A fine, relaxing game. The slow and calm music in the background works wonderfully here. :) Here's a few issues I found: 1. As others have said, it really needs some notification about plant hydration status. 2. When you move the character and want to stop, the character doesn't stop immediately. A lot of times that caused me to waste precious time. I moved fast to try watering a plant quickly, but the character floated a bit too far and I watered an empty tile. I had to wait for the watering animation to finish before I could go back one tile and try it again. More precise controls would do great here. 3. I know it was probably not intentional, but you can plant crops on fence tiles. That is not a huge problem, just looks weird. One thing that can be problematic is that you can plant crops on the top fence row, but you cannot water them - I guess the watering can collider is too big for you to be able to reach the top row of the map. |
| Apr 21 08:25:55 | 17m 04s | Keep him alive! | ♥ 0 | Interesting idea! Since it's basically a 1v1 combat, I guess the camera could be much closer to your character then it is right now. I'd also probably make the attack range a little bit bigger, since often it looks like both me and the opponent should score a hit, yet neither of us lost any hit points. One bug I found: if, after losing the game, you return to the main menu, the music player from the game scene remains active. Since the main menu has its own audio source active, you actually have two music players playing the same track at the same time. Actually, every time you click play and then return to main menu after losing, another music player is added. The music track is great, but it sounds better if I can hear it from only one source at a time. ;) Also, you might want to edit your Itch.io game window size. Currently it is too narrow and some of the text is off-screen: keepHimAlive.png Pressing the fullscreen button added by Itch.io doesn't help here, but if you click on Unity fullscreen it works fine. Since you added Unity fullscreen button you might want to disable the Itch.io one. |
| Apr 21 08:46:10 | 20m 15s | Magic Garden | ♥ 1 | A very nice entry! The art style is just great. The gameplay is pretty well done. Only problem with it I had was the damn bats - since you can only attack left or right while standing on the ground, dealing with them was problematic. Perhaps the attack hitbox could be expanded to reach targets a bit above and below you? Or maybe you could get an early upgrade that allows you to attack while you're mid-air? All in all, a great compo game. I only reached the third plant, but I will definitely play it again and try to get further. ;) |
| Apr 26 07:06:30 | 118h 20m | Apple Panick | ♥ 2 | A very nice game! I love the artstyle, simple and clean. :) The audio side in the game could be a little bit better. While the menu music and the creepy sounds around the edge of the map were great, the lack of music during the gameplay was very noticable. As for the gameplay itself, I wish there was a better indication of your target. When holding a shovel it was difficult to dig new holes. I guess because I was too close to the existing ones, but some in-game indication would be nice. I'd also add some highlight to the currently targeted item, right now if there are two or more items close to each other I press E and pick up one of them seemingly at random. The watering indicator was a great idea, but it was a little bit too subtle (I've noticed it after two or three playthroughs). Anyhow, I had fun playing your game. Good job! :) |
| Apr 26 07:43:18 | 36m 48s | CellForm | ♥ 0 | A good and interesting idea with great implementation of flocking. I loved the music, reminded me a bit of Pit People. Very fitting for a game like this. One thing I'd change is the trigger range for the enemies. It is difficult to approach them horizontally without making the whole group swarm at you, but if you accidentally approach a group vertically, they'll trigger even before you can see them. Oh, and a "skip tutorial" button wouldn't go amiss. It's great to have it the first couple of times, but later on it's just slows me down if I want to try the main level again. All in all, a really solid entry. I had fun playing it. ;) |
| Apr 26 07:56:50 | 13m 32s | Keep It Afloat | ♥ 1 | A really good game! The controls can get a moment to get used to, but once you do they feel great. I think if you'd change the jump button to spacebar it would feel even better. I love that the game gives you a lot of feedback - hitting the birds makes an explosion, both visible and audible, and the screen shakes. If your balloon air gets too cold, you get an alarm. Everything if clearly communicated to the player. I also like the slow difficulty buildup and a variety of enemies to defeat. Great game, I loved playing it. ;) |
| Apr 26 08:11:08 | 14m 18s | Witching Hour | ♥ 1 | A fun little game. I love the fact you've made the effort of having separate game levels to complete instead of just going "survive as long as you can". The graphics are nice, the sound is pleasant to the ear. One thing I'd change when it comes to gameplay is the hitbox size of the fireball - I felt like sometimes it damaged me even though it shouldn't. Other than that, everything is awesome. All attacks are well telegraphed, giving the player a good opportunity to react. Love it! ;) |
| Apr 28 09:03:26 | 48h 52m | Sourdough Starter Kit | ♥ 1 | I loved this idea from the moment I saw it. It took me a while, but after 32 days I've managed to bake some wonderful bread. :) Three issues I had: 1. The physics of grabbing things aren't really working as expected. Even the slightest movement to the left or right makes the object rotate by a lot. In contrast, when the object rotates to the side it takes a really long time for it to fall back down due to gravity. 2. Sometimes, if you drop an object close to another, you can't pick it up alone again - their colliders glitch through each other and become connected, and the only way to separate them is to shake them violently (and lose most of your progress). 3. The "Menu" button visible when you finish the game is active at all times during the game - you can accidentally click on it while trying to pick up the flour. Try moving your mouse cursor to the bottom of the flour bag. The cursor will change and you will be able to click the button to move you back to the menu. In summary, I really liked this game. I gotta say, there is something oddly satisfying about trying to gently shake the air our of that container. While I felt like I had to work against the physics instead of working with it, I really had fun playing it, more than I usually get out of this type of physics games. I've even managed to get my score down to 14 days after a few more playthroughs. I loved it, well done! |
| Apr 28 09:27:58 | 24m 32s | Hedgehog Survival | ♥ 1 | Great entry! I love both it's visuals and the sound/music, they work really well in this game. It could use a bit more variety. Right now it fells the same throughout the entire playthrough, making interest in keeping those hedgehogs alive fall down quickly. Perhaps slowly introducing over time more types of hedgehogs, with different movement speeds and patterns, or maybe adding a special car once in a while. Maybe a police car or an ambulance moving faster than normal cars? Telegraphing it with blinking lights would be enough to give the player warning. All in all, I liked it. It's a simple entry, but a good one. I enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| Apr 28 09:56:00 | 28m 02s | Tree Defence | ♥ 1 | A really nice entry! One thing I would change is the player weapon fire - it would be good to limit the fire rate. Right now you can fire as fast as you can click, which makes the player a bit overpowered, but also makes the gameplay a bit frustrating. Requiring the player to spam LMB as fast as possible doesn't feel good. You could add an auto attack, where the player only holds down LMB and the weapon will fire once every few hundred miliseconds. That would also enable you to add some form of powerup to the game, which could increase your weapon fire rate (either temporarily or permanently). Other than that, I really liked it. Nice job! |
| Apr 29 10:19:54 | 24h 23m | B.U.B.B.A. Express | ♥ 1 | A great idea! It's a nice bullet hell platformer, adding the twist of a moving base was great and made the whole thing unique. Leaving the robot to gather turrets / scrap added a lot of tension to the game. ;) One problem I had with it is that is too easy. When first enemies arrived, I hid behind B.U.B.B.A.'s head, shot them down, taken their turrets and mounted them on three forward slots. From that point on, the game almost played itself. Even if I mounted more turrets, the enemies were destroyed before they got in their range. To fix that, I'd propose three changes to the game: 1. Make the turrets do less damage. I think they should serve as support for the player instead of dealing the entire damage themselves. 2. Make the player gun more powerful, but restrict it's usage. Right now, the player can hide behind B.U.B.B.A's body and shoot from cover. Making it so player bullets collide with B.U.B.B.A. (even if they don't do damage to him) would give the player the need to come out of cover in order to shoot their enemies. 3. Spawn enemies from all directions. Right now, enemies all appear in the front of B.U.B.B.A, making the back turret slots useless. If some enemies arrived from behind or from above it would add the need to think about turret location a bit more. Other than that, it's a pretty solid entry. The sound effects are nice, and the music is great. Well done! ;) |
