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JustinMullin

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		JustinMullin's comment
Oct 4 20:36:22		The Amazing Clownzie	♥ 1	Congrats, and well done managing to get a submission through with a newborn in the house! This is tuned really well, very satisfying to get things just right, and it has a very nice property of being pretty natural once you get a good feeling for the physics. I really enjoyed this, and it's just the right length, though my heart sank when I realized there was going to be a fifth spotlight to hit on the four crates level, hah! The graphics are just right for this, set the theme straight away, and I love the "Amazing!" refrain, especially at the end. Great little submission. =)
Oct 4 22:04:37	1h 28m	A Towering Climb	♥ 3	Nice little platformer, and the random room conditions was an interesting mechanic (though it seemed to clear on death, and I'm not sure if that was intentional?) I found the fourth room (I think it was #4) to be way harder than the rest; after that point I was able to cruise pretty quickly through the others. I ran into a couple bugs with the moving platforms resetting my jump even though I didn't land on top of them, but otherwise the platforming worked quite well in this. Nice work.
Oct 4 22:16:34	11m 57s	AstroJump	♥ 3	Very simple, but well polished! It took me 4-5 tries before I figured out I was supposed to be slamming down on the debris to continue to climb. It's very hard, but satisfying to get a good run. I found myself pretty frustrated sometimes by how quickly the screen scrolled down, where I couldn't bounce on a piece of debris that had left the screen, even though I could get the altitude to keep up with the screen scroll if I were to hit it. It kinda forces a more aggressive play, which was fine but a bit uncomfortable for what was initially most natural/intuitive for me. Overall, nice pure game-play and well executed.
Oct 5 01:08:04	2h 51m	Go Hard!	♥ 1	Nice polish, the particles were integrated really well and the game plays nicely. I really felt the lack of a thrust-down option though; often times the only reason I was using the boost was so that I could turn around properly. It works out, but felt a bit uncomfortable. Anyway, nice piece, I enjoyed playing and the leaderboard worked really well.
Oct 5 01:30:16	22m 12s	Love Stacks	♥ 1	Nice base here! I'm not 100% sure about this, but it seemed I may get more points for carefully shooting just one block off the top of the tower at a time. Either way, interesting way to progress and I liked that I got more block types as time went on. Because there's not really much way to rotate them, it seemed easier to just stack the regular cubes up at a certain point, but I had a bit of fun trying to build a couple extra shapes nonetheless.
Oct 5 01:39:26	9m 10s	A Spelling Error	♥ 1	This is pretty unique, and it's always nice to see a bit of voice acting in the scope of a Ludum Dare too. It took me a while to figure out how all the rules worked. It didn't occur to me initially that the words had to make some sort of sense in addition to following the beginning/middle/ending rules. Once I figured it out the puzzles were pretty easy, but I can see how it might be fleshed out into a deeper puzzle game which is cool.
Oct 5 13:44:55	12h 05m	Unstabadome	♥ 4	Neat concept here! Floating across the level when gravity is totally reversed was a neat feeling and sometimes worked really well. Unfortunately I would frequently get caught in the floor when gravity went to the side; perhaps if the player was also rotated to be able to walk properly on walls? The voice acting was fun, and it's always nice to see someone go that extra level with sound. It took me quite a while to find the shotgun - I know you put the button for change weapon in the game description, but I totally forgot for a bit. The rocket launcher is very powerful, but the splash damage was so unforgiving I ended up using the shotgun exclusively to avoid killing myself on a surprise collision with a wall. Nice entry, I restarted several times to try for a higher score. =)
Oct 5 17:12:39	3h 27m	doctor concoctor	♥ 1	I love this! Strong "Enter the Gungeon" vibes, probably that was intentional. =) The gameplay is very tight, large variety of enemies kept it fresh, and the difficulty scales very nicely as well. My main complaint here is it was very unclear to me most of the time what each new upgrade was doing for me, which cheapened the feeling of upgrades a fair amount. Sometimes it seemed I just got greater damage, but without health bars or any indicators even that was a bit hard to judge. This is doubly true for the end-of-floor rewards, where I got to select from three options, but pretty much just had to choose blindly. I would love to have felt like I could steer into interesting combos at this stage! Overall though, just treating the upgrades like a basic progression system that I couldn't control, the game worked really well. I played for quite a long time across several runs, and I enjoyed each one. Very polished entry and very complete. Well done!
Oct 5 17:28:23	15m 44s	Desultorium	♥ 1	So I'm not sure if I was playing to the right "rules" here, but I had fun trying to stay in the middle of the game world as things fell apart and shifted around, which at least feels like the right thing to do. I managed to get to the end of the timer and I'll consider that a success. =) I like the chill music!
