Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Feedback comment stats → Honey Pony
Feedback comments for LD49
Honey Pony's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Honey Pony's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 4 01:17:32 | Radioactive Horse Escape! | ♥ 1 | I think the platforming physics of this game are worth commenting on. So, the platforming physics involve instant deceleration, from what I can tell. When I stop holding right, my horizontal momentum drops to 0. In my opinion, this is not the most fun way to implement platforming physics. As a general rule, I would say it is more fun in a platformer when letting go of the direction does not immediately stop your momentum (at least while in the air). But, I'm not actually talking about this for the fun factor. What I am more interested in is the emotional contrast of those physics with the framing of the game as a chase sequence. The game is primarily a sort of runner game, where you have to continuously move to the right. There is also a sense of urgency--that you need to try to move right as quickly and consistently as possible. So, when you maintain no velocity at all (i.e. no consistent momentum), there is a huge contrast between the feeling of the chase sequence and the feeling of the physics. So, why do I care? Well, this contrast unexpectedly gives the game a more serious feeling, I think. It feels less like a carefree chase sequence and more like something with real weight. The player's motion must be pretty deliberate--it is, essentially, more realistic in that it is not actually very easy, athletically, to escape an avalanche of rocks, and this game reflects that. | |
| Oct 4 01:34:54 | 17m 22s | Broken Planet | ♥ 1 | This game may not be very involved but it was fun pumping up my highscore a bit. I got up to 3404 using a strategy involving holding left before spawning in. Small things I liked: the falling platforms feel pretty good. The sound plus animation on them works well. The animation and sound for the death animation feels good too, with all the platforms shaking. It is possible to get softlocked by getting stuck inside a platform. It only happened to me once. In general it seems like fitting in the 1-block vertical gaps is kind of janky. Overall, this was a fun entry to play for a couple of minutes. 😄 |
| Oct 5 02:37:32 | 25h 02m | Unstable Aviation | ♥ 2 | This game is really nicely polished! All the nice graphics and particle effects and a lot of the sound effects are really good. I find that the unstable control scheme is interesting to try to wrangle. It is definitely not an easy control scheme to work with. In particular, I find that I am really not able to maneuver myself to avoid enemy projectiles and asteroids; practically the only reason I ever survive a possible collision with a hazard is because my shield happens to be up at that time. I imagine it may be possible to get better at actually moving out of the way, with enough practice with the control scheme, but I think it is very hard to learn how to be remotely good. That said, this kind of difficulty is not particularly unexpected, as this is essentially an arcade game. I just thought it was worth talking about. A nitpick: the way the screen wrapping works is kind of confusing. I feel like I lose track of my ship when I wrap the screen. Overall this is a pretty fun game. I don't think I'll be able to get a score much above 13,000 though. |
| Oct 5 02:58:44 | 21m 12s | Snmuloc | ♥ 3 | This is a neat twist on the usual match three game. In a usual match three game, I find I am usually not thinking all too hard about anything but one particular match--I almost always miss all sorts of matches that show up as a chain reaction, as I simply don't care about them. But in this game I have to care very much about every single possible match. So it's really an extremely fresh take on the genre, because it fundamentally changes the way the game is played, and none of the way I would play a usual match three game transfers here. This game is not fast paced at all, it is very slow and deliberate, and the contrast with the way I expect a match three game to work is just really cool. |
| Oct 5 03:25:52 | 27m 08s | b-Blaster | ♥ 1 | This is a pretty cool game. I do think the gameplay curve is worth commenting on, as it has a couple strange features. In particular, I've seen a couple people say that 1000 was when things got hard. But this was not my experience. For me, things got really hard around 700, and progress became really slow. A lot of the enemies I was killing were dropping hearts instead of protons as I kept taking damage, so it took quite a while to get to 1000 points. But then, once I reached 1000 points, the game suddenly became much easier. I think this is because a bunch of new enemies were spawning in, so I could build up mass much more quickly, and getting more common heart drops was a good thing too. I ended up with a score of 1626. I think the way that the electron-spawning mechanic works is really interesting. It essentially ties your score directly to the difficulty of the game--increasing the score means, necessarily, increasing the difficulty. I think this mechanic in arcade games does usually exist, but is usually not so explicit. It's an interesting choice to make it more explicit. I found that the clear screen mechanic is something I never used on purpose, but did use by accident sometimes. One small thing I really like is the buttons on the menus. They are very good. Overall I think this game is pretty good. It was fun to play and the graphics and especially the sounds are very good. |
| Oct 6 21:01:06 | 41h 35m | Alchesaster | ♥ 1 | This game is extremely mechanically fun. I think that, in general, it is satisfying to use an input system where a series of inputs need to be executed in order to perform any actually meaningful task, and this game definitely exemplifies that idea. It is just a lot of fun to have to press a couple buttons to set up a particular spell. I think the reason for this is because it requires so many inputs that it feels like I'm doing something really complicated and intricate, even though I'm really not. But that feeling is a really good feeling nonetheless. I really like the variety of spells that exist. I figured all of them out but the speed one, which I failed to notice had increased my speed. The most obvious area of improvement for this game is of course polish and audio. But the gameplay is really good, I think. I honestly had a great time trying this out. |
