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Feedback comments for LD48
Jeremy Ryan's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Jeremy Ryan's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 26 12:46:16 | Forge Dig Forge | ♥ 0 | Your Windows download doesn't seem to be working. I think you forgot to include the data directory in the download; right now it's just the EXE and the crash handler! | |
| Apr 26 12:56:24 | 10m 08s | Jackhammer Uncle | ♥ 0 | Wow, that was... something! The overall creative direction was hilarious, and the wacky control scheme added to the effect. That said, I do wish it was a little more forgiving (specifically, easier to move side to side). Occasionally you would get trapped by monsters with no way to realistically get through without taking damage, given your character's slow digging speed. The art was nice overall, especially Uncle Jack. It might have helped to use a more consistent line thickness (for instance, the enemies look like they were drawn small and blown up, so they have thicker lines). Nice work for 48 hours! |
| Apr 26 18:22:19 | 5h 25m | Star Trail | ♥ 1 | Nice entry! The inspiration from Oregon Trail, etc. definitely comes through. It was nice to be able to solve problems in different ways --- diplomatically, or with weapons, or with bribes. I did feel like a lot of the game came down to random chance for your encounters. Sometimes, you just never got any opportunity to earn salvage for several turns. Other times, that happens with fuel. I invested almost all my resources in mining, but eventually ran out on jump 26. The art is great, especially for the spacecraft. The UI is pretty barebones but gets the job done. A larger set of events would definitely add to the replay value, and maybe other ways to specialize ships that play on different roles in the fleet. Well done team, especially for what appears to be all of your first Ludum Dare! |
| Apr 26 22:32:21 | 4h 10m | Little Shade's Big Adventure | ♥ 2 | Nice entry! The atmosphere and progression are definitely strong points. The first area definitely feels like "ah, I'm setting out on an adventure," and things get colder and more uneasy from there. The graphics are nice, and you do a good job of distinguishing each area with your color and lighting choices. I like how there are enough tree variations that you don't notice them repeat unless you're really paying attention. I did notice some "seams" between textures in the backgrounds sometimes, especially when the camera was moving, but they were few and far between. The multi-layered background and parallax effect were really nice, especially starting out when the title scrolls away. The protagonist reminded me of [the wood spirits in Princess Mononoke](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-J8A0ofBvk9s%2FVcJZLKENmTI%2FAAAAAAAAAmU%2FNIavIQ8U0WA%2Fs1600%2F0082.jpg&f=1&nofb=1). It may have helped to have smoother animations on him, but it is a game jam and animation really drains time. One graphical choice that was slightly jarring was the scaled-up light circle in the final scene; the rest of the game has a consistent pixel size, so it was noticeable when that texture was chunkier. The final moment was still very satisfying with the music and the animation. The music was nice and definitely added to the atmosphere, especially as it grew more mysterious as the game went on. There were a little bit of popping in some places where the music started, stopped, and repeated --- I'd recommend using short fades in and out if you notice this, especially in places you're starting or ending a track in the middle. The gameplay was pretty basic --- pick up mushrooms to move forward. It was appropriate for a short moody game like this but would obviously get tedious for a longer game. Great work for 48 hours, and hope to see you around for LD49! |
| Apr 27 00:43:55 | 2h 11m | Graverobber | ♥ 1 | Really solid entry! The shadows and lighting really brought out the spooky skeleton vibes. I especially liked the bones that get exposed when you dig up a coffin, as well as the shovel animation. The combat is pretty simple, but gratifying. There are occasional moments that feel bad (like hitting an enemy in a corner, or into a gravestone, where they aren't knocked back and therefore attack you right away), but for the most part it's really satisfying. It would also be nice if there was an animation for getting hurt (like your character flashing briefly). The sound effects fit the game really well. I agree that later in the game the difficulty increases pretty steeply, especially since your shovel is the best way to avoid projectiles and it has a cooldown. I got $1132. |
| Apr 27 01:37:54 | 53m 59s | Touchdown | ♥ 1 | Nice entry! First of all, this is a hilarious and inspired premise. There are 3500 entries so far for this Ludum Dare and I would be surprised if any of them did anything similar. The variety of areas is very nice, especially since they all have mechanical differences rather than just being a reskin of the same level. The character jumping in a boat to cross the ocean was unexpected and the animation was great. My only gripe with the graphics is that there were occasional moments where I wasn't sure quite what the hitboxes were supposed to be; but they were generally pretty forgiving. The "LD" in the touchdown zone and jersey number 48 were nice touches. The music was varied enough that it didn't get stale after playing several times. It would have been neat if the instrumentation changed based on the biome you were in (also PSA --- there's a Musescore 3 now!). Nice work for 48 hours! |
