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Feedback comments for LD46
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Turncoda's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 21 21:23:38 | Keep Vlad Alive | ♥ 1 | I loved watching the brainpkins grow. Nice job on the pixel art there! For health reasons I use a trackball instead of a regular mouse, so it was harder for me to play I think. But even with my reduced mouse agility, the game still sort of devolved into spam-clicking the mouse button. I was just watering constantly. It also was not clear to me whether the seeds were a good investment. My initial reaction was "wait, did I even break even?" I played and loved Stardew Valley, but in that game you don't even have to do the math to figure out that buying seeds is a good investment, because the rate of return is so high it's very perceptible. It's like double or triple your cost basis or something. Then again there are lots of moving parts to that game, so maybe it's not just about the numbers. Good job overall, loved the art and music, and the intro cutscene was fun to read! | |
| Apr 21 21:46:12 | 22m 34s | Keep Joe Alive | ♥ 5 | The best part about the game is your pixel art. It's very fun to look at! Maybe you pivoted in the middle of development, but given that the game in current state is largely "on rails", I think you could have pushed the animation even further, adding longer jump anticipations, more frames of squash and stretch, and more elaborate dodges. Player characters in sidescrolling games are often constrained in their animations because the game needs to prioritize responsiveness and readability over pleasing animation. But in a game like yours that plays down direct player control, those constraints are not present, so you can be much more liberal with the animation. Regarding the gameplay, at first I suspected that there was some correlation between the keys I was pressing and the actions I was taking, but I eventually decided that there was no correlation. It was a shame, since while I was under that illusion, I felt more connected to the character. I happen to be a touch-typist so the game was not difficult to play, but I know people who would struggle with the game because they wouldn't be able to find the keys on their keyboard fast enough. I think arrow keys and/or spacebar would have been a little more accessible, because more people can press those keys without looking. Finally, I would have liked it if the key indicator was closer to the object I was looking at. I stopped looking at Joe completely after a while and just looked at the top left corner of the screen. Ideally there could have been a correlation between the action taken and the key pressed, so the step of reading a letter from the screen could be eliminated entirely and the player could instead focus on taking actions directly. Great job making a complete playable game! |
| Apr 21 21:56:00 | 9m 48s | Keep It Alive Game | ♥ 1 | Playing your game made me smile 🙂 The art was very charming. I love my little monster box. From what I can tell, I hatch from an egg? I love the idea that I'm given control while I'm still in the egg. That's a pretty novel idea I think. Now that I think about it, the expanding field of vision was a way of communicating the feeling of hatching from an egg. I love it! Excited to see what you make next 👍 |
| Apr 22 18:08:01 | 20h 12m | Omiga Daycare | ♥ 1 | Great job on the UI design, it was readable and straightforward. I loved being able to move my ~~Tama~~ Omigas around on the table and watch the keychain jiggle around. I actually kinda wish I could grab them by the keychain and swing them around. And flip them upside down. That would be funny. Wouldn't it be cool if Omiga devices had accelerometers or step counters? Then you could shake the device and the Omiga might respond to that. I really liked that there are negative consequences for taking incorrect actions. Seems obvious to say, but I think it's easy to overlook when you're designing a game. Almost expected the Omigas to express annoyance or unhappiness, but they were a little less expressive than I was hoping. I kinda wish I could return the Omigas to their owners at some point, and perhaps that would impact the reputation of the business which would in turn adjust the intensity of the game, but I realize that this would have drastically increased the complexity of the game's design. Guess that's the reality of the compo for ya. It's fun to think about though, because it's one of those adaptive systems that makes a game more accessible for a wider range of skill levels. Amazing that you made such a polished experience for the compo. Great job on managing your time well! The variety of Omiga really spices it up, nice touch! |
