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Oct 5 02:39:48 The Salatroitsk Incident ♥ 1 The atmosphere is stellar! Sadly running through Wine seems to be a complete chore for this game thanks to the heavy particle effects. I'd love to give the game side another look with a Linux port if you have the time, but your PSX artwork is incredible as always!
Oct 5 20:29:37 17h 49m The Nuclear Ball ♥ 1 Congrats on an incredible first jam! Simple, well thought out, has a variety of challenges that are all reasonable, and controls are fine tuned-- it's just a reasonably well made game through and through. The ball can feel hard to control at times, but only so much so that it makes you sweat a bit at tight corners-- the actual controls are surprisingly precise. It's possible that the game could be made a little more tense by adding some kind of timer or mechanic where the element could need to be pacified, maybe a system where there are checkpoints in the level that you need to rush in between but save your progress per point, but that might have changed the flow of the game. All in all, you set out to make something and did it to absolute perfection, and the completeness of your project is commendable.
Oct 6 00:53:34 4h 23m Balancing Act ♥ 2 This is an incredibly simple and polished idea that clearly has a lot of thought put into it. My only concern is how the scoring system works-- would it be possible to exploit the mechanic by scoring close to perfect and deliberately _not_ using the speed-up function? Random thoughts aside, I have nothing to complain about except that I wish the game could continue for longer if you reached the top with most of your blocks covered as a sort of endless mode. I would have liked to see the game expand so that you had to account for higher numbers like 11-15 with the same scale of balance as before and try to accommodate this. First playthrough results: firstattempt-balancingact.png I found your game out of curiosity since my own game was registered as balancing-act-2 on LD-- I'm glad I stumbled on this as it's quite polished.
Oct 6 03:34:58 2h 41m 绝地天通(Babel Blocks) ♥ 4 This game took me a few tries to understand. I get that with the time crunch, your focus was on the game. That said, I think this game would benefit greatly from more information on its Itch IO page as it seems like there's a lot of confusion. To my understanding, the game works like this: - You start by going to the shop and buying blocks. - Click on blocks to spawn them from your inventory, then place them in the scene. Blocks can't be changed after starting the round, so choose carefully! - Click Start to properly start the game. Do NOT click the Refresh arrow as it will erase all progress and start over. - Press F until you are allowed to build again. Your tower will have to withstand disasters-- anything ranging from an off-the-charts earthquake to a book not being very good. Some will barely leave a scratch, and others will tear everything you've worked for apart in an instant. - If your tower survived past the goal mark, the HUD displays a Start and Shop button again. Shop and build! Your existing tower can't be touched, but you need to keep building upwards with new parts. My biggest complaint is the fact that the Reset button makes it too easy to completely undo your progress-- I would recommend moving it somewhere else as I click on it intending to shop only to wipe my progress away. Otherwise, I would have liked the ability to rotate blocks as some of the blocks seem like they're designed to fit others. All in all, it's a fun little prototype with nice art and I got a good laugh out of the events-- the UFO one definitely caught me off guard. Great work!
Oct 6 21:07:09 17h 32m Turnip Boi and the Forest Lost in Time ♥ 3 You created a very tight platformer with a lot of love poured into its presentation. All in all, not too many complaints here. I like the aesthetic and a lot of care was put into the assets and mixing pixel art with stylized 3D. I have very few complaints in terms of the level design itself, and the atmosphere created by the chippy audio and lightweight music fits the color palette quite nicely. I normally highly disapprove of WebGL because of the input lag and performance problems that I have playing games in a browser. While the framerate wasn't great, I was able to get by surprisingly well and the controls felt responsive. Still, I'd prefer a standalone Windows/Linux release if possible. My biggest complaint comes from the gravity. You can fall to your death in less than a second; while it feels snappy, it makes accidental death much more frequent, and when the game sends you all the way to the start this feels quite unfair. There weren't too many jumps that felt unfair as the camera was fairly reliable, but the gravity issue combined with the lack of a safety net really hurt my experience with this game. All in all, great entry! I hope your team releases the OST separately at some point if it uses original tracks.
Oct 6 22:16:00 1h 08m Unstable Explosives ♥ 1 I loved this! It's such an incredibly simple game, and took all of five seconds to learn. Every moment had me watching from all sides for another hit. It's pure chaos and frantic but fair. I'd normally beg you to port the game to Linux, but I had no problems running the Windows version through Wine so it feels unnecessary. It ran like butter and I've got nothing to blame for poor performance except my own lack of skill. The audio is fine, but it can feel just a bit empty without an ambient score or music. I'd love to see you add a few additional stages, more rules (bomb types, etc.), and BGM in a postjam release. This project was absolutely stellar, one of the highlights of LD49 for me so far and my first 5 star overall. Keep it up!
Oct 6 22:29:30 13m 30s The Train Station Mage ♥ 1 I don't know how I'm supposed to load a train when gravity's gone up! This was a neat take on the theme with a lot of thought put into it. I think a cheat sheet for which trains take which materials would have helped me on the first few rounds, and the spells feel unwieldy but effective-- as they should be! If you were interested in a postjam, I'd like to see more uses for spells or world rule modifiers, or a focus on modifying the actual platform for materials/sorting before the train arrives so that you have more prep work involved in getting a good score before the train arrives. Great work! Bonus points for the highly realistic train sounds.
