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mDuo13

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		mDuo13's comment
Apr 25 23:27:22		I'm So Deep	♥ 4	The concept is intriguing, but feels like the kind of thing that would work better in a party game with actual humans. (It's a little reminiscent of the Jackbox robot rap battle game.) I'm guessing you're using some kind of natural language tone analysis, which seems just too unreliable to be used like this. Maybe if the game provided more direction up-front, or feedback as to why a poem was "So deep" or "Trash" it would be a little more satisfying to try and figure out how to succeed; as it is, it feels like every poem is a shot in the dark and it doesn't feel nice to be rated as trash for not understanding what the game wants you to do. Also, the princess's prompt poems are tonally all over the place (mine seemed to have a fixation with evil and lice??) which provides even less direction as to how to proceed. I can't say I cared for the music, but I love the way the protagonist rolls onto the stage to give his poem. And there's something charmingly satisfying about the way he bites his lip in satisfaction when at a "So deep" rating.
Apr 25 23:34:11	6m 49s	Earth Diver	♥ 4	Not a bad endless runner / shmup type game! I like the pixel aesthetics (could probably use slightly more color?) and the background music is a good vibe too. Nothing too surprising or unique in the game design, but it runs well at least. Not sure if the stars do something (upgrade??) or if they're just worth more points.
Apr 25 23:43:09	8m 58s	The Life Aquatic	♥ 2	OHHH, ZE BEAUTIFUL FISHIE! It's very difficult, but strangely satisfying. I love the concept and the voice samples brought a smile to my face. The BGM has a very "watery" feel to it, too. Well done!
Apr 25 23:50:28	7m 19s	Deep Space Beat	♥ 1	The polygon aesthetic is very cool—it has a very retro vibe while the color palette is more modern! And the music is a neat groove, although I kept dying before I got very far into the song... My best was just under 5000m. ("That's... bad", thanks game, I know. 😅)
Apr 25 23:51:53	1m 25s	Theodores Tumble	♥ 0	The download link is a 404 for me. Maybe there's a typo, or you haven't set it to public on itch.io?
Apr 26 01:23:52	1h 31m	Jupiter Diving	♥ 2	It's somewhat basic, but it works! Those dang square ones keep getting me! It would be cool if there were a depth meter on screen to show how much progress I'm making. Is it supposed to be kind of a square screen view?
Apr 26 01:32:21	8m 29s	Nuclear Chaos	♥ 2	Dang, I tried to get it to run on Linux using WINE and it didn't work. The concept looked promising, too. I see your source has a comment about a Linux build; is that real? Could I compile it myself to try?
Apr 26 01:41:03	8m 42s	FALL GUY	♥ 2	I did it! 2021-04-25_183818_091419608.png I don't understand why "championship" mode sometimes jumps the opposite direction. It seems like the yellow guy has a facing, but I didn't quite figure it out. Some of those screens were pretty hard, but it was satisfying to figure out how to get past them. The green bouncy surfaces were extra fun.
Apr 26 01:59:27	18m 24s	Under Pressure	♥ 1	Things are going swimmingly! And by that, I mean I suspect my crew are swimming. 💦💦💦 2021-04-25_184729_834107371.png It could really use some guidance regarding how to make a halfway-passable or basic submarine, like an example build. On my second try I managed to get something that could kind of wiggle its way down to 134m. The physics are pretty funny though. It has a "oh god, look at it fall apart" charm kind of like one of my favorite board games, Galaxy Trucker.
Apr 26 02:11:30	12m 03s	Deep Dive	♥ 1	Those darn bats! They kill me almost as much as my own bombs. 👻 It's a tried and true premise, and it works. I like the pixel art (the dirt texture is nicely detailed and tiles well for example). Wish there was some way to get health back.
Apr 26 02:17:36	6m 06s	Goober Bros.	♥ 1	I don't remember Mr. Driller being a VS game! I don't know about starting the players facing each other where they can shoot each other to start the match, though. Did you know you can keep shooting the bad blobs to keep them in their death animation indefinitely? Poor guys.
Apr 26 02:29:32	11m 56s	Dreamer's Depths	♥ 5	I cleared it! I like the concept of boosting into ledges to jump so much I kind of wish the game didn't have a traditional jump button. The atmosphere of the background images and color palettes works well, and I really like the "portal to the next level" effect. The placement of the hearts is on-point. I was just barely at low health when I got to them several times. Props for that. It's kind of tricky how going over even a really small hump can cause you to become airborne. There's one spot in the second level (where you double back to going left) that's especially difficult to navigate because of that.