| Apr 29 10:50:05 | 30m 11s | Cell Defence | ♥ 1 | A nice take on the tower defense genre! It could use some more feedback for the player. The first time I played I didn't notice the mitochondria could be used to upgrade your ship, so maybe adding some sort of tutorial messages at the beginning (and perhaps an upgrade type symbol on the mitochondrion itself) would work well. Also, speaking about upgrades, the bullet lifetime / range could use some improvement. I guess it works fine at the beginning, but the more enemies come the worse it gets. It would be nice if the player could upgrade their range. I liked using the virus to mark the direction of the next attack, though it was a bit difficult to find them all in the time between the waves, especially when you need to also upgrade your ship and place some turrets in the same time. Maybe increasing that time a bit would help. Oh, and one final bugbear I had with the game - the lack of autofire. Without it, the game relies on player's ability to spam their mouse button, which isn't really a good design. Players who don't like that will have a harder time, while players who can and like that will have an overpowered ship easily destroying all enemies. Adding autofire would add another direction of upgrades for your ship (reducing the time between shots). All in all, a good entry. I had fun playing it. ;) |
| Apr 29 11:02:06 | 12m 01s | Save Dave | ♥ 0 | Holy crap, that has to be the weirdest combination of genres I've ever seen. And it works really well! One thing I wish it would take from games like Virtua Cop was marking the enemies when they appear on screen. Right now it's pretty easy to miss them, despite the audio cues. Other than that, I love the game. The artstyle is great, both sounds and music work well for the game. Well done! |
| Apr 29 11:10:30 | 8m 24s | Mutual Survival | ♥ 1 | A nice top-down shooter! Good job! I like the enemy design. They look creepy enough on their own, but their glitchy movement makes them even creepier. ;) One tip: if you use Unity sliders as progress bars (like HP bars, in your case), make sure you disable "Interactable" on the Slider component. Right now you can still drag the sliders with your mouse. Fortunately, it doesn't increase the HP value, it just looks weird. If you only want the bar, you can also delete the Handle element. All in all, it's a nice entry, props for using autofire on the weapon instead of forcing the player to spam the left mouse button. Well done! ;) |
| Apr 30 11:22:30 | 24h 12m | Project Ark | ♥ 1 | I loved it! I like the theme of trying to prepare for / escape from the coming disaster. The game is a little bit too easy - I was able to get the green ending on my first try, with the infection rate still around 2%. One thing it definitely needs is to show how much resources you are earning each month. Without it it's difficult to judge how long you have to wait for resources for the specific ship part you need. On another playthrough I've first researched the antimatter engine and installed it on the ship. A few months later when I got bored of just installing more habitats and solar panels, I added the conventional engine, thinking it would either do nothing or slightly improve my thrust value. Instead, my thrust dropped from 5.5 to 1, as if my ship is only using the conventional drive. I tested it further by researching other drives: installing the magnetic drive increased thrust to 1.7, installing the nuclear drive afterwards dropped it again to 1.2. Other than those issues, the game is good. I guess it just needs more things to be a great one - more research, more types of parts, some type of events which could either benefit or harm your efforts, etc. It could definitely use some simple ambient music and button noises to make it feel complete. Speaking of audio, since the game has none, you should probably opt out of the "Audio" voting category. All in all, great job! I enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| Apr 30 13:02:18 | 1h 39m | Boxes in space | ♥ 1 | A really good first entry! Great idea to try an Asteroids-like game with RTS controls! The simple graphics look well, the sounds - while a bit too harsh on my ears - give that old arcade feeling. The only thing missing is some simple fast music track playing in the background, I think it would do wonders for your game. Also, try implementing some sort of flocking algorithm for your squares, it might look really nice in here. A solid LD game, well done! ;) |
| Apr 30 13:17:46 | 15m 28s | Symbio-tech | ♥ 1 | A really fun game! I'm a sucker for anything using a hexagonal grid, so you had me there from the start. The idea is good, your objective is clearly marked, the controls are responsive. The only thing I'd change is to add a sound if you're trying to use your shield bash and it isn't ready yet (also maybe a sound when the bash finishes recharging). Other than that, I loved it, had fun playing it. ;) |
| May 1 18:38:57 | 29h 21m | L♪vely Rhythm | ♥ 0 | A lovely game! The music is just great and the art style fits this idea. The only problem I had with it is music desyncing with the rhythm timeline - it feels like the music plays a little bit too fast, so the further you go the greater the deviation becomes. Other than that, it's a really good entry. Impressive for the short amount of time given. Well done! |
| May 1 19:04:33 | 25m 36s | Courier of Fire | ♥ 1 | A really nice puzzle platformer! Great job on mixing different mechanics to create interesting levels. I think it would be nice if every new mechanic introduced was explained a little bit. On level 1 you've added the text "beware the water" to make the player aware they should avoid putting the fire in it. You could expand on it and put more hints on further levels, like "use water to jump higher" on level 2 or "throw spikes at the cord to cut it" on level 5. The game could also use some background music, but I get how difficult it is to make everything in such a short time. Oh, and as others have already said, the interaction button for the exit door isn't needed. Since you've opened the exit, you probably want to go through it anyway, just detect if the player entered unlocked door. All in all, a well done LD entry. I enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 1 19:43:20 | 38m 47s | The Adventures of Eggbert | ♥ 0 | Well done, it's a great platformer! The artstyle is pretty good and the music is just wonderful. Reading through comments it seems everyone has already notified you about all the issues I had with the game and you are working on them, so I won't have much to add here. If there is one additional thing I'd change is to perhaps make the character move faster - right now it makes the game feel a little bit too slow. A well done entry to the compo, great job! |
| May 2 06:53:53 | 11h 10m | tiriplici | ♥ 1 | Great idea! I love a game where you must control two things helping each other. Having two playable characters with different abilities makes for interesting gameplay. My only problem with it is the movement of the toaster. Not only it moves way too fast, making it really difficult to control, but also it's very easy to lose it off-screen. Most of the time I lost the game because I've accidentally moved the toaster beyond my line of sight and it died to something I couldn't see. I think restricting the toaster movement to visible area of the screen and slowing it down a little could do wonders for this game. Well done on your entry! It's a fun concept, I liked playing it. ;) |
| May 2 07:20:34 | 26m 41s | Keep 'it' Alive | ♥ 1 | Nice idea! And a pretty damn good execution, as well! Simplistic graphics really help to manage the slowly unfolding chaos. I really like games where you have to do something, but are limited in some way, so the stamina bar worked great here. Good job! ;) |
| May 2 07:43:19 | 22m 45s | Save the FOX! | ♥ 2 | Really nice game! I like the artstyle and the music. Two things made it problematic for me: 1. The branches should be more distinct from the background. Right now they look like background elements and it is pretty difficult to know where you can jump, especially when you're moving. Might just be my color blindness, but it made it really hard to judge my jumps. 2. The platforms are a bit too high for the player's jumping ability. To jump from one platform to a higher one you have to time your jumps perfectly, and the window you need to fit is really small. That makes it a frustrating experience of jumping multiple times to reach one platform, and usually you just end up falling all the way down. Speaking of falling down, one suggestion I have is to add the ability to drop down from a platform. Press **`S`** or **`Down`** and your character drops down through the platform they're standing on. Without it the movement seems too limited. Overall it's a great entry. I enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 2 07:53:20 | 10m 01s | Space Drone Guy | ♥ 0 | That's a really fun game! ;) The graphics look great, the sounds work fine for this type of game. I wish there was some background music to supplement it, but I get how hard it is to fit everything in such a short time. I loved that you used proper classical mechanics, though I guess it could use some sort of "brake" button, which would use thrusters to stop you in your place. |
| May 2 08:03:15 | 9m 55s | Air for Inspiration | ♥ 1 | It's a really good concept! I liked it! One thing that bothered me was the letter rotation. After I've pressed the button, the air usually stopped flowing before the letter managed to rotate towards the fire. It made the game feel too random. Perhaps instead of constantly rotating you could give the player full control over the letter rotation? Have them rotate in 90° intervals (clockwise when clicked with LMB, counterclockwise when clicked with RMB) and only randomly select from which direction the air will flow. Oh, and you should probably edit the link in the description here - right now it's missing the "https://" part, so it's not actually turned into a hyperlink. |