Oct 5 21:13:08	3h 44m	Unstable Stick	♥ 2	I really loved this. Tons of fun to play and master. The slight random factor on the jumps was completely infuriating though, especially on the section with the little platforms all in a row; I'm convinced it's possible to fail that section even with perfect play just because the game shoots you a bit too far or short. It also came into serious effect with the tall vertical drops at the very end, where I'm pretty sure the best plan is just to sit completely straight vertically right at the edge of the gap and _hope_ that the game gives you a little tip, so that you don't get randomly pushed too far if you have a slight angle to hop in. Anyway, it's easy to forgive that issue given the charm of the rest of the game. The presentation is so simple, but it fits perfectly and jumping around just feels great. Excellent work!
Oct 6 02:56:16	5h 43m	TECHNUCLEAR	♥ 2	Wow, this is really cool! Very polished, fun to play, and I was impressed by how it kept layering in new features. Couldn't believe there was a final boss too! Excellent work. =)
Oct 6 14:29:49	11h 33m	Batscape	♥ 1	This is a creative platformer twist that I haven't seen before! A couple of the puzzles were interesting as well, I liked the clever use of falling platforms to line up for the bat's flight in multiple places. I didn't read the game's description very carefully and got a bit lost after reaching the end of the game thinking there was more, but there was plenty here to show off the basic mechanics. Nice work!
Oct 6 14:57:03	27m 14s	Atomic Rock Paper Scissors	♥ 4	This is by far the most compelling "match puzzle" style game I've seen in Ludum Dare, and honestly with some tweaks a contender for most compelling match puzzle I've seen period. These games so often suffer from combos popping in randomly or other sorts of variance that make them relatively mindless unless you're really dedicated. This game had me planning a few moves ahead consistently, and I felt like it was worth the work. There aren't flashy chain-reaction combos like in some games, but collapsing a long chain of tiles across the board was way more rewarding for how much it felt like I was the one who set it up rather than stumbling into a nice pattern by chance. My main complaint here is just the length of the game; others have commented on this as well so I won't harp on it, but I struggled to see the game through to the end after I'd started to succumb to too many metal blocks, just because I knew I wouldn't be getting too many points but the slog of clicking through all the little 1-2 tile chains was a lot. I played for a very long time regardless. The art and music are great for this too, very satisfying to clear tiles, and the "heartbeat" music track was very conducive to a focus mindset. =) I especially love the shine animations, a nice little touch (though I did keep thinking the movement out of the corner of my eye earlier in the game was a sign that the game was progressing while I took some time to think, leading me to rush a bit before I realized it was just an aesthetic touch). I would definitely return to this entry for a version 2!
Oct 6 18:38:47	3h 41m	precAIRious	♥ 1	This was really fun! I played with a keyboard but I might come back and try it out with a gamepad for the properly nuanced controls. Tapping 'S' to stay level was a little tedious after a while. I loved the zaniness of some of the cargo in this game, and the flight mechanics were solid. Crashing was a lot less punishing than I expected, and I didn't initially realize I had to fly low to pick up and drop off items, but once I had the hang of it I was cruising around and thoroughly enjoying myself. Nice work!
Oct 6 18:45:30	6m 43s	In Search Of Water	♥ 1	Love it! Short, but super moody and I love the art. Lots of variety in the level design too. I especially liked the static effect you had applied here. The animations in general were great (I'm partial to the reaching tentacles for the creature art), but the sequence with the drill reaching down and scanning was really cool. Just generally polished all around. Nice work!
Oct 7 01:14:07	6h 28m	Atlas The Clownlifter	♥ 2	I don't understand why clowns are so difficult to balance until I have two of them stacked up on my index finger. I suppose it is just a fact of nature and I should not be so questioning of clowns, but it is an observable fact: just one is a slippery nightmare to balance, but two of them stacked on each other in any nonsensical configuration somehow begin to balance each other out in equilibrium. I wish they would launch themselves into the air in pairs, but alas, they don't seem to listen to my complaints. I don't understand why some clowns bedevil me with ill-timed leaps directly to their doom. They endanger not only themselves, but also their kin who they throw to the ground along with them at great speed. Do they have a death wish? Are they simply deluded or incompetent? I cannot know. I have no time to ask these things in their very brief moment of peril, and they can never answer me again after their fated stunt is finished. I don't understand why this audience is so insistent in ruining my work, my masterpiece of circus engineering. Don't they realize I am Atlas The Clownlifter, whose finger raises worlds of harlequin art that their minds will never completely comprehend? They pay for the privilege to share this tented space, and they need only to sit in rapt silence while I conduct the work that I, and only I, was born to do. Instead they throw vegetables with deadly and malicious aim, and I despair. I don't understand many things about this accursed act, but I do understand this: this game seems to want me to despise it. This game is a bit buggy and more than a bit unfair. I'm halfway convinced this game hates me, and me in particular, and yet...I can't help but love it. Thank you for sharing this game. clowns.png
Oct 7 16:45:22	15h 31m	AFTER SUN	♥ 1	Well that was dark! Simply incredible polish, all of the animations and effects are jaw dropping. I especially loved the first time the ship went to top speed to the moon. Great stuff here! The gameplay itself was pretty tedious, I found myself wishing I could just have the back and forth trips automated away so I could watch the pretty game. It's relatively short though, and the eye candy and nice audio was plenty to keep me occupied through to the end. Excellent work here!
