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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | piscythe's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 6 04:49:31 | Echo Anomaly | ♥ 2 | Really cool idea, if kind of jank in execution. I spent a few minutes trying to cheese the final puzzle with dumb physics shenanigans before realizing that there was a perfectly rational, non execution-dependent solution. The audio cues for the interactive elements were well done, but I wish there were good visual cues as well, particularly telegraphing which switch does what. I felt pretty smart when I finished, so I'd say you did pretty well on the puzzle front. | |
| Oct 6 05:03:52 | 14m 21s | Brace for Impact | ♥ 2 | I found this to be ... extremely disorienting. My first few attempts I could barely parse what was going on, particularly because I thought all four directions were potential threats. Once I realized that I only needed to care about two directions, things got much easier, but I never really got a good sense of what was happening spatially and how I needed to move to avoid/contact the bars. On my good stretches, I think I understood what you were going for. When I was on a roll, the game felt really cool. Unfortunately, I never got to the point where I could make it through round 1 consistently, let alone round 2. |
| Oct 6 05:20:30 | 16m 38s | ⛧ Hellycoaster ⛧ | ♥ 1 | My bloodbath came to a rather abrupt end at 286,640 points, I'm sorry to say. I did one test run to learn the mechanics, bailed because I realized I mucked it up, and then came back and got that run. It seems like a strategy game, but I feel like the key to getting a really good score is sheer reflexes and apm. ...so exactly like an RTS. I applaud you for making a roller coaster game for people who kill people in roller coaster games. |
| Oct 6 05:43:46 | 23m 16s | Loop Run | ♥ 1 | Combining an endless runner with a puzzle game is a really interesting idea. It was fun seeing how my choices on one run through the loop affected subsequent loops. However, the endless runner side of the game is punishing (as endless runners usually are), so I spent a lot of time retreading ground because an execution mistake or physics bug caused my death. I think it would be helpful if the jumps were shorter and fixed-height, and if they player could see more of the environment at once. |
| Oct 6 05:55:05 | 11m 19s | Pig-em-Up: Lassos Are Loops, Too! | ♥ 1 | This rocks. It's satisfying in a very visceral way. A couple minutes in I stacked three cowboys on a stick of dynamite and thought *this is sweet*. Why can I jump? What does that buy me? Is a cowboy who works with pigs a pigboy? I've lost the plot but good job with your game. |
| Oct 7 01:31:42 | 19h 36m | Leopold the Lich | ♥ 3 | This game is great, but the gameplay feels like it sabotages itself. The actual combat is fun - killing enemies is very satisfying and it feels like I have to actually plan my approach for each enemy. The cleanup after combat is less fun. I appreciate the idea that you have to make sure the coast is clear before collecting currency, but I don't think the process needed to be two steps. I think siphoning up souls would feel much better if you didn't cripple your movement. Actually, I'd be much happier with the mechanic if I just had to push one button to pull in all of the souls on the screen. Also, the explosion upgrade feels really double-edged. Watching enemies go flying off the screen or into the water is fun until you realize you can't claim those souls. The 2D animation is absolutely on point. It feels really smooth and helps sell the visual gags. |
| Oct 7 02:24:25 | 52m 43s | Sudo-over | ♥ 0 | Playing this with a headache was a bad idea. I had a great moment thinking I could make stuff up and then realized I couldn't. |
| Oct 7 02:35:26 | 11m 01s | Death Loop | ♥ 0 | I think you forgot to opt out of audio fyi. Cool idea for a precision clicking puzzle. Why did the green thing kill me? What was it? |
| Oct 7 02:41:20 | 5m 54s | Gold Looper | ♥ 1 | I really wish I could hold down the mouse button to shoot instead of having to mash it. |
| Oct 7 02:57:56 | 16m 36s | 7's Loop | ♥ 1 | The movement feels slippery, traveling through pipes is too slow, and I'm not really sure how to get back up from the sword area without dying. I appreciate how forgiving it is, though. The boss would have been easier to figure out if the projectiles changed color when hit. |
| Oct 7 03:03:44 | 5m 48s | Tako Nom Nom | ♥ 1 | This feels like one of those simple, challenging mobile games that people play for hours on end. The sound effects are quite good and I really appreciate the sense of impending doom as the bar ticks down and the tako gets angrier. |
| Oct 7 03:28:02 | 24m 18s | Tales Of Horror Beneath The Cabin | ♥ 0 | I really like how the game builds tension with audio cues while providing safe havens. I really don't like how I can't see anything, especially when the thing I can't see is "the monster coming". |