| May 2 08:22:19 | 19m 04s | HIVE | ♥ 0 | A nice RTS game! Three problems with it: 1. Itch.io window size is set to 1600x900. That made the entire UI not work as it should be - even the buttons in the menu didn't appear to detect clicks properly, like the button area was moved away from the actual button sprite. Try editing your game window size on Itch.io game page and see if that helps. 2. I guess most of this problem stems from the above, too. The game doesn't really explain itself well. I tried constructing some units, but they rarely actually appeared after clicking buttons in the build menu. I don't know if it's the UI problem or some game mechanic I don't understand. There's the "+1 egg" upgrade in the upgrade menu, but it seemed to me like it only worked once, and without the ability to construct more units it was difficult to stay alive for a long time. 3. Also a UI problem - since the UI covers the area where my worker bees are working, it's impossible to see if something comes from the bottom of the screen and attacks them. Other than those issues, it's a good idea. I was happy to see an RTS entry in this jam. Well done! ;) |
| May 2 08:35:26 | 13m 07s | Egg Rescue | ♥ 1 | A well executed bullet hell game! The art style is wonderful, the music and sound effects make it feel like a real old-school shooter. My only problem with it was that it's difficult to judge collider sizes in some places. To shoot down some turrets you need to get really close to those ships, and sometimes even though it looks like you should be OK, the ships collide and you get destroyed. Overall, it's a really solid entry. Good job! ;) |
| May 2 08:44:55 | 9m 29s | The Fire Must Go On | ♥ 1 | Nice puzzle game! The graphics look good, the music is really great. There are three things I'd add to make it even better: 1. Checkpoint system. When you complete a generation, the game should save the progress. It's really disheartening when you beat a few levels, then get surprised by something new and have to go through all of the same levels again. 2. The level end square should work automatically. Make it so the player can enter the red tile, and when they do the level is completed. 3. There should be some better marking of dangerous tiles. Because of the 3D view it's sometimes difficult to see where the water balls actually are and where are they going to shoot. Light up the tiles underneath the enemies, so the player knows those are the dangerous tiles. Likewise, when the balls fire the water stream, light up the tiles underneath it. All in all, it's a really solid entry. I enjoyed playing it! ;) |
| May 2 11:42:01 | 2h 57m | Keep it Fire | ♥ 1 | Great game! A well executed platformer. The controls are smooth, the graphics are nice, the music fits the game well. The only issue I have with it is that it lacks any tutorial to slowly teach you everything. Instead, it just throws the instruction screen at you with a ton of text to read and remember. It's not a big issue, since the mechanics are not that difficult to learn on your own in a few short minutes, but I feel like a slower introduction of everything would make it better. Also, the instruction screenshot here in the LD game description is wrong - the "take from bonfire" and "give to bonfire" buttons are switched. All in all, it's a really good game. I had fun playing it. ;) |
| May 2 12:00:08 | 18m 07s | Dummy Doggy | ♥ 1 | That was a fun game! Good looking graphics and wonderful sound effects, plus a pretty fun gameplay. ;) I found it really great when I noticed that Dodger picks up spawned items and brings the balls to you. That was a fun addition. ;) It felt much worse when Dodger accidentally picked up a coffee and it made him sick. There's also a small issue with the abilities. In the instructions above you wrote: > Use the MOUSE to select an ability to perform, and SPACEBAR to execute it. But that only works like that for the ball. For the treats and coffee when you click the ability it is automatically activated when you select that ability. That made me waste some of them when I just wanted to select them to be used soon. Also, the ball throwing is pretty difficult, given it always throws the ball where your character is facing. I guess adding a separate throw targeting, using the mouse or second controller stick to target your throws, would work much better. Overall it's a great entry. Well done! ;) |
| May 2 12:08:21 | 8m 13s | It Feasts On Gibs | ♥ 1 | An interesting concept! Destroying those zombies feels really satisfying. The only issue with the weapon I have is that it's projectiles are too small and almost invisible. It's difficult to judge the weapon's range because of that. Also, I think that the zombie attack is a bit too unforgiving - you can get into zombie attack range and immediately move out before their attack animation plays, but you will still get hurt. Besides that, it's a really good entry. Nice job! |
| May 2 12:23:51 | 15m 30s | Flight of the Cepheus | ♥ 1 | A very interesting concept! The whole thing gave me some serious Battlestar Galactica vibes, having to travel a long distance while managing resources and having to deal with both morale and ship integrity deteriorating. ~~The only thing missing in my opinion is some sort of help screen, describing all the actions and possible things to gain, as well as resource requirement to execute them.~~ As I was writing that I noticed your previous comment about tooltips. I thought the "inspect" button worked only to check the people, not menu options. Perhaps it would be better if those tooltips appeared on their own when you hover over a button instead of having to right-click? Overall it's a fun little game. I enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 2 16:21:38 | 3h 57m | Treeblocks | ♥ 1 | Well done, I like the idea here! The game can be a bit unforgiving, but it seems balanced enough, especially for a 48h compo game. One thing I'd probably add is an option to clear a smaller area than just 3x3. Maybe adding an option to also clear a 2x2 square would work (though obviously it would need to be expensive enough to not be overused by the player). All in all, I had fun playing it. A really nice entry! ;) |
| May 2 16:42:24 | 20m 46s | GNAT#46 | ♥ 1 | A nice idea! Kinda reminded me of old Descent games, though it's more open than that. As others have already mentioned, the inverted pitch doesn't really work here. If you think it should remain in the game, perhaps you could have some sort of toggle to reverse it? As for the difficulty level, it feels pretty high. Perhaps instead of spawning a large group of enemies at once you could either start with a smaller wave, or make that group spawn over time? It's an overall good entry to the compo. Well done! ;) |
| May 2 16:56:08 | 13m 44s | Your Inner Child (Keep It Alive!) | ♥ 1 | A nice tower defence! I enjoyed playing it. ;) There's a couple of things I'd change, though. The enemy path is almost indistinguishable from the build locations. That makes it really difficult early on, when you have to quickly place some turrets in locations most needing them. The amount of enemy types is pretty good, but what the game lacks is those enemies acting differently from each other, and to have a wider amount of turret types to counter those enemies. Though I liked the idea of the baby in the middle slowly growing up as the various responsibilities reached it, it lacks a clear information on how much more it can take before the game is lost. Other than that, the idea worked really well. I had fun playing it! ;) |
| May 2 19:19:29 | 2h 23m | The Elons Xtreme | ♥ 2 | An impressive entry! I really enjoyed playing this game. It looks like Surviving Mars was a huge inspiration for you, and you've managed to use it well. As others have said before me, the progression could use a little bit of tuning. I guess most of it stems from the fact you can't produce titanium on Mars and you need to not only wait for the ship to make a round-trip to Earth and back, you also need to mine enough resources to sell, and that will take at least two ship trips before you can even build your second living quarters. It would probably be best if you added some sort of titanium mine. That way you could produce small amounts of titanium on the planet, but you would have to juggle your colonists between different buildings, giving the player something to manage. I also liked the implementation of the day/night cycle, but since it is important for the gameplay (since power producers only work during the day), you really should add a clock. The player should know how much time is left for their power producers to make electricity during the day, or how long they need to survive without power production during the night. Overall, I loved this one. You've made a wonderful jam game, good job! ;) |
| May 2 19:36:53 | 17m 24s | Peanut Butcher | ♥ 1 | A fun (and funny!) little game. I really enjoyed it! ;) The controls are good and responsive. If there's one thing I'd add it's some more information about the shooting. A lot of games in this jam lack autofire option, instead requiring the player to spam the "shoot" button. Seeing four separate shooting directions here, I expected the same, and played with frantic button mashing. You wouldn't believe the relief I felt when I accidentally discovered this game does have autofire. :) Another accidental discovery was the ability to shoot diagonally by holding two arrows at the same time. It is intuitive, but not every game with four directions of shooting allows for diagonal shooting. Also, probably my surprise for the autofire played me here as well. I had one bug-like issue with the gameplay: when I've completed a wave and a new one spawned, pretty often the small peanuts spawned very close to me, so I didn't have a chance to react. I felt pretty good about myself for completing another level, and suddenly two or three peanuts spawned like some sort of demons and jumped on me instantly. You could probably restrict the spawn to happen entirely off-screen. Other than that, the game is wonderful. It could use a simple music track playing in the background, but even without it, it plays really well. I particularly enjoyed the idea of having your character slowly downgrade instead of upgrading. Well done on your game. I had a lot of fun playing it. ;) |
