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mathemagician

Feedback comments for LD47

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		mathemagician's comment
Oct 5 14:42:07		10 Seconds from Death	♥ 1	The atmosphere on this is amazing, and I think the ultra-high max speed's effect on the visuals adds even more to it. I got stuck pretty early on I think (the puzzle that introduces the spring, it seemed like I couldn't get enough speed to climb the wall and reach the red button? I'm pretty into where I saw you going with it though.
Oct 5 17:07:57	2h 25m	Soulbound	♥ 1	I say this every time, but I'm such a sucker for nice Pico8 games. Those are some super tricky riddles, I definitely had to restart once or twice to go back and look for tombstones I had missed/forgotten (the initial snake puzzle in particular comes to mind). It looks, feels, and sounds stellar!
Oct 5 20:16:46	3h 08m	Run a circle	♥ 1	Really clean: someone mentioned that they could see this as a fun mobile game, and I definitely agree. My only complaint is that the inside track is pretty tough to play on, since jumping moves you closer to the upcoming obstacle, while the outside ring moves you further away when you leap. I love the aesthetic, and the music fits quite nicely!
Oct 5 20:25:11	8m 25s	Stuck In Paris	♥ 6	Boy howdy is fun mode ever fun. As a fellow Roundabout-game maker, I definitely had to try this. In-browser, things are pretty choppy when the player car breaks apart (at least on my MBP), but it's an exceptionally fun take on things. Like mentioned, the movement feels a little stiff with too little granularity (could be an animation thing too, really), but I definitely know how polishing in a jam goes haha
Oct 5 20:34:11	9m 00s	The Trolliest Problem	♥ 1	Really quite funny, I had to hit esteemed actor Shia LaBeouf just to see what happened. I ran into the same problems as @iluvatar
Oct 5 21:03:45	29m 34s	Bind Off	♥ 1	A nice little piece of interactive fiction, I really like the idea here. A few small quibbles though: - it took me most of the game to realize that certain pixels would prompt monologue, instead of it just being random after so many steps or something. That could maybe be a bit more obvious? - Related to that, since hitting any key will advance monologue as well as move, I found myself accidentally skipping text pretty frequently. I loved the bits of story and the knit design, but I admit I did end up testing every square to find out where the "mistakes" were.
Oct 6 01:39:32	4h 35m	unfriendly AI	♥ 2	Pretty nifty little game! My only issues are UX ones: That the "fight" button and all your attacks are on opposite sides of the screen had me always feeling like I was starting on the backfoot; and since I couldn't look at the attacks outside of a fight, and had to just commit to an attack until it succeeded or lost.
Oct 6 01:50:38	11m 06s	GIANT Sushi Party!	♥ 3	A nice little mechanic and execution! It took me embarrassingly long to realize how the red number under the sushi worked: I thought for sure that adding+removing an ingredient would lose me money real-time, not just when I submitted.
Oct 6 14:30:12	12h 39m	Lily Pad Drifters	♥ 1	I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would on first blush. That music's incredible. A few things that could really take this over the top: - This may be happening already, but it'd be nice if the bug spawning patterns varied per level - Some kind of indicator of how much time you have left without eating (draining colour from the frog, maybe?). I found myself staring at the timer a lot, doing quick math to see how long I had left - It felt super awkward launching myself when the frog would spin in reverse, but I don't have any helpful suggestions here.
Oct 6 15:06:04	35m 52s	The Looping Legend	♥ 1	What a tricky little game you've managed to put together here! Honestly, the biggest thing the game could use is some extra juice: the bullets are pretty small, and the effects from them hitting something are pretty easy to miss. A punchier SFX and upping the bullet size would do a lot for the feel, I think (though would make it quite a bit tougher). It took me a hot second to realize that my plane wasn't autofiring (I think the countdown timer threw me off?) It's a really fun (and funny) idea, I could definitely see this going somewhere post-jam.