| Oct 6 21:23:06 | 22m 00s | Unstable | ♥ 1 | This game is interesting. The best strategy by far seems to be to build a single block width tower. It's pretty easy to avoid messing up each individual block placement, and it merely becomes a game of repeating the same block placement over and over. So, by my calculations, the game ends up being: do the exact same pretty easy thing 150 times to win; messing up once forces you to start over. Now, games that require absurd numbers of repetitions of the same task are something I'm actually quite interested in. The emotions they inspire are, I think, rather unique. In particular, when you mess up, there's an absolutely awful feeling of the amount of tedium that has gone to waste. And so then, during normal gameplay, there's this constant pressure and feeling of dread, because messing up is to be avoided at all costs. There's also a feeling of losing track of the total count. It's pretty hard, at least for me, to distinguish having done the same thing 65 times in a row from having done it 70 times in a row. It all starts to feel the same at some point. And this game encapsulates all of those feelings just fine. It is on the easy side, so I didn't actually mess up once I figured out what I wanted to do, but it does nonetheless have some version of all of these ideas in it. So, for me at least, that's pretty neat. Other note: I really like the sound effects on the block dropping and locking-in. They are very good. |
| Oct 7 02:33:03 | 5h 09m | Horse Pile | ♥ 1 | This game is a lot of fun. I like how it gestures at a couple of different kinds of ideas: the startup noise is very arcade-y, the music and environment seem like a monster truck rally or something, and the horse noises are cartoony. The mashup off all these aesthetics is pretty compelling; it is absurd but it is not overbearingly so. The aesthetics are unusual but they do work well together. For example, even though the only direct aesthetic resemblance it bears to an arcade game is the little jingle, the game overall does work as a fine arcade game. |
| Oct 11 23:12:48 | 116h 39m | DIE: Doomsday Intervention Enterprise | ♥ 2 | The best mechanic in this game is unquestionably the switches. Flicking them back and forth is extremely visceral and extremely satisfying, and I think that the rest of the controls would be more effective if they were more like the switch. More concretely: the sliders should have definitely snapped to the different increments, and the knob overall I think needs to be easier to control and more intuitive. A real-life knob is extremely easy to turn to exactly where I want it, and I think for the same visceral feeling this knob needs to be easy to turn as well. As it stands I had an extremely hard time using the knob--the first time I lost because I couldn't figure out where the 5 was, and in general I couldn't really get the knob where I wanted it to go even when I knew vaguely which direction it should be pointing in. I'm not sure the button really can be improved; it feels fine to push. It's probably a good idea to have one really simple control like the button, as it allows the player to prioritize always fixing those, which can be done in a matter of seconds. One thing that is really effective is the building sense of panic. The length of the game combined with the music combined with the unexpected darkness really makes the end tense (especially after I lost the first time). There is a real sense of pressure there. Good job! |
| Oct 11 23:37:17 | 24m 29s | Paper Route | ♥ 1 | The physics in this game are a lot of fun. There is just something exhilarating about accelerating the bike and then going down a hill with way too much momentum. The way the bike wheels spin complements this well; overall the bike is just very satisfying. I definitely had fun beating the first two levels--the mania of trying to maintain a good amount of momentum while not losing all the papers was pretty neat. So far I have not been able to beat the third level. One thought on the third level is that it is hard to tell the foreground from the background. At first I was annoyed that there was a timer, but I do think it actually is pretty important to force the player to go fast. The feeling of rushing without knowing if I'll be able to keep all my papers in is a pretty nice feeling. I do wonder if it would be good to let the player keep playing after they lose, though, just so they can play with the physics and learn the level layout a bit. |
| Oct 11 23:58:44 | 21m 27s | Volatile Witchcraft | ♥ 1 | This was a nice little game. I did sort of restart the first level as I wasn't sure how to climb up after all the platforms had been destroyed (I did not know they would come back, etc), but after that it was smooth sailing. I particularly think the ice wand is a lot of fun because of its midair jump reset, which allowed me to do a lot of climbing without nearly as many platforms. I think the idea that each of the witches is experiencing a particular mental health condition, which is symbolized through the gameplay, is pretty neat--but I must admit not much of that was on my mind while playing the game (aside from possibly the last witch with disassociation, as parts of that screen did kind of draw my mind in that direction). I think that making those thematic elements even more explicit, if at all possible, could be really cool. As it stands, though, the game was fun to play through. The story was sufficient to make it work, and the variety of mechanics and aesthetic themes keep the game feeling fresh throughout. |
| Oct 12 00:22:19 | 23m 35s | Trick Or Retreat II | ♥ 1 | I think that the multitasking involved in this game is pretty neat. You have to both track the trick-or-treaters and avoid the birds, which requires sort of paying attention to your peripheral vision. It's a pretty straightforward combination but I think it's effective--either task on its own is pretty easy, but doing both at once makes things much more complicated. The different difficulty levels definitely have fun names. I did eventually manage to beat the hardest difficulty. One thing I liked is I'm pretty sure I saw two birds collide at one point and fall down. Those kinds of interactions between mechanics are always fun to see. I had to go back and play Trick or Retreat again as I couldn't really remember it's story. I wonder if the aliens in both games are related or unrelated. If unrelated, the Trick or Retreat alien may find themselves in an unfamiliar UFO after this game, it seems. 😄 |
