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fre

Feedback comments for LD49

Timestamp	Since previous	Game		fre's comment
Oct 4 23:06:44		O'Ryan	♥ 3	To disable compression, see this: https://imgur.com/a/9mOg5ZK
Oct 4 23:26:23	19m 39s	Unstable Valley	♥ 3	It worked for me! - Press space at the start, then quickly select a difficulty level - The game announces "The rebels approach" - Game then works as described. Attempting to start the tutorial or waiting until the narrator is done talking makes the game unable to start for me. If you are sighted, I recommend leaving the readme open to understand what's going on. I managed to win once on difficulty 1. My feedback: - It's super nice to make an audio-only game and get it to work!! Massive props for that 👏 - The controls to select regions and units are limited and intuitive, I like that you kept it simple - I found no way to get my resource count announced, nor my unit count on regions other than farms, so there was a lot of guessing what the current state of the game is. - There seems to be audio cues about enemy attacks, but with the background audio, it was hard to follow. Consider muting the track when something happens. - I perceived the game as going very fast. Having things happen slower would give more time to process what happened (consider e.g. pre-invasion announcements, e.g. "enemy is targeting GOLD with 3 archers", then "3 archers arrived at GOLD"). Overall, I was very happy to see this! I work on accessibility and screenreader support for web and it's nice to see games going in that direction. Congrats and thanks!
Oct 5 00:00:05	33m 42s	Dr. Bleeno's Dimension Glitcher	♥ 1	No trojan for me (checked with Avast). I managed to go through 2 levels then I got stuck on a platform where it seems I needed double jump but I was not in the right shape (and I couldn't drop down and reach the lower level either). Overall, it's really cool that you got something submitted on your first attempt! Here are some suggestions for the next jam: - Level design: Make the first levels very easy and introduce one element at a time (first the platforms, then the enemies, then changing powers). Write the controls as text in the background directly in-game. Having mid-level checkpoints was really nice, keep that :) - Graphics: The elements are really cool, but everything is the same brightness so it's a bit hard to see what's going on. Make the foreground elements stand out more, either light on dark or dark on light. Thanks for making this :)
Oct 5 21:00:39	21h 00m	ATTACK! OF THE UNSTABLE LIFEFORM	♥ 1	Nice idea and well executed! I played a couple rounds, hopefully swaying the balance back towards the human side 😅 I could not finish a round with the spore, even after infecting everything I could, the map would not end. Maybe I missed something. I agree that the combat mechanics could use refinement, but maybe to keep the scope small and focused on the persistence idea, simply shrinking the map by ~half or ending the level as soon as the opposing side is eliminated could help make rounds faster and let people get to the end state, assuming there is one 😄
Oct 5 21:17:30	16m 51s	Dungeon Disasters	♥ 2	Cool game! I liked that the power up effects were quite strong, so it's very clear what you picked up. I played a run until the boss then died, at first I could pick up weapons, but after a while it seems I could not anymore, so I died fighting with my basic sword 😅 My suggestions for the next jam would be: - Graphics: increase contrast to make the game more readable (for example, make the background a dark brown so that the player is more clearly visible. - Audio: use sfxr to generate basic sound effects and trigger them after every meaningful interaction, it's quick to do and adds more to the immersion than a soundtrack (imo). Overall, a nice and fun entry!
Oct 5 21:33:05	15m 35s	Russian Connect	♥ 1	This was shhhhh and well shhhhh! I leaked just a few shhhhh shhhhh and found the shhhhh ending. Voice shhhhh was excellent! Would you briefly explain how you shhhhh the shhhhh with the text? Is it mapped by shhhhh for every shhhhh or did you do something smarter? In any case, excellent job and I loved how the shhhhh loop was kept short and shhhhh, and fit under shhhhh minutes. Congrats!
Oct 5 22:03:41	30m 36s	//ex.it	♥ 1	Hey, well done, this is a super polished entry! Same as others have commented before, I feel like the platformer difficulty took something away from the experience. I stopped playing after a couple minutes trying to execute the same jump over and over again after pressing a lever, trying to get past a hill. I have nothing against hard games, but with so many games to play and rate, I'd like be able to experience the core idea fully within a few minutes, and it felt like I missed out a bit. My suggestion for fixing the jump accuracy: - Keep track of a "last ground collision time" - Allow jumps up to 0.1s or 0.25s after the last ground collision, even if you started falling off a platform. This helps perceive jump timing as more fair. Tiny suggestion for audio: the mood was perfect, but with little particle effects under the character's feet, I feel like I would have loved to hear tiny footsteps. Overall, really high quality with this one, just wished I had managed to see all of it.