Oct 6 16:43:12	1h 37m	GLITCH LOOP	♥ 1	Oh my god, how did you do this all in 2 days? A little chunky to play, but I'm guessing that's my underpowered laptop speaking. I'm in love with the whole aesthetic you've created here, and the puzzles are great too!
Oct 6 16:55:54	12m 42s	Cattle Ropin'	♥ 0	This is a really cute experience, and I'm really bad at it: I only managed to lasso 10 cows. It oozes character. It maybe ran a little long for me, and I had a hard time judging how far my lasso would go (maybe a "power" meter would help out with that?), but I'm really glad I found this game.
Oct 6 17:06:56	11m 02s	Revenge of the zombie attack	♥ 2	These tower defenses aren't usually for me, but this was pretty fun! Some small quibbles about the tower designs though: Is there a range limit to the gatling guns? I couldn't figure out if there was any reason not to stack barbed wire from the front as far back as I could afford, and just load up gatling guns the opposite way.
Oct 7 00:14:46	7h 07m	Loopy's run	♥ 1	Congrats on making your first game! I think you've found a pretty cool concept here, but I'm not sure the game itself communicates it well. The stark contrast between the "bullets" and the environment is great for helping the player keep track of where they need to avoid, but I found it a little hard to actually control and maneuver around the space: I ended up settling in more or less just moving straight forward and jumping to clear obstacles. I think part of that is from the camera being extremely sensitive, and that I couldn't really get a feel for how enemies move/appear, so I felt like all I could do was keep moving full-speed ahead. I didn't actually realize that getting hurt would increase my score more until after I had played and then read your submission. That's a really cool idea! I wish I could have discovered that a little more easily in the gameplay itself though.
Oct 7 01:11:46	57m 00s	Press The Button	♥ 1	You've done a frighteningly good job capturing the mood here, almost too good. I know it's intentional, and I absolutely respect the choice, but it went on a little too long for me. The art does a lot to sell the whole vibe, I love the little bit of.. parallax?, you've got going on as you look around your office. One tiny nitpick: I'd have appreciated if you used a monospace font for the numbers, it makes it a little awkward to tell how much money you've got at a glance, when a 1 can make it so much shorter than other numbers. When I started writing this, I was really curious what items would be trash and what would be saved. Having thought about it some more though, I think you made the right call in having it be arbitrary from moment to moment. Boy did I ever feel bad for actually getting the promotion.
Oct 8 01:57:43	24h 45m	Stuck in a Timeloop	♥ 2	You've got the core of a fun little platformer here! I had kind of a tough time judging how high I needed to be to jump on my ghosts, and things generally felt a bit floaty. I like the character concept you've gone with here, but I found it a little tough to parse exactly what was going on in their sprite, maybe because of how it worked with the start black background?
Oct 8 02:05:54	8m 11s	Grinding Gears	♥ 1	That third puzzle sure is tricky, huh? Like has been mentioned, I found myself exclusively looking at the mini-map, especially with how tricky it was to jump between the main screen and the map I avoided it as much as possible. Character movement was maybe a little on the slow side for me, but that's a pretty minor complaint. Good work!