| Oct 12 00:59:11 | 36m 52s | Contact Nesigur | ♥ 1 | This game was great, in my opinion. It's ultimately not that deep in terms of mechanics--at least, in terms of mechanics I understand--but it was a lot of fun throwing things at the wall until I finally managed to win. To elaborate: I thought that it would be possible to edit all of the bugs out of the way, but I failed to change the position or size of any of the bugs other than "bug_0". I also never managed to get the "speed" variable to do anything. On top of that, I never quite understood how to make the game hide the intro screen or what exactly would cause it to crash. In particular, I was nearing the end of the game, starting to hone in on exactly what position variable I should give the player, when the game started to crash no matter what. I had to delete the JSON file and re-play parts of the game until it started hiding the intro screen again. (I did manage to win after enough manipulations. 😁) But... all of those experiences were pretty neat, really. I never really figured out exactly what worked, but I did know that I could always delete my save file and restart from the beginning. The meta way that this game is played is really cool. I always know that, if the game is screwed up somehow, there is a way to get back to where I was by changing the files on my computer. But... changing the files on my computer is also the literal gameplay of the game. So the game destroys the distinction between the game and the meta game. It's very cool. In particular, if I decide to, say, delete all the info the game has saved and re-download it, I am in fact still playing the game. That's weird. And so I think it's great. One of the neat little experiences I had while playing is attempting to just delete all the bugs so they wouldn't be in the way. This of course caused a crash. Killing isn't the smoothest way indeed. The buzzing sound that is in the right ear is great. I actually didn't realize that was a part of this game until I went back and checked right now. The game continues to eviscerate the line between itself and the rest of the world. So yeah, great game. First LD49 game I've given 5 stars. 😄 |
| Oct 12 01:14:59 | 15m 48s | B.A. in Animal Psychology | ♥ 1 | Neat little game. In my opinion, the conversations worked pretty well. The correct answer was always obvious for me at least; the main reason I clicked the other options was to see what game over message I would get, as those were usually quite funny. The ending test was also a great use of the conversation mechanic; it was super cool to be able to recall that the ostrich was wearing three green hats, and therefore be able to answer the hat question and have a good idea about the color question. The walking gameplay was fine, although I think it could possibly be more interesting. In particular, it seemed like the way the penguin moved was somewhat random, and I think it might be a more satisfying game if the penguin has a predictable movement pattern where the correct sequence of lefts and rights can be learned; in that way, the player learning how to control the penguin would sort of be the way that the game expresses the penguin learning their own motion. The minimap was a pretty neat addition, though. It made it pretty clear for me at least what the checkpoint system was, and that the walruses were hazards. One small point is that sometimes I confused the shadows in the penguin level for water. Overall, pretty fun entry. Definitely one of the funnier ones I've played. |
| Oct 12 02:01:45 | 46m 46s | Unstable Chem Mystery | ♥ 1 | Pretty good game I think, the core concept of having all these combinations is really great. In particular, I like that it's easy to predict to at least some degree what each combination will do--I know, for example, that a "creates cube" concoction will always make some kind of cube, even if I don't know exactly how "explosive" might apply to it. And of course, the drinkable ones will always have an effect on the player, which is particularly fun because it's not exactly known what kind of effect that might have. Like, the first screen with the slime, I obviously went "what will it do when I make make a drinkable bouncy thing?" It sounds like a very unsafe idea. And that's what's fun! The unstablium was pretty great too. I loved combining it with explosions on the very last screens, as I could just clear out everything at once. Very cool. One tiny little thing I like a lot is the rotated computer terminals and chemical stations in a couple of the levels. It does a good job of communicating that something is breaking down, because I never would have expected to see those things off the ground. It's essentially a subversion of expectations; when we see some sprite like that in a game, we assume we will always see it the same way again throughout the rest of the game. Rotating it breaks that. It's cool. Good entry! |
| Oct 12 02:14:46 | 13m 01s | This platform is UNSTABLE | ♥ 1 | Fun game! This is a pretty nice 3D platformer, I think, primarily because it's pretty straightforward. The physics are easy enough to get used to and there's no complicated camera in the way of the platforming because it's first person. I really like the unstable platforms because they serve as fine hazards but also as very useful platforming tools. Tilting the platform down and then sprinting off the high end of it is super effective, which also makes it a lot of fun. In particular, it feels rewarding to make a jump like this because I have to do it in multiple steps, so even if those steps are objectively not that hard for me to perform, it still feels like I'm doing something cool. I don't know if it's really necessary for the game to have a sprint key--it might make sense to just have a single speed that is equal to the current sprinting speed--but it isn't a problem. It is also true that requiring me to hold the shift key does make me feel like I'm doing something more sophisticated, even if it really is pretty simple. |
| Oct 12 02:36:53 | 22m 07s | Nuclear Beer Factory | ♥ 2 | I think that the physics on all the draggable objects is pretty neat. It gives them all a weight and it makes manipulating them a bit of a task--the maintenance of the nuclear factory requires some actual care and dexterity, and that's cool. I think the problem is that those mechanics by themselves are not interesting enough to really mean much. I do like dragging things around, but the only eventual goal I have is to make more money so that I can drag more things around. So really I guess the game just needs more stuff in it--more things to buy, more things to drag around, more ways to interact with everything. As the game stands it is especially annoying to have to drag every individual beer to the rocket. This mechanic does make sense, I think, as something that the player would eventually buy some upgrades to make faster. It is a good mechanic once it is augmented with some ways the player can make it less annoying. Right now those upgrades are missing, though, meaning that only the annoying remains. The experience the game does provide is distinct from a lot of similar games for that reason. There is no real way to make the business more efficient or more powerful, and that gives a unique feeling. The game becomes solely about maintaining a straightforward routine unfailingly for, apparently, forever. What's interesting about that is my reaction to this gameplay loop is to say it is incomplete. This game, I think, sort of reveals a bit about my psychology with respect to games, and I think that is actually pretty cool. But I'm not sure that's what you were going for. 😅 |