| Oct 7 03:38:21 | 10m 19s | Frozen Potency | ♥ 3 | I definitely don't feel like I every really got a good feel for how my attacks worked or why I should ever stop moving when all the enemies are shooting at where I was instead of where I was going. That said, this is one of the most visually stunning games I have ever seen in an LDJAM. Good job. |
| Oct 7 03:53:24 | 15m 03s | The Same Odyssey in Space | ♥ 2 | This one was fun. I like the randomness because it forced me to learn the mechanics (particularly how to react to the oxygen crisis) instead of simply memorizing the correct route. It's cool how there's sort of a succession of pressing needs that you have to respond to while patching everything up. I like how the ending is "you escaped the loop" and then I click and the game drops me back in the loop. |
| Oct 8 03:27:46 | 23h 34m | Solar Sailor | ♥ 1 | For what it's worth, the whole "learning on each loop" part of the design worked for me. I really felt like I had to learn the mechanics to make it to the end. The false paths felt bad when I ran down them, but at least I learned to avoid them. Usually, flying around with wrench recoil is much easier than attempting to operate the normal movement controls, but sometimes staying on the ground or wallsliding can make an area easier and faster. It feels awkward to me to have ASD controls and then jump on spacebar when W isn't being used for anything. The idea of "realistic" movement in a platformer felt brain-bending. I'm so used to being able to change direction midair. Having a time limit on a game like this is kinda harsh, but it keeps things moving and creates great moments of panic. |
| Oct 8 03:55:59 | 28m 13s | Coalescence: Battle System Prototype | ♥ 1 | The battle mechanics felt kind of opaque to me. There was one battle where I was just mashing two of my mons into the last enemy, which had a sliver of health, but my team just kinda died and accomplished nothing. Having some kind of color-coded aura on the mons would be helpful. Also, I think slowing down the movement would give the player more time to react and plan the battle. I really wish the abilities were hotkeyed so I could use them without directing focus away from the battle. I really like where you're going with this - in fact, I've wanted to do something similar for a while, so I wish you the best of luck with the larger project. |
| Oct 8 04:08:39 | 12m 40s | GitGood Dungeon | ♥ 1 | It feels odd to me that attack is on mouse when the position of the mouse doesn't matter. Carving through the hordes of skeletons was fun, but I didn't feel very much agency in the outcome of those fights - it seemed like the best strategy was to just mash and rush them. The storm of projectiles, however, helped in that regard. I think the game would feel better if your normal attacks moved you forward. The moment when I first saw the dungeon just filled with purple skeletons was pretty good. I was a bit surprised when I cleared the game in one attempt - I was honestly expecting endless procedurally-generated levels, but nope. Good job, and may the git gods not curse you next time. |
| Oct 8 04:55:07 | 46m 28s | Wage Slave | ♥ 3 | I have no idea what I'm doing. I can't find the non-fat milk. No one labeled the syrup bottles so I guess this customer is getting some extra flavors. My cup is stuck. I can't move it so let's reset. Oh no I dumped my tip jar in the coffee there goes my hard-earned 19 cents. You know what? This guy is getting a cup of alcohol and gummy bears because I can't find the caramel. Who even cares? I'm going to stick an entire pumpkin in this cup just watch me. 5/5 mood. |
| Oct 8 05:21:29 | 26m 22s | VINYLED | ♥ 2 | That hint about switching tracks was very necessary. I would never have figured it out otherwise, and would therefore have missed what is otherwise an absolute gem of a game. |
| Oct 8 06:06:46 | 45m 17s | Bean Up! | ♥ 3 | You certainly made a challenge platformer all right. Pretty sure I died more to the blue turrets than the "smart" ones. That bit with the thwomp smashing the start is just plain rude, especially since the physics kinda break down and make it really painful to escape the death loop. This one is hard, but I did stumble across the finish line. |
| Oct 9 01:46:25 | 19h 39m | Boris the Bear Hunter | ♥ 1 | I would prefer it if the best strategy for the final boss were to fight like a proper warrior instead of hiding behind a rock, but I guess Boris is a hunter. This is a very creative idea, and I'm glad I played it all the way through. |
| Oct 9 02:26:53 | 40m 28s | Lethal Loop | ♥ 1 | This is a really cool idea, but I had a much easier time just button mashing my way through than trying to play properly. There should be some kind of mechanic or redesign to make it so mashing doesn't turn you into an unstoppable flying death machine. The core mechanic seems like a really great foundation for a build-your-own-fighting-style sort of game. |
| Oct 9 02:34:21 | 7m 28s | Toil of Pnamos | ♥ 0 | This is a really interesting twist on the classic notion of a "typing game". I kind of wish I knew where the end was or how close I was to it, though. |
