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Feedback comments for LD48

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		anchorlight's comment
Apr 27 01:58:58		all the king's men	♥ 1	Everything felt very deliberate and feature complete in this game-- I like the clean aesthetic, the smooth transitions, and the music score. Nice job tying the mechanics into the actual presentation, too. I kind of wish the game had a second stage of gameplay, but that also might have messed with the pacing. All in all, great work!
Apr 27 02:15:48	16m 50s	What Swims Beneath Us.	♥ 1	560m. I'm sleeping with the lights on now. At first I thought this was a little bit too easy, since you can just outwait the shark... then I realized that air meter wasn't a pressure gauge for an endgoal, it was a timer. I played it _way_ too safe. Then, the tablet, your instant cheat sheet... has a limited use... that's a neat design. I do wish I could look up or down, though, and I had a little trouble clicking the descent button because of how small the pad is. Maybe that's by design though, the fumbling on my end definitely added something to the atmosphere. I love the visual aesthetic, but I hate sharks. Your sharks and underwater monsters in particular have all of the qualities that I despise about sharks. Trying to be a bit more neutral, I'm impressed by how many fish models that save for a little clipping here and there managed to look the part in a Compo game. Seriously, rigging and setting up all these 3D models on such short notice is really impressive. Editing my comment to add this in: I didn't even comment on this, but aside from the chunky graphics the audio actually carried the weight of being underwater incredibly well. I don't have too many comments on that front because it all just built on the atmosphere without sticking out. The heartbeat indicator was also a nice way of conveying player info, but I like the fact that it can potentially hurt your score if you're overreliant on it. In short, there's just lots of little things that really make this game something special. Incredible work, and worth five stars... but please, no more sharks.
Apr 27 03:57:57	1h 42m	So Below	♥ 1	I'm going to start with two criticisms: I felt that the player controller was a little floaty due to a lack of air control, and on a certain type of staircase that ends with a small drop off to the floor, the collision can get the player stuck without a little speed to pass the invisible bump. The one thing I simply can't get over are these art assets-- seeing painted objects that hold up on close inspection with fine-grain detail is really incredible. I feel like all the atmosphere needs for improvement is a little lighting contrast, and even then, the sort of displaced look on the bricks more or less takes care of that. Save for a single hole in the ceiling I saw, I couldn't even tell it was Procedural until I restarted the game and saw it was a different layout. I do wish the atmosphere had a bit of audio or that the gameplay were a little more involved, but for a compo entry I really like what you were able to put together here. Great work!
Apr 27 05:13:45	1h 15m	The Space Between Us	♥ 3	Reporting in from Simpathey's stream! This game is stellar. There's so much character and polish to the whole experience, and the minigames never get in the way of the experience. My only suggestion would be to detect if the player has caps lock enabled by checking to see if all letters are capitalized/excludes all non-capitalized characters. It could return a message along the lines of "you left caps lock on again" or something else that still adds to the atmosphere while cluing in the player. Otherwise, all I can say is that you should definitely take this project further and at the very least get a Google Play Store release off the ground. If you needed to come up with a game loop for a more premium version, you could potentially have a survival time at which you've fully harvested the planet and have different stages with new difficulties for minigames, then have planets that have different dangers (like a tundra world that causes your machinery to freeze up, or a paradise planet where your gerbils desert/go on strike). I think you're onto something great and to some extent, you're already there. Also as a quick heads-up, Charlie Bruber's name link is broken on this page.
Apr 27 06:19:11	1h 05m	Ludum Dare News Network	♥ 1	This is wonderful. Congrats for the first 5 on Innovation I've given across two LD events. It's so hard to go through those textboxes while trying to be serious. This is a small nitpick, but I think the mouth would look better if it had no frame interpolation and had no texture filtering. It also should have a metric for scores to give players a general estimate of what to expect for a decent score, good score, great score, etc. That's really the best I can do as far as criticism goes. Thanks for making the most out-of-left-entry I've seen yet.
