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mahalis

Feedback comments for LD48

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		mahalis's comment
Apr 26 02:08:34		Find The Page!	♥ 1	Clever use of the theme! It’d be fun for the pages to be randomized somehow, but that seems like a much harder thing to implement. Nice work.
Apr 26 16:40:56	14h 32m	Irrational Volumes	♥ 2	First time I’ve seen a bullet-hell game with accessibility settings, therefore the first bullet-hell game I’ve been able to play for any length of time without losing. 🙂 I’m a little unclear on what causes the game-over: a few times I’ve gotten to the end-game screen while I still had several lives left. Maybe a bug?
Apr 26 16:47:58	7m 02s	Doug Tudeap in: The Ore Gone Trail	♥ 3	This is impressive! One of the more esoteric environments I’ve ever seen an LD game done in. Seems like it must have been a ton of work. I beat (?) the first level but couldn’t figure out how to progress to the next one—it was telling me to go right but no amount of messing with the movement keys got anything apparent to happen. Also, great title—I’ll admit the pun is what drew me in. 😄
Apr 26 17:00:38	12m 40s	The Depths	♥ 1	This is really impressive! Super elaborate for a compo game. It’s definitely got the Myst inscrutability. I figured out the button puzzle and found my way to the five switches, but I couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to find information about which ones to pull. I’ve never been good at Myst, though, so… I guess you nailed it!
Apr 27 01:01:08	8h 00m	Asterisk	♥ 8	This is absolutely terrific. Fun to play, catchy music, and the writing’s great—I got the silliest grin on my face at the "we will remember… FERDINAND…" line. I must have gotten lucky on my first run because I got something like $13K before hitting a bomb—the subsequent few were much briefer. If there’s one thing I’d like to see it’d be a way to jump; it was a little frustrating scanning something off to the side that was _just_ a little higher. But I guess only being able to go deeper fits the theme. Amazing work.
Apr 27 01:21:33	20m 25s	Deep Sleep - The Sandman	♥ 1	As others have said, the sounds are delightful—the dogs were my favorite. I do wish the difficulty ramped up a bit—by midnight or so I had the hang of things, and I kept going until 9:30 assuming the guy must eventually wake up… but no luck. The visuals are impressive for a compo entry, especially the amount of detail on the dog. Nice work!
Apr 27 01:28:40	7m 07s	DeepSea	♥ 1	This is really impressive! I did find the tilting really confusing—it made it surprisingly hard to steer. The atmosphere was good, and as others mentioned, the way the level’s laid out to encourage you to go deeper while putting a bunch of hazards in your way is good design. A little more feedback when a) you’re successfully drilling something (I seemed to miss a lot) and b) you’re close to a mine or being targeted by a missile would have been helpful, but… 48 hours is tight. Nice work!
Apr 27 04:02:38	2h 33m	Resurface	♥ 2	Wow! The scope of this is wild for a game-jam game period, let alone a compo one. I had a pretty hard time navigating with the lighting, even in interaction mode, but I did manage to find and salvage a couple of items. Some kind of highlight to make interactive things stand out from non-interactive ones would have been nice, but… 48 hours 😄 Great work.
Apr 27 04:08:45	6m 07s	Wiki Vortex	♥ 1	Clever use of the theme. The game concept itself is well established, but this is a good execution of it—the randomization is nice, as is the fact that you don’t have to click all the way through to a given target word if it’s linked to from the page you land on. Well done!
Apr 27 04:29:08	20m 23s	Agent In Depth	♥ 4	This is a lot of fun! I’m real bad at timing games, so I died a lot and eventually got stuck on the level where you start with two turrets directly to your left… but that’s just me being bad at timing. The music is really catchy and the sort of glowy effects really make the art pop. Great work.
Apr 27 04:59:27	30m 19s	FALL GUY	♥ 1	Wow, this is a really tightly designed game. Dead simple concept, super well executed. Could have used some more sound / music, but eh, it’s compo. The levels did a great job of introducing the mechanics of the different wall materials—I enjoyed the green section the most, it was fun finding a way to progress without manual jumps. Made it in 189. Great work.
