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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | DamonWakes's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 26 15:15:08 | Descent into Midnight Trench | ♥ 2 | This is pretty neat for a 48-hour game. The graphics might not have much variety (at least down to about 100 metres, which is as far as I got - if there are other fish I feel as though they should maybe come in sooner), but what's there is good. The controls seem like the real standout element of this for me: it's got a real underwater feel to it, and I love how the harpoon shoots out fast at first and then starts to drift. One small change that might improve this is a bit of a delay before you can use space to dismiss the Game Over message. I happened to be hitting that button at the point my guy got eaten (which I figure is pretty likely to happen for most people) so the text was only on screen for an instant. | |
| Apr 26 23:02:11 | 7h 47m | Drill Out | ♥ 3 | I like this. It's simple, but it does encourage you to sit inside that turtle drill even while the aliens are coming down the walls, which adds quite a bit of tension. It helps that it's hard to know exactly how many hits it'll take to kill one. I feel as though the controls could be simplified a bit, though. Maybe just the down key to get into the drill and upgrade your weapon (since it's otherwise unused and you can't do both at once)? |
| Apr 26 23:28:41 | 26m 30s | Untitled Bruce Game | ♥ 1 | Love this. It reminds me a little of the levels in the original Rayman that force you to keep up as the screen moves along from left to right, or as water fills the level. It's nice that you get a little more time to think through what you're doing, though! The only real improvement I could suggest would be more levels - it feels as though the ones you have already are pretty well polished. |
| Apr 27 00:41:52 | 1h 13m | Far Gone | ♥ 1 | Nice work. I guessed what was going on pretty much immediately, but it was still interesting to explore. The graphics are very atmospheric, though I found myself spending longer than I would have liked trudging towards blocks of grey that turned out to be rocks on the ground. I also feel as though this is a bit of an inversion of the theme, since Emma's sort of getting closer to the "surface" throughout. |
| Apr 27 00:57:43 | 15m 51s | Little Mother | ♥ 1 | Very sinister! I found the sound a little bit repetitive - particularly at the very beginning - but it bothered me less once I got into it. |
| Apr 27 12:13:50 | 11h 16m | Under the Surface | ♥ 7 | This is fantastic for a 48-hour effort. Sticking with the same basic background for each floor seems like a really good move: it fits the theme, and looks as though it probably let you focus your attention on putting together the actual game rather than needing a whole lot of unique assets. I ended up stuck on a black screen after trying to take the flash drive up to Level 0. Not sure that's supposed to happen, but the story felt fairly complete at that point anyway. I also got a message saying "Cannot consume item - not enough in player inventory" after using the keycard (which was properly removed from the inventory). I also noticed that inspecting the terminal that takes the keycard, it says "I should try my luck elsewhere" even though that is actually the way forward (and that inspecting a body after looting it later on gives the same message as inspecting a locker). Really minor stuff, though: I think this is my favourite game from Ludum Dare so far! |
| Apr 30 16:30:11 | 76h 16m | Down to Goblin Town | ♥ 1 | This is thoroughly charming! The unconventional graphics and sound actually give it a really cohesive style, and the movement of the images does a lot without needing actual animated sprites. It gets across everything it needs to very clearly, and the difficulty feels just about right: easy to start with, then fairly frantic towards the end (I, uh, didn't quite make it to Goblin Town myself). |
| Apr 30 19:50:06 | 3h 19m | Dwarf Inc. | ♥ 1 | This looks (and sounds) great! It's a simple idea but it's super polished. About the only thing I'd suggest changing is the options at the end: it's not really clear what either "Diggy diggy hole" or "Leave the mine" actually mean, which is a bit of a shame when it takes a while to reach that point. |
| May 1 17:12:51 | 21h 22m | Digsite Simulator | ♥ 1 | I considered something like this for the theme myself but didn't have the technical know-how to pull it off. I'm glad to see somebody more capable ran with the idea! I did find that occasionally a single pixel or two of an upper layer would prevent me digging down to a lower layer (while being almost impossible to get rid of), but figure that's probably quite hard to avoid. One thing I think would have made for a substantial improvement would have been steadily darker soil colours. As it is, once you've torn up the ground a bit it can get very difficult to tell what it is you're trying to dig. Really nice little game overall, though: very satisfying to gradually clear out whole upper layers while you're poking around trying to find things on the lower ones. Like others I'd appreciate some sound effects, but I'm actually not sure it really needs background music. If you did turn it into a mobile game, for example, it's the sort of thing I might tap away at while watching TV so might just mute that anyway. |
| May 2 16:44:53 | 23h 32m | Dino Digging | ♥ 1 | This was fun! It's kind of a shame it doesn't have an ending screen because it otherwise feels pretty complete. The only other tweaks I'd suggest are pretty minor. The main thing is that the pickaxe makes a disproportionately huge difference to the game, to the extent that it's virtually impossible to progress beyond a certain depth without it. I found that I'd regularly hit two "columns" of stone - no way of clearing two at a time, no horizontal stretches of dirt to drop both down into some kind of combo - which pretty much makes that stretch of the dig a guaranteed game over. At times it was less a matter of actually thinking through the puzzle and more a matter of grabbing as many fossils as possible before that inevitably happened. Once I got the pickaxe and could reliably clear out more than one tile at a time, it got much more interesting: I really like that the late game more or less depends on placing two-hit rocks around regular ones so you can clear a whole bunch out at once. It would be neat to have some way of regaining hearts during a dig so that letting a rock slip through now and then could be more of a tactical choice than a definite step towards the end of the expedition. |
| May 2 19:11:58 | 2h 27m | Holey Moley | ♥ 2 | Holey Moley! Definitely one of my favourite games so far! The mole rat facts are neat, it's fun to explore (while the following snake also makes it pretty tense), and it's a solid take on the theme. The one thing I think would improve it would be if the snake could find its way towards you. I tried zig-zagging back and forth (ie. going left across the level on one layer, dropping down a bit, then going right on the next). I got quite a way ahead of the snake, and though I'm reasonably confident I crossed my own tunnels at some points (meaning that the snake had a shorter route available to it) I don't get the impression it did anything other than follow my exact route. Still, a top-notch effort even as it stands! |