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pkenney

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		pkenney's comment
Oct 6 15:19:25		Ball of Chaos	♥ 1	Nice game! Good core idea, well grounded in the theme, with an impressive number of cool twists on it. The presentation is also really nice, and the sound/music really added to the feel. I also liked the non-tutorial tutorial, definitely a fan of that approach and you did it well. I struggled a bit with getting frustrated, so I really appreciated the VERY fast restart time. If I could tweak one thing about this game, it would be to adjust your check for whether I am grounded or not. I kept getting cheated out of the ability to jump in this situation: BallOfChaos-CantJump.png Here I am standing, but I cannot jump (tested several times by hammering the jump button). I can't see the code but my guess is that you use a raycast down from the center of the player to check whether to allow the jump, but you could fix this by checking multiple rays at the edges of the player. You could also consider some coyote time, as I suspect a more generous control would add to the experience by making all failures feel like my own fault instead of control malfunctions. I don't mean to sound overly negative because I really liked this one, I just thought it could be even stronger if you smoothed a few frustrations off. Very nice well-rounded entry!
Oct 9 23:22:04	80h 02m	Tones of the World	♥ 1	The varying synth and the art really came together nicely! The mix of 2D and 3D was a cool effect, and the little smiley-face guy gave some personality to the instructions and story. Mechanically I liked that I had to lead my shot a bit, which made it satisfying to land my shots, although I had a hard time with depth perception because I didn't have that much basis for scale, until I moved around a little then I got a good a sense from the parallax. After that my shots started landing a lot more. I think I had 42 as my best hit-count, but I was unclear about whether to shoot as much as possible to get high hit-counts, or to pick my shots carefully to keep my accuracy high. Really unique moody vibe, nice work!
Oct 13 21:39:47	94h 17m	Unstable Concoction	♥ 1	Jammin! I got 7300 hardmode. Clearly some better typers out there. I kept stumbling on the word euroro- europena- EUROPEAN for some reason! Cool vibe for sure, and the way it didn't ravage me for any mistakes (and even allowed me to skip spaces) was a nice touch that let me try to go really fast without hesitation or fear, and avoided the feelbad moment of just hitting one wrong key to be gameover. Smart design. The environment was nicely done, although the gameplay didn't really allow me to look around at it very much, so I'm not sure I took advantage of the eyecandy. Sound and music really clinched the atmosphere and made it all work. Nice all-around compo, well done.
Oct 18 01:42:13	100h 02m	Router Runner	♥ 1	My best run was Cycle 7 with 27/7/0/2. I encountered the video issue where it was cropped, and I couldn't see the icons on the top row. At first I played using only the light-haze to tell me which columns were active, but after some fiddling with my resolution I found a much more playable setup and from there any mistakes were my own doing. The ambience here is just amazing, the audio really works well and although the puzzle can get quite hectic with time as the limiting factor, the calm music kept the experience chill. I can't imagine how stressed I'd get with a forward-leaning turbo-song going on. I really enjoyed this, and I experimented with some different layout approaches. For a while I though that turning immediately out of the port was good, but after there were more connections this really hosed me and I started turning in the middle of the board a lot more, and in my last runs I kind of just turned somewhat randomly to have a variety, which did okay. I wonder if there's a systematic approach. I made a LLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTT of mechanical execution mistakes, landing on the wrong row/column, entering the wrong port, or dropping the cord one cell outside the port. The movement is interesting: the game is a discrete grid, yet the movement is continuous. There's kind of a cool vibe to it, but I certainly would have had more precision with a discrete/cellwise movement scheme. It was interesting how you rounded to the nearest row/column as I moved in the other direction, I heard NES Zelda did something similar. My experience was that I'd move downward to get to, say, row 5, and then turn right. But of course I would try to turn as soon as possible, so subconsciously I was aiming for row 4.5 I guess. And if I hit 4.49, as I turned to horizontal movement, then I would go backwards in the vertical to row 4. The discrete movement is interesting, but I wonder how it would feel to change the straight "round to nearest" to include a small buffer in the direction I was last going, almost like momentum. Or maybe this already exists and I was just cutting my corners too hard! Anyway it didn't hurt because some of the mistakes yielded the "oh NO!" moments that were a lot of fun. Art was super effective, and again the audio ambiance and mood was just awesome. I see you have a second Mullin in the credits this time... Does that mean this is a family effort? That's awesome. Nice entry!
Oct 18 02:25:45	43m 32s	Cro-Mathnon	♥ 1	This chaos is beautiful. I'm trying to protect my lovely equation. The platform is sliding and I don't want to hit the lava. But as I edge away from the precipice I see that two sweet sixes I hold will be replaced by a 1 and a 2, and I cannot allow that. One ill-advised jump later and I watch in complete horror as my two multiplication signs are replaced by minuses. Woe. The whole idea is nuts in a wonderful way, I love the story of cavemen competing for the best number, it's just great! I definitely picked up what you were shooting for with the async thing. There's this awesome gambling, push your luck, competitive feel that could really be awesome against live humans. And the shame.... oh, the shame. Loved it!!
Oct 18 14:34:10	12h 08m	CyberVoid	♥ 2	Looks really cool, unfortunately my laptop could not handle it and it was too choppy so I couldn't give it a real try. I didn't rate since I didn't get a real experience, but it's intriguing!