| Apr 24 22:20:00 | 52h 11m | Hatching Dragons | ♥ 1 | output.png I beat it! I felt a little frustrated at some of my deaths, but since the enemy paths were the same every time, I was able to plan ahead and improve my strategy. I found myself prioritizing the axe guys because I learned that they had the potential to one-shot an egg if they got to it. To some extent I had to know what was coming to succeed, as I wasn't fast enough to react the first few times I died to a particular hazard. The third egg especially required some planning ahead. I learned that if you don't anticipate it, an axe guy will one-shot the third egg right after the second egg hatches. I was really stuck on the third egg for a long time, but my desire to see what would come after the third egg hatched was enough to motivate me to find a way forward. There's nothing wrong per se with a game that requires persistence and some rote memorization, but it can certainly test a player's resolve. On the other hand, the challenge of the third egg felt insurmountable at first, which made it all the more satisfying when I eventually managed to succeed. I found the core shooting mechanic to be quite intricately designed. The fact that damage and accuracy vary with time makes timing and positioning critical, but it's nice that they can be fudged a little if you get a little closer or take a few more shots. The fact that you walk slower while drawing your bow makes for an interesting trade-off between preparing your next shot and moving to your next position. There were a few moments when I really needed to move quickly to a new position, and those were the moments when I had to consciously stop drawing my bow. On that topic, The fact that you can move at all while drawing your bow was not something I fully considered on my first few attempts. I would decide where to shoot, move into position, then start drawing my bow. But after settling in to the game a bit more, I started drawing my bow before I even knew where I was going to shoot next. This happened somewhat subconsciously. At first I was also overwhelmed by the number of enemies, but as I improved my rate of fire and game knowledge, the volume of enemies got to be more manageable. Realizing that some enemies were more important than others was a fun and interesting moment for me, because I started to prioritize certain enemies over others. I realized that enemies would deal a certain finite amount of damage and then leave. While from a narrative perspective it doesn't quite make sense to me (why would the enemies hit the egg, not finish the job, and then run away? If they wanted the egg destroyed wouldn't they stay there and keep hitting it?), it actually made the game more interesting because it opened the option to take a calculated loss by letting an enemy live. This is a problem that I remember having in tower defense games I've played ages ago, where letting any enemy live basically means you die (eventually), which turns into a kill-everything-no-matter-what mindset, which I feel is a little less interesting. |
| Apr 25 03:13:06 | 4h 53m | Turtle Daddy | ♥ 2 | This was really fun and difficult! Also, hilarious concept, love your creative take on the theme. When I learned that you can throw your shield to pick up the turtle babies, I got way better at the game. I ended up trying to cheese the game by camping on the left side of the screen and throwing my shell vertically on the screen repeatedly to collect my babies as soon as they hatched, basically ignoring all the enemies. This didn't work as well as I'd hoped, as the crabs, though they kept their distance, acted as a shield against the oncoming ink projectiles and seagulls, until they could get right on the spawn points and I'd have basically no time to react. That's some really impressive anti-cheese design! The design of the game really encourages you to play in a fun way, which is what I'm most impressed by. The in-game tips are a nice touch, they really helped me improve by providing critical game knowledge in between attempts. Great work, can't wait to see what y'all make next! |
| Apr 25 03:54:50 | 41m 44s | Letter to Thomas | ♥ 1 | The landscapes set a beautiful mood for the story. I think the landscapes and the story together make this a stunning accomplishment in 72 hours. If this were a film, animation, or otherwise non-interactive media, I would have really enjoyed this. I felt that the precise platforming worked against the delivery of the narrative. Dying would have been fine in any other platforming game, but in this one it is especially jarring because it interrupts the flow of the text appearing on the bottom of the screen. Furthermore, the fact that platforming was so precise meant that I had to focus intensely on the postman at times, which meant not reading the text. Audio delivery might have helped, but it wouldn't have solved the problem that dying interrupts the narrative flow. I think it's interesting to think about whether player death, which is so ubiquitous in games that it's easy to take for granted, are a necessary aspect of games. In this game, the possibility of death forced me to engage with the platforming mechanics, which meant looking more closely at the details of the landscapes. That act of scrutinizing the landscapes made me feel more connected to the postman, which I think is a good thing (sidenote: why is the postman reading the mail he's delivering?). It made me feel like I was actually navigating that treacherous terrain myself. On the flip side, the unforgiving deaths took me in the opposite