| Oct 9 03:58:06 | 1h 23m | Chroma Clones | ♥ 1 | This is a great puzzle game. It took me a while to fully understand the mechanics, but I don't think there's a better way to learn them than by using them. A lot of loops just involve moving to a location and then standing there/shooting a target, and I kinda wish there were a way to make that process less tedious. Still, this is an exemplary use of the theme to create a complete, innovative experience. |
| Oct 11 01:15:10 | 45h 17m | The Twisting Heavens | ♥ 1 | This game looks pretty nice and feels good, but I don't understand what exactly you intend to do with the mechanic. How can the shadows interact with the world? What kinds of puzzles would this allow for? I'm curious to know more about what the full product might look like. |
| Oct 11 01:43:14 | 28m 04s | Zog's Hopeless Abyss | ♥ 2 | It's impressive how much stuff you were able to model - and how well you captured the feeling of a hopeless maze. I found all three shapes and got a blue portal, but I just ended up at the beginning and didn't know what I was supposed to do from there. |
| Oct 11 02:48:28 | 1h 05m | Speedy Spider VS Fishy Fish | ♥ 2 | I want to like this game. I love the 2D animation, and I love boss-driven games, but I just don't get this one. It doesn't feel intuitive or fair. The movement and shooting feel more like a restraint than a challenge, and the lilypads just feel random. The fish's hitboxes aren't where I expect. Most of my deaths seemed to be because I get physics'd into the fish by a lilypad. I just kept finding myself in positions where I was unable to meaningfully react to the fish's attacks, and I'm not sure how to look at the game so as to avoid getting in trouble. Also, I can confirm that the windows build works fine on my Win10. |
| Oct 11 03:14:45 | 26m 17s | Lyza's Knot | ♥ 2 | I was really hoping someone would build a good game around the idea that "stuck in a loop" is something to be inflicted on an adversary rather than the player's state of being, and you have delivered. Horror and puzzles fit together naturally. I see that not everyone was able to figure out the basic mechanic, but I will say that the breakable rock mechanic is very intuitive once you get to it. The death animation and sound, if anything are a little *too* creepy - they certainly made me want to not die. For some reason I really felt that I could dodge the monster in a one-tile hallway, despite all evidence to the contrary - making the creature wider would clarify its hitbox. I'm glad I was able to play this with headphones. It was very satisfying hearing the monster dash through a portal and crash into rocks in the distance. Excellent work! |
| Oct 11 03:33:03 | 18m 18s | Feed the Bear | ♥ 2 | I really like the core mechanic here. It's simple, but leads to interesting gameplay as you're forced to decide which areas of the screen to control. I surrendered half the screen, and then lost more and more space until I got boxed into a tiny column, scoring 178 on my second attempt. The bear's movement feels strangely slippery - probably in part because there's no walk animation. Good work! |
| Oct 11 17:06:59 | 13h 33m | Suit Loop | ♥ 2 | This is really inventive. My suggestion would be to present more information to the player in more ways. Like, there should be a way to highlight which suit is next so you don't have to reference the cycle chart and your current card. Also, I would love to know how the jokers calculate the probability of moving to any given space. I think UI improvements like this would make the game faster and more fun to play without taking away from the strategy involved. Good work! |
| Oct 12 05:21:38 | 12h 14m | Shadow Loop | ♥ 0 | Like others above, I was thrown off by the lack of an enter key. I also had a lot of trouble telling the as and os in the font apart. I'm really not sure how anyone is supposed to guess the partially-revealed passwords without knowing the dictionary that the game uses. I also feel as thought the difficulty could have ramped up more quickly. There's no reason to make the player do more than one of those $500 jobs, for example. I'm curious to see what this would look like with a stronger selection of minigames. |
| Oct 13 03:05:09 | 21h 43m | Prayer Circle Peril | ♥ 0 | I really like how the chanting and music contribute to the dark atmosphere here. The mechanic is interesting, but felt unintuitive to me. The cultists are just so slow that when I thought I was giving them time to clear an obstacle, they'd be halfway through before it triggered again. It's probably sheer luck that I stumbled my way to the last fire with one cultist left. Good work! |
| Oct 13 03:23:33 | 18m 24s | The Guardian | ♥ 2 | This game looks really cool. I hated having to mash the fire button to get anything done, and I really felt as though I was fighting against the power bar instead of the monsters. I only saw the death/upgrades screen at all because I died on purpose. The power bar is an interesting idea, but I think as it is it's, in principle, really easy to end up in death spiral mode. Also, I tried wandering too far away from start and had all kinds of weird geometry glitches. Still, good work! |
