Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Feedback comment stats → detectiveLosos
Feedback comments for LD47
detectiveLosos's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | detectiveLosos's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 7 00:18:46 | Loopy Glitch | ♥ 1 | I don't really know why, but I finished this game twice in a row. Maybe I thought there was something else in the final room to do to get the "good" ending, or perhaps the looping nature of this Loopy character worked for me so well. This game does a great job of teaching you mechanics without ever telling anything. It was a real moment of discovery for me when I finally understood what was happening. On a contrast it's a bit sad that most of the levels are so straight forward without really any puzzle element in them at all. For me the only difficult level was the one with a bomb, but at the same time it was the most interesting one until I figured that you can just throw the bomb back to the beginning and grab it in the next cycle. Until then I tried one strategy after another before settling on the following: getting hit by a bullet on the first cycle, then on a second cycle kiting the turret's aim away and getting hit by the second bullet to clear a path for the third cycle, and only on the third cycle I tried to grab a bomb and run away. But sadly this didn't work because I didn't have enough time to place it and finish the level. So yeah, when I finally discovered that I just forgot about a throw button, this level transformed from a real puzzle with subversion of expectations into a simple straightforward purely mechanical task to complete. As for the ideas that may help develop this concept further it would be really cool if there were puzzles that require you to do multiple things with a same character. For example you stand on a switch and open a door, wait a bit for the future you to pass through, then go to another switch to open another door for yet another future you to go through. Right now most of the puzzles are designed in such a way that the characters have nothing else to do except wait after they did one and only thing that was required of them. Another idea is to remove the fail state entirely and have you loop back to the first cycle after you finished with the last one. Or maybe even have an ability to switch back and forth between the cycles. So yeah, it's a cool little puzzle game and I haven't really played anything quite like it except maybe The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. So there is a whole huge unexplored area of design possibilities if you wish to develop it further. | |
| Oct 7 00:41:59 | 23m 13s | AutoMate | ♥ 2 | Seems like there will be a lot of time looping games this jam. Well, the more the merrier! First things first the obvious downer is the camera movement. It makes it really hard to make sense of everything that's happening. Other than that it was a really cool puzzle game with some solid puzzle designs. I really liked the fact that you have multiple things to do in progression for each robot, this way in the end when you finally solve the puzzle it all looks like an elaborate, chaotic but at the same time calculated dance. At first I hated the way the game makes me rush and speedrun through the puzzles and I thought of it as a genre-mechanics mismatch, but surprisingly enough by the end I got into a rhythm of things and almost screamed "Give me more fast paced puzzles to blaze through at a speed of sound!" when it ended a bit abruptly. So yeah, it looks and sounds really good (I especially enjoyed the attention to all the menus), it plays quite well except the camera so if you have time and opportunity I'd suggest fixing it and uploading a post-jam version. |
| Oct 7 01:13:36 | 31m 37s | Commuter | ♥ 3 | It's a bummer to start with a bad thing, but at first I couldn't figure out how to place anything on the grid and it didn't help a whole lot that when you click on the placeable objects it just ticks the circle like you are going through some sort of a checklist. But yeah, after I finally figured the controls out I had a pretty fun time blasting everything into pieces. I didn't find it all that engaging to chase the time limits for the medals, so I played it more like a sandbox game trying to beat the level with only spikes or with only a force push or even competing with my own turrets on who will be the fastest: me pushing the cars off or the turrets exploding them. It also seems like there are a whole lot of really similar levels that has no meaningful difference between them, but yeah it's quite difficult to make a jam game be content rich. Overall it's a really neat idea with quite a beautiful visual presentation. I found it at it's best when it's played like a sandbox, but right now it has too few toys in it to keep the player engaged for all the levels you have created. |
| Oct 7 01:56:50 | 43m 14s | Anomaly | ♥ 1 | Oh wow, it was a strange experience, but a welcome one nonetheless. Stylistically speaking it felt like I'm back on DOS emulator playing an old Master of Orion game. Don't know if that was intended, but visuals and soundscape are just perfect at triggering that nostalgia. You even have some element of a planetary base building there! So yeah, aside from the overall style I also quite enjoyed the resource management aspect that was going on. It was cleverly designed with intent that you drain all the resources from your starting planets to the point there are none so you have to move up to the next ones and risk having no resources for ship repairs. And it also felt like you can actually control the desired pace of the game right through gameplay which is brilliant: if you want to kinda speedrun it, you are perfectly able to do so and complete the entire game in just a couple of rollbacks, but if you like to horde all the resources and fuel (like I do :D) then you can stay a few cycles longer and then you also encounter an interesting mechanic of completely draining the planets of all the stuff that will hurry you up. So yeah, a great jam entry! I have nothing really else to add. |
| Oct 7 21:39:17 | 19h 42m | Ouroboros | ♥ 2 | Oh wow! Just wow! First of all a big fan of your LD44 Path of Redemption game. And there are definitely some similarities between the two. When I saw three pillars I even thought that you were reusing the same switch-puzzle from the previous game (and honestly speaking I wouldn't mind, because I really enjoyed them back there). So yeah, it's super polished overall and the voice acting is a cherry on top! Arrow sounds and the fact that your arrows actually stuck in the enemies make your shots feel powerful and satisfying. The idea of a looping dungeon is neat, but I felt like it was somewhat of a downgrade in comparison with a standard roguelike maze exploration. It seems like in every next wave it's the same enemies from the previous one with some extra ones. So it would be cool (especially given the theme of undead and necromancy) if the bodies would remain and when you go back to the same room it wasn't the new enemies spawning, but the old ones reviving. It would add some feeling of looping and persistency I think. I also found the game to be too too easy. I quickly bought all the upgrades and then just annihilated all the enemies without them ever having a chance. If the game would be more challenging players would also need to manage the health pickups. Not grab them immediately when at full health, but leave them be to have more chances on the next cycle. So yeah, even though I felt a little bit like the idea of a looping dungeon was somewhat underexplored, it didn't stop me from enjoying the experience a whole lot. |
| Oct 7 23:48:13 | 2h 08m | Orbit | ♥ 3 | I actually really enjoyed this little game, but I have to start with negative things first. At first I was completely and utterly confused by what was happening. I ran into asteroids right after I spawned and got a game over screen time after time. Then suddenly it generated a level with no asteroids at all and I got a victory screen right away. Which was to put it lightly - a bit disorienting. After a couple of quick restarts I got used to one button controls. And then I tried to figure out how to dispatch of all the asteroids without touching them and exploding. After some time I accidentally smashed into one not straight into but kinda knocking it sideways and I didn't explode because of it! So yeah, I thought at the time that I finally figured out the mechanics and started actually engaging with the gameplay: grabbing fuel, dodging asteroids and then sidekicking them by switching lines at the exact right moment. And it was actually pretty cool and fun despite the fact that there is no gradual difficulty increase but completely random levels instead. And after a couple of rounds I ran straight into the asteroid and did not explode! Then I figured out that you don't have to time your line switches to kick the asteroids sideways, you just need to have enough fuel left to not explode. Which I found to be less interesting that the thing that I imagined. So I kept playing the game by my imaginary rules :D And yeah, it happened to be quite a lot of fun, so in the end I finished something like a ten rounds of varying difficulty. I really liked the minimalistic presentation and the nonstandard small window size. So if you plan on creating a post-jam version I would suggest adding something like a tutorial stage and creating a couple of levels progressively increasing in difficulty. And maybe even create some additional mechanic of dispatching asteroids like the one I described or something entirely different so it would add a whole another dimension to the gameplay. |