Apr 27 17:34:57	12h 35m	Iceskimo	♥ 1	This is cute! On my best run I made it down to 46. I liked the randomness of the dark blue blocks; unexpectedly getting a cold one made for an interesting challenge. It might have been good to have some more structure to the areas that you couldn’t dig through (I assume I wasn’t supposed to dig the ! blocks? never actually tried it), but it works without that. Well done.
Apr 28 02:36:48	9h 01m	Into The Darkness	♥ 1	What a unique concept! It’s definitely got a meditative vibe. The guitar music is pleasant; I think some fire crackling sounds would have been a great addition, but I have no idea how I’d record those sui generis for a compo game. I did find myself wrestling with the camera a lot—some more smoothing on it might have helped. It’s a lot of fun for such a straightforward idea, though—nice work!
Apr 28 02:45:47	8m 59s	Heavy Fall	♥ 1	This is clever! Good use of the theme. Love the character design and the sparks coming off the elevator brakes. Some way to heal would have been nice, but maybe I just need to get good—I only made it down to 344. Nice work.
Apr 28 02:51:44	5m 57s	Break your fall	♥ 1	This is fun! I did not even come close to surviving on my first one—grabbed a couple of weights early and then I was falling too fast to do anything else—but I made it with 23 extra bones (?) on my second 😄 Great use of the theme, and the art’s good too!
Apr 28 04:32:35	1h 40m	Associated Arguments	♥ 1	As everyone said, the conversation audio is really good. I… have to admit I had no idea what was going on, or what the individual conversations were accomplishing other than occasionally opening a door or respawning me. I got to the point with two pairs of adjacent doors and got stuck—nothing I did seemed to cause anything to happen. I guess I was supposed to restart, but I’m not even sure what I did wrong to get into that state in the first place. Anyway—congrats on your first compo entry! It’s always intense but it can be a lot of fun.
Apr 28 15:43:41	11h 11m	Deepest Sword	♥ 0	This is delightful! Super clever mechanic which I am… not at all good at. I got as far as the "A slow fall slips less" hint and got stuck there. Gorgeous illustrations—the palettes really pop—and cute sound too. Amazing work.
Apr 29 01:13:15	9h 29m	Tickle Monster Caves	♥ 1	This is cute! I really like the hand character, and the… chili peppers? I couldn’t figure out if there was a pattern to their movements but I got past them eventually. Nice work.
Apr 29 01:18:59	5m 44s	Internal Abyss	♥ 2	This is super atmospheric! The lighting and the music, and the subtle drifting particles, all give it a real feeling of sinking into… well, an abyss. The gameplay confused me; on my second runthrough I don’t think an enemy ever got close enough to touch me but I died anyway. Did I miss something about… the number of crystals, or something?
Apr 29 01:29:58	10m 59s	Trench Elves	♥ 3	This is weirdly meditative (the music really sets a vibe) and very frustrating at the same time. I appreciate that it doesn’t game-over you at any point, just moves you further upwards, but the fact that I moved way slower than half the enemies made it almost impossible to progress. With some difficulty adjustment I would have played this for quite a while. Nice work.
May 1 02:19:43	48h 49m	Terrace Territory	♥ 1	What I understand of the idea I like, but this could really have used some explanation of the mechanics, even on this page if not in the game itself. I couldn’t figure out what made a connection form between the plants—I got the y=x graph working once, but then I picked up one of the pots and couldn’t figure out how to get it connected again. What did I miss?
May 1 02:32:02	12m 19s	The Depths of Despair	♥ 0	This is really impressive! The visual style is striking—I haven’t seen good cel-shading like this in a while—and I enjoyed unexpectedly getting fire hands. I fought a large ghost that I assumed I was only able to damage by getting underneath it; eventually I got a fade-to-black and the game exited, which… might have meant I won? Either way, I had fun. Music’s good—it’s pretty rare to see an LD game, let alone a compo one, that has different music for being in and out of combat. Well done.
May 1 02:36:12	4m 10s	The Naked Truth	♥ 1	Unlike a bunch of the folks above, I was able to launch it without issue. Unfortunately it runs way too fast to play—within a fraction of a second after starting the game, my character gets swarmed with text and starts fading out. Is it… not limiting the frame rate, or something?
May 1 14:53:41	12h 17m	Digtet	♥ 1	This is really tricky! I like it, but I’m not good at it. As @arya-s said, it’s impressive how much this one alteration changes the way you play it. Nice work.