Oct 7 03:35:42 5h 06m Wobbly Pagoda ♥ 0 All in all, a solid entry. I made it to the end eventually, but it certainly took me some tries. It's also kind of neat that your LD48 game involved descending a tower, and now we're climbing one. I'll try to be thorough, overall I enjoyed the game but there's a few things that hurt the experience for me. Thankfully, they're mostly minor issues and some of them are an easy fix. For one, as TastiHam mentioned, the jumping is a set height every time. The platforming itself isn't hurt by this, but I found myself frequently jumping into projectiles and had difficulty when trying to fire shurikens to the right place. The artwork is charming and fits together to form a more upbeat atmosphere, along with the great little synth track. However, the enemy sprite and a few HUD elements are set to Bilinear filtering, and it hurts the quality of the original pixel art-- especially for the large enemy, where the low resolution filtering is about ten times the normal size. Point/no filtering is a MUST for these textures. Another minor thing in presentation, the text speed should probably be a little faster. There weren't too many bugs, but one or two floors had some odd collision and I managed to make the character disappear once. A hit sound effect would have been nice, but now I'm _really_ nitpicking for what was a 72 hour gamejam entry. This post may seem mostly negative, but I enjoyed playing this entry a lot. The moving rooms were a neat concept, and I have zero complaints about the shuriken system which was reliable and useful without being too easy on the player. Despite my complaints with the jumping system, landing a shuriken on the head or leg was always satisfying when you managed to get around enemy projectile defenses. The game kept you focused on every enemy encounter and how to get a good vantage point before the fight, and the risk of falling kept platforming tense without a risk of falling all the way to the start over one missed jump. Thanks for the submission! youwin.png
Oct 7 14:49:32 11h 13m Turrim ♥ 3 Leaving me at the mercy of a physics engine is a fate worse than death! At least it's not Unity >5 physics, though. Simplistic concept, and very well executed. It took all of two seconds to learn and while there's certainly a lot that can go wrong, it's mostly due to my own poor judgement. I was pleasantly surprised by how stiff the blocks can feel. Dropping a block from the top certainly has enough force to destabilize loose blocks, but otherwise the blocks are able to hold together relatively well in circumstances where other physics based games would throw in the towel and start launching the objects apart. (I am talking about your 1.0.1 release so I can't speak for past versions) The lack of a rotate button caught me off guard, but I feel like it really forces you to take some unusual risks in block placement. To make this short, nicely done! I hope you get a chance to add some SFX in a postjam release as a good collision sound and some little blips on input are all I feel the game is missing.
Oct 9 02:11:23 35h 21m Apollo's Lab ♥ 0 There's a few polish issues here and there-- the main mechanic didn't click with me at all until reading these comments. As some others have said, the animations are excellent... but they can be a bit long on repeat. Once I understood how to play the game, I cleared through the whole thing without a problem. Its puzzles were creative, its artstyle and tone are wonderful, and the characters have so much expression to them. I have mixed feelings of terror and amusement over the hot-dog possession and the use of dumpsters as a respawn point for a raccoon is adorable. Overall, a strong entry. I'm interested to see what you might have in store for this game postjam as its core concept is quite unique and fun to play around with.
Oct 9 14:09:54 11h 58m Boat History ♥ 1 Yep, that's a 5 star entry. Your main mechanic with the water physics is fun to play around with, and it _feels_ like water. Struggling against gravity to keep your boat on the right course got to be a lot of fun once more obstacles appeared. My only main concern is that the game played very differently depending on whether I had the game in fullscreen or not. I think the game's physics may be tied to your framerate, and this could potentially cause some problems where systems may have the game slower or faster than you intend. That aside, you made a fun little jam with an interesting game mechanic, pleasant graphics/music, and a whole lot of content. Excellent work!
Oct 9 14:30:24 20m 30s Fellowship Manager ♥ 2 Incredible ambition on display here. I have no idea how you pulled this off in time! It definitely felt a little overwhelming at first, and it's hard to tell what you're doing playing around with systems like battle formations on the first few turns. I did eventually figure out what was going on, though, and the rest of the game was a pleasant surprise. The enemies didn't ever feel too challenging, but they don't have to be when it seems like your units are perfectly capable of degrading on their own. The two things I really would have liked to see are some wandering enemies and random events; supposedly the world is unstable, but it doesn't really feel that way. Having friendly villages slowly get destroyed, the water turning brackish, and other world disasters [as well as reasonable ways to slow them down, such as destroying the related attack party] would add to the atmosphere and make the Mad King's threat a lot more present. Otherwise, I think you really have a great project on your hands, and these Darkest Dungeon esque games about managing a crew that falls apart on its own could easily have some large appeal for a paid product.
