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Empty Set

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		Empty Set's comment
May 4 08:53:46		Salvage	♥ 2	Really unique concept for a puzzle game - I've never seen anything like it before. The way weight works wasn't intuitive to me. I assumed that I was either 'heavy enough to sink' or 'light enough to fall' and only after quite some time that it was possible to be at an 'equilibrium' weight where you neither sink nor fall. I also didn't immediately realize that treasures contribute to your weight, and had to do quite a bit of deliberate experimentation to figure out that treasures contribute 0.25 of what weights contribute to your total weight. The somewhat awkward thing about treasures contributing a fraction of your weight means that those 'equilibrium weights' can only exist if you have a number of treasures which is a multiple of 4. I also found a way to cheese the game (which it sounds like taximan also discovered a version of) - it's possible to drop a weight, become buoyant enough to start rising, and then grab the weight before it falls below your hitbox, causing you to fall again - if you repeat this over and over, you can 'swim' indefinitely. But due to what I noted above, this only works if the number of treasures you have is NOT a multiple of 4 - if it is, instead of switching between "rising" and "falling" you'll just switch between "rising" and "neutral" (and if you switch from "rising" to "neutral" weight while already rising, you'll keep rising - not sure whether that's intentional or a bug). It also seems exceptionally difficult/impossible to do if your weight is a multiple of 4 minus 1, since you get so little rising speed. I got stuck on the final level (or what I assume is the final level because I went off the top of the screen instead of going to the next level) for quite some time until I had figured out the weight mechanic, since it seemed necessary to know how to make your weight neutral to get the top-right treasure, but I was indeed able to beat it without cheese.
May 4 09:39:16	45m 30s	Deep Space Escape	♥ 1	The concept is interesting, but in terms of what you actually implemented... well, there's just not much here, to be brutally honest. The game is theoretically about time and resource management... but there are only three (implemented) resources: people, food, and shuttles. But the amount of food you need depends on how many people you have, and you only need enough people to man your 4 shuttles (which you can't get more of), so people and shuttles feel irrelevant and food is never a serious issue either. The game comes down to just 'clicking the planets in order of their proximity' rather than having any meaningful resource management, which is unfortunate. It was confusing that you could select planets - and their icons would turn red - even if you didn't have a shuttle ready to visit them, and this would even render them un-selectable even after some of your shuttles came back. And as others mentioned, sometimes planets would spawn behind the UI or off-screen. These issues are a bit hard to ignore when clicking on planets is all the game consists of... Despite all my harping on the game, the idea definitely has potential. If you do keep working on it, I'd for sure like to play the version that actually delivers on the vision you had for the game.
May 4 10:06:57	27m 41s	Frog	♥ 2	Absolutely surreal that you straight up made an NES game for Ludum Dare. The emulator I dug up to play it on (some probably-ancient version of fceux) crashed during the sax sequence but it appears that was the ending anyway. The graphics and music are great - the game has a really nice atmosphere. There were some slightly awkward collision-related issues which other people have already noted (spikes, ceilings, etc), but it's rather hard for me to fault you much for them considering you wrote this for the NES in 3 days and even many big-time commercial NES games aren't without their collision bugs. The gameplay is fun, and I like the bubble mechanic. If I had to scramble to find a criticism, I might say that it was perhaps a bit monotonous, with no enemies and no hazards other than spikes, but it was so short and sweet that it certainly didn't overstay its welcome. In some ways, it felt like this was just a snippet of a game, and the bubble power was just one of many abilities Mr. Froggy Guy discovered along his adventure - it's super easy to imagine this as just a slice of a full NES title, which I think says a lot.
May 5 05:33:35	19h 26m	The Pit	♥ 1	Neat little platformer. The grappling hook concept was cool. I liked the guy at the end who offers you a medal. The platforming is smooth and bug-free, which is good. Many LD platformers suffer from being too floaty, but I think this may have gone a bit too far in the other direction - you fall like a brick, which gives you some very narrow windows to act in. I still don't quite understand the logic of which grappling hook you grab on to when you click. Since the grapple button was on the mouse, I assumed you'd grapple to whichever hook your mouse was aiming at, but sometimes I'd be aiming right at one and he'd go to another. The hard levels are really tough, and in a bit of a frustrating way. Too many maneuvers felt nearly frame-perfect or pixel-perfect which made the levels feel a bit tedious to me moreso than challenging. I did get to the green portal at the end of the stages to the left, but mostly because of sunk cost fallacy. That last level had me pulling my hair out. One thing that made it trickier than it needed to be was the way that grappling hooks make you move faster the further you are away from them - so in some areas I'd rocket across the screen unexpectedly fast right into a spike and there was only a tiny little window in which to let go. A maximum movement speed would make this less stressful.