| Oct 12 03:17:24 | 40m 31s | Unstable(d) | ♥ 1 | Pretty good game. The gameplay is pretty smooth; as I played I definitely learned more about how to use the abilities I did have, and was able to unlock useful things as well. That kind of two-pronged difficulty curve is pretty neat, I think, as it allows the player to grow on their own and get better at the game, while it also allows them access to new mechanics in a sort of drip-feed. Good stuff. The star speed upgrade is definitely extremely powerful--I didn't actually buy it before winning, but when messing around after winning I certainly noticed how it unbalances the game. For some reason it seems like I am unable to buy the 150 star dodge upgrade...? I do think it would be nice if there was a sandbox mode or something. I would like to be able to try out some of the fully-upgraded upgrades, now that I've won, but it takes a lot of time to collect all the stars necessary. That said, the game overall is pretty good; playing through until reaching the end of the story is a great experience. |
| Oct 12 21:11:00 | 17h 53m | (DE)BUGGER | ♥ 3 | I would say the core concept here is pretty strong. There is an inherent tradeoff in any particular activation order for the bugs, as which ones are activated first will affect the difficulty of activating the other ones. That leads to some fun strategizing about which routes are best, and just makes the level design process work pretty well. I found the dash to be a nice addition, although it controlled somewhat unintuitively. Sometimes it seemed like it would give me an extremely large amount of gravity. I think perhaps that it is just normal gravity, but I am kind of expecting the dash to have almost no gravity...? I'm not sure. Maybe I've just played too much Celeste. The last level was definitely tricky, although I managed to beat it in two tries. I think the difficulty curve is pretty alright all told. I especially liked the way the gravity zones were used in the level design--having to use the gravity zones to get extra acceleration is pretty cool. So overall, a nice little platforming game. |
| Oct 12 22:48:39 | 1h 37m | Stars - Where they come from? | ♥ 2 | The vibe I get from this game is definitely a Getting Over It vibe--the platforming mechanics are intentionally unintuitive, and the game is intended to involve falling and losing progress quite a bit. If this is a Getting Over It sort of game, then the most important difference from Getting Over It is the lava. The lava is effectively a timer, and if I don't complete the platforming objectives in time, I will lose. I actually think that this is a pretty neat twist on the Getting Over It "genre." It adds a sort of additional dread to the gameplay, because I don't know exactly how long the level is, and when I run out of time it could mean I'm too slow by a little bit, or it could mean I'm too slow by orders of magnitude. That feeling is pretty neat. I didn't make it past the section with the three rows of tiny blocks, as I couldn't figure out how to do the last jump, and replaying that section kind of makes my hands hurt. I think that section could be trimmed a bit for that reason--I don't think the game would lose much by making it a couple fewer jumps there, and it would hopefully be less physically difficult to get through it. Overall, I think this is a neat take on the "unintuitive platformer" given the timer mechanic. |
| Oct 12 23:09:22 | 20m 43s | NAMU | ♥ 1 | Pretty neat little box stacking game! I've seen one very similar entry that also involved building a tower with the exact same box-moving-back-and-forth mechanic, but this one is drastically different, which is super cool! I particularly like the chill vibe this game has. It is essentially an arcade game, but it doesn't feel fast paced at all. It truly feels like the game is being honest when it tells you "Nice job!" after stacking only a single trunk. It's as though the game is embodying a sort of unwavering kind-heartedness. That's great, in my opinion. I think the music really works well for that. At first I thought the game might benefit from having a slightly faster pace, but now that I'm writing this I don't think that's true. I went back and played it a bit more and I think the pace does work pretty well. And, when I sort of relaxed a bit more, I got my highest score yet (12 trunks), so that's neat. Overall, this is a great take on the tower-building ... genre, or whatever it might be called. 😄 |
| Oct 12 23:27:13 | 17m 51s | GR/ID | ♥ 1 | I didn't have much trouble remembering the rules for each object, but I did find it pretty difficult to keep up with everything happening. I think an improvement would be a better indication of how long I actually have until things explode, as for example I never really knew how long I could wait for a second lightbulb so I could use a toaster. I also think I would appreciate a more relaxed game mode 😅 ...I think I would have more fun if I could take things a bit more slowly. That said, this is one of the most novel action puzzle games I've seen in a while. It's absolutely nothing like the usual Tetris or match-3 games, and it was pretty fun to try to get better scores and to explore all these puzzle mechanics while under pressure. And, it is absolutely hectic. It was often extremely tense seeing if I would be able to complete a laundry machine circuit in time. So good job on all of that! |