Apr 27 07:03:42	44m 31s	Dante's Refrigerator	♥ 2	Starting off with the critiques, the main issue I had with this game is the Input lag. I will say that I played on keyboard, so part of it could be down to this. I felt like the response time between pressing a button and having the character move were two entirely different things. Same goes for switching characters. Brushing that aside though, the controls for attacking and jumping were entirely fine and I never had an issue. The artwork, score, and little gameplay twists with the gelatin travel points were all incredibly well done. Props to your team for pulling this off!
Apr 27 11:18:18	4h 14m	Date Night	♥ 2	@wheffle Honestly, that coffee order sounds about right.
Apr 27 12:54:44	1h 36m	Whispers of Life	♥ 2	Your entry is very polished and I like the unique mechanics. It only took me maybe a few seconds to figure out the mechanics, and the controls felt very smooth. I appreciate the light palette and music, and the presentation in general just removes the game of any sense of danger or dread (not that it's a bad thing). Above all the game just feels very complete, and that's not something every Compo game can pull off. Well done!
Apr 29 07:58:43	43h 03m	Vertical Diamond Deliveries	♥ 0	The aiming took me a while to understand, but all in all this is a solid entry. A few critiques. Starting off, I ran into some pretty bad performance problems with this game. If this isn't the case for anyone else, it may be because I'm playing your game on Linux with Wine, but I found that holding down the mouse button to prepare a jump would cause the framerate to plummet until I let go. I think your method of calculating the jump or displaying a preview arc may be very performance-intensive, possibly from some expensive calls running every frame. It's not an issue here as the game more or less waits for you to be ready for a jump, but I figured it was worth mentioning in case you're able to fix it. Second, I feel that the risk of falling isn't fun as it _never_ leads to any lucky landings. It basically means that you should retry the jump right away as you will certainly miss by a longshot-- I feel that if a few bridges were longer than others, it would at least give the player a fighting chance of landing before it's too late. I found your graphics to be very appealing, and as for audio, it's a 48 hour compo and I can't complain too much about that. The jump itself felt solid and predictable, and if not for the rough UI I'd say you have a pretty polished mechanic ready to go. I do have a small bug report, though. When retrying near the edges, I was occasionally able to glitch the game so that I respawned inside a wall at the wrong distance from the objective.Screenshot from 2021-04-29 03-48-54.png Another small thing, and this one IS entirely on me because I'm on Linux; the ability to quit the game with Esc would be very helpful as I am unable to Alt-F4, and otherwise have to end games from the System Monitor. It's not a huge deal, but it would be greatly appreciated. All in all, you put out a solid entry and I'd be interested to see if you added more gameplay elements to spin this into something greater. Nice work! 🙂
Apr 29 12:40:41	4h 41m	Deep Mine	♥ 0	It's a neat little game. The audio compliments the gameplay nicely and the graphics are nice. If I had one major criticism, I wish you'd made sure not to use texture filtering on the character sprite as it ruins otherwise charming pixel art with a blurry look. The status messages were cute and I liked some of the variety in the game. Also, thanks for the Linux port. 👍
Apr 30 03:58:06	15h 17m	Rex's Wizardspace	♥ 1	pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasePLEASE make a postjam. Your magic system feels intuitive and unwieldy at the same time, and the potential is here for a fun interaction system that only games like Magicka ever pulled off. I have a special love of first-person control schemes that break the mold a bit with unusual mechanics, and this one ticks all the boxes. Awesome work!
May 1 10:15:19	30h 17m	HELIUM	♥ 2	I love the fact that you went for something a little different from the genres you normally see front and center, and for a jam I think the visuals really do hit on the right beats for a retro game. Since I mentioned visuals though, you should probably set the sprites for your drill to no filtering so there's no blurring on it. Your narrative is cool, and the survival side is awesome... but I feel that your game needs a little bit more explanation for how your rig works in-game. I think @iellswo has a good point about the controls, and the fact that the itch page runs on its own fullscreen tab means you can't see those controls in-game; if you're willing to do some messing around, you could edit the index.html file to include the controls below the game in plain text. Let me know if I can help out with that, I'd be happy to assist. I'd like to see where you go with this, maybe a short point-and-click/adventure game of sorts with some crispy audio and more dialogue.