Oct 10 02:11:58 11h 41m Reliance (Working Title: ~Generating Cosmic Forces ♥ 1 This is actually a very similar concept to what I took on with LD47 and its unreleased postjam game, a game where you deal with incomprehensible cosmic Monoliths that control the flow of reality and repeat the timestream whenever they dislike the results of something. Your story is incredibly interesting, but I'll admit that appreciation came after exiting the game and reading what you had in mind. The placeholder responses and lack of unique visuals or any kind of change on screen hinder what it could have been. The audio and text otherwise is definitely neat. I completely understand that you gave it your best shot for Compo, an uncaring and brutal timeframe where the cutting room floor is the whole building and surrounding estate... not to mention doing it on Pico8 as opposed to a toolkit that can automate more of this process. I guess the gist of what I'm saying is that I'd love to see you keep going with this idea, whether you continue developing on Pico8 or bring the idea to a more modern engine. If you have any interest in continuing this, I'd be happy to chip in wherever I can!
Oct 10 04:09:17 1h 57m U-49 Meltdown ♥ 2 Gah, forgot to post a comment! It's a fun little entry and I appreciate how incredibly RUSHED you feel going through this game. My biggest annoyance is the little trip/knockout function as it feels arbitrary when you land it. Otherwise, the platforming mechanics are neat because the level really forces you to keep track of where you're walking, and the short length of the level keeps the restarts from being frustrating. I like most of the game, but the audio logs are very hard to reliably listen to because it gets lost in all the chaos of the platforming. My main issue otherwise is the framerate, which tended to get a little choppy and make platforming more difficult than it already was. In short, it's a fun bite-sized entry and I can't stay mad at that happy li'l uranium.
Oct 11 00:39:59 20h 30m Rocky Rhodes and the Cracked Case ♥ 3 what
Oct 12 02:52:20 26h 12m Oh, Hello? ♥ 2 I do have some general criticism over the difficulty of the game. I was extremely frustrated over the second level, and while the first level somewhat made sense it felt like a rather unintuitive introduction to the game. Getting that out of the way, your entry was a lot of fun! I liked the overarching story and worldbuilding, even if it took some VERY unexpected turns. I think your fourth level is a fantastic demonstration of what the game could be, a more dynamic environment in which getting to the reception point is easy but holding the reception is a constant challenge. The stages in which finding the reception point forms the challenge lack that same kind of satisfaction. If you were to take this in a postjam direction, I would model all of your stages after that final section, finding fun reasons to distract you from the signal point. Furthermore, you should make the conversations more interactive so as to take the user's attention away from the background elements that will cause a disruption. This would give you a fun gameplay loop where the actual difficulty lies in keeping a long conversation going as opposed to just getting to the conversation point to begin with. One more thing-- what does a snowman exactly sound like?
Oct 12 03:30:17 37m 57s Improbability Fighter ♥ 1 It was all fun and games till I turned into a tree. How am I supposed to check my digital watch now? Aside from the obvious in that it's cool to have a working NES game here, it's a competent and interesting idea. I don't have any particular issue with the control schemes, but some of them aren't exactly intuitive or convenient. It's a fun take on the theme and kept me on my toes. Unfortunately, the lack of unique projectile patterns really does make the combat a bit too predictable, and there's no real challenge when you figure out how to fit between the consistent bullet paths-- my first playthrough ended up being entirely damageless. I'm not saying it's anywhere near as bad as vogon poetry, but this exploit does end up hindering the combat from being as fun as it could be. Even if you are unable to add enemy movement, I would try to randomize or iterate on the bullet spawn patterns more so that projectiles have a more unique pattern to dodge-- for example two bullets that aim towards the center, two that aim outward, then both skewed right, then both skewed left. I would also add more forms to a postjam as the more chaotic this gets, the better. This was a great entry, and bonus points for grounding it in such a fun HHGttG concept.
Oct 12 03:43:58 13m 41s 2001 Unstable Oddyssey ♥ 1 I love the atmosphere on display. The game definitely feels a bit on the floaty side, and I wish there were a bit more of a goal beyond an endless collection of asteroids-- just a little something to either reward the player or keep it going, like an upgraded beam or some sort of visual flair like your spaceship dispersing energy to make the background behind the player more colorful and dynamic. I also wonder if faster movement could potentially cause more accidents, giving the game a little more of a chaotic feel. Ignoring my constant insecure need for gratification through meaningless stats, the mechanics all work well together and the presentation is simple but polished to a t. It really does justice to the space setting with some great lighting and an impressive ambient score. Is there any chance that @dephon could release a score/soundscape for the game later on? The ambience is top-notch and I'd love to add it to my playlist.