| Oct 13 00:05:29 | 38m 16s | UnstaBall | ♥ 1 | This game has a lot going for it. The visual style and the basic platforming concept (disappearing platforms with various abilities) are both just really solid and work really well together. On the music: it seems to me like the notes that the game generates algorithmically don't really come from one unified scale...? I think if you just generated random notes from a single pentatonic scale every time some action called for a note, you might get a better result. The later levels are really difficult, which I think is mostly fine... I especially did have a pretty good time beating level 15. But level 13 annoys me, as it seems extremely precise to get enough momentum to reach either the portal or the blue block after hitting the red block. I did eventually manage to beat it after I realized I sort of needed to hit the red block while moving vertically...? On that front I think the main improvement would just be to make the route in each level extremely obvious and relatively easy to execute. I don't think having to manipulate your velocity incoming to the red block is a well-broadcasted technique to the player, and so it should be left out of levels until the game teaches it somehow. (Or maybe I'm completely wrong about what I need to do, which I think would also communicate my point here... 😄 ) But, I did manage to power through, and I am ultimately glad that the game had a couple harder levels. The last level especially was fun to route, as I got to figure out which ways I would be able to successfully exit the portal, and then I could plan around that. It was good. Overall, this is probably the best platformer I've played yet this Ludum Dare--it was extremely strong in terms of gameplay concepts and in terms of aesthetic design. |
| Oct 13 20:43:41 | 20h 38m | Destructo | ♥ 1 | The falling-away-ground mechanic is pretty interesting, as it adds a sense of pressure to every room. Most roguelikes I've played, the pressure mostly came from the combat itself, but here there is a pressure to get out of the room as fast as possible even when the combat is pretty easy (during the first levels). The mechanics that the game has right now work together pretty alright--it is possible to move around and at least attempt to get some upgrades. I think the main thing this game would benefit from is polish--it's unclear, for example, that you kind of have to walk over where enemies died in order to pick up their treasure. I do think that the disappearing ground mechanic could use some elaboration. It would be nice to see a way to buy, for example, a bridge, or something that could save the player from standing on the ground, or whatever. This is because I think it's alright for the game to have RNG elements that can randomly end your run (it is a roguelike), but it would be even better if it were possible to mitigate that RNG through careful spending and planning. One small note is I got softlocked one time, where the ground disappeared below me but I didn't die. |
| Oct 13 20:55:19 | 11m 38s | Shifting Labyrinth | ♥ 1 | The first level here really had me hooked. The idea of a maze that changes as you move through it is, I think, a pretty strong concept, and the first two levels at least were pretty cool. The third level I didn't really have a clear concept of how to solve, and so I sort of walked through it randomly until I won. I think that somehow communicating more information to the player would make the game more effective overall. In particular, level 2 worked well because I could see where the wall would disappear when I wasn't yet next to it, and so I could guess that it would disappear once I walked over to where it was. Level 3 was less organized like that, though--there were a bunch of shifting walls, and I couldn't tell which ones were going to shift when I got near them or not. Level 1 I did like just because it had that "woah" moment of when the maze first shifted--in my opinion, it is a very good level for introducing the concept of the shifting maze. It just works nicely, even if there's no puzzle solving. |
| Oct 13 21:14:02 | 18m 43s | Moonbound | ♥ 2 | The idea of being able to trade stats in a sort of market is pretty funny. It seems like a pretty interesting mechanic, as it creates a trade-off between getting money and getting stats; it is of course possible to build up both over time, but it takes quite a while to get more stats and more money. That said, spending the time to build up all the stats and the money is unquestionably the best strategy, as the combat is not really doable otherwise. I do think that making it possible to attack a different direction from your movement would be a major improvement, as it's hardly possible to do much combat without upgrades when you can only attack in the direction of your movement. It was kind of a neat experience, though--I failed over and over until I sat down and just used the market for a bit, and then I just crushed everything in my path. It's an unusual way to play a game, and that tradeoff between sitting down and doing the tedious work versus just trying to wing it is interesting. |
| Oct 13 22:47:54 | 1h 33m | The ScrapYard | ♥ 0 | This game is pretty cool! It's not the only tower stacking game I've seen, but it is much different from the other ones and there's a lot of great features. There are a couple hiccups I had. For a while I didn't realize that the height that the game gives you at the end is the height of the tower at that point in time--I thought it was the maximum height you had achieved. This meant I was quite uncertain how I would ever get anywhere close to 1800 meters when I almost always seemed to get around 250 meters. (Once I figured this out I got like 1200 meters). I also think it would be nice if there was a reset button, although just waiting out the timer isn't too bad. But onto the things I liked! The sound design and the animation of the blocks and camera shake is all absolutely fantastic. The game feel of this game is just off the charts. The way that the blocks clang into place, and the way that the different materials do kind of feel like they work differently; it's all just awesome. I also like how free-form the stacking environment is. I've played a number of 2D stacking games, and I like the way that the 3D environment changes things. I particularly like that having a fall is not actually game over--it's super cool that I can sort of end up with a couple missed blocks that end up who knows where and still get a good score. It's also great when things devolve into pure chaos and I end up stacking a bunch of blocks onto the ruins of my previous tower, and how the blocks are just allowed to end up sideways and they turn into a big pile. So overall, I think this is a great take on the stacking game, with just a couple little polish issues that, if fixed, could make it even better. |
| Oct 15 01:52:33 | 27h 04m | Swerve | ♥ 1 | This was a fun game! Something I think that might be interesting to talk about is how the game doesn't really tell you how to play it (beyond the short description). Of course we usually expect the game to teach us how to play it, but I honestly had a pretty good time while just figuring this game out... playing through a couple times and getting a better grasp on the mechanics. Maybe it's because space already evokes themes of the unknown, and of complex technical systems... but it seems to work pretty well, which I think is neat. It is interesting how you can end up way outside of the space where there are any asteroids. One of my runs, I ended up warping there, and I thought I would have a pretty smooth ride to the finish... until I realized I had flown way out of wherever the finish was. It made me pay even more attention to where I was going, in future runs... On that note, it's pretty cool how once you're near the finish, you can tell where it is located based on the trajectory line. Especially if you reset your velocity with S, which is the strategy I used. A small note is the first high score I tried to upload didn't save my name. (I got #4 in speed, I remember). Overall, this was a lot of fun to figure out and satisfying to win. |