May 5 05:58:04	24m 29s	To the Center of the World	♥ 2	Clever idea. Took my a second to realize I was already playing the game and not just looking at a download page or something. The enemies move so slowly and aimlessly that 90% of them are a complete non-threat and avoiding the rest is mostly a matter of patiently waiting for them to slowly drift out of your path. Probably fine early on, but it would've been cool to see more threatening enemies as you get further down the page. The music was... "programmer music", I suppose, haha. Was nice to be able to toggle it on and off. I thought it was funny that if you try and cheat by instantly scrolling to the bottom, you get a special message saying everyone on your ship died, lol.
May 14 11:27:48	221h 29m	Buried Deep	♥ 0	The drill was fun to use. Ended up finding 6 miners. The controls felt a little awkward. Since you aim with the mouse, firing the drill with a mouse button would've made more sense to me, and G is a little uncomfortable to reach from WASD. Flight probably could've been mapped to W/Up too. I agree that the jetpack's acceleration was a little too slow - especially if you started falling and then used it. Faster acceleration, with extra upwards acceleration applied if you're already falling, would make it more fun to fly around.
May 14 11:42:25	14m 37s	Mars Cave Explorer	♥ 1	Really interesting concept, but quite tough to learn and feels a bit frustrating at times. For the most part, if I ever landed at all on my side, I couldn't get up - which made hull upgrades not feel particularly useful. Once, I landed in the mothership upside down and could neither escape nor self-destruct. Several times I got a gem to the mothership only for it to get caught on one of those protruding little nubs. I think the mothership could be made a little more forgiving - it would be cool if it would sort of automatically pull you in, grab the gem, and spin you upright once you got close enough, because I think I spent a disproportionate amount of my attention on trying to land back on the mothership rather than, well, actually going and getting gems. The graphics are simple but quite pleasant to look at and the music is atmospheric. Fun experience overall.
May 14 11:53:11	10m 46s	Crushing Blocks Till You Drop	♥ 1	I like the combination of platforming and puzzle elements with trying to mine through connected groups of blocks. The fact that you're trying to mine downwards for a lot of the game feels kinda iffy, though, since there aren't as many options to set up groups of blocks as when you're going horizontally. The physics had some occasional issues - sometimes the blocks would get stuck and not fall into place properly. Unity physics might not be ideal for puzzle-game-style blocks... It's cool that you made a post-jam version - might check that out later.
May 14 12:09:58	16m 47s	dyppan	♥ 2	Simple but fun little game. Even without upgrades, I didn't have much trouble except for with the spiders - and when you do get upgrades, the effects feel pretty minor, especially since the dungeon doesn't really get much harder as you go deeper. Having the difficulty ramp up as you go would definitely make me play longer. The graphics are stylized well and look cute. Music wouldn't have hurt but I don't mind the lack of it all that much.
May 14 12:26:38	16m 40s	Deep Space Fractaling	♥ 2	Cool take on a space exploration concept. I would've liked some more upgrades other than just fuel and increasing your max depth. The controls felt a little finicky - turning right and left was really sensitive compared to the thrust, so you have to just lightly tap left and right or else you'll spin way too much. Once, I ran out of fuel in space but then managed to land back on the launch pad - but it was still game over, even though I had plenty of money for more fuel. That felt a little unfair. I got to the final depth (by cheating and getting all the upgrades by going in debt) and the camera glitched out and then there was an Amogus guy flying through space. Dunno what that was about.
May 14 12:42:58	16m 20s	Deeper and deeper in trash	♥ 0	Short and sweet game with a unique but relatable premise. Much more fun than cleaning up my actual apartment. There was more strategy to the game than at first meets the eye, since you can choose between taking things to the appropriate place or throwing them in the right direction to deal with them later... or so I thought, until I noticed the bug that everything becomes "trash" once thrown. So now the game is all about yeeting every single object in the direction of the trash can. Too bad you didn't notice that bug before the end of the jam. The movement was strange - it was neither directly up/down/left/right nor aligned with the isometric perspective, which made it a little hard to aim. I'm confused as to why it would be like that.