May 2 10:30:59	24h 15m	Soaring Under	♥ 1	Between the beautiful lowpoly artwork and the great music score (not to mention the bad piano stings that ruin said score as a little salt in the wound for failure), I'm amazed by what you pulled off in a compo entry and dare I say it, it blows my game out of the water. The map feels vast, the flight physics take skill to master, and the presentation is stellar. Exceptional work.
May 9 23:54:34	181h 23m	DESERT BUS 2 LETSGOOO!	♥ 2	The scope of this jam game is a sight to behold. I love the random events and the overall feeling of a wasted world you've built up here, and the movement feels weighty enough that it all works. Overall, very few complaints. I have a few annoyances here and there, though: For one, I felt that the map really lacked verticality. Now, I did have one time where the world didn't load, and when I realized you were rendering out the game as squares of terrain, that limitation entirely makes sense and ultimately doesn't matter for a jam game. That said, some taller dunes and cliffs would be a welcome addition. I'm a huge fan of the visuals, they really get the wasteland feel down. That said, a little screen shake or flare on the bullets would go nicely; the gun just feels like it lacks any real impact. Speaking of impact, I found myself frustrated by the amount of static debris that puts your car into a dead stop, and wish some of that random debris on the ground could be rammed through and turned into dynamic rigidbodies for a health penalty. Random events would be nice with a little more story. This note is here PURELY in terms of post-jam content. They're fine as quick events for the jam, but should you take this further I see a huge opportunity to place some more involved side content here. As for bugs, I did have one instance where the map took a few seconds to load in and one instance where a random event spawned an enemy inside a rock. I also had one game freeze after colliding with a rock, but it's hard to say if that's the game or trying to run said game through Wine on Linux. I think you're really onto something, and with more of a world to explore or other gameplay elements like mapping routes to destinations or a Fallout 1 style world map, I think this game could be something special. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next!
May 18 08:10:24	200h 15m	PANEMUAN	♥ 1	I'm a huge fan of the art and presentation, and for a solo effort jam I think it's very solid. The theme feels like it's a little heavy handed at the start, but it's carried by the artwork and stage backgrounds as well as the actual level design. I do feel that the gameplay for the second half isn't exactly clear on objectives, and there are lots of little issues and things that are probably more due to lack of time than anything. I think the second half of the game just needs a little more clarity, which is of course a tough line to draw when you're trying to leave some things up to player discovery. As a stopgap, I think the backtracking all the way to the intro on failure might be a little too strong of a punishment as it leads to a lot of repetitiveness. Overall, great work! It's cool seeing a more story/presentation-oriented entry in the jam.
May 18 08:27:14	16m 50s	Solar Subs	♥ 0	My first score ended up being a 49, though I wonder if I could improve that with a little more practice. I want to first address the gameplay side itself, ignoring presentation-- it's a real neat concept, and executed fairly well. The game getting darker with further depth naturally makes the actual gameplay loop harder to score on, and the player getting more hurried/frantic hardly helps with scoring those final points before the timer runs out. It carries that theme of going deeper brilliantly. Overall I have very little to report, it just works as intended and I never ran into problems with the rotation or the sub registering. Maybe a small light pulse from the sub might have been nice purely for some kind of validation on a successful click, but that's nitpicking. It is just a sort of clicker game of sorts at the end of the day, which would still be fine as it's working as intended and still has some sense of difficulty/progression. It's just a solid game through and through, and I feel like there's potential going either way-- it's solid enough as an arcade game, and could probably be expanded on for a more traditional title as well. That said, calling it "serviceable" doesn't do it justice after bringing presentation into this. The art, audio, etc. had to be addressed on its own-- the ambient score, the tones on click, the simple sprites and light masking, the 2D shadows, the particles and background objects that distract the player-- it all comes together for something spectacular. The music score reminds me of something I wrote a while back on a _good day_, but with way more polish and actually fitting into the game's atmosphere. It feels like you used every hour of the jam to _master_ the atmosphere. I love that background audio that's somewhere between a distant siren and a space pad-- it makes just enough of a tune to be distinguishable, but blends into that atmosphere so perfectly. Just... bravo. As for criticisms... it just comes down to the WebGL build. I was entirely unable to play it due to scaling problems. I won't let that affect my opinion of the game as I know fully well that Unity's Web Player is a total toss-up. Everything about this feels perfectly scoped, perfectly executed, and finely crafted. Excellent job!