| May 2 23:05:24 | 3h 28m | Message | ♥ 2 | An interesting idea! I love the theme of playing an internet packet trying to reach its destination. The graphics look nice, and the sounds fit the game well. My one problem with it is that the camera is much too close - it's difficult to see anything ahead. A couple of times I've ran straight into an enemy because I kept forgetting that was the platform they were on. I think it would be better if the player could see where they're going instead of having to remember the entire layout of the level. All in all, it's a really solid entry and a well executed first game jam. Well done! ;) |
| May 4 14:25:39 | 39h 20m | Xenov: Ascension | ♥ 1 | A great looking TD game! The voxels and isometric view work really well for this one. The gameplay is a little bit lacking, though. The enemies always come from the same direction, which kind of defeats the purpose of locating your main base in the center of a large city. It also gives you an easy way to earn more money than you could spend - just place those farms on the opposite end, and they'll never be threatened. The city itself looks great. The flying cars were a nice addition to make the city feel a little bit alive. You could expand on that, making some of the lights on buildings turn on and off during the night. Perhaps adding very small cubes to simulate people walking would be a good idea, too. The day/night cycle looked nice, I only wish the transition between the two was more gradual. All the colors suddenly changing made me feel a little bit confused. It also might be nice to actually use it as a game mechanic, making the enemies send different units during the night. Overall it's a really nice entry. I had fun playing it. ;) |
| May 4 14:43:50 | 18m 11s | Ultimate Planet Habitat Support Tester 2020!! | ♥ 1 | A very interesting game! It was fun watching each planet slowly evolve and see if it manages to survive. My only problem was the game speed. It seems that the gameplay is linked to its framerate, so the more things the game has to calculate, the slower it goes. This means that depending on your choice of planet size the game will run differently. The game said that a large planet could be heavy on my PC, but I actually found it run the best out of the four (maybe a little bit too slow). Medium planet seemed alright, but small one run way too fast for me to be able to influence anything, and the tiny one just flew past me and within a few seconds the game was over. When it comes to gameplay, I guess giving the player more ways to influence the world would work wonders. I also wish there was a way to simply add a new species to the world without replacing an existing one. Maybe it'd be nice to be able to click a specific specimen to see its stats, like age and health. All in all, it's a really great entry. I enjoyed it very much! ;) |
| May 6 08:03:07 | 41h 19m | Space Station Express | ♥ 0 | Well done! I like top-down shooters with movement based on classical mechanics. What it could use is a "stop" button, which would auto-fire appropriate thrusters to slow you down no matter which way you're facing. That way the player would have some more control over their movement. Right now it can be a little bit too chaotic for you to deal with your ship movement, cargo requirements and the enemies at the same time. One bug I've noticed - the game window should open anchored in the top-left corner of the screen, but instead it starts more to the left and higher, which causes large portion of the UI text to be invisible: spaceStationExpress.png The UI itself could also display your ship's current HP. Without it it's difficult to judge whether you can take some more damage before you really need to run away no matter what cargo you're hauling. All in all, I liked this entry. The music was pleasant, the gameplay worked fine. I enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 6 08:35:49 | 32m 42s | Battery Life | ♥ 0 | A really atmospheric game! It makes you fear the monsters even before you see one up close. The creepy ambient sounds and music also work in the game's favour. One thing I'd like the game to have is some way to mark your progress. Without it, the player just stumbles around in the dark, trying to figure out whether they've been in this corridor before or not. It does improve the mood of the game, but I feel like it also makes the gameplay itself too frustrating. Other than that, it's a wonderful entry. Beautiful art style, great audio and amazing atmosphere. ;) |
| May 6 08:59:15 | 23m 26s | Go With The Flow | ♥ 0 | An interesting take on a rhythm game! I loved the bouncing audience, seeing them jump made you want to hit the right word at the right time. One issue I had is that sometimes the music and the bouncing ball didn't really match. A lot of times I had to tune out the music and focus only on the ball to be able to press the button at the right time. Other than that, I loved it. The idea is great and the execution is solid. Well done! |
| May 6 09:09:29 | 10m 14s | Raid Healer Simulator | ♥ 1 | A funny little game. :) I loved the idea, and the execution is pretty damn good, too. One thing it could use is to have the description of skills inside the game - without it it takes many playthroughs to learn what each ability does (and which icon is which ability). In that way the difficulty curve feels a little bit harder than in a real MMO. Other than that, the game is perfect. The chat was a cherry on top. Made me relive a lot of memories from games like Guild Wars or The Old Republic. :D |
| May 6 09:32:05 | 22m 36s | Friendly Fire | ♥ 0 | A really nice entry! Pretty well polished for a 48h game. I had an issue with chest opening, namely that if you stop opening a chest you have to start again. The time to open a chest is way too long for that. This can lead to annoying situations, especially later in the game, where you're almost done opening a chest and there's a bat incoming before you can finish. A kind of related issue is having chest opening and kindling dropping on the same key. As you try to drop a kindling in panic, the game thinks you're pressing X to open a chest, so you don't manage to drop the kindling in time and the bats eat you. Other than those small issues, I loved it. The art style looks great, the music and sounds are pleasant to the ear. Well done! ;) |
| May 6 10:12:23 | 40m 18s | Chain Reaction | ♥ 1 | A really interesting idea! Though I played it single player, controlling two players myself, I enjoyed quite a bit. It's really satisfying to put one ball on the board and watch the chain reaction slowly propagate across the entire field. ;) One thing I wish for this game is to be faster. When you're placing a ball, there's a really long time before it falls down to the selected field. In case of some fields, you're not even sure the click happened, since the ball is spawned off-camera and you can't see it until it comes really close. Also, sometimes when balls are exchanged between two fields they can get stuck on each other for a few seconds, further slowing the game down. Another issue was the colour scheme. First time I played, the Player 1 colour didn't really stand out from empty fields, making it difficult to see your conquered area. Also, you might want to set your Itch.io game window to a higher resultion. On full-screen it works fine, but it the default window the introduction screen gets squished really bad: chainReaction.png The game has a lot of potential for improvement. One idea I had was to introduce different types of fields. For example, you could have a moderator field, which would require more neutrons before splitting. You could also add walls between some of the fields on the grid to make some more interesting level layouts. Overall, I had a lot of fun playing this one. Well done! ;) |
| May 6 10:31:25 | 19m 02s | Desertification | ♥ 1 | A good idea for a puzzle game! I love the theme of growing the forest to fight the encroaching desert. I see other people have already pointed out that the game doesn't really explain itself well. If you don't want to make detailed instructions or tutorials on everything, instead letting the player discover everything themselves, I think changing the end turn number display would work. Right now, when you press End Turn you get a wall of numbers for a few seconds, without a chance to figure out what field did what change and why. I think you could separate that for each field type: first the player sees the effect the desert has on its neighbours, then the wells, then the plants. That way it would immediately tell the player the effect each field has on others. All in all, it's a lovely game. The audiovisual side of the game is wonderful. The gameplay is solid. I enjoyed it. ;) |
| May 7 06:32:49 | 20h 01m | Carnivorous | ♥ 0 | A well done twin stick shooter! The audiovisual side is pretty well done. I've had a few issues with the gameplay, though: 1. There's way too many enemies to either destroy or avoid. Your cell is moving too slow to try and avoid them (and even if it was faster, there's usually not enough space to avoid enemies) and it's firing way too slow to punch through. 2. The enemies can't leave the screen, but your cell can. It looks like there's collider missing on the bottom of the screen, and you can move out of view to stay safe. 3. There wasn't enough difference between enemy types. At first you get two types of enemies, which don't seem to be any different. Then you get the darker ones which are much faster, but that's it. The larger ones work as powerups if you shoot them a few times, but they don't seem to die to your fire. Overall, it's a good LD entry. Well done! |
| May 7 06:50:41 | 17m 52s | Keep It Charged | ♥ 1 | Well done on your first game! It's really good! The graphics look nice and sleek, the light music loop in the background is pleasant to the ear. The battery pickup sound was probably a bit too loud, but that's not a big issue. I guess my only real issue with your game is the transition animation. Those fade-in / fade-out animations are really too long. It feels like I'm waiting forever for the next level. Other than that it looks like you've fixed everything already in your post-LD version. I liked the way you used the walls to place instructions for the player. The memes were a nice addition, too! ;) Nice game, I had fun playing it. |