May 14 13:13:41	30m 43s	Watery Crave	♥ 2	I like the concept of the fish bouncing around out of water. Some of the challenges were quite fun. The physics when bouncing around felt a little bit on the slippery side, especially since there was no friction - once you start moving, you keep moving, and acceleration is pretty fast. Sometimes I would land on the bouncy flowers but not get bounced high... I wasn't sure if this was a bug, or if it was intended that you had to bounce on a specific spot. This was sometimes frustrating in the challenging bouncy sections because I'd think I did everything perfectly but then I would fall to my death because I didn't bounce high. I ultimately decided to call it quits early due to this and the somewhat slippery controls. Fun game overall, though. Could be really awesome with some more features and some polish.
May 17 01:42:33	60h 28m	Beepo's Shop	♥ 1	Really nice game! Managed to beat it on my first attempt. I really like the mechanics here. The drilling upgrades didn't feel very useful - I only bought the first one, but I don't think I ever used it. Materials that are tough to drill through are so rare that there is very little cost to just ignoring them. The hull upgrades seemed skippable with careful play - though I was careless and ended up with a pretty long main tunnel right from the starting hole which forced me to pick up some hull upgrades so I didn't accrue big damages on every expedition.
May 17 14:59:08	13h 16m	Deep into the space	♥ 2	Was practically unplayable for me on the web version due to lagging/freezing roughly every 2-3 seconds, which didn't go away over time or on later plays. Ran just fine when I downloaded it, though. Sometimes it was a bit hard to judge the depth of asteroids, but I'm not really sure what could be done about that. Music was pleasant and the graphics were nice.
May 17 15:14:37	15m 29s	Mine Flower	♥ 1	The main mechanic was fun. The addition of stamina as well as fall damage was a nice way to make the wall clinging/climbing not overly powerful as an ability. The game ended pretty quickly - I found myself wanting to play more. I definitely think there's potential to expand on this - more moves like for instance a double jump could open up a ton of really fun movement possibilities alongside this mechanic. I like the design of the main character. The graphics are pretty nice overall, but some assets clash with each other just a bit - the tiles especially felt a little small and simple compared to the rest of the sprites. But overall the game looked good. I don't think I have much else to note that hasn't already been mentioned. Good work with this!
May 17 15:36:36	21m 59s	Deep down the asteroid	♥ 2	I like the pixel art graphics - simple but nice to look at. Being unable to jump made the decision-making and planning ahead much more interesting and challenging. However, it sometimes meant there was no way to get all the goo. Maybe some sort of limited number of short jumps (like only 1-3 or so) would be interesting? The digging animation felt a little bit slow to me. I think the pace of the game could be picked up a bit. Overall this was a short and sweet game. Good work.
May 17 16:29:15	52m 39s	Sea Game	♥ 0	The art style was quite cool - though the high colors and sharp aliasing made it look just a little rough around the edges. Would probably look great on a tiny screen though. The movement speed and especially the descent speed felt a little bit slow, especially when compared to the comparatively fast ascent speed. I often found myself rocketing upwards to survey my surroundings then sloooowly going back down. Without enemies or puzzles, there wasn't a great deal to do, but it was still fun to just explore this environment, and I did eventually get all of the yellow thingies and 'upgrade' to the pink submarine.
May 18 13:45:22	21h 16m	Jung Guns	♥ 0	I liked the artstyle, and the concept was completely unique for a shmup. I managed to get through to the end on my first attempt, but only barely (I chose the green ship if that makes a difference). Between the movement speed (which was far, FAR too slow in my opinion) and the ship's big size and hitbox, there were plenty of times when getting hit felt nigh unavoidable, and I only survived the last boss by burning through a lot of health (as well as surviving a few close calls with my danmaku skills). The intensity could've been ramped up quite a lot higher if you could move faster and graze bullets more closely.
May 18 15:08:46	1h 23m	Dungeon digger	♥ 0	Would've helped to have the controls listed - Space, X, and E are really not very intuitive - I almost quit before seeing how to buy the drill and go deeper down. The digging animation is a little slow. Also, you can sort of 'queue up' multiple 'diggings' by spamming the spacebar.
May 18 15:35:54	27m 08s	Deep-Sea Idling	♥ 1	Cute little idle game. The linear upgrades to the houses made it feel a bit unsatisfying to upgrade them and it was usually better to just go deeper and get more free slots (since building a new house improves your net income by just as much as, say, upgrading from tier 4 to tier 5) I also found the odd behavior of the houses turning invisible and the second house being infinitely upgradable. For fun, I upgraded the invisible house to well over 200/second, but then the game crashed due to an error. Guess I wasn't supposed to do that, haha.
May 18 15:42:59	7m 05s	Lost in the Reef	♥ 1	I liked the vibe of the game. The controls were a bit weird - WASD is so standard that I don't see the point of "QWES". I ended up mostly just not going backwards since it was awkward to press S.