| Oct 13 03:41:41 | 18m 08s | Ludum War | ♥ 2 | As a fellow person dumb enough to make an rts for ldjam (3 of my past entries were), I salute you. However, it did feel really awkward that units remained in place relative to each other instead of converging on one point when I issued a move order. The minimap feels low-visibility to me. I'm very confused about what the number above the money count is supposed to be. As far as actual gameplay goes, I boomed up immediately, got rushed, and then crushed the attackers with overwhelming force and dropped the hammer. Textbook. It's only a prototype, so I'm curious to know where you plan to go from here. |
| Oct 13 05:30:20 | 1h 48m | Regicide | ♥ 2 | Untitled.png Wow this game was not kidding when the castle was covered in ? marks. It's absolutely incredible that you were able to make a 3D game look this good so quickly, and I had lots of fun up until I crossed the river. After I got to the castle, things kinda went downhill. The castle is more disorienting than threatening. After I killed the king, I lost my ability to interact with objects, but I succeeded in glitching through the door, running along the mountainside, and slipping through the hills past the doom knight area. I then jumped out of the world. I'm calling that a win. Ladders are kind of jank, I had a bunch of problems with invisible walls, open-looking doors I couldn't go through, beacons not being where I expected, and not being able to step up 20-centimeter steps. Despite these flaws, this is a spectacular entry. I thought it was really great when I got to the bridge and saw all of the corpses of people who tried to cross it. Avoiding the knights was fun, though I'll admit to being disappointed I couldn't clobber them with the water barrels. Relying on shortcuts instead of checkpoints makes the player feel as though they've earned their progress and strengthens the theme. The noise when a knight notices you is absolutely on point. Well done. |
| Oct 14 01:36:51 | 20h 06m | End the Rampage | ♥ 0 | This is a really interesting idea. I think it would be really helpful to have some kind of indicator of where the orc is. It's hard to know how much time you need to spend running before you can safely start setting a trap. Having the orc be a huge unknown would be great for a horror game, but this one seems to be trying for an arcade-fantasy sort of feel. It would be good QoL to have the trap not completely reset if you leave, or allowed the player to move while setting. The orc's vertical hitbox is way too big. I found myself getting killed while the orc was offscreen because I put on too much vertical distance. The potions are absolutely opaque. Some effects are obvious (improved view), but there was one potion that made me transparent and I had no idea what it was for (the answer is in one of the screenshots above lol). Another one gave me flight and I died before I could work out the flight controls. Hexes, on the other hand, consistently made perfect sense. My first win took about 3 minutes, so I'm sorry to say I'm not in the running for the highscore. Good work! |
| Oct 14 02:22:56 | 46m 05s | Down the Bullet Hole | ♥ 1 | Exactly as advertised. A simple, elegant twin-stick with good enemy variety and a high skill cap. Fairly basic in some respects, but what's there is fun and feels complete. Good work! |
| Oct 14 03:02:36 | 39m 40s | Fountain Of Death | ♥ 4 | I was expecting this one to lean more toward "puzzle" and less toward "precision platformer". I wish it were more clearly telegraphed what switches did and which pressure plates require two crates. The soundscape is good and atmospheric - the loudness of the footsteps relative to everything else underscores how alone you are. It's a harsh game, where one mistake can lead to a reset. There were points where I felt as though *I* was stuck in a loop doing the same jumps over and over again. I did eventually make it to the end, but, as you seemingly intended, it didn't feel like a victory. |
| Oct 14 03:25:54 | 23m 18s | Make Mush-Room for Me | ♥ 1 | This is a really sweet design. The enemy and weapon variety is great, and I love how all the different systems intersect. It's a whole new twist on the ammo system, forcing players to think about their ammo and controlling their fire in a completely different way. The result is a game that demands more precision and planning than a normal shooter, and therefore has a slower pace. Well done! |
| Oct 15 01:50:53 | 22h 24m | Goblin Alchemist | ♥ 1 | This was a really fun, trial-and-error take on crafting. The number of useless/debilitating potions I got from crafting felt really authentic to the experience of trying to cobble something together. For the same reason, I thought seeing a potion in action and trying to figure out what it did added to the experience. I wish I hadn't had to test by trial and error that inventory pauses the game - knowing that made it much easier to react to the ghoul when it appeared, as I could safely pause and chug a haste or freeze to fend it off. This may have been a quirk of my crafting style, but I was constantly flooded with Detect Undead when I really wanted Compass - I ended up trying to use the enemy-facing compass to navigate. Later in the game, inventory space became the biggest problem. I was forced to be really mindful of which ingredients to keep. I failed my first run, but on my second attempt I was able to assemble the banishment potion. I was worried it was going to be some kind of attack and I'd have craft a second one and Lure the ghoul in, but nope. Good work! |