| May 7 08:11:04 | 1h 20m | Keep The Spirit Stone Allive | ♥ 1 | Impressive looking game! I like the overall theme of nature defending itself. Gameplay wise, it's a nice idea to combine an incremental game with a tower defense, it worked out really well. Most of the issues I had with it you've already fixed in post-LD updates. There are, however, several still there: #### Enemy units get stuck often, seemingly on nothing. This one occured in one of earlier waves: spiritStone1.png And this one is the final wave. Almost all the units in this screen are not moving. Notice the units from the first screenshot are still there: spiritStone4.png #### The units spawned by wizards bug out horribly When they're spawned they glitch in the ground for a moment, before being shot into the sky. They fall back down after a while, but they always fly back up with even greater speed. Here you can see one just a second after being spawned, already flying off: spiritStone3.png #### HP bars are not visible through the trees There's a snake behind that tree, but you can't tell, since its health bar is not visible. spiritStone2.png Also, overall the healthbars aren't really that visible to me. Might be due to my color blindness, but I also think they should be much bigger, not requiring you to fully zoom in to be able to see them. Also, perhaps showing them all the time isn't really necessary - just show them if a unit isn't fully healthy. #### Plant and animal spawn location is (mostly) restricted to the area behind the stone Most plants and animals spawn behind the stone, which causes some issues - the enemies can reach the stone without entering engagement range of your animals. Occasionally, a plant will spawn somewhere else (even on the other side of the river), but the animals are still tightly packed in one area. Though it might seem like I'm overly critical, I really enjoyed this game. The idea itself is great, and the execution amazingly well done for such a short time. Nicely done! ;) |
| May 8 06:39:10 | 22h 28m | The Last Flower | ♥ 1 | A very well done platformer! The graphics look nice and clean, music and sound effects are pretty good. I see that most of bugs and quirks have already been pointed out, and you have a plan to fix them. I'll add another one: in level 4 the rotating spikes are either a little bit too high or have too big colliders. It's really easy to touch them while standing on a theoretically safe platform. Not sure if that was a conscious decision or an accident, but I guess it could use some fine-tuning. Overeall it's a really great game, especially for a first-time entry. I enjoyed playing it. :) |
| May 8 06:53:31 | 14m 21s | Serveryard | ♥ 0 | An interesting idea! It has a few quirks and bugs, but overall I liked it. It might be a good idea to somehow show the player that their canister is filled. For the first couple of tries i thought the "fuel source recharging" was the progress of my canister filling, so I just stood there and waited for it to fill (up to whole 5%, I'm not a patient man :) ). Do the planks placed on the roof disappear when it rains? I've placed about 6-7 planks on the roof, went to get some more. When I was cutting more trees, it rained for a short while. When I returned to build more planks, I had to start all over again, like they've all disappeared. Gathering only one plank from a tree seems overly limiting. It stretches out the game unnecessarily. Also, since you can carry a lot of planks at the same time, it doesn't really add anything to the difficulty, since you can cut all the trees you want and then place all the boards when you have enough of them. Speaking of tree cutting, when you do that the game slows down a lot. Are you spawning the planks when a tree is cut down? It might be a good idea to have them pre-spawned, but disabled until needed. Overall it's a nice entry. I haven't managed to finish it yet, but I'm going to try a few more times. I'm enjoying playing it. ;) |
| May 8 07:23:08 | 29m 37s | Commodore Commander | ♥ 0 | A really amazing game! The visuals are simply stunning. The audio side could use a little bit more work, but I understand how difficult it is to fit absolutely everything in such a short time. And you've managed to fit a lot of things! ;) When playing in full screen, the game window placement gets a little bit wonky: commodoreTanks.png It does work in normal mode, though, so I could use browser full screen mode. The tutorial AI bot - you can skip it's messages, but it would be great if I could press a button to display the whole message instead of waiting for it to slowly appear, letter by letter. It makes the tutorial a little bit too frustrating to sit through. As for the gameplay, it's really good. I only wish there was some sort of checkpoint system, letting you restart your current level instead of throwing you back to the start. Also, did I see correctly? Can enemies shoot through the glowing cubes without damaging them? Overall, it's an impressive entry. I enjoy playing it, and I'll sure play more of it. ;) |
| May 8 07:38:01 | 14m 53s | Birdie Burglars | ♥ 1 | A cute and fun little game! The art style and the audio side are both extremely well done, it was a real joy to play it. As for the gameplay, it works really well. I loved the cat animations, they reminded me a little bit of the dog in Duck Hunt. One thing I would change about the gameplay is to invert the direction you have to drag to shoot - while dragging down seems more "realistic", I feel like it makes the control really difficult. Dragging up would allow for much more precise controls, which is really needed when you have only one shot every few seconds. All in all, I loved it. It's a really well done entry. Great work! ;) |
| May 9 06:53:13 | 23h 15m | Dad Day | ♥ 1 | Nice entry! It was pretty difficult to keep them both safe. Most of the time one found its way to the chair. :( The graphics are nice and the music fits the game really well. It could use some game sounds, but I understand it is hard to find time to do everything. All in all, a pretty solid compo game. I enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 9 07:10:33 | 17m 20s | Space Station Alpha | ♥ 1 | Great game! I love well-done pico-8 games, and this is definitely one of them. ;) The game is pretty hard to understand at first, even with the instructions. As you play, however, you slowly learn and remember what each thing does, it gets a little bit easier every time. I have one question about the gun - does it let you kill the enemies? I've shot one with all my bullets, but all it did was move it one space back. All it all, it's a really fun game to play! I enjoyed it very much. ;) |
| May 9 07:24:35 | 14m 02s | Life On Mars | ♥ 1 | A funny little game! I really like the theme, I enjoyed trying to keep the little guy going. I loved those simple animations on the alien. The fact it covers its eye when it's hidden from sight helped a lot. ;) If there's one thing I'd change, it's the satellite scan. Sometimes it feels like there's not enough time between seeing the shadow and the scan running to find a safe location to go to. Also, I think it would be nice to somehow mark the area that's going to be scanned - a few of the times I had nowhere to run, so I just move a little bit further behind the rock, but the satellite still caught me on the edge of its scan field. Overall it's a great entry. It was really enjoyable to play. ;) |
| May 9 09:56:34 | 2h 31m | Life | ♥ 1 | I love the idea of using Game of Life as part of your mechanics. Overall I liked it, though I wish there was some sort of a challenge here. An idea I had is to use colours to determine block threat - enemies and their projectiles are red, your shots / spaceships are blue. When you generate a new block in the next generation, you set its color to the average color of its neighbours. You must shoot the red block to either make them disappear or to turn their color as much towards the blue as you can. If red blocks touch the bottom of the screen, they damage you. Blue ones would simply disappear. |
| May 9 13:55:15 | 3h 58m | Tear the damn tree down | ♥ 1 | Amazing game! It's pretty difficult to survive, especially on later waves, but it's very satisfying. The game is well done. The graphics are nice and clean, everything is visually distinct, making it instantly recognizable for what it is. The sounds and music are nice. That track playing in the background is very fitting for a hectic arena fight. ;) I love that this game has so many features. Multiple enemy types and variations, several attacks, ugprades... This game has everything. Even a sort of day/night cycle, though I wish there was more happening during the night than just making everything harder to see. Maybe special enemy that appears only when it's dark? As for the few issues I had: - I think the camera is a bit too close to the character. It makes the whole experience a little bit too hectic. - The game could give more information to the player. When using sprint or special attack when it's not ready, there could be a beeping sound informing the player they can't use that action yet. The sprint could use a recharge bar, too. - A bit more instructions would be nice. For example, you need 80 (or is it 100?) blood to use your special attack, but it's not explained anywhere in the game. - Sometimes the triggers on blood cubes didn't fire when I got close to them, so I could use my character to push them around instead of collecting them. Moving out of their range and back again seemed to fix it. - The corn planting mechanic doesn't seem to do that much now, I'd either ditch it and make the corns fall out of enemies, or expand it. Overall, it's a very well done jam entry, I had a lot of fun playing it. Good job! ;) |