Oct 12 20:10:00 16h 26m Dear Ghost ♥ 1 I definitely feel like a few tweaks are in order to make sure users go through this game as intended. This is an exceptional effort with high quality artwork and audio, not to mention a surprising amount of dialogue... but unfortunately the structure makes its shortcomings the first thing most players will see. I had a difficult time getting through this due to the items bug where characters refuse to register anything you do correctly if you picked up the related item before speaking with them. This issue is made worse by the fact that you start the game in the house with no guidance, and don't have the ability to interact with the ghost-- I promptly picked up every item I could because I assumed it was what I was supposed to do. It was only after replaying and forcing myself to avoid all items that I got through most of the game. I like the range of characters, and the sheer amount of dialogue in the game is staggering for an LD entry-- with branching options, too! My only real narrative criticism is that it could have been funny to give the exorcist no knowledge of the author, mirroring the player's experience. Mechanically the game presents itself as a point-and-click, but I wonder if this was truly necessary as it feels like the drag-and-drop applications are very limited. I feel that this game may have been better suited as a pure dialogue-driven adventure instead of having a drag-and-drop inventory. A point-and-click adventure typically lets the player interact with lots of things that aren't necessarily game related just to get a sense of the world, and that isn't really present here-- no doubt due to time constraints for Ludum Dare, which is totally understandable. Scrapping this mechanic would allow the game to be entirely focused on the characters and dialogue. For a postjam, I would recommend the following: - Add a small notebook-themed questlog that updates as you talk to the NPCs. - Move Alice slightly to the left. - Add a check to items to make sure you already talked to the related NPC; if the check fails, give a small description of the item and avoid picking it up. Start items as simple interact points with a different material, then highlight them _after_ you need them or add a sparkling particle effect. An example would be that the Sketchbook is not highlighted until you talk to Harper, then if you interact with the sketchbook anyway you get a simple self-dialogue saying "It's some kind of sketchbook. There's a few pencils and other art supplies here, too." Then after talking to Harper, the sketchbook has the yellow outline indicating that you can pick it up. - When referencing an item in dialogue, the item should appear in the character's hands. This is the best solution I can think of to the question @angela-he brought up as I had the same issue talking to Delilah's husband. - Force the player to leave the house immediately after starting the game. Maybe add a scripted dialogue from the exorcist to herself along the lines of "This is haunted, no doubt. I should look for anyone nearby to find out more." before leaving the building automatically. This could potentially cause confusion about whether you can interact with the house or not, so I would highlight the front door when you go near it from the overworld as well. - Either remove the click-and-drag functionality and purely base dialogue on inventory contents, or add special dialogues for giving the wrong item to certain individuals. This would either improve the feedback for clicking and dragging, or remove frustration from trying and failing to interact with the world. - Add a Quit Game button to the pause menu that runs Application.Quit(), a small but welcome addition for downloadable versions. Hopefully this comment doesn't feel too focused on the negatives. You had an interesting narrative for this entry and there's so much to appreciate about the submission, I just feel that some of the bugs will prevent others from seeing any of that since I felt encouraged to cause those gamebreaking bugs without realizing it.
Oct 17 17:36:20 117h 26m Manicat ♥ 1 I'm at a total loss for words, and my eyes hurt. theme_ultracursed.png I'm concerned for my long-term emotional health but that's alright. Incredible game, visuals are like bleach to my retinas in the most aggressive way possible. Anyway, it's a 5/5 all around, let me know when you get the LimeWire mirror up and running. I'm gonna go take a depression nap now.
Oct 17 18:05:06 28m 46s HONK III ♥ 1 I'm gonna start with the negatives because I feel obliged to be as critical as possible with a game shooting this high in every regard. I had a lot of bugs going through this one that dragged the experience down a bit-- guns would stop firing after a few bursts of fire, then the gun would be useless for the remainder of the level. I had this happen on the Plasma Rifle three times and the default gun once. This was the Linux Postjam version. I also think the first level has some severe design issues-- the early enemies weren't particularly fun because they were usually placed next to doors that would shut the moment you walked away, and I would recommend holding the door open for five seconds before allowing it to close as it would allow you to actually fight enemies from room to room as intended instead of needing to step away and hide behind the door just to get a good shot. As I'll get into, it's mostly contained to this first level. Now that I'm done bashing it, I get to talk about the game. For a moment here and there, I forgot I was playing an LD game. The 3D models look perfect, the environments are the right blend of retro, and the weapons are fun. It's described as a Doom-like, but it felt closer to me like a faster, tighter Serious Sam-- I would like to see more air control and maybe some Ultrakill-esque mobility options, but otherwise I was absolutely floored with what you accomplished. I think most of my issues really do stem from E1M1 as beyond that the level design increases in quality dramatically, with way more verticality and more interesting enemy placement. I also love the little Quake 3 jumppads you snuck in there... I'd recognize that sound anywhere. Ignoring the qualms I had, it's amazing what a game you turned out, and with a sizeable amount of content as well. Multiple enemy types, multiple levels, extreme visual polish, multiple weapons with entirely different functions... it's just exceptional. All this without mentioning the audio. Incredible OST, and generally solid SFX all around. I'd like louder and more distinct enemy sounds, and maybe some slightly punchier rifles, but that's about it. I'm begging you... PLEASE take this game postjam. I would happily put down some cash for Episode 1: Knee Deep in the Bread. I want to see exactly what you have in mind for Gooseguy's upper-tier arsenal and a full campaign. Hats off to your team for an incredible entry. HONK. --- As a side note, thank you for porting your UE4 game to Linux. It's a first for me on LD to see this and made running the game a whole lot easier. EDIT: I put together a list of my favorite projects this jam, and I feel fairly confident putting yours in the runner-up/honorable mention for Best Overall. I was blown away by what you accomplished and, again, desperately hope that I can play an expanded version in the future. HONK! overall2.png
Oct 18 23:11:09 29h 06m Falling Tower ♥ 1 I wish I'd played this one earlier in the jam! It's a simple but incredibly well-executed concept. On my first run, by the time I realized the blue blocks were supposed to be solid foundations it was too late to save the top half of my tower. It took virtually no time at all to figure out the concept, and there isn't a single moment where you're not furiously connecting nodes to pull together the blocks that fell on course and save the blocks that are a little off the path. I liked the electric snapping sound and the wire physics were very trustworthy-- I never felt like I was going to risk stability with ropes that might just bug out the physics, and every structural weakpoint was entirely down to my own carelessness. Mechanically the tower climb is executed perfectly, keeping you focused on exactly where you need to watch while giving you enough screen space to snap blocks as needed. I also like the BGM, with the synth pads and vocal textures. It's a very calming and upbeat tune that fits the gameplay and visuals perfectly, even if the gameplay was anything but calm. I only have one small nitpick, but in the interest of criticism I'll say it anyway. The music doesn't quite seamlessly loop. It fades out, then comes back to full volume, then skips; that's about the most I can really knock the game for. Fantastic work!