Oct 7 17:14:50	29m 28s	Untitled Digging Game	♥ 1	This plays really well, everything is quick and smooth, and I didn't run into any bugs. I kinda got some Starseed Pilgrim vibes from the game, which was cool, a simple but mysterious game world where you learn how things work by watching closely. The "shuffle" effect as the flying disturbance or whatever it is moves around is neat. The game is pretty hard (I struggled to get past 15 or so), but the world is predictable enough that I could see the skill cap being pretty high. I could picture an expanded version of this game with different sorts of blocks to encounter being very interesting. Overall I really enjoyed this, and it's definitely got me thinking which I love. Thanks for the submission!
Oct 7 17:53:56	39m 06s	Neon Saber	♥ 3	Very cool. The art and the acapella sound track were excellent, as was the writing. Gameplay was good, each boss was relatively unique which was fun. I did find myself a bit helpless at times, the difficulty seemed just about right but sometimes I felt I was just lucky with the way the saber bounced, and on occasion it seemed I would die to something I didn't have much opportunity to dodge. Maybe I'm just bad though. =P I really enjoyed this!
Oct 8 01:38:24	7h 44m	Unstable Chem Mystery	♥ 1	This is pretty incredible! Lots of interesting puzzles, each felt like a new opportunity rather than just stretching content. Pretty much every combination of reagents felt like a useful thing at some point in the game, and I feel like that's quite the accomplishment! There's license to be creative here, and several appropriate solutions to most puzzles. The writing was fun too to boot. This is an excellent specimen, nice work! PS spoilers: !> I'm really sad I didn't find a good use for honey+healthy MEGA BEES
Oct 8 02:23:50	45m 26s	Pen's Panic	♥ 1	This was very hard! I only managed to rescue 2 eggs on my best run; that walrus is just so fast. It seemed my best strategy was simply to dash for the nearest eggs to the start, hope to harvest 1-2 before the walrus got there, and then from there the thing was on top of me forever. Maybe I'm missing some more effective strategy though! The initial dive from the cliff is a cool moment, and I like the sliding mechanic for sure. The animation on the penguin is great as well!
Oct 8 02:36:46	12m 56s	The ApprenDice	♥ 2	Wow, this was really cool! It took me a couple peeks back at the instructions above to understand properly how the game was played, but once I got the hang of it I really enjoyed my time through. I kinda wished I could use the "rewind" potion to just rewind the dice of my choice; maybe that's too powerful for how you've balanced the game, but it seemed spamming rewinds until you get the rolls you need earlier on is the best strategy. I really like the progression aspect of the game, and I could see jumping back in to try to get the omega potion as quickly as possible. I definitely played inefficiently the first time through. Nice work and a clever idea!
Oct 8 03:01:12	24m 26s	Kessler Controll	♥ 2	This is so cool! I love how simple and effective the orbital mechanics are, and the prediction lines are just right, enough information to play without overdoing it. The "collision warning" was an especially nice touch. I especially loved the moment where I thought I had it all under control, and just when I allowed myself to feel proud for a moment, one satellite nicked another, and the debris took out the whole lot of 'em in 5 seconds or less. I didn't initially realize the satellites had fuel, so it was a fun twist to have to play around the one satellite I'd been overtuning for much of the game. I think my main request or nitpick is that the adjustments are very touchy; I think I would have liked to be able to make more fine tuned changes to the orbits to get things just right. That said, I wonder if you tweaked it this way to ensure that the player can quickly make changes without being limited by speed? It works quite well as is, but I often got a bit finicky with trying to get an orbit just right, tapping back and forth to try to center something out. I wish I could have spent a bit more time reading the news feed during play, because I really liked the flavor of it all, but of course those pesky satellites took all my attention. =) Love the game, thanks for sharing!