| May 9 14:20:53 | 25m 38s | The King's Gun Guy | ♥ 1 | A nice jam entry! I had fun trying to protect the old man from evil goblins. I love the artstyle, and the sounds work quite well here. The gameplay could be a little bit more, explained, though. I thought I'd have to go around and explore the level to get the king what he needs, but there wasn't much to explore and I had to run back quickly to protect him from enemies spawning behind me. I've played it several times and I've noticed several issues: - Every time I earn around 40k points the enemies stop spawning. The game doesn't end, there simply aren't more enemies to shoot. - When I'm in the upgrade menu, I can still control my character, or at the very least I can still shoot. - The weapon upgrades work well for the first 5 or 6 levels, after that the cost goes down to 0. I can upgrade weapons up to level 11, but anything above those first 5-6 don't seem to do anything. - In the weapon upgrade menu I can't see the entire tooltip on the rightmost upgrades - they go behind the edge of the screen. I like very much that not only you had several different weapons, but also your upgrades changed how they work instead of just adding damage or speed. Though at later levels I couldn't decide between jblab and asdfas upgrades, at least I got the "I AM AWESOME" upgrade. ;) All in all it's a solid jam entry. I've enjoyed playing it, I'll gladly check the updated post-LD version. ;) |
| May 9 14:28:56 | 8m 03s | The Little Ship That Could | ♥ 1 | A very difficult game! The controls take some getting use to, but once you do it's really satisfying when you pull off those dodge-rolls. The graphics look simple but clean, and that's most important for a bullet hell. Sound and music are both very good. I've enjoyed playing it, I'll probably go practice some more. ;) |
| May 9 14:58:49 | 29m 53s | MiniDrone | ♥ 1 | A really nice entry! I'm enjoying the calm experience of a lone space mining drone. ;) I think the power charge bar should be visible in the on-screen UI, the tiny bar on the drone is really difficult to see. It's especially difficult at the start of the game, when your power reserve is so small. The player shouldn't have to play the entire game zoomed in to be safe. I'd also move the first battery size upgrade to be the first upgrade on the list, since the starting power amount is really small. I'd make it so you don't mine just by standing over the mineral spot, I'd require the user to either toggle mining with right mouse button or to have them hold the button to mine. Right now it's easy to lose all of your power because you're standing on a mineral field. Oh, and on some planets it's really difficult to see the mineral text on the day side - perhaps adding a black border to the text wouldn't be a bad idea. Overall it's a really fun game. The visuals are great, sounds and music worked well. I had a lot of fun with it. ;) |
| May 9 17:17:30 | 2h 18m | Keep Him Alive | ♥ 1 | Well done on your entry! It's a pretty solid hack&slash for such a short time. If there's one thing I'd change about it, it would be to increase the time your character changes colour after being hit - right now it blinks so fast it's almost unnoticeable. I had fun playing it, now I'll check the post-LD version to see how much you've improved on it. Great job! ;) |
| May 9 19:30:09 | 2h 12m | The Pacifist | ♥ 1 | A good idea. The unconscious bodies on the floor make it really difficult to defeat the remaining enemies in the area. If I was to change anything in this game, I'd increase the amount of damage done by all weapons - taking down even a single zombie using only pistol and fists feels like it's taking forever. I'd also give the player more incentive to not kill the zombies. Perhaps you could add something like money you'd receive for captured zombies after each wave and can spend on upgrades? All in all it's a really solid entry. I had fun playing it. ;) |
| May 9 19:55:45 | 25m 36s | Overwatch | ♥ 0 | That's a really great entry! The idea of leading someone safely out instead of directly controlling them is fantastic, and you've executed it pretty damn well. Other commenters are right, I can definitely feel some Metal Gear Solid vibes; though the game doesn't blindly imitate MGS and works on it's own. The artstyle is great, the music (and voice acting!) are awesome. If there is one thing I'd change, it is the way camera works. Currently, the camera constantly follows the ambassador. I'd change it so your game camera is focused on the in-world camera you are currently controlling. I'd even go as far as allow the player to lose the ambassador from their field of view (well, maybe leave something like an arrow pointing in the ambassador's direction). This would allow the player to scout ahead before leading their protectee to safety. Right now there are places where that is difficult - on the second level, after you evade the first guard and move upwards, you can't really see whats up ahead, and it's a straight corridor directly towards a guard. It's impossible to evade him when playing for the first time. After you've learned he's there, you know to hide behind the boxes and wait for him to pass. The first time I've played this, I hid there just to be sure, but the guard never came down (do I need to move far enough to trigger his movement, or was that just a bug?). Overall it's a fantastic entry, I really wish there was more of it! It might be short, but I had a lot of fun playing it. ;) |
| May 9 20:04:59 | 9m 14s | Unicorn | ♥ 1 | A nice little game! It looks like you guys had a lot of fun making it. ;) The drawings are really cute. If there is one thing missing from the gameplay, it would be some sort of checkpoint system. It's tough having to start everything all over again, especially because you followed an arrow sign straight into a spike pit. ;) Overall I like this one. I've enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 9 20:10:08 | 5m 09s | Micros | ♥ 1 | An interesting idea! Having multiple cells and switching between them was a great concept, and it's realized pretty well. The movement is a bit slow - it feels like it takes ages to move (and then even longer to stop), so most of the life cycle of the virus is spent on fighting the controls. Other than that, I really enjoyed playing it. Well done! ;) |
| May 9 20:22:52 | 12m 44s | Astronautical | ♥ 0 | A good idea, I enjoy good orbital mechanics use in games! The game looks very interesting, too. It could use a little bit more player feedback - half of the time I didn't know if my shots hit the enemy or not. It didn't help that the enemy hitpoint bars still have a little bit filled even when they're dead - because of that I kept firing on an enemy who was long dead. astronautical.png Other than that, I liked it. It has the potential to become a really fun and engaging game. I hope you'll keep working on it. ;) |
| May 9 20:41:11 | 18m 19s | Confluence | ♥ 1 | A nice idea! I like the simplicity of the artstyle, perhaps changing the main computer to the same simple graphics would work better. Overall the game works fine, but I had a few issues with the gameplay: - Very often enemies spawned very near me, causing me to hit them fractions of a second after they spawn. I guess forbidding the spawn within some distance from the player would work well. - The level design isn't really interesting. Most of it is just long, straight corridors, forcing you to fly forward for a long time and think of something else to not get bored. In the lower section you made a slightly more interesting maze, but the fun of it goes away quickly because of the tight passages. You need to carefully maneuver through them, and since the controls aren't really precise, it makes for a frustrating experience. Other than that, I liked the game. It's a pretty decent LD compo entry. The boss fight felt really good. All in all, I had fun playing it. ;) |
| May 9 20:59:45 | 18m 34s | Wonder | ♥ 1 | A fantastic game! The mood was great on this one. Even though it was clearly designed for somebody with more steady hand than me, I didn't stop playing until I've reached the end. And even then I didn't give up - I know you didn't want anyone to get inside your heart, but I still did it. ;) I was kinda expecting some hidden message if I managed to do that, but the final level just restarted. No shame, the sheer amount of good levels in this game is amazing. I loved that you made the eraser tool big enough, I'd hate if I had to very slowly and precisely erase the lines I've botched. This one was perfect. Well done! ;) |
| May 10 06:48:46 | 9h 49m | Stoke The Flame | ♥ 0 | A nice compo entry! The graphics look really good. It could use some sounds and atmospheric music, but even without them it plays well. I've had a few issues, though: - The player moves too slow, it feels like I'm spending an eternity just moving towards the next enemy. - The radar could use a bit of work. Enemies are a bit too small, and the trees aren't shown at all. - There is a bug which causes the player shadow to slowly move away from the character, the more you move the further away it goes. After a while it looks like the character is floating mid-air: stokeTheFlame.png Other than that, it's a really solid game. I enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 10 07:03:13 | 14m 27s | Akula | ♥ 0 | It's a nice game! I like the art style. The shark, fishes and birds, little islands, everything looks great. Also, the Moon Shark bug at the start is pretty hilarious. ;) There are some things I'd change, though: - The shark jumps way too much after a single key press. You press the key once and the shark jumps up half the screen. It makes it really difficult to control when there's nothing around. When you have to move between a sand hill and an island it's almost impossible. I'd reduce the amount of force used for the jumps by a large amount to give the player more control. - The shark slows down even if you don't hit anything. It makes you lose the game even if you are playing perfectly. I get that you wanted to make sure the player eats other animals instead of just swimming through without catching anything, but it doesn't really work here. I'd probably remove that completely. Give the player a small speed boost when they eat a fish or a seagull, but don't slow them down below the starting speed. - I think the shark mouth collider is a little bit too small. Sometimes I missed the fish I was sure I should get. Overall it's a really solid compo entry. I very much enjoyed jumping the shark out of the water to catch the seagulls. ;) |