Oct 18 23:29:36 18m 27s Gecko's Chronicles: The Miserable Men ♥ 2 The photoscanning technique was a really cool concept. As mentioned on a stream, I would definitely recommend adding a short delay to the time it takes from falling off something without jumping to no longer being allowed to jump; the main issue comes from hitting uneven geometry at a high velocity and having that force translate to upward momentum like a ramp. Otherwise, the presentation is charming and the environments are fun to explore; I especially appreciate the warped developer models complete with dramatic camera angles during cutscenes. All in all, this was a fun out-there title. For better or worse the game appears to be entirely shaped by the environment photoscanning method your team employed, and despite some annoyances here and there the final game is something that easily stands out from the rest. Well done to your team.
Oct 19 06:08:03 6h 38m Reactor ♥ 0 There are some games on LDJam where I forget it's a Ludum entry and and start to see the game as a standard browser game-- this is absolutely one of those cases. It's a simple concept that works exactly as intended, and with very clear matching rules. I like the fact that you have to start to get a feel for which isotope circles expand and contract over time, and getting overwhelmed can happen a lot faster than you might have come to expect after accumulating enough points. All in all, a solid entry where I have trouble really picking apart anything about the game. It's not a genre I typically play, but what you have is a solid arcade game that keeps the player engaged as the pace picks up. This definitely feels like an easy postjam sell. Other than some visual flair and general presentation polish, it already feels like an IO game and just needs a little more work to be commercially viable-- the kind of work that a weekend would never account for. Nice work!
Oct 19 07:23:33 1h 15m Space Ace in: Meltdown Madness ♥ 1 Nice work putting this together in such a short span of time! All in all, it's driven by a fun idea and the point comes across. As others have said, the gameplay has a serious flaw in that enemies can gather out of range for normal fire, and it dampens all of the fun of combat. The presentation is very solid for a LD game with portraits, back-and-forth banter, and all the like-- not to mention the homemade SFX. As a jam entry, it's good stuff. I do think this game may benefit from a postjam version with some extra additions and tweaks, though: - The camera is a bit of a problem. I would try angling it just slightly downwards, so that the ship doesn't block the screen as badly when in the center and about 70% towards the top of the screen. - Enemies should be limited to the range of your fire, keeping their x distance and y distance within a certain range of the player's. - A game like this really benefits from some good combat music. A BGM track would be nice to have in future updates. - I feel that the Warp Drive warning should be a little more obvious, like having a flashing icon with a sound effect at 90% towards the next warp. I found myself constantly getting wrapped up in the combat then crashing into a tree because once the warp starts, movement is hopeless-- a fun idea, but a bit frustrating if you don't feel like you had enough warning. - I would definitely recommend adding Unity's post processing stack and setting up a global volume for the camera as it can really bring some life and flair to the default renderer. Hopefully I'm not going overboard with criticism here, because I feel like you have a solid entry here. All in all, good work! I'd definitely give it another look if you ever have time to put together a postjam version. EDIT: I should have looked more closely. I had no idea this was a compo game! This is a tremendous effort for a 48h from scratch entry.