direction, disconnecting me from the postman. What if death wasn't possible? What if there's no fail state? I can't even imagine what that would look like, because I generally don't play narrative-focused games, but I think there are plenty of successful narrative games out there which do exactly that. Something else that kind of bothered me was that dying at the end of the game was an unavoidable part of the intended narrative, but dying elsewhere in the game just led to a restart of that screen. The lack of consistency made me feel like the experience was somewhat arbitrary and took me out of the moment. Then again, this problem seems to have plagued adventure games since their inception... there's a narrative the designers want you to follow, and if you don't follow it, you have to restart. |
| Apr 25 04:15:28 | 20m 38s | Sourdough Finisher | ♥ 2 | Your game is brimming with personality and I love it! If baking sourdough is this fun in real life, sign me up, send me some starter right away and I'll give you a gift (and then lie and not give you a gift). The music ensured I had a dopey smile on my face at all times. At first it felt kind of irrelevant but as it played over and over it became the soundtrack of my journey to master bakership. The descriptions had me laugh out loud multiple times. Even the title of the game is hilarious to me. A thought that occurred to me while playing the game is that if you get into baking sourdough bread, you become a spreader of the sourdough bug, so to speak, where your friends are the victims. And as an added perk, you can get *stuff*! Who doesn't like *stuff*?? I loved looking over my list of gifts, by the way. Very nice game. Loved every minute of it. |
| Apr 25 04:27:48 | 12m 20s | do not go gently | ♥ 2 | It was interesting to decide between the sure option and gambling on the question mark card, but it wasn't long before I got bored of that particular decision. If the sure card is good, I pick it, and if the sure card is bad, I don't pick it. Still, I felt tense as I got close to the end, as I got pretty badly bruised when I thought I could take on a tiny monster with my fists in an effort to conserve ammo! I managed to beat the game on my first attempt, but only barely. An interesting part of playing the game for the first time was that I had no idea how much health the monsters could do, or how much damage they could deal to me, so picking whether to use my fists or bullets was a genuine guess. That feeling of mystery is a good thing! Great job utilizing that to create tension 🙂 Thinking about card games and the idea of transparency in games and my mind wanders to the brilliant game Dicey Dungeons. In that game, the enemy's cards are shown to the player, so the player knows what they're capable of, but the game is still tense because the player ultimately doesn't know what cards the enemy will play, and there's some uncertainty in the player's cards as well (just like the question mark card in your game). This also reminds me of that one Game Maker's Toolkit video about the two types of randomness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwI5b-wRLic Highly recommend that video if you haven't already seen it. |
| Apr 26 21:25:57 | 40h 58m | Ball Monster | ♥ 2 | I started out with the web build and the framerate felt like 30fps or less. I was able to beat a few levels, but I could not get past the S-shaped level because the framerate was too low to control my jumps. I then tried the native build (I run Linux and the Linux build worked perfectly for me) and the framerate was much better, something close to 60fps. The game became a lot more fun and I managed to beat the game without much trouble. I am an avid player of platforming games though (e.g. Celeste, Mario Maker, Spelunky) so my experience may have been an outlier. That being said, I felt like my character was moving so fast that I never completely got the hang of controlling him. I especially did not enjoy controlling my guy in the air, because he falls so fast that I don't have much time to react. Of all the aspects of the game, I enjoyed throwing and catching my little friend the most. I don't see why he has a face, because he doesn't seem to do anything on his own. I suppose his specialty is pressing buttons, being that he only has arms, though I don't see why he has to be an animate object to be able to do that, seems like the physics takes care of it, and it isn't clear to me why my character cannot press buttons himself. I kept wanting to catch my little friend in the air, but it seemed close to impossible as I never pulled it off. I would have felt really cool though. I noticed there were some hard levels towards the end that were almost exclusively about platforming, with little to no ball-throwing. That gives me the impression that the ball-throwing was an afterthought. It was also tedious, like the difficulty was being artificially increased using repetition instead of novel material, on the S-shaped level for example. I would have really loved to see the ball-throwing mechanic explored more, because I really enjoyed throwing the ball and would have like to do some more cool tricks with the ball. Ultimately