| May 10 07:41:31 | 38m 18s | Madscape | ♥ 1 | A really nice concept! It could definitely use more instructions and a tutorial, something to gradually teach the player all of its mechanics. I've played for quite a while before even understanding what I'm supposed to do, and I still don't think I've figured out everything. I think the camera should be more restricted in its movement. At one time I've switched browser tabs to see if there was something I missed in the instructions, and when I got back, the game board was nowhere to be seen. I tried moving around with WASD to see if I can find it again, but eventually I had to restart the game. Also, the zoom is a nice feature, but I think it's controls are reversed - scrolling up zooms out instead of in. Overall it's a really interesting strategy game. It takes a long while to understand, but once you do it's pretty satisfying to play (and win!). I had some fun time with it. ;) |
| May 10 10:50:05 | 3h 08m | It came from the sewers | ♥ 2 | A nice concept! It could use more player feedback, right now it's difficult to "feel" anything, whether it's receiving damage or eating trees. It would be nice if the blob grew bigger the more trees it ate - it would make for an interesting difficulty progression. The dynamic map generation is nice. Overall I've enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 10 11:07:53 | 17m 48s | Croze's Moving Castle | ♥ 1 | Nice game! It's a great concept, having to explore in the darkness to find resources. It plays quite well. The only issue I had was that the movement was way too slow. The leap helped to mitigate that a bit, but I still think the speed should be increased by a large amount. There could also be more things to find in the darkness than just small campfires. The possibilities are endless! Overall I liked this entry, I had fun playing it. ;) |
| May 10 11:33:04 | 25m 11s | Keep Hope Alive | ♥ 1 | An interesting concept! The programmer art might not be good, but it's workable. I'm not an artist myself, so I know how difficult it is to create something that at least doesn't hurt anybody's eyes. ;) At first I found the game unbearably difficult - any single mistake send you straight down to the rock bottom without a chance to get out. After a few years I've managed to get out for a bit, before falling back down. Few years later, I've managed to reach the good times and spend the rest of my life there. Which is why I was surprised when the final screen told me I was a failure full of regret, despite having 17 years worth of good times. Perhaps that's something to tune a little bit. Overall, it's a nice idea. I like how it shows that, while difficult, keeping the hope alive is always possible. Hang in there, you'll get out of this. :) |
| May 10 14:30:45 | 2h 57m | Commandball | ♥ 2 | A very good game! It looks amazing and it plays really well, once you get used to the control scheme. That would be my only issue with it - the controls are too confusing. Even when you manage to somewhat learn what everything does, having two players on the same keyboard doesn't really work, as a lot of keyboards has limit of simultaneous keys pressed. For a fast-paced game, having your controls not work means having a bad time. I guess it would be better to move the second player controls to the mouse. Also, when I started another game, loading bar appeared on the field: commandBall.png Overall, I had fun playing it. Well done! ;) |
| May 10 14:38:33 | 7m 48s | KEEP IT ALIVE | ♥ 1 | Congratulations on your first entry! It's pretty well done for your first game! If there is one thing I'd change, it's the camera location - currently, the perspective makes it difficult to see precisely where you're going. I'd also add a better explanation of game mechanics (like that vitality drops with time and you need to deploy mines before it drops to 0). Overall, it's a really good entry. Good job! |
| May 10 16:11:22 | 1h 32m | Keep the station alive | ♥ 1 | A simple yet fun game! Controls feel good, audiovisual assets are used very well, player feedback is mostly good. One thing I'd improve is to add better feedback on player getting damaged - maybe adding a little bit of camera shake, or temporarily blinking player sprite, or changing player sprite color for a short time. Overall, it's a great entry. I had fun playing it. ;) |
| May 10 16:17:01 | 5m 39s | Water the Flowers | ♥ 1 | A nice little game! It looks peaceful, but it's actually quite dynamic. The art style is great, the music nice and calming. Overall I've enjoyed the experience. It looks like you guys had fun while creating it. Well done! ;) |
| May 10 18:05:12 | 1h 48m | Adrift | ♥ 1 | A very fun game! Though it's played like a top-down shooter, the gameplay is more akin to a puzzle game. Each level introduces new obstacles you have to overcome, gradually increasing the difficulty instead of just overwhelming you. The audiovisual side is good enough for a jam game. My one problem with it is the turrets - I think they're firing way too fast to be a valid obstacle on such an early level. Perhaps setting their firing rate to something much slower, but adding a super-fast-firing turret later on would work better? Overall, it's a really great entry. I've enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 10 20:54:44 | 2h 49m | Catastrophe: Wildfire Firefighters | ♥ 2 | This is probably the best game I've played this LD, how did I miss it for so long? ;) The presentation is amazing. The whole thing is like a giant nostalgia trip, a love letter to the best games of old. At first, the overall look of the game made me remember hours spent on playing Capitalism back in the DOS era (or was it Win3.1 already?). Then I've heard the music and memories of games like the original Command&Conquer or KKND kicked in. What's great about the game is that it doesn't really try to imitate any one old game, instead it focuses on delivering a great gameplay experience of its own. The theme of the game is great, I've always loved games where you had to prepare for or fight an already happening disaster. One thing I didn't like about the gameplay is, same as for other commenters before me, the lack of feedback on skills and cooldowns. The bulldozer usually takes what feels like forever to dig one hex, it really needs to be visible how much longer it'll take. It's great that after using a skill its button on the skill bar gets disabled, but for some reason it resets after several seconds, even though the skill is still working. Many times I've tried using my firetruck, noticed it didn't work, then looked around and found the previously spawned firetruck wasn't finished yet. Other than that, I loved this entry. I'm glad you'll be working on a full release, I really see a lot of potential in this one. Well done and thanks for a fun game to play! ;) |
| May 10 21:18:48 | 24m 04s | Chill Thrive | ♥ 2 | It's a really chill experience! I love this game, the presentation is wonderful and the gameplay is satisfying. There are two things I had issue with: - The air / CO2 mechanic. You say that I should drag it to generate wind, the faster the drag the stronger the wind. For me, if I drag it too fast it does nothing (or generates a very very weak breeze). I had to drag it quite quickly, but not too quick, usually dragging the windmill two or three times to generate a strong wind. I've played it on full screen, so it wasn't an issue of mouse leaving the game area. Not sure what the problem here is. - The growth takes a little bit too much time. On the first or second stage it's quite OK, but later on it gets a bit too long. I see that the progress bars get longer on each stage, but it really felt like their progress slowed down on higher levels of the lifecycle. Overall, it's a wonderful entry. I enjoyed it very much. Well done! ;) |
| May 11 06:31:40 | 9h 12m | Worm Protect Egg | ♥ 0 | An interesting idea! Combining a tower defense game with Snake worked really well for your game. The presentation is also amazing - I just love well-done Pico-8 games. ;) My one issue with it is the difficulty - it takes a lot of attempts to survive more than a few seconds. A more gradual buildup would probably serve the game well. Also, I don't think having to stun your enemies before eating them works really well here. The tail-stunning mechanic works fine, I just wish the worm could simply eat anything that came near his mouth. Sometimes you will miss an enemy by a very small amount and you have to maneuver quite a lot to try and stun them again, wasting precious time. Which almost certainly means you'll lose, since the blue bugs need only one touch of the egg to destroy it. Overall, it's a great compo entry. I've enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 11 07:03:51 | 32m 11s | Live Bomb | ♥ 1 | A good entry! I haven't played a tower defense game where you had to create your own maze in quite a while, I guess the last ones were either Sanctum games or an old Flash game called Xeno Clash. It was refreshing to see that mechanic. During my playthrough on the easy level, the dev console displayed a message: "Development Console: Ensure Read/Write is enabled on the Particle System's texture." On the hard level, when enemies reached my bomb the game stopped with an error in the console: NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Overall, it's a nice compo game. It might be short and simple, but it is fun. Add more levels and more types of turrets and enemies and you'll have something pretty enjoyable for a long time. Well done! ;) |
| May 11 07:18:57 | 15m 06s | It's Gonna Work | ♥ 1 | A nice and funny game! Well done on adding a tutorial that explains every mechanic pretty well, it was very helpful. There are two things I'd change to make the game better. First, the top and bottom chairs are too similar, they really need to be easily distinguishable on a first glance. During the tutorial, when it said I should go to the chair to control the laser wall, I first moved to the bottom one and I wondered why isn't it working. Perhaps replacing one of the chairs with something different (control cockpit?) would work well. Second thing to change is the bottom chair - more often than not, it just gets in the way of me trying to move around quickly. I guess it could be moved farther from the portal to leave a passage through. That would make it much less frustrating. Overall, I really liked your entry. Very nice game for such short compo time. I had fun playing it. ;) |