Oct 19 20:07:43 12h 44m Split ♥ 1 This is a good effort for LD, and with a massive team I'd imagine organization certainly played a factor in development. All in all, there's one thing this game does great, and it's the abstract feeling. I like the idea where each door has a silent environment around it and you open each door to a completely different game style. I think there's some general things that need a lot of polishing if you were to put out a patch, as there's good ideas here that are buried under some problems. ROOM SEARCH: The worst of these games is easily the search for shards-- a severe bug and feedback problems make it hard to play. the mouse cursor seems to be slightly off center and makes things harder to click on, while the objects themselves give no feedback. You should have any containers, drawers, etc. highlight when you hover over them with the mouse; that way, you can actually tell what you're supposed to open. I would also try to add some moving objects to the foreground, as I like the unstable room idea but it's a static image that ends up getting stale after a few seconds. A few moving objects e.g. a floating lamp or clock would make the scene more interesting to look at. DUNGEON BLOCKS: A good idea, but I felt like it was very hard to tell which areas would end up being blocked off. I would maybe swap every two moves with a sound effect instead. The other way I would expand on this game would be to add some kind of object you have to collect before reaching the end, with a much more relaxed move limit. Another important thing: the pattern should not feel random-- it should be a maze. You should be rewarded for paying attention between movements to try to discern a path. This is a visual thing, but when doing pixel art in Unity I highly recommend selecting the textures and setting the filtering to Point instead of Bilinear. This gets rid of the blurring on small textures and makes pixel art appear as crisp as it should look. I'd also add some kind of sound effect to the movement. THIRD: ...not sure what this game was supposed to be. I'm going to guess it was cut for time, which is unfortunate but understandable. OVERALL: Finally, I'm going to have to really get critical about this: the narrative really didn't work for me. Again, this criticism comes with the understanding that you worked under severe time crunch and only had so much time to do everything, but for criticism's sake I'd still like to give some suggestions. My main issue is that the games themselves didn't feel like they had anything to do with the subject topic. I feel like I played minigames then got a screen where I made a choice-- the games had no actual bearing on the story other than a pass/fail check. The characters themselves didn't say anything comprehensible, so until reading the description of the game I had absolutely no clue what was happening. As others have said, I don't know what the clock was supposed to represent. The same goes for the dungeon, and the shards, and the personalities. These elements really don't mesh together because I don't see a single connection between them. I think the game needs some more consistent symbols and goals between the experience to give the world some sort of cohesion. Otherwise, it feels disjointed and none of the games belong together. --- I don't want to make this comment entirely negative as there were some neat things here. Conceptually I do like the game, and the art and music were actually quite good. I'd probably give the game another look if you put together a postjam patch with fixes and a more polished narrative. To sum up my feelings on this, I like the intent and the attempt to make something cryptic, but I didn't understand the final result at all. There is still potential for more here, and I'd definitely give a revised version a look. Even if things didn't really turn out as you hoped, I'm interested to see what your team does next.
Oct 19 20:40:56 33m 13s Emily vs the Unstable Creatures ♥ 1 I wish I'd played this one earlier. From the artwork, to the music, to the characters... this feels like a herculean effort and a 5/5 across the board. To let this game die with LD would be a travesty. The sheer amount of original artwork and music fully implemented is staggering. There's genuinely fun banter in between waves. The upgrades system (while kind of horribly broken and unbalanced) does exactly as you expect and actually adds components to the game instead of just being a raw damage/speed boost. In short, I don't know how this got done. PLEASE take this postjam. I'd love to see more content and mechanics in this game to expand on it. You managed to do so much, and all polished to a T... even localization and dialogue skips, small QOL things that are unheard of in LD. Please let me know if the soundtrack is available separately.
Oct 20 00:57:35 4h 16m Crysterra ♥ 2 For some basic criticisms... I would definitely recommend a UI overhaul and small tutorial as it can feel a little unintuitive at first. I didn't feel much feedback on the Crater/Raise tools and the lack of a more distinct design for your crystal-throwers and knights makes differentiating the two troublesome. Some of the sound effects are a little too loud, particularly the world movement. Okay... bashful criticism out of the way, let's get to the meat of the comment. There's one question on my mind: how'd you do this in time? This game came as a total surprise to me, in that I genuinely don't know how it was done nor how it works so well in what amounts to a single weekend. I like the concept and the world-shifting mechanic is a very unique way to handle your defense, setting up a unique compromise where you take damage to avoid an even worse penalty. I feel that some balancing may be in order, but that doesn't take away from the accomplishment-- you have my full attention and I could genuinely see myself playing more of this with more content. Really, the part that blows my mind is the execution-- the world shifting feels like such a natural part of the game and adds enough variety to chasing enemies that I would want to leave nothing to chance when they got anywhere near the crystal, regardless of elevation. Aside from this, the art and music (the presentation in general, really) is very nicely put together. I just hope there are more enemy designs on the way. A part of me wonders if you could also put together levels that leave the levelshifting you control behind, where you attack an enemy crystal nation that controls their own worldshifting crystal to act against you. Whatever you might have in mind to expand on this concept, I hope to see more of this game postjam!
Oct 20 01:21:45 24m 10s The Town of Clarity ♥ 1 That was neat, and the visual style caught me off-guard-- having a 2D view and using DOF to mask the backdrop was a nice touch. I do wish the camera didn't clip on foreground buildings as much, though. I wish there were more gameplay to it or more conversations/interactions, but all in all it was a neat little experience.