| Oct 15 02:09:58 | 17m 25s | Overpowered | ♥ 1 | The core mechanic of this game, where being too powerful has disastrous consequences, seems to work pretty well. I played the arena mode for a while and then I played the story, and it was interesting trying to balance the power bar the whole time while moving towards an objective. Watching whole rows of enemies explode into a shower of blood after an extremely short spacebar tap definitely communicates an overpowered feel. The violence in the game, to me, feels more comical than demonic. I think this is partially because of how gratuitous it is, and partially just because there's only one kind of enemy. But the game feeling comical does work pretty well, I think; after all, being overpowered in a game generally does feel pretty funny--I can remember times when I first activate a godmode in a game and have a great time doing silly things. I think this game has kind of the same vibe. |
| Oct 15 02:20:21 | 10m 23s | Lava Frog | ♥ 1 | This game is extremely chaotic! I did manage to get about 3 platforms from the end using a relatively deliberate and careful strategy, but the winning strategy I found is, fittingly, much more chaotic. Essentially, I just spammed the mouse button in small increments from the frog, and tried to drag it to be close to platforms as often as possible. This worked for two reasons: First, my movements were always successful, as I never had the mouse too far from the frog, and second, the platforms don't drift as far apart when you reach them quicker. It is pretty interesting--this strategy only works because the game allows you to be on the lava for a little bit. The particular combination of mechanics this game has is kind of unique, which leads to some really novel ways of playing it, I think. |
| Oct 15 02:27:34 | 7m 13s | Topplecrown | ♥ 1 | This game looks and feels really good. The 3D environment and the level select menu are both super beautiful, and the game controls pretty well for the most part too. I was annoyed there was no restart button, and that losing would kick you back to the menu--a problem which is compounded by having to scroll the menu down. I also think that the piece description text boxes that come up sometimes are a little finicky. But, these are basically just nit-picks. The gameplay and the levels themselves are both pretty neat. I like the combination of chess mechanics and box-pushing mechanics--pulling puzzle mechanics from two well-known games is a great way to make them more obvious to the player. It's especially fun to push around the blocks and destroy the enemy pieces. I also think the AI is pretty impressive. I'm afraid I'm not smart enough to always tell when I've trapped it, but it definitely seems to do a pretty good job, overall, at putting up a fight. Overall, really nice entry. |
| Oct 15 02:37:18 | 9m 44s | Tower Construction | ♥ 1 | Wow, the extremely slow movement speed of the crane is probably not what most people would call fun, but it has a super good feeling to it, in my opinion. That is, it really has this feeling of manipulating a giant machine--the machine doesn't react instantaneously because of course it doesn't, it's a giant machine! I really think this game captures that well. I think the direction to take it would really be to incentivize the player. That is, getting a high score is just not that exciting, overall, so I really don't feel like I have any reason to sit here manipulating this gigantic slow machine. But... if there were some other goal I could accomplish with the machine, that I already cared about for some reason, then I would have more reason to want to use it. And then the physics would really get a chance to shine. So I guess, if there were some sort of larger game that this crane could fit into, maybe even just something like an idle game, then people would feel like interacting with the crane a lot more--which would be great, because then more people could experience these cool physics. |
| Oct 15 02:56:20 | 19m 02s | A Solar Disorder | ♥ 1 | I really like the vibe this game has to it, even without music. It kind of feels like a dusty Atari game or something that I would play at like 2AM at night... no music, no background noise, just silence interrupted by spaceshippy sounds. I did not really manage to hit a lost of asteroids. I think this is because of a combination of factors: - Asteroids are small - Asteroids have a somewhat strange trajectory - When focusing on aiming, you can easily get sucked into the sun - Your have a finite ammo supply Adjusting any of these factors could make it more possible to hit asteroids. As it stands, I mostly just circled the sun and if an asteroid happened to be in my path I would try to shoot it right before I hit it. Or maybe it's supposed to be really hard to hit asteroids without being really good at the game, I have no idea. I do think that most of the game mechanics are pretty fun on their own terms. It's cool to have a sun with gravity, and it's cool that the asteroids make it bigger, and it's cool to have a finite ammo supply, and finally the momentum system is really cool too. I like all of these ideas quite a bit. I just don't know how to actually play the game well, when it comes down to it. 😅 One tiny note is I really like the way the rocket fire works. The little flame sprite is just great. |
| Oct 15 03:08:06 | 11m 46s | Cemetery Pinball | ♥ 1 | Super cool to see a DS game! I found that I was quite bad at using the flippers, but that repeatedly bumping the table upwards would allow the ball to keep climbing arbitrarily high. I'm guessing you would change that in any future versions 😅 Using that strategy I did manage to get the ball trapped in a stable loop as others have done. I do find that the controls in the emulator are kind of awkward, as I essentially have to use one hand for the left shift and one hand for the right shift, but then I also have to move my right hand over to use the arrow keys. I'm sure I could have just changed the emulator controls--but I wonder if there's a way to distribute a version of the emulator that already has different controls. I do really like the way the game looks, and I like the sound effects quite a bit too. |