Oct 5 22:30:23	26m 42s	How can I help you?	♥ 0	I managed to discover three nodes, but I'm also stuck with the language barrier 😅
Oct 5 22:44:18	13m 55s	Lightning Ball Rampage	♥ 3	Hey cool game, I love the intensity and vibe! 😆 I played until I died a few times, it was nicely executed and I liked having green borders around walls for readability. My suggestion for the next one would be to take the "out of control" theme even further and make the lightning ball bounce around almost uncontrollably, so the gameplay is not simply to go and find the purple thing, but to actually hit it once you've find it (maybe making levels more open so you don't need to be precise). As it is, it was nice to play this, I just felt that the gameplay didn't quite match the energy level of the game presentation! ⚡️
Oct 5 23:15:50	31m 32s	Balkanization 1	♥ 2	This was super fun, well done! I struggle to find anything I would suggest doing differently on this one. The couple of minor points I could find: - Add a small note about what "fortify defenses" does. - Add "conflict history" lines between nations that attacked each other so that I can learn over time who tends to attack who. Fighter jets though 😆
Oct 5 23:27:02	11m 12s	Turnip Boi and the Forest Lost in Time	♥ 4	Nice game! I died a few times, managed to reach 100 crystals, then died again and ran out of time and had to stop. My suggestions for the next one would be: - Level design: For game jam games, make the lose condition less punitive than restarting from the beginning. There are a lot of games to play and rate, and I would like to see as much of the game as I can, but after 10 minutes I have to move on. Here, I played the same intro sequence 5-10 times because I kept missing a jump, so I felt like I only saw part of the game content. Once thing you could do would be to add checkpoints, or cut the game into smaller sequences (e.g. restart from last portal). - Graphics: Consider increasing the contrast between gameplay elements and the background, especially gems, for example by making them brighter. Here it felt like bits of purple blending with more purple 😄 I really like the 3D death transition, that was a super nice effect! Overall, well done!
Oct 6 22:33:40	23h 06m	Path of Giants	♥ 3	Fun game! The length was great and puzzles were nice, it felt like a complete experience. It was fun to figure things out, personally I liked that had to think outside the box for a solution instead of having a tutorial 😃 My suggestions for the next one would be: - Keep an outline on the selected mech so it's clear who you are controlling - Make the different stages of ice slightly more visible. As it is now, it was sometimes hard to understand the board state at a glance. What I would keep: - Short length and simple controls. - Cool look of the mechs.
Oct 6 22:44:47	11m 07s	Yarnball	♥ 2	Cool game! I'm impressed by the concept and how you managed to implement it in a short time! I had no major issues and scored 47 😄 My only suggestion for the next one would be to give more contrast to the text. Right now it's purple on purple and I didn't notice the tutorial text until the second play through. Overall, well done!
Oct 6 23:06:25	21m 38s	Unstable Ball Game	♥ 1	Interesting choice of engine! I had never heard of Panda3D before, it's nice to see something different! I think you did well considering the self-imposed constraints, and thanks for sharing the source code, I had a quick look! I can see how lacking an editor makes it hard to generate and tweak the scene. Did you consider using a scene representation format and editing the scene in a different tool? I imagine it's a bit overkill to write a custom parser, but maybe something like that already exists?
Oct 6 23:10:37	4m 12s	LONE ROOM	♥ 0	Hi! I'd love to play this if you managed to get something done! If not, no worries, things don't always work out as planned, but there's always the next game jam! 😄
Oct 6 23:28:52	18m 15s	The Oven	♥ 1	It worked for me! Congrats on submitting a game and making it work, and thanks for sharing with us!! I managed to get 258, then the falling rods brought the fire to 100 and even though there was no game over triggered, I stopped out of fairness 😄 I was a bit confused why the oven hatch kept opening again and the timer kept going up, so I didn't know when the game would end. One suggestion for the next game would be to make the world logic more coherent, for example if you replace the falling logs with a wind indicator, and when there is wind, the fire is hotter but burns fuel faster, it might be easier to understand the game mechanics intuitively. Good job overall!
Oct 7 18:13:46	18h 44m	Weasel Words	♥ 1	Ah, this was fun, thanks for making it! @eldogg what did you use for TTS? Would love to try it out as well 🤖
Oct 7 23:19:43	5h 05m	Unstaball	♥ 1	The game was nice! I won in 10s... once I realized there was a win condition 😅 Clearly it's not your first go at this, so I don't have much to say about the design choices and execution, but as food for thought: - The lightning ball character looks quite unique, but the platformer mechanics are fairly standard. Perhaps for the next one you could give yourself a bit more space for experimenting and stumbling onto happy accidents? In my mind, it could lead to more unique mechanics and more bold design choices. For example, what would a lightning ball tend to do? Find the shortest path to the ground? Spread out across everything it touches? Maybe then some tiles conduct electricity and some don't, leading to interesting explosion patterns? Maybe the ball just zaps to the closest object once you get in range? - A second angle you may want to consider is making it feel like a emotional journey of some sort. Once you have a toy, perhaps think about how to take players from the start of the experience to the end? Maybe it starts as a short-circuit in a calculator, then eventually the whole city is blowing up as you're trying to escape through the telephone wires? Overall, it's fun and well-executed, so my main suggestion would be to keep exploring the design space further and further!
Oct 7 23:44:23	24m 40s	UnstaBall	♥ 2	I really liked the visual identity in this one! It's working very well. I managed to clear the first 10 levels before running out of time, it was nice to be able to have a peek at the rest! On the audio side, it's working quite well, although I see what you mean about the soundtrack. My suggestion here would be to do less in the background track and let the melody come from hitting the blocks. Maybe have some soft drums to give it a bit of rhythm, and pads with low attack if you want a bit of harmony (as opposed to having a lot of sharp sounds already in the background track). Short notes on the visuals: - I find your in-game font a bit too small and the contrast a bit too low over the background. - The background changing color is a nice touch, maybe transitions could be a bit slower, or mapped to player actions in some way? (e.g. take the color of the block you hit or just change after a hit) In my mind, this might add a feeling of responsiveness to the environment. Overall, this was quite fun and challenging, it felt like the idea was clear and fully executed. Well done!
Oct 8 00:13:11	28m 48s	Unscrambler	♥ 0	The game was excellent and the soundtrack just right! Congrats, I have no suggestions to make, this was really cool 😄