Oct 20 01:38:39 16m 54s Osaka USA ♥ 1 I like the Crazy Taxi meets Paperboy approach, but I wish the gameplay had more of a bite to it-- the lack of a fail condition or drift encourages the player to slam into walls headfirst because it's the only way to move relatively quickly. With a game like this, the street layout is important; I can see that you used grids to properly build this in time which is a completely reasonable approach, but having more curved corners to roads as opposed to a strict grid layout could make for some very fun main roads. The highlight to me is when you have just enough space on a slight turn to keep your speed up, and I would really like more opportunities to build that environment. I also wish the turn control was just a little tighter, with slightly more acceleration on the bike. I know you're just on a bicycle here, but the game tone really leans itself into full-blown craziness and I think a more arcadey vehicle simulation may add to that. Another thing you might find to be fun is destructible decorations. Something Crazy Taxi does well is making the player feel like they're on a total rampage through the streets, throwing caution to the complete wayside. I think you need to add traffic cones, boxes, trash bags, and other objects that break on the moment of impact, not affecting player movement (or negligibly so) but shooting debris pieces everywhere with a crash sound. The longer you keep the smokescreen of chaos over the player, the more invested they'll be in as they feel like they're barely in control. With more music, a refined vehicle control system, and more of an impact to your collisions with a game-over timer and score on delivery, I think you'd have a pretty solid game here. My biggest criticism is the gameflow-- I'm going to guess that a failstate just didn't get implemented. It's definitely hindering this version of the game. I would recommend losing ramen bowls one at a time as a condition for the ramen tipping, and a timer that extends on delivery for a game over-- that way, the penalty for losing balance is having to prematurely go back to restock. A low-poly chef model that appears on would also be a great inclusion. Another small thing, but I'd like to see a little more post processing to bring the visuals out. If you restrict the WebGL version to WebGL 2, you can still use Linear color space and ACES tonemapping in WebGL without any issues (this is how we approached post-processing in our own LD49 game). Aside from that, the presentation is great-- the character model and low-poly aesthetic is pretty much perfect. I only wish the city itself had less normal low-poly buildings and some more decoration to distinguish certain areas as you begin looping back around the streets. The ramen stacking is wonderfully executed with the way they lean towards the left/right with your balance, but a light beige particle effect on the top bowl might be nice to simulate broth splashing out of the bowl. Small side note, but can you add wheelies and ramps? Asking for a friend. Great submission!
Oct 20 02:49:55 1h 11m Wayward Warlock ♥ 0 This appears to be a fairly ambitious title. The lack of audio is disappointing, but I like the ideas you had. The first thing I would do is finish what was started with the character model by implementing a walking animation; I highly recommend using Blender Rigify if you need to do this to a custom model as the add-on lets you create a basic armature and fit it to the character model without having to make it yourself. Allowing the camera to rotate with Mouse X would also be a welcome addition to the controls. After that, I would give the potions distinct sounds and add an ambience or background music to make the game feel less empty. Audio is important to atmosphere. This is also a great way to give more player feedback, as a pickup sound on collectibles would make the effect more obvious (a HUD for your powers as mix would be great as well. All in all, congrats for getting a functional game out the door! It definitely feels like a lot was left on the cutting room floor, but the core idea is still communicated clearly and the challenges do take some time to overcome-- I actually liked figuring out the quirks of the platform potion while crossing the river.
Oct 20 18:57:26 16h 07m Super Stable Tower Constructor ♥ 1 That was a neat project! It took me a second to process, but I got the hang of things pretty quick. I like the main bitcrushed BGM a lot, especially as there's enough variety in the loop to keep it from getting repetitive. If there's one criticism I have, it's the fact that you've made a distinctly 2D game that plays in a 3D space anyway. I feel that certain types of structural weaknesses become unfair to the player because you can have pieces of your building fall along the Z axis and continue to block the corner of any piece that falls near it. Because the player can't control the Z axis placement in the slightest, this just doesn't feel fun-- if you plan on keeping the game 3D, it may be a fun addition to allow the player to move back and forth with W/S and have full control while the X axis remains a claw-game. If you don't want to give the player any control, I'd just lock the Z axis physically-- I do like the visual aspect of buildings collapsing in 3D, but it does hurt gameplay at the end of the day. Otherwise, the physics are very solid and pieces have enough friction to stick together for the most part. I also appreciate the whimsical and polished UX, though I think the in-game visuals would look better with some post processing. All in all, great entry!
Oct 20 19:04:16 6m 50s BLOOPS! ♥ 1 I've played lots of physics based Tetris games this time around, but this is the first time I've ever had so much uncertainty attached to my current board. It's neat having an entry where instead of the main threat being falling blocks, your own paddle is the greatest factor to destabilization-- the blocks are just so prepared to leap out of the containing area that every movement becomes an ordeal. It really kept me on edge when moving the paddle, which is something none of the other Tetris-likes really managed to do this jam-- there's not a single moment where I was actually worried about that top block, just the bottom blocks. I also appreciate the audio design, as the foley audio is incredibly lifelike and sounds exactly like how I imagined the shapes and collisions would sound. All in all, a fun concept and well put together. I do wish I could call the next block manually as the automatic timer sometimes took a little longer than I'd like to recognize that the tower was stable (well, 'stable') but that's just nitpicking. Good stuff!
Oct 20 19:13:58 9m 42s BUMBLING BUILDERS ♥ 1 This one's getting a perfect score. Elegant UX that generally works as expected, fun puzzles that take a try or two of catastrophic and hilarious failure, lots of enemy and block types, and a fun gameplay loop. Add more worlds with new puzzles and background environments, and you honestly have a commercial game ready to go here. This entry is exceptionally feature-complete and a pleasure to play through. Congratulations on a fantastic entry!