| Oct 15 02:12:03 | 21m 10s | Baderna | ♥ 1 | It's gorgeous, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I certainly wasn't able to collect a single fruit, and I have no idea how to get good enough to do so, or use the controls properly at all. There's a cool idea here though, and the water ripples are a nice touch. |
| Oct 15 02:22:02 | 9m 59s | Tloop - The looping tank Shooter | ♥ 2 | Finally a game for people who circle strafe. The strong enemy variety does include some types that punish or restrict circle-strafing, but I feel as though such an enemy should have turned up earlier to put pressure on the player from the beginning. Aside from that, this is a fun, straightforward game. Good work! |
| Oct 15 02:54:29 | 32m 27s | Core Defender | ♥ 1 | This turned out to be a "hold a button and run in circles" sort of game. I never felt as though I had any idea how much health I or the crystals had remaining. As noted above, it's confusing that you don't start with a weapon equipped. Having three guns was interesting, but, with the exception of the small enemies, it seemed to me that 2/3-shotting everything with the rocket was the way to go. I like the idea of locking the player into an irregular-shaped path, but it needs more mechanical support. Still, good work! |
| Oct 15 03:21:28 | 26m 59s | In the lands of EVIL | ♥ 3 | In the grass level, the smaller rocks didn't look like they ought to be path blockers (too small), and yet they were. Web fullscreen didn't work on my Firefox, so I ended up using 200% browser zoom instead. A lot of the enemies kinda felt the same. Aside from the fire enemies, they either run at you or stand and shoot single bullets. It would be more interesting to have enemies with noticeably different speeds and movement/projectile patterns. Having enemies flash and/or get knocked back when hit and explode on death would work wonders. Still, it's a working game with good music and a lot of decent-looking assets, so I'd say you did a good job. |
| Oct 15 03:42:24 | 20m 56s | Ufomen Ride Again | ♥ 1 | This game doesn't really stick the player in a loop, but I had a lot of fun trying to line up the perfect shots. The sound effect when the ship is launched is excellent. The restart button made it tricky to remember where my last shot was, so I had to try to eyeball it based on where the stars were. There's a solid mix of precision and timing here. Good work! |
| Oct 15 04:55:52 | 1h 13m | Low Level Operations | ♥ 1 | I really like stuff where the player controls one person or a small group and there's a huge allied force. This one, however, feels pretty sluggish. It takes a long time for anything to happen, and most of the player's time is spent running back for supplies. For this idea to work, the player needs to be in a position to make strategic decisions about where to allocate their unit. Here, for all the player's autonomy in moving around the map, they're just another grunt. Assembling this many rts mechanics in 13 hours is very impressive though - I wonder what this could have been if you'd had the full 72. Good work! |
| Oct 16 01:30:00 | 20h 34m | Ouroboros | ♥ 1 | This game looks and feels really good. My one big complaint about it is that the room difficulty felt really uneven. The room with the pits and the ranged enemies was dramatically more difficult than any other room type offered, and getting it when the head was closing in, especially multiple times in a row, felt like a death sentence. All of the other rooms were much more straightforward. The boss at the end was fun, though it leaned a little too hard on adds. I really like the aesthetic decisions here. Good work! |
| Oct 16 02:23:21 | 53m 21s | Rock 'N Load | ♥ 1 | I really don't know what the rhythm mechanic was supposed to be. My gun felt awkward and unpredictable and I have no idea how it was supposed to correlate with any kind of rhythm. The enemy encounters seemed really hard until I saw the persistent corpses and correctly inferred that the enemies don't loop - anything I kill before resetting stays dead. Since health isn't really a concern, that turns the game into a simple war of attrition, which, with the healing from the bottle, I was guaranteed to win. I was more concerned with aiming and my feeble attempts to not waste shots than avoiding the enemies. The non-linear treasure acquisition is a good structure, but I think it would have worked better with 4 gameplay treasures and then a last act or final boss for players to use all the different abilities. I did have fun playing this, though. Killing enemies felt good and I was really curious about what each treasure would be. |