May 1 15:03:44	10m 03s	Carpet Flea	♥ 3	Wow! This is really challenging and a lot of fun. I’m so used to navigating platformers without planning or thinking about it too much, so having to conserve jumps/dashes was hard. I made it farther than I expected, honestly—finally gave up on the level with five dashes in a row because I just couldn’t get the timing right. The visuals are beautiful and well-animated, and the sound effects are unique; I found I didn’t mind dying over and over again much because the start-of-level sound is just so satisfying. Great work!
May 1 15:11:25	7m 41s	Truck or Pupper	♥ 1	One of the silliest (and therefore best) takes on the theme I’ve seen yet. The multitasking is a lot of fun—you sort of have to let one side or the other become an unconscious process. It starts out maybe a little too easy, but it does ramp up eventually. I think this game gave me a real understanding for machine learning. Well done.
May 1 15:19:04	7m 39s	Shoot Them Deeper	♥ 1	This is really cool! Never seen a mechanic like this before and it was surprisingly challenging, especially having to keep separate mental counts of the number I killed vs. saw. Great visuals and music—you nailed the retro vaporwave vibe. Well done.
May 1 15:34:53	15m 49s	Fall	♥ 2	This is absolutely delightful. Love the music—especially the first track—and the weird physics on the cat are incredibly charming. I’m not much good at rhythm games, so I didn’t mind the imprecision. I agree about the confusing parallax though—in the hard mode it was tough to see where the quicker vs. slower note transitions were. Still, this is one of my favorite games I’ve played in this LD. Terrific work.
May 1 15:41:18	6m 25s	GUN DESCEND	♥ 1	Neat concept! It’s a little hard—the enemies have a ton of health whereas I seem to have almost none. The dual-wielding mechanic is fun. I think with some tuning this could be a really enjoyable mechanic. Well done.
May 3 15:11:50	47h 30m	FALL DEEP INSANITY [R16+]	♥ 0	First game I’ve given 5 stars for “mood” in quite a while—the Psychonauts-esque level design and random effects (“Hands?” being my favorite) really sell the feeling of it. I did find that I was missing some of the dialogue while trying to navigate the levels—@crazyrems’s suggestion is a good one. Overall: great work!
May 4 14:25:02	23h 13m	Deep Dive	♥ 1	This is really good! The gameplay is pretty simple but the level design is surprisingly elaborate—it feels like there’s a ton of stuff to find. I thought I knew all the types of fauna you had but right before I died to a giant fish I saw a jellyfish-thing get ready to attack me as well 😄 The art is charming; I’m impressed with the amount of detail you put into the animations. It would have been nice to have some way to recover health, and maybe more fuel tanks… but as-is it’s reasonably challenging and I did get noticeably better at it from one attempt to the next. Great work; congrats on your first successful LD!
May 4 14:45:53	20m 51s	Spin On	♥ 1	Really impressive! Unique take on the theme, and for the most part everything works well. I did wish I had some kind of aim-able weapon—it felt like the missiles weren’t doing enough even though I was spamming the fire button constantly. Made it up to level 3 twice and got knocked down again twice, at which point I gave up. The scale changes were neat—it felt like nothing much was changing for the first level or two, but by the time my impending mech was standing astride a planet I had a much clearer idea. Curious what the subsequent levels were—one planet per foot? A star? 😄 Great work.
May 4 14:59:02	13m 09s	Debts and Pandamonium	♥ 2	As others have said, I love the art style—the characters are weird and incredibly charming. I also had no idea what to do: I could never find anyone or anything to interact with that wasn’t an NPC with regular dialogue (all of which was well written, though) or a cop to fight. Some kind of… objective marker? or even a tutorial mission that held your hand a bit more would have helped. The premise is sound, though—with a little more time this could be a lot of fun!
May 4 15:13:19	14m 17s	Subwoofer-Bot	♥ 1	This is charming! First sound-based interpretation of the theme I’ve seen. The art and animations are terrific—I love the way the enemies fall apart and drop their skulls. It is, as a bunch of people have pointed out, quite hard—as soon as the green projectile ones showed up I was pretty much done for—but tuning difficulty for a jam game is always a challenge. Well done.