I feel that the tight platforming levels served only to shut out newer players and irritate players of all skill levels. On the level with a tall wall, it took me way too long to realize that I just had to do a max-height jump to get my ball-friend over it. It didn't seem possible at all at first. I wish it was clearer when the darkness would kill me so I'd know exactly how much time I'd have left. On one hand, it was mysterious so as it got darker I felt more tense, which is a good thing I suppose but I still wish I could tell more easily exactly when I would die. I felt like I was never able to predict where the ball would go. For that reason, a lot of levels boiled down to guesswork: (1) find the exact right spot to stand, of which there is only one, (2) jump to the exact right height, and (3) throw my little ball-friend. The error tolerance in this process seemed very low. Just a few steps to the side and instead of tossing my ball-friend to victory I'd be hurling him towards a gory death. I felt like the design of the level did not clearly communicate to me the correct course of action, so I spent a lot of time just guessing, which meant I was spending less time doing cool tricks. Congratulations on making a complete and playable game! |
| Apr 26 21:53:16 | 27m 19s | Eternal Flame | ♥ 0 | Solid platformer! If there had been checkpoints I definitely would have played all the way through, but alas, I died 3 times at level 6. I'm used to having more air control, but I can see the appeal of committing to your jump, plus it's more physically accurate. The lack of checkpoints makes it really frustrating to take a loss towards the end. The last straw for me was when I made a really tough jump, landed on the very edge of a small platform, but then I just barely grazed one of those flying cacti and it was over. I can understand hitting a flying cactus when I'm airborne, but not when I'm on the ground! The hitboxes on those cacti are ridiculous! I wish there was a way to fight the firemen. I was able to see some paths in the level that clearly led to certain death, and I'm not a fan of those. If I'm dead, the kindest thing you can do is kill me quickly 🙂 Cute animations and nice colors. |
| Apr 27 01:30:45 | 3h 37m | Woodpunk | ♥ 1 | Lovely aesthetic. I love that the music and art support each other to create a vibrant mood. Honestly I enjoyed just walking around and seeing the world you all built together, and especially just listening to the music in each area. The gameplay was a little overwhelming at first, but I eventually understood how it all fit together. Great job everyone! The fact that you put out something so cohesive as a team of 7 is an incredible feat in its own right. |
| Apr 27 19:40:25 | 18h 09m | Solais | ♥ 1 | I found your game through itch.io rather than the LD website. Extremely moody atmosphere, I loved it. Beautiful environments. Moving around was very satisfying. I noticed that you even implemented coyote time! Very thoughtful ❤️ Agreed with @mika-la-grand , that top part is a huge difficulty spike (no pun intended). I must have died on it at least 10 times before getting through. At times it was hard to see the level. It makes sense that I can't make out the hazards from the background from safe platforms at first glance, and the darkness really draws attention to the torch, but it was a little frustrating as well. I learned more by dying than by inspecting the level. Still, very well done on the torch and lighting engine. I definitely appreciated that the tiles had different appearances in the darkness rather than just being dimmer version of the illuminated sprite. It made for a very pretty-looking game. I like that you made the spike hitbox pretty forgiving, and that touching the side of the spikes was safe. Then again there was that one wall-jump area where I had a very small runway and jumping too early meant bonking on the ceiling and too late meant running right into spikes. I liked the idea there, but I think that particular room felt more tedious than challenging. The conveyor belts, disintegrating platforms, and waning torch mechanic were a great device for increasing the pacing of the platforming. Very nice design decisions there. The particle effects on the checkpoints were wonderful! I also loved the color contrast, as the green color of the checkpoints made it really stand out from everything else, while the blue color of the water made it stand out from the red character and torch. The torch trail was so nice, I have no idea how you did that but it looks amazing. I noticed that I re-jump if I hit the ground while holding the jump button. Personally I am used to having to re-press jump to re-jump, as this is the behavior in Celeste, Mario, Spelunky, etc. but it actually didn't bother me too many times in your game. The narrative pacing of the game was excellent. Each bite of text was enough to add flavor, but just short enough to not be overwhelming. Spacing it out over the course of the game was an excellent design decision. It also sets up the ending brilliantly, as it reveals the narrator (I presume?) only at the very end, and puts a dark spin on the story up to the point and makes for a satisfying ending. Really smart, I might have to steal that device for next time 🙃 I'm really impressed by your game and it's one of the few games I've played this jam that inspires me to improve and work harder next time. Keep it up, excited to see what you put out (no pun intended) next! |