Apr 26 07:00:47	4h 31m	Down the Stairs	♥ 3	First off, just having a quick help screen to start the game is a big plus. 👍 It makes a big difference to have a little direction and to kind of know what to expect. I like the idea of having a turn-based tactics game where your actions are somewhat limited, and I think you could do some interesting things with randomized movement too, but combining them into one game design is kind of un-fun. I found myself wasting turns and running out of points because I happened to roll way too much and go past the enemy. It seems like the optimal play for most cases is to not move and let the monsters come to you, since that way you won't waste a turn overshooting or undershooting on an unlucky roll. The graphics are very charming and look quite polished. I appreciate the head-bob idle animation, which reminds me of Undertaker, and makes me think the game should have a bangin' soundtrack for the characters to jam to. (Given that the music & sound category isn't listed, I'm guessing I'm not just missing it.) The interface works smoothly and doesn't feel sloppy or unfinished at all, which is impressive on the short timescale. I made it to about Cave 6; am I correct in guessing that it's endless?
Apr 26 09:05:33	2h 04m	My own Asteroid	♥ 2	The music is strangely catchy! It's pretty exciting how fast you can get going if you're not scared! I appreciated the little story illustration cards, too. The handwritten text is kind of hard to read, though. You should probably just type it next time unless you're going to be very careful about handwriting it neatly. I appreciate that it has an ending, too. Simple but sweet story.
Apr 26 19:50:12	10h 44m	Fishing the Deep	♥ 1	I wish I had a flash cart so I could try this on my actual NDS! It's been quite a while since I used it, but the DS is one of my favorite consoles ever. But since I don't have one, I caved and used the Desmume emulator (I'm on Linux). I really like what you've done here. The graphics and music are both very pretty (and honestly kind of impressive for something done in 48 hours). It might've just been the emulator but the sound got a little choppy at times. The gameplay is the most under-developed part; the timer goes for a generously long time but there isn't much to do in that time. It definitely would be rewarding to have a few more different types of fishes with different rarity, movement patterns, etc. but obviously that's the kind of thing that takes time. And I don't really see what the point of moving the ship left to right is, since the position of the hook seems to depend mostly on where you touch the screen... but it's nice that it can move. But there is a strange kind of satisfaction with pulling a big haul of multiple fish in one cast. The pixel art of the fishes and the boat are both top-notch. And the main menu has a help screen and everything! That's polish.
Apr 26 19:53:00	2m 48s	The Rabbit Hole	♥ 0	Dang, I tried to run it in Linux in WINE and had no luck. (That's not entirely surprising, but often enough I get lucky and things just work.)
Apr 26 19:54:21	1m 21s	A Journey Down	♥ 0	Yeah, need a download link or something
Apr 26 20:04:18	9m 57s	The Long Walk	♥ 1	The graphics are quite nice! You got a nice variety of sprites in there and the characters have a decent amount of style despite being pretty pixelated. Unfortunately I don't quite understand what's I'm supposed to do, and it seems a bit buggy. It seems like going through the door causes the room contents to shuffle (it's visually jarring to see things move around as that happens) but pressing E to "Loot" things mostly does nothing? At some point it looked like I had looted a gun, and then later on I think I looted bullets and it overwrote the gun in my first inventory slot? So in practice, I just had to wander back and forth between randomized rooms until the zombie guy randomly showed up and stabbed me to insanity... It feels like the start of a good game, but maybe you didn't get far enough in 48 hours to make it really work?
Apr 28 02:06:59	30h 02m	Into Conflict	♥ 4	It took me a long time to understand the interface. I spent the first part of the game wondering... Which color am I? What do the checkerboard patterns represent? (rebels, invasion, or both?) Are the numbers I see on the board my own stats or the stats of a territory I have selected? How come sometimes when I click on a territory the rebels win at some point and in other cases it goes away after a while? Are 3-way-or-more conflicts possible? (I think the answer is yes but only the top two contenders are shown on the bar??) I think I kind of figured it out eventually but by then I was quite far behind. Some other things, I still don't get. I applaud you for taking a different approach to the theme, and I agree with @pdotjpg that "painting a map is always satisfying". The graphics, for as simple as they are, are a good part of that; once you get past the UI there's certainly a rewarding feeling to the little population meeples, and the way the water level cycles up and down is a nice touch.