May 18 08:42:53	15m 39s	Ancient Maze (starring Mathilda Ayume)	♥ 0	I apologize for how long it took me to get around to playing this game. Stellar work on the presentation. The art is very clean and conveys the purpose of most objects well. I did end up dying plenty to stage hazards anyway, but that's my own fault. The level feels a little convoluted at times, but as far as the theme goes I wouldn't have it any other way. The music is great for the style. I do feel like some measures get a little chaotic here and there. The unusual time signature and syncopation gives off a sort of sea shanty feel to the track that really adds something to the game, and I'd love to hear the song on its own outside of the game. I did have the audio cut out once or twice, and I'm not sure if this is a game issue or the fact that I ran the game on Linux. That's basically it for bugs. All in all, this is a great entry, and that's ignoring the time it took. The fact that you not only submitted it for Compo but didn't even use the full Compo time is awesome, and makes me wonder what you would have changed with a little more time.
May 18 09:05:03	22m 10s	DeBlockhas	♥ 0	This entry just screams "Ludum Dare" in all the best ways. You decided to do something completely different with no promise of good results or actual benefits, simply because it might be a challenge. You narrated the intro yourself, the graphics are squares and color values... it just has that programmer feel, everything is so hand-crafted and I love it. I wouldn't dare take a risk like this, as I barely reached the finish line even _with_ some industry-standard tools in my belt. Yet, you pulled it off, and the game ended up being just fine! It's a simple arcade title with a nice little tune to go along with it, and everything just kinda works as intended. As for criticism, the bad-block placement feels a little too random and uncontrollable for the precise player movement, and that might need a little more fine tuning. I also feel like the music could use a little touching up here and there as some chords hit me the wrong way, but I'm just nitpicking at this point. Great work!
May 18 09:24:32	19m 29s	SUBTERRA	♥ 0	What an entry! The music is awesome, the graphics are perfectly executed, and the miner voices are brimming with LD charm. Pulling off RTS style character selection and pathfinding for a jam game can't have been easy, but here it is! It took me a second to really understand the controls and how getting more miners worked, and I felt like pausing the engines automatically on miner move sometimes got a bit frustrating. My biggest problem was probably the lava, as it kind of just creeps up without warning. Once it appeared, I went from 0 casualties to being unable to stop for any reason and losing everyone aboard; I think the lava moves just a bit too fast for you to really do anything about it, and a one-time ability to boost past the lava with some permanent stat reductions might be a nice compromise to counter this without ruining the tension. Otherwise, the controls feel a little unwieldy trying to keep the engines actually moving while ordering your miners, and I feel like the system could use some general QOL. I would have also liked a stronger musical sting or sound cue for the lava wall. The whole premise of the game is awesome, and long before the lava appears you feel a constant pressure to keep moving that keeps you from wanting to waste time on the smaller gems. Once the lava's on you, there's a real feeling of hopelessness when you're past a certain point and just trying to outrun the inevitable as your power dwindles. Despite this, the music is a nice beat that complements the gameplay nicely. Overall, I think you've got a really solid game concept here, and maybe even a strong candidate for further development. I'd love to see where this game goes if you keep working on it. I think doing a little more with the actual Subterra 88 ship or stringing together a more fleshed-out world could easily justify a price tag on this game.