| Oct 15 03:38:57 | 30m 51s | Doc. Noggin | ♥ 1 | This game was pretty tough, but I'm glad I managed to get to the end. While I was descending the game, I often felt like the levels had a lot of completely extraneous elements--I was particularly stuck on Chiller for a while, as I completely did not even think about how little I actually needed to do to win it. It did turn out that a lot of those extraneous elements ended up being used for the chase sequence at the end, but I really was quite confused while going down. (I'm also pretty sure there's still parts of Chiller that are completely unused on the left side of the map...) But, the gameplay itself is pretty good. The variety of mechanics with the bomb and the various level elements are pretty cool, and the chase sequence they build up to is pretty neat (although I personally would probably prefer if it were easier). This is definitely probably the best use of "stability" as a direct numerical game mechanic I've seen yet. The stability meter is pretty interesting even though it's not that different from a normal health bar. The two mechanics--placing a bomb lowers your stability, and fighting enemies raises it--those two mechanics are enough to make it work quite a bit different from a health bar, and then the chase sequence at the end, of course, adds yet another twist, which is really cool. It's just neat how so many mechanics are encoded into one single meter at the top of the screen. |
| Oct 15 04:13:21 | 34m 24s | Il Bambino | ♥ 1 | This is a really nice little adventure game. All the puzzle elements fit together pretty well--after getting the spell, I naturally looked around for stars, then tried casting a few spells before I remembered where I needed to go to teleport. Then the rest followed pretty obviously. Lots of little puzzles with pretty obvious solutions--to me, it basically just felt like a series of "aha!" moments. One detail I think is rather interesting is the way the player moves. It seems to be essentially based on the operating system's built-in automatic key repeating feature, which is interesting because the only other broad category of games with the same kind of input, that I know of, is games made in the Scratch programming language by people new to programming. It's a very unique tic to those kinds of games, and seeing it here I can't help but be reminded of it. I'm not sure if that's what you were going for, but it's definitely the vibe I get, and I imagine anybody else who used Scratch will get a similar vibe. |
| Oct 15 15:58:56 | 11h 45m | The imaginner | ♥ 1 | Wow, it's super cool to interact with a game using the microphone. It's such a rare method of input! As far as I can tell, the game in its current state doesn't have anything I can use my coins for. I think that that's the primary thing missing. It is fun to play around with the microphone mechanics, and I can see how the game could work as an educational tool. But, players would be more hooked with more mechanics to interact with, and so I think the game would be more effective in that case both as a game and as an educational tool. One note is I can't seem to get the voice line "Very slow, but day by day i learn something new" to input correctly. I think this is because it is expecting a comma, but I can't get the recording algorithm to output a comma. But, the recording aspect did work in all other cases I encountered, and it was a lot of fun. I think the concept of the game makes sense--it makes sense that a game testing your speaking skills in a particular language would simply involve conversations. It's a pretty good framing device, I think. |
| Oct 15 16:29:12 | 30m 16s | SplashX | ♥ 2 | The graphics in this game are super nice! Some of the cleanest artwork I've seen this jam, I think. I found it extremely difficult to do most of the later levels. I think this is because the ship needs to be aligned, but when I rotate the ship to be aligned, I can no longer slow it down vertically without accelerating horizontally. This makes it extremely difficult to land the ship unless it spawns right above the landing platform. I do think I could probably do a much better job if I developed a more sophisticated strategy, but it's hard to try things over and over and practice due to the RNG. On that note, I'm not sure if having the ship start at a random point is a good idea or not. It seems like some of the starting positions may well be impossible, or at least orders of magnitude more difficult than the other positions. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but I'm not sure I see the point. If you had a particular reason for adding the RNG I'd be curious to hear it. 😄 I did eventually manage to win with a score of 91. I think that the physics on the ship are pretty good, overall--definitely captured the usual landing game vibe. |
| Oct 17 03:18:09 | 34h 48m | Drilbert II Diggeredoo | ♥ 0 | Pretty cool game! I like the way that the end screen is playable and makes bonus levels available. This is just a fun way to implement bonus levels. The way the game teaches the player mechanics is really well done. In particular, the second screen, which teaches us that the flag is the goal and that coin collection is mandatory, is pretty brilliant in how it teaches the player. I also think that the way the interlocking falling parts work is super cool. That last bonus level in particular I thought really made good use of the physics engine. I admit I would kind of like to be able to see the blocks falling with continuous motion, rather than the tile-based physics, but that is a tall order. (And, I wonder if having continuous motion in the game would make it harder to understand some of the puzzle mechanics...?) But, either way, this game is just a really solid puzzle game. I think it's one of the best LD49 games I've played. |