Apr 28 02:20:43	13m 44s	Dwarven Mines: Hunt for the Evergreen	♥ 1	Yeah, this game looks like a great start but could certainly use a little more something to do. As best I can tell, there's no difference between the hammer and the staff except the staff has a cool glowy effect? I'm certainly into the pixel art with modern lighting style. (It's reminiscent of the HD-2D games like Octopath Traveler.) And the music has a great, ominous opening chord... which periodically loops. Ah well, such is the nature of compo games.
Apr 28 04:36:19	2h 15m	Savestate	♥ 1	Really cool concept and surprisingly polished for a compo game. (Except, I guess, for the parts where it crashed on me, but maybe that's because I was running it on Linux via WINE.) The level progression is smooth, there are cool visual effects, the sound effects fit nicely and the music is groovy. As @sode points out, it does a disservice to the background music that it gets interrupted and restarted so frequently as you load the save states. One of my major difficulties with this one was the controls being mostly on WASD. Jumping with space and moving with one hand on WASD is something I have plenty of experience with, and I could also handle moving with the arrow keys and having action keys where the left hand could use them, but having to manage load and save states on one the same hand that's controlling left and right movement was rough. Also, just like with classic save states (ah, memories of ZSNES) it's all too easy to overwrite a good save state with a useless one by accidentally mashing the save button when you want to press load. Having some kind of buffer or log of previous save states to revert to would make it a lot less punishing when your mind blanks and presses the wrong key (as mine does a lot). Listen, sometimes it's like, "I want to make a save state at the top of the jump. Ok, jump, I'm at the top, top is up, press the up button (W)! Aww, @#$%, I just loaded my save state at the bottom..." But even that's much better than the opposite, which also happens. Still, I think you're onto something really cool here and of all the compo entries I've seen, this might be the one I'd most like to see a finished version of.
Apr 28 05:33:45	57m 26s	Soil Surfer	♥ 2	My poor worm fell into a centipede track that was carved through solid rock, hit a dead end, and couldn't get out! 😭 2021-04-27_222425_716087344.png Also, the game doesn't quite fit on my 1080p screen, but the scaling feature didn't seem to work (just got a black screen). The gameplay is neat and pretty unique, and fits well with the theme. I was so mad at myself for managing to just barely dodge out of the way of the food, by accident, over and over again! The music is solid, the centipede sound effect is appropriately scary, and the sprites are simple but effective. The color palette in particular gives me an "DOS / early Windows game" vibe, which is not a bad thing at all. Food definitely seems to become more scarce further down. I guess that and the hard rock are the limiting factors on how deep you can go. And it's kind of hard to avoid the centipedes sometimes (the audio cue helps but it's not clear what height they'll come in at, and once I had it spawn almost on top of me so it was impossible to get out of the way). Certainly seems like better living to stay in the fertile topsoil and collect all the goodies there. I guess that's the life of an earthworm alright! Well done!
Apr 28 06:13:45	40m 00s	Hole Town	♥ 1	The voice samples were funny, and the flavor text was some nice light humor. I don't know how deep the mechanics go, but they were fun to play around with and the game lasted long enough to do some cool things with them without overstaying its welcome, so that's very nice. It would be cool if there were some mechanic other than bombs that would let you dig the edges. It's a pretty satisfying, short little experience that feels pretty complete for a compo game. You could probably do more with it, but it doesn't feel like anything is missing. My only complaint with the gameplay is it was really hard to tell which rocks were bigger than others, so I kind of gave up trying to figure out how to set up the perfect combo and just dropped more rocks until they lined up. Maybe if there were not as many sizes it would be easier to tell them apart. The graphics are charming and functional, with no issues with contrast or anything like that (just the rock sizes). I'm OK with that. Thanks for this. I hope you become as rich as your character with the dubious rock-dropping hobbies.
Apr 28 06:30:32	16m 47s	Eel With A Gun!	♥ 1	A diagonal shmup, interesting! It was tricky to remember which direction is which, and certainly chaotic, but unique. Nicely animated pixel art. The pew pew sound effects for shooting were spot-on, but I couldn't tell which sound, if any, corresponded to me getting hit, which seemed to happen a lot... The music was kind of whatever, but at least you had music, which is more than many compo entries can say. Are there discrete levels or does the one just go on forever? I'm never sure if I've seen everything or if I'm just being bad at video games and there's more content.