Oct 8 02:19:41	13m 47s	Purgatory is a Music Store	♥ 5	Every so often you just see a screenshot of a game, get an incredibly clear idea of its vibe, and know you just have to try it. This absolutely brought my poor old laptop to its knees which made improvising a little tricky, but I loved every second of it anyway. The trumpet was maybe a little harsh and artificial for me, but I think you've got a great idea here. My previous LD game had a music improvisation mechanic as well, I'm always a sucker for being able to create like that in a game haha
Oct 8 02:42:03	22m 22s	Crazy Looper	♥ 1	This was a lot more enjoyable than I would have guessed at first glance! With some juice (maybe an indicator of how much power you gave the previous shot? I found myself using my mouse for that anyway) and non-placeholder graphics, and maybe with some sub-objectives, I think you could really have something here
Oct 8 15:03:45	12h 21m	Time Loop	♥ 0	Congrats on publishing your first game! I was going to suggest almost exactly the same things as @nelow: it feels like the purple enemies start firing a bit too soon, and either enemies move too fast/often, or you shoot too slowly, it makes it hard to react. If you want to keep the shooting enemies firing immediately, maybe you could provide an alternate shot that could destroy the incoming shots? You've got a ton of room to get a bit of extra polish in and have a really clean package. I like the aesthetic of the game as is, but adding some "juice" to the shots and whatnot could go really far. One last thing I ran into: I'm not sure why I'd want to move around the circle? It seems like I could shoot wherever, it just changed the angle a bit? The movement controls felt a little unintuitive (I think that just comes with rotating around a circle though haha), which may have contributed to me just sitting in place and aiming entirely with the mouse. Maybe you could auto-fire or something, and have your angle locked based on where you are in the circle? Once again, congrats on finishing and releasing a game!
Oct 8 16:31:07	1h 27m	Memoirs	♥ 1	This is really sweet, I love the art! The ties to the theme are maybe a little tenuous and could've been hammered on a bit harder through the exploration, but I honestly like the somewhat quieter tie to the theme. Maybe just because I know what the theme is, but it had me actually thinking about what I was seeing and where you might've been coming from. Congrats on your beginning forays into writing, I've always been to scared to try haha
Oct 8 16:59:32	28m 25s	Loop Frogs	♥ 2	Really clean execution on the concept here! The only problem I ran into was having my frog seemingly desync from the path I had laid out? Not sure what happened there, but redoing the loop seemed to fix it.
Oct 8 17:52:54	53m 22s	The Titan's grave	♥ 1	Oh this is great! Making you choose between moving and shooting is a choice I can respect, but the movement felt a little too clunky to be quite right for it (imo, of course). Because of it, I found myself getting stuck in "death loops" on the last phase, where unless I more or less spammed the dodge roll I'd eat multiple hits after taking one. Not necessarily a problem, but you know. It felt like a massive difficulty spike from 2-3, but I'm not gonna pretend like I'm good at video games.
Oct 8 18:54:35	1h 01m	AutoMate	♥ 2	Wow, I really dug this! I ran into a small couple of camera control issues, and had a bit of a tough time figuring out how exactly everything worked together: things felt maybe a touch more frantic than you may have intended? I absolutely enjoyed my time with this one, the puzzles were neat, and I adored the music you went with
Oct 9 13:56:08	19h 01m	Orbitrary	♥ 0	Really quite slick, but similarly to other players I didn't notice that much of a difference in speeds between the layers: I had a really hard time avoiding the cone-beams. I also absolutely spent a long time my first playthrough trying to avoid the shield pickups, couldn't tell you why. I love a good Pico8 game though, congrats!
Oct 9 14:03:25	7m 17s	Roundabout Way	♥ 1	This is delightful! The whole aesthetic's really cohesive, and watching all the cars slowly crash after failing to escape is wonderful. I could've gone for a bit more juice in the car's handling, and a quicker way to restart on failures, but those are extremely minor points.
Oct 10 22:14:14	32h 10m	Loopy Dungeon	♥ 1	I more or less agree with all the comments other users have left: I had a tough time figuring out how to plan my route without getting ruined while still fixing any traps. I know the weapons are hitscan, but I had a super hard time telling if I was actually connecting with enemies. I found the hotkeys didn't feel super intuitive to me, especially with having to use the mouse as well, but that might just be me being a bad gamer.
Oct 13 19:26:36	69h 12m	Stuck in a Soup Loop	♥ 4	I really dig the aesthetic you're working with here, the art and music get along quite nicely! The in-game tutorial was really quite clean, though I initially expected more variety in the different round's tasks (instead of just a bit shorter, and without numbers, tweak some other things instead?) Did the soup direction end up coming into it at all? I think all the soups I made ended up being CCW. Was the `in the soup` label at the bottom supposed to show what you've already added? I'm guessing that got cut for time?