| Apr 28 09:44:55 | 14h 04m | Across the Lake | ♥ 2 | This is an extraordinarily calming game. The better I got at the game, the more calming it became. As my runs got longer, my brain tuned out and turned off, which weirdly made me feel more immersed in the game. It reminds me of my experiences with meditation. By clearing my mind, I become more aware of the moment. After a few tries I found myself relying heavily on the stone's reflection for timing my presses. I eventually found that pressing space at the moment that the stone completely overlaps its reflection, or maybe a frame or two before, is about where you can get a perfect skip (losing no height). I would guess that there is about a 4 frame window in which you can get a perfect skip. My best score was 76 skips. across_the_lake-Apr_28_2020_1_57_AM.png Those long skips felt really nice and calming. I "entered the zone" on those. It's really amazing that something so mechanically simple could do that for me. I really appreciated the effort put into creating a calming atmosphere. A big part of that is the soundtrack. The soundtrack is amazing, like I can't believe how well it fits the game. Of course I can tell that it repeats, but I can't tell exactly where, and it never got repetitive. The synth drones are my favorite part. It's literally just so chill. The background is full of character despite being mostly a pure-black silhouette. It reminds me of one night when I was driving from California to Oregon: a moonlit sky, the dark silhouette of trees interspersed with lights from the sprawling towns. I'm focusing on the road, but in my peripheral vision, I notice the landscape lazily drift by. This game reminds me of that, and it felt real nice. Loved the subtly multi-colored particles on the surface of the water. I love the impression of speed that I get from watching them whip by as I'm skipping. This game is strong, focused, and well-executed. Congratulations on making a wonderful game. |
| Apr 29 22:36:16 | 36h 51m | Mother Hen | ♥ 0 | I was really unsettled by the flashing at the end of each level. Couldn't continue. Thank you for providing a Linux build though, it is much appreciated. |
| Apr 30 06:11:50 | 7h 35m | Goat Rider | ♥ 1 | Really neat puzzle concept with tons of interesting non-obvious behaviors (a good thing!) I found the premise to be pretty absurd going in, but surprisingly it didn't bother me once I learned the rules. The characters and objects soon became symbols in my mind; I saw them for how they functioned, not what they looked like. I had no trouble learning the rules, so whatever tutorializing you put in worked for me. I did however never figure out how to reliably move the clothesline in the direction I wanted. The undo button made it just bearable, fortunately. I found the graphics to be somewhat hard to parse, especially because of the similarity in color between the ropes and the grass. Otherwise, your color choices were really pleasant on the eyes and quite readable. I didn't like Festival. It didn't require any novel ideas, just careful calculations, and a lot of them. Deja Vu, the level it is derived from, and Network were my favorite levels. They forced me to think harder and pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I agree with @boxedmeatrevolution , Network is a really great level. I don't know how to explain why, so I'll just talk about my experience. It was overwhelming at first, but as I familiarized myself with the level, I was able to see the vague structure of the solution. Because I could see the rough path I needed to take, I felt encouraged to keep trying, even when I got stuck. When I did get stuck, it was not because I didn't understand the rules, it was because I didn't understand what exactly I wanted. It took a few hours to get unstuck, but I was making slow progress the whole time. Progress came in the form of formulating progressively more precise problem statements (e.g. I need to get there -> I need goat to be here so I can get there -> I need apple to be here so goat can go here so I can get there). Part of that came from exploring the possibility space through experimentation, and part of it came from thinking ahead and working backwards. The Aha! moment was really satisfying, in part because I was really invested at that point. Looking back, the core insight (no pun intended) seems perfectly obvious, but it's probably because I spent hours analyzing the level and developing a detailed mental model of it. If I had to explain the core insight to someone, I would probably have to explain every single mechanic in the game first for context, including advanced edge cases that players probably wouldn't think about until it happens, which I guess goes to show that it's a really good core insight. It's awesome that you created a level that forced me to come to that exact conclusion. Great job! Did you design most of the puzzles on paper or did you design all of them after implementing the core gameplay? How much in-game exploration informed your puzzle design? |