Oct 21 02:11:55 6h 57m Drunk Fist ♥ 2 The words "Big Obstructions in a Mall" are engrained into my brain now. EDIT: "There's cockroaches in the mall" makes way more sense, now that I've read the blurb. 😂 I like the visuals and audio work a lot, but I'm not sure how I feel about the gameplay itself. On one hand, I like the risk/reward of having to waste bottles just to fully fight, and needing to jump around enemies to actually save your bottles for objectives. On the other, you're rewarded for drinking so I feel that the combat buff is just a bit too short considering how you'll be expected to fight an endless horde. It took me a while to figure out what exactly I was supposed to do with said bottles as the arrows seemed to point towards the machines without a more distinct arrow leading to the bottle-lock mechanism. I'm not sure what the point of the drinking was outside of that, as it feels like an unneccessary screen blur with a temporary boost. It didn't really serve a gameplay purpose outside of using the bottles, though the animation has a lot of style to its timing and sound. I'd also like slightly more jump height as I kept getting caught on knocked-over shelves, and the bugs may need to get a little closer to the player before attacking as they would regularly group up and start swinging just out of their own reach (thankfully within the player's reach). This made many early groups easy to dispatch before they grew in numbers enough to push a few bugs forward. Otherwise, the presentation is solid, even if the default mouse speed is a bit much. I like the PSX shaders and psychadelic screen effects, the unabashedly campy metal track, and other than the walking kind I don't think I ran into too many bugs in my playthrough. The audio is quite nice too with some punchy sound effects. This is a solid entry, though I hope that some of the simpler tweaks like the AI distance before attacking can be corrected in a postjam version. Good work!
Oct 21 02:22:07 10m 12s Pillars of Stability ♥ 2 This was a really solid entry, with a clear aesthetic and a lot of thouht put into its mechanics. If I had one major criticism, it's that I feel like you can easily be roped into bad decisions out of bad luck-- there were points where I would be trying to bring my economy back down to earth only to have three factory tiles in front of me, rendering my playthrough hopeless as every single tile I rolled from there ended up being a positive to economy. Other than some general balance quirks like that, the game sets out everything it tries to accomplish rather seamlessly, though I'm not sure how I feel on the hard two year limit to gameplay. Great work!
Oct 21 02:30:40 8m 33s Skew Pong ♥ 1 The instability setting does _NOT_ mess around. I feel like I'm not built for this game, as I simply can't wrap my head around the precise kind of reactions you need to counter the tilts. I would say that the AI can feel a bit brutal when maxing the instability, as the player already has the cards stacked against them without an average-strength AI. Despite that complaint, this is a cool entry with a great vaporwave aesthetic I can get behind. For all my complaints, the instability system is very smoothly executed and has a visually interesting layout-- I like the visual of the gyroscope around the map that twists as a reference point for how the map is tilting, a very minimalist but more than adequate approach. I'm also pleased with just how many little QOL things you got in there, like customizable colors-- little things you'd never think of for a 72 hour competition. It makes the game feel relatively feature complete. Solid stuff. Thanks for the submission!
Oct 21 02:38:56 8m 16s YuraYura! - Tidying up the tilting tower! ♥ 2 The artstyle isn't for me, but from a fidelity perspective this is one of the most polished games I've seen as far as visuals go. Audio is also decidedly punchy, though I don't care for the sort of lunge forward the player does when attacking-- when enemies damage the player on collision, this tends to lead to frustrating and unnecessary damage. The gameplay has some neat concepts that seem to be executed well enough, but I would definitely recommend some easier first few levels before introducing the hardest challenges. It can feel like you have to catch your bearings on stages where you can lose in seconds due to being just short of stpoping a growing weight or a jumping rabbit. In short, a solid entry-- nice work!
Oct 21 02:47:38 8m 42s Deep Space Defenders ♥ 1 Incredible aesthetic and audio, though the game over crunching sound was a bit much volume-wise. It took me a moment to really get my bearings with the controls, and I feel like the Raccoon doesn't really serve a purpose in the game. Otherwise, this was a solid entry I might need to play more of later. Thanks for the submission! By the way, any chance you'll release the music track separately?
Oct 21 02:57:02 9m 24s Weasel Words ♥ 0 I love it when I play an LD game and it just leaves me utterly bewildered beyond any kind of criticism, feedback, or even logic. Congratulations. Your game BROKE me. 5/5
Oct 21 03:28:59 31m 57s The Collapse ♥ 0 All in all, an incredibly solid first jam! The music loop can get a little repetitive without more variation, though. I think my biggest criticism is that you've opted to make any damage at all a restart. That's nice and all, but for any of the levels that involve more vertical movement, the falling rocks become an unfair and unlucky death sentence as you don't have enough time to react to them on the way up. I think this particular aspect needs more fine tuning, maybe a replacement with rocks blowing in the wind or something along those lines to replace the falling ones on vertical stages. Otherwise, I thought the level progression was neat, especially with the stage where you end up on lots of falling platforms. Nice work!