| Oct 19 19:59:00 | 64h 40m | RoTable | ♥ 1 | I think it's instructive to compare this game pretty directly to Getting Over It. I don't know if it's directly inspired by Getting Over It, or if you've played Getting Over It, but comparing the two games is worthwhile, I think. In particular, they are both based on the core concept of managing finicky physics in order to progress through a level. But there is one important difference, which is that Getting Over It has extremely intuitive controls, and all the difficulty comes from the physics. But this game has both unintuitive controls and finicky physics. That is to say--almost every time I tried to do something, I would end up rotating the legs the wrong way. I would also often rotate the wrong leg. This isn't a case of me failing to master the physics--it's a case of me failing to master the controls. The buttons I pushed very rarely corresponded to what I thought they would do. I would think I was rotating a particular leg clockwise, and I ended up actually pushing the button that rotated the other leg counterclockwise. I am mostly interested in pointing out that this kind of control-based difficulty is distinct from the purely physics-based difficult in Getting Over It. (Although, I think it may be a lot more similar to e.g. QWOP). Now, I think this is actually probably a good thing. The Getting Over It formula works for Getting Over It, but exploring different kinds of frustrating gameplay--such as gameplay where the controls themselves are difficult to perform--is a lot more novel then just making a game with the exact same frustrations as Getting Over It. I just think it is worth making sure that you're aware that your game uses a different kind of frustration mechanic, and making sure that your level design and game design accomplishes what you want. It is interesting, for example, that a lot of the gameplay in this game is easier to do by simply holding two buttons down then by trying to do it with any strategy or precision. This is a fine thing to have in your game design. But if your goal was for the first few levels to require any real mastery of the controls, that goal was not quite met, I think. One other comment: I find that I really like the graphics and the level design in this game. When I reach a screen, I never know exactly what the obstacles are going to be, because the scene looks like just a normal drawing. But then the obstacles end up being pretty easy to understand as soon as I run into them, and the cleverness of the level design starts to become more obvious as I try to navigate around the obstacles. |
| Oct 19 22:43:00 | 2h 44m | Total Meltdown | ♥ 1 | The use of the 3D environment to house all the controls is a good choice, I think. A particularly important component of this setup is that the controls cannot all be seen at once. This of course would be possible in 2D, but is a lot more natural in 3D. The result of this is that I have to constantly be aware of my surroundings, and be sure I'm not forgetting to check anything. This experience works really well, especially with the sound effects when something is going wrong. Once I got into a good rhythm the only component that ever got into the red zone was the pressure meter, but the experience of hearing that sound effect and thinking "Oh, I really got to get to that fast" worked pretty well, because I was mentally aware that the pressure meter was the only thing I hadn't checked recently. Overall I think this is a pretty good take on the "manage a nuclear reactor" idea. |
| Oct 19 23:12:20 | 29m 20s | Russian AllCash | ♥ 0 | I think the most interesting mechanic I found in this game is the way that the camera sort of affects my perception of the jumping. It actually, interestingly, really helps to gives the gameplay a bit of an unstable feel... so very thematically on point, there. |
| Oct 19 23:26:44 | 14m 24s | Vineyard | ♥ 1 | This game is pretty solid given the amount of content that it has. One point of confusion for me is that my barrels often explode when there are no enemies nearby, and I'm not precisely sure what's causing it--maybe it's my own bombs? Or maybe it's enemy bullets? I think that the aspects that the player cannot control--e.g. all my pistol troops getting themselves killed by advancing right before I can form a larger group--are not necessarily problematic. I think that they force the player to think more strategically, and it's also interesting how I am not able to do anything the computer can't do. (That is, the computer can't just stockpile troops until it has a huge group, so... neither can I). |
| Oct 19 23:51:20 | 24m 36s | Polygonal Animal Stacking | ♥ 1 | As others have said, the colored pencil art is quite fun. What's interesting is that the small size of the island effectively places an upper bound on the highscore that is achievable. I wonder if the game would be better if it simply centered on achieving some particular score (and then going beyond if you really wish). Then I think, because the difficulty would be less open-ended, it would be a lot more grounded. Right now it feels strange to try to push for a high score because I know that there is probably an upper bound, even if I don't know what it is. That said, that feeling of detachment that the game has--where there is no benchmark I can meaningfully relate my own scores to--is a fine thing too. And, is perhaps more thematically related to "unstable" than a grounded, specific goal would be. I did end up getting a high score of 25. |
| Oct 21 14:18:45 | 38h 27m | Dimensional Degradation | ♥ 2 | I quite like the variety of levels for the different dimensions. I did encounter a bug where, on one of my better runs, the game didn't seem to load any new dimensions--it just kept taking me to various places in the dimension with the mountains. |
| Oct 21 14:24:35 | 5m 50s | Fission Horse in The Escape From the Condemned Stables | ♥ 1 | The physics in this game are extremely fun. I think this is because of the contrast between your lowest speed and your top speed. At least in my experience, platformers always seem more fun when you start to crank up the player speed, but then as that speed becomes "normal" it becomes less exciting. So, because this game has a normal speed that's pretty low, when I do accelerate to be really fast it remains exciting. I found the addition of the carrots, especially the secret carrot, to be quite fun. I especially like the way that the secret carrot requires components in all three levels. The game is pretty hard, but it's ultimately not that bad. After playing through it once it becomes quite a bit easier to get through it again, so I was able to get all the carrots and secrets. Overall I think this is a really good entry. The only thing really missing is music, but that didn't take away from the fun gameplay or level design. |
| Oct 21 15:16:34 | 51m 59s | Laura Magan | ♥ 0 | My reading of this game is that it works well as a sort of metaphor for PTSD, or something along those lines. I see the items in the forest as being non-literal; they are instead shapes in the forest that remind the player character of their trauma. In this reading of the game, I think it works pretty well, really. The non-literal becoming literal seems to me quite like trauma or grief (e.g. from my own experience--when you seem to see a pet who has recently passed away in the corner of your eye). Now I have no idea if that's the intent. Maybe the intent is the teddy bear is literally on a chair in the forest. But it is my reading, and hopefully this perspective is helpful in some way at least. |