May 18 09:34:25	9m 53s	Explory Story	♥ 2	I feel bad for not commenting or rating this one earlier in the jam. This entry ended up being a real highlight, if not for the absurd premise then the perfect execution. You can get a vague sense of certain word placements based on the actual text, but otherwise the large font size and small player acts as a great fog-of-war for your actual objectives. I can't say I've ever taken this approach to old literature, and it was amusing to say the least. I think there's some missed opportunities here and there-- for example, Lawyer not spawning a demon or a few other instances of words acting differently from how you'd imagine. There's also some cases where I felt like words had larger hitboxes than expected. Most of that criticism can be chalked up to time constraints, and they're footnotes compared to the overall experience. It's also much harder to criticize difficulty problems thanks to the included practice mode. I wonder if you could incorporate a number of other works from H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and the like to expand this further, with different authors bringing their own themes and positives/negatives into the mix. Thanks for putting together one of the most interesting entries I've seen in any jam. 😄
May 18 09:42:10	7m 45s	Zombie Movie Marathon : A Game Remotely about Zombies	♥ 0	I'm a bit late to comment here, but got the chance to take a look a few days earlier when you were streaming. While the game might not have reached the finish line, I can at least appreciate the work that went into it. The artwork being this bizarre 2D backdrop mixed with 3D models was a really neat idea, and I like the monster designs (playing as an Evil Dead style possessed hand was a pretty neat platforming concept that I'd love to see with more mechanics, like ledge grabs). That said, I think the backdrops feel a little colorful, and need a little grime or desaturation to really match the models. Unfortunately, I found the level progression to be very unclear, and I was never sure if I was going the right direction or not. The levels themselves seem to be alright in design, and the music is a great bridge for mixing that horror theme and an action platformer. The controls also felt tight while moving across the map. Despite the hurdles, it's a solid effort that I can definitely appreciate, and I'd still like to see what this game might have been with a little more time.
May 18 10:05:50	23m 40s	6 Feet Under	♥ 2	Incredible polish and presentation for a jam title. It's a shame it took me this long to get around to playing it. The controls and platforming were way more polished than I expected, so much so that a few of my early deaths were for overcorrecting where I expected to run into unresponsive controls or didn't expect momentum to carry over cleanly. It's a tough game, and I haven't reached the end yet, but I'll accept the blame for that. It felt well paced, even if I couldn't keep up. What really sells this game for me is the presentation. The single color with palette options was a neat choice, the art and animations are stellar, and the music is perfect (especially with the changes underground). Unfortunately, I really don't have much criticism or feedback for this one. It just kind of felt complete in execution to me, and I really don't know what I could possibly change about it. All in all, awesome work on this entry!
May 18 10:22:51	17m 01s	Diggy Diggy Dwarf 2 : Deeper & Deeper	♥ 1	This is probably the last entry I'll play for LD48 in time for ratings. It's a shame it took me this long, but on the bright side, I feel like with this game it ended on a very strong note for me. I really like this kind of worker management-survival game, especially when it's turn based. At first I didn't really understand the game, idly throwing Bill and Ted around until a bunch of X's stopped me from doing things and only one dwarf remained. Once it all clicks, the mechanics work well together and the real pressure of long-term welfare vs. profits draws you in. The art design has this awesome diorama feel to it, and the sort of middleground between a board game and stylized 3D was executed very well. I was at first worried that the music would end up being too intense of a score for the game, but it ended up being a really solid orchestral loop that carries the theme very well and hits those minor notes at all the right points, and it gives the whole thing a sort of ominous tone. I think Recher's suggestions are a great step towards improving the first time experience with a little more transparency, but overall I think this is a really fun entry. Great work!