Oct 18 14:42:24	8m 14s	House comfort...	♥ 1	The hand-drawn 2D-in-3D-world art style really worked well, nice job! The mouse sense was too high for comfort but since I didn't have to aim at things under pressure (like in a shooter for example) it didn't interfere with my enjoyment. The musical change was another nice touch that really helped sell the experience. Story was a good mix of mystery, mundane, and horror.
Oct 18 14:58:42	16m 18s	Dimensional Shift	♥ 1	Simple but effective graphics, and a very cool concept! It was a little harder than I was capable of, for example the coordination in the climbing room where you have to alternate midjump a lot (at least that's what I think I need to do), so I'm afraid I didn't get very far! It's a shame because I think I missed some pretty cool stuff by not being able to do it... Definitely my fault and not the game's though. Very cool concept.
Oct 18 15:43:39	44m 57s	Hammer Keep	♥ 1	Very cool action game. Everything comes together into a nice tight package - the art style is great, the gameplay itself is crunch and feels good, with key details like the telegraphed enemies and the different types of attacks needed. The 8-bit sound and music fit together with the rest, and it all really works. The pacing of the action is also really well done. Great entry!
Oct 18 20:11:51	4h 28m	Unstable Caves	♥ 1	Really cool set of systems that I bet create some fun puzzles, it's too bad you didn't get further since I would have loved to play some more. I liked what was here, cool systems, a nice underground vibe that the art really sells. Nice work, despite not really getting it to a complete experience.
Oct 18 20:27:38	15m 47s	P.T. Bone-um's Fabulous Tightrope of Terror	♥ 2	Tried both versions. The art, sound, and overall ambience is really nicely done. The controls were already decent and most of the frustrating bits were improved with the follow-up version, so nice work there as well! I could still use a slightly faster restart, and checkpoints would make me push farther into the game (if there were any I never got to them). If I could tweak just one thing in the post-jam version it would be the collider on the little guy (lemur?) sitting on the ball. It felt a little rough that this was gameover, so maybe the kill collider here could be just a bit smaller: NotGameOver.png But overall this was a really nice one, good job!
Oct 19 01:25:57	4h 58m	Keep the Pressure	♥ 1	Very basic but I liked the vibe, the art style was nicely done, and I had a little extra fun by skipping the instructions, so I liked that there was no tutorial and I got to figure out what to do for myself by experimenting. I wouldn't have minded if the difficulty was higher, and I even played in Chrome! Nice job with a small entry.
Oct 19 01:36:55	10m 58s	Un's Table	♥ 0	This is a cool core idea. I liked the way it didn't explain too much, and it was really obvious what I needed to do after a tiny bit of experimenting (I didn't read the instructions on the game page first). I can imagine a pretty sweet game around this core, trying to shove my way through the crowd to put food on the right spot to rebalance things! If I could add one thing it would be a game over state (pass or fail) that loaded the scene again. The art style was basic but clean, and the lights on the alarm were a nice touch. Congrats on your first LD compo!!
Oct 19 01:47:15	10m 20s	free fall	♥ 0	Nice relaxing experience, and I didn't even have to rake up afterward or look up whether this week is yard waste collection. After some experimentation, I think I like the results best when I don't really drag the leaves around, but stipple them in tiny bursts so that there's less of a pattern to the way the results change colors. Very nice. Somewhat unnerving music and a background that's either relaxing or a bit jarring stand to remind me that autumn portends winter.
Oct 19 02:22:16	35m 01s	Unstable Gun Fishing	♥ 0	HEY I DID IT! Now that was some grimy underground punk rock shit, it hit full throttle from second one, especially since I hit Alt-Enter to fullscreen, which didn't fullscreen but instead skipped the explanation of controls and threw me right into the battle before I was settled. Well, so be it! And I stayed unsettled pretty much the whole way through. And ain't nothing wrong with that. Nice hectic crazy original action-packed entry.
Oct 19 02:38:07	15m 51s	High-Rise Havoc	♥ 1	JAMMIN soundtrack, and the sfx and art were good, too. I enjoyed this game and played to the end. It wasn't that new for a jumping climber game but it had a nice variety of things packed in, the retry loop was short when I died, and the game ended while I was still having a good time. And also that music kept me grooving. On the critique side, I did find it frustrating to wait for moving platforms so many times, and I needed coyote time pretty badly, as it seemed my jump command kept getting eaten (perhaps because I played in the browser?). Fortunately the game has great air control, and the puzzles never demanded a run-into-jump, so I always just jumped from a standstill and used air control to complete the game. Overall a nice little action game, good job!
Oct 19 02:56:39	18m 32s	Launch Yourself!	♥ 0	Savage and fun with a jammin soundtrack! I played a bunch. Then I finally got up to the the pachinko part, and past it. And I had explored right from the start, so I knew the risk and I got ready to be careful, and I blasted myself up there, and then suddenly I was not looking at the game anymore because it is not fullscreen and I had clicked outside the bounardies on the browser tab behind it, and when I went back into the game I was already at "Pity". I did not have the heart after that.... although I did try alt-enter and wince hard when it did go fullscreen. :~( I also agree with @raphiell as I had some difficulty with re-shooting due to the camera smoothing making the margin for mouse expression extremely small, and I also had problems with some shots being duds. Notably a dud when I finally got to that