| May 11 14:02:19 | 6h 43m | Protektor | ♥ 1 | Amazing game! I love the fast-paced gameplay. The visuals are wonderful (if maybe a bit too blurry), music and sounds are fantastic. If there is one issue I had with the game is that the camera is sometimes a little bit too twitchy, especially when you're suddenly changing movement directions. It would probably also be nice to directly control shooting direction instead of having to rely on auto-aim. Other than that, I loved it. Right now I'm trying to complete level 6, I'll keep playing it till I finish it. ;) |
| May 12 04:57:02 | 14h 54m | Guardian | ♥ 1 | A nice little game! It is simple, but the gameplay loop is satisfying, making you want to restart and play just one more time, everytime. It takes a moment to get used to it, but since the controls are pretty intuitive, it quickly becomes easy to play. At least for the first few levels, before it gets really difficult. The difficulty ramp up seems to be well done - it's very easy at the start, giving you the opportunity to get used to the control scheme and the main mechanic of the game. At first it seemed to me like the ship keeping its momentum after using the shield move action would lead to a lot of confusion, but it actually both looks and feels natural. I'd probably experiment whether it wouldn't feel better without it, but it's an option I'm not totally against. The audiovisual side is also great. It might be simple, yet it is clean and everything is easily distinguishable. The clouds slowly passing by were a nice addition. One thing you've already received feedback on is the UI, so I'll won't spend time talking on that. Have you considered giving the player ship more durability? Something like "you can take two shots, but the third one will kill you". That would give the player a little bit more wiggle room, while it would also keep the option of perfectionist run without loosing any hitpoint. Of course then the game would require some feedback on hits, as right now the game just ends and there isn't really a need for one. Over all, I liked it. It's a pretty solid compo entry. Good job! ;) |
| May 12 05:09:32 | 12m 30s | Waste of Space | ♥ 2 | A really interesting idea! It's kinda like a combination of a strategy, puzzle and action games all in one package. The gameplay loop is very engaging, making you want to play more. The audiovisual side is good. My only problem with the game, which probably stems from not fully understanding the mechanics yet, is that sometimes it's difficult to know what your shields or lasers will protect. Sometimes I felt like despite having multiple lasers in the area a lot of rocks still got through. Oh, and I also think it would be a good idea to add some sort of damage indicator to the sections - right now it's impossible to know which sections need to be protected first before your base breaks apart. Overall, it's a great jam entry, I enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 12 05:27:21 | 17m 49s | Feed the Machine | ♥ 2 | A pretty fun game! You've managed to create a lot of connected systems for the player to manage. It's pretty enjoyable to be running around, first trying to locate everything, then frantically trying to replenish your resources. The UI could use a lot more feedback though. Your hunger bar is only visible when you're moving up or down. I usually spent most of the game moving left or right, so most of the time I couldn't see the bars getting low and lost. When a machine breaks, you have no idea it's broken and you have to fix it. It would be a nice idea to at least add some icons or text to the screen, something like "You are hungry" or "The O2 generator broke down". That way you wouldn't have constant access to full information about the state of each system, but at least you would know there is a problem somewhere and you need to take care of it. Also, a lot more feedback when using things. Right now I can press E and not notice something isn't working. If I'm trying to use a machine and there's no power, play some sort of beeping or clicking noise to let me know it isn't doing anything. When completing the radio call for home, display some information like "message sent" instead of just hiding the interaction text. While I understand the idea behind having to find each machine every time, I think once the player finds them they should have some sort of markers, letting the player know where they are. It would be better if the game remembered their location instead of forcing the player to do it. The colliders could use some work, too. Pretty often I'd get stuck on things like the back of the chair, while stuff like broken pipes were very difficult to move to. Overall it's a really good survival game. A nice jam entry, I've enjoyed playing it. ;) |
| May 12 17:03:24 | 11h 36m | SOS STARSHIP F1 | ♥ 1 | I love this idea! It feels kind of like FTL on steroids, but the direct control over the shuttle and your character makes it feel much more immersive. It has a huge potential, and there's a lot of directions to expand in: different types of locations to visit, bigger locations which you really need to explore on foot, there might be combat (both on foot and in your shuttle), etc. Add in some random events for additional flavour, e.g. you return to your ship and you find it boarded by pirates and you need to fight on foot inside your ship. The minimalist art style isn't bad, but it would be greatly supplemented by slow ambient music and some muffled sounds, like rocks hitting the hull, metal creaking, etc. One thing I'm not so sure about this is the jump sequence. I feel like this simplistic arcade-style agility test with low-maneuverability ship is a little bit out of place. However, I guess with some upgrades it could feel a bit better - as you travel you are able to add shielding for your ship, protecting you from some debris damage during jumps, maybe a forward-facing laser to be able to shoot the debris yourself. I've found one bug: on my second playthrough, as I gathered resources from a location and started to move to my shuttle, the camera suddenly shifted partially to the outside, and I lost control. Moments later the camera moved entirely outside, but I never left the location. The shuttle wasn't there to control either. None of the buttons worked, I had to refresh the page. The game didn't freeze / crash, because the oxygen was still going down. sosStarship.png Overall, it's a wonderful concept and a nice compo entry. Good job! ;) Edit Oh, I forgot to add. If you land in a location, your character should probably leave the shuttle on their own. Right now you have to press `y` to dock, then `y` again to leave the shuttle. Since you can't undock immediately, it's obvious you want to leave the shuttle. There's no need for this additional key press. Same thing for leaving a location - you want to undock after you've boarded the shuttle. |
| May 14 07:23:04 | 38h 19m | Gaia | ♥ 0 | That's a nice and chill game. I wish I found it during the voting round. The art style is great, the UI is clean, the background music is just fantastic. The game plays really well. I had some trouble during the middle age level, because those humans seem to damage the planet's health faster than I can plant new trees or animals. Eventually, I've managed to reach the modern era, where I encountered a problem - it's really difficult to destroy buildings with the meteor. More often than not, the meteor only destroys the land under and around the buildings, while leaving them intact (and apparently floating on this new lake): gaia.png Also, there seems to be something wrong with the pause button. I've pressed it to pause the game to take a screenshot and switched tabs to start writing this comment. When I returned to the game, I pressed the pause button again to unpause, but then it just displays the "Paused" message. Clicking on `Continue` doesn't resume the game, it just closes the message window. Overall, it's a wonderful jam entry. If there is one thing I'd change about it, I'd probably made the world a little bit bigger / everything else a bit smaller. Other than that, I love it, I had fun time playing it. Well done! ;) |
| May 15 10:08:19 | 26h 45m | Prototype Towers | ♥ 1 | A really nice tower defense game! It's a shame I didn't find it during the voting phase, but I'm glad I could play it now. ;) The repair mechanic is really good. Usually, tower defense games devolve into just placing more and more towers, going for the sheer quantity. Some of them have tower upgrades, which reduces that a bit, but not by much. The repair mechanic totally fixes that problem. Of course, you still need more turrets to damage more and tougher monsters, but you also need to make sure you can keep up with the repairs. One thing I'd get rid of is the timer on repairs. I feel like the repair itself mitigates player's efforts well enough, since they can only repair one tower at a time. Having the towers get destroyed when you don't manage to fix it in time seems like too much punishment. Just leave the damaged turret there, it will be a hindrance to the player until they manage to repair it. Also, the third tower's ability to destroy your own towers (including itself!) doesn't really feel that good. Perhaps it could be replaced by something like a mine - you'd place it on the path and it would be one use only splash damage to everything in the area. With proper warning that it does damage your turrets, it should work fine. I've played it twice and managed to win my second game. The music is really good, it does fit the game's frantic gameplay well. Overall, it's a very good idea, and a pretty good execution. I liked it. ;) |