| Apr 27 02:44:10 | 1h 06m | Vast Trivia Of The Void | ♥ 5 | Knocked it out of the park as usual, @moski and @jorgegamedev! The art is particularly nice on this one, with the space monster host looking disappointed when you miss a question or happy when you get it right. The board is well designed, and you have plenty of side mechanics (cards, coins, combos, teleports) to break up the monotony of rolling dice to move. It felt nice to get stuck in teleport hell and rack up a bunch of coins. The collectible pawns for progression was a fun touch as well, although at first I didn't realize what it was I was buying (I expected the characters to appear floating in space and decorate the board). There seemed to be a pretty good variety of questions; at least I didn't play long enough to notice any repeat. The specific questions might be a weak point for this game; I noticed a few typos, one factual error (Ben Franklin wasn't a president), and overall there seemed to be a strange mix of very easy questions and very niche ones. It would have been neat to have a choice between a hard or easy question for a category (maybe hard gives more combo), or otherwise turn this variability into a mechanic. It is nice that you plan to implement loading your own questions! The music was fantastic, and played well with the space trivia show aesthetic. I appreciated the attention to detail with different instrumentation depending on which menu you're in. Well done @zachary-blystone. Beyond the deep space setting, the "deeper and deeper" theme could have been presented more strongly. Was there a mechanic change with the increasing "depth" meter? And although it's obviously out of scope for the game jam, it seems like this game would be super fun with a multiplayer mode. Trivia games tend to play better in groups, where you can gloat about how much smarter you are than your friends (or vice versa). |
| Apr 30 01:23:45 | 70h 39m | Dig World | ♥ 1 | Creating an MMO sandbox game for Compo seems like an enormous undertaking! And while the mechanics aren't incredibly complex, it was definitely fun for what it was. The wacky character customization and the multiplayer aspect definitely improved the experience. The graphics are simple but get the job done. It would have been nice to have some extra "game feel" bits like particle effects or breaking/placing animations for blocks. The audio is a short loop, but managed to not get old very quickly (I played for over an hour, so by the end it was maybe a little tiring). It might have been nice to have inventories or other ways to improve efficiency when mining, or have multiple stations where you could craft and sell. By the time I played, most of the material had been mined near the shops, so it was more difficult to collect. I imagine this will get worse and worse over time, but probably isn't the end of the world for something the scale of an LD game. I got a score of 2497! It was a little bit higher than that before I built a ton of ladder to make a floating LD48. Well done for a Compo entry! Had a blast. mine_world.png |
| May 1 17:12:07 | 39h 48m | Deeper into Darkness | ♥ 1 | Got the same error as @metalfox-dioxymore directly after the boss fight. Nice entry! The graphics are really simple and one-bit, but they're very clean and do a great job of getting the desired effect across. The boss is particularly nice-looking. The enemies are varied enough that you have to approach each one differently, but they're intuitive enough you don't get surprised by them (other than maybe the first time the boss attacks). It was neat that you even had a level system, an inventory, and a shop --- I just wish there was more content to be able to really see them in use. Other than the crash at the end, I did encounter one bug; one of the bats just flew into a corner in the ceiling and wouldn't come down, which meant I couldn't clear the room it was in. This happened in both runs, but didn't prevent you from following the main route. Simple music would have done a lot to add to the atmosphere! Nice work for a jam game. |
| May 1 17:22:14 | 10m 07s | Vertabyss | ♥ 1 | Neat entry! Saw it on stream and came back around to play it myself. The pseudo-3D really took a while to get used to, but I appreciated the depth lines. It was surprisingly intuitive to use the mouse scroll wheel to aim up and down, and for the most part I had a good idea of where I was relative to the enemies. That said, the game is pretty darn hard. The limited space to move around coupled with having to quickly interpret the 3D space meant that the farthest I got down was in the 80s ("JARM" in the leaderboard). A neat mechanic may have been making subs that are farther away from your level appear darker, as an extra way to intuit relative depth. I also would have appreciated a "bullet time" mechanic or extra lives --- but that's mostly because I'm bad. Some music would have been a nice addition as well! Regardless, nice work for the jam, especially in a custom language/framework! |
| May 4 00:16:34 | 54h 54m | Deeper Bros. Digital Computer | ♥ 1 | Nice entry! Despite being a game about low-level programming languages, it's remarkably accessible; the on-screen documentation and stack/output information was surprisingly smooth for a 48-hour game. In terms of the IDE, the only thing I would have added would be a debug mode or at least a way to "underclock" to follow execution more easily (although I'm not surprised you didn't have time for it). The puzzles were well-constructed and force you to tackle them in different ways, between the deep assembly language and the deep deep microcode. The language itself made enough sense, but the additional restrictions --- mostly memory-related --- made you have to think really carefully. It would have been nice to have a couple more ways to interact with memory, like maybe a separate stack for the inputs and general use, or a couple registers to store values. That said, just the stack was technically enough and certainly made the earlier puzzles more interesting. Performance on Windows wasn't the best, and it took a couple seconds holding down delete to clear a line. I never expect great optimization for a game jam game though. I still haven't beaten all the puzzles but I'll probably come back to it! Great work and creative use of the theme. |