| May 2 08:28:28 | 50h 16m | Tiny Fragments | ♥ 5 | Great execution on all fronts. The music was pleasant to listen to while solving the puzzles. The graphics and animations were clean and readable. The puzzles themselves don't have super obvious solutions, which motivates me to figure them out. That being said, either the possibility space was not very large or the solution to non-solution ratio was relatively high, because it was easy to play mindlessly until I stumbled into a solution. I was never forced to slow down and think, because there wasn't much to think about. It also wasn't really possible to slow down and think, unless I held onto a piece to pause the game. I felt consistently motivated to continue playing, but mostly because the solutions came easily without much effort. There weren't any particularly memorable levels, or levels the stood out. I would say the most interesting moment was when I encountered a raised-ground tile that I had seen a few times before, but this time with a twist: there's a spike on one side of it, so you can't just treat it same as the ones from before. The amount of polish on the game is incredible. It might seem like a little thing, but the little clock that appears next to the hand is really effective at indicating times when player input is ignored. The white border highlight around the tiles, too. I feel like player control is under-communicated in a lot of games, especially puzzle games, leading to a feeling of unresponsive controls or eaten inputs. I've thought a lot about how to make games feel responsive when animations are involved. How do you handle inputs if an animation is currently playing? Do you skip the animation? Do you buffer the input? You present a solution here; ignore player inputs during the animation and show a spinner. It's a bit old-school, reminds me of an old Sierra game, but it definitely works in this context for its intended purpose. The controls were easy to learn and did not get in the way of the gameplay. |
| May 2 08:57:19 | 28m 51s | Friendly Fire | ♥ 4 | What a charming game. I love how many different mechanics are in what starts off as a modest platformer. I loved reading all the dialog. All of it was really funny and witty, and made me laugh a bunch. I loved the dancing mechanic. When the game suddenly turned into a rhythm game, I laughed at that too! And when the ending came and all the previous game systems and character interactions came together, that was really satisfying. I love an ending that pulls the whole game together. I'm so impressed that you all managed to make a game that had no less than 3 subsystems, and it all worked well together! Don't take this the wrong way, but though none of these were novel ideas, they were implemented with such heart and humor that I found it to be a ton of fun in the way hanging out with friends is fun (and not in the way mobile games, MMOs, and esports games are "fun", no offense to those types of games; they have a time and place). |
| May 2 19:14:05 | 10h 16m | Remember, Apollo | ♥ 0 | I like that you've drawn a parallel between the narrative structure of the game and the physical world. It lends an abstractness to the gameplay, which is rare to see in physics-based games. I ended up paying less attention to the narrative because of the gameplay, and as I did with picture books when I was a kid, just got the gist of the narrative by looking at the pictures. I was compelled to play through the game twice, probably because I felt sad about the ending and hoped that something would change, but the overarching narrative remained the same, which feels appropriate. Interestingly, on my second time around I did take a few slightly different paths, leading me to find a non-critical path that I had missed on my first time around, which added color to the narrative. The lava-lantern-illumination effect was really fun to look at and was a neat way to indicate the visited nodes and to reveal the images gradually. |
| May 2 19:39:49 | 25m 44s | Efi | ♥ 0 | A simple yet effective conceit coupled with great execution. Each type of object (speedground, moving blocks, baby bird, wall) felt meaningful and wrinkled the core gameplay in their own meaningful ways. The core mechanic of steering the bird, while simple to grasp, was difficult to master. As I neared the end of my playthrough I backtracked over a few places I'd traversed before, I noticed that I have tangibly improved. As I stretched my neck towards the last baby, I closed my eyes and whispered, "mama is here" The music was fantastic. 👏 |
| May 6 01:34:19 | 77h 54m | Tower Defence of the Heart | ♥ 1 | I enjoyed the pacing of this game. Once I stabilized in the early game, I started to hit my stride, making tangible improvements to my damage output, but then I got killed by the second boss. Overall I felt like the game was fair, and that I was improving at the game every time I lost. I'm glad you focused on pacing and balance, that essential aspect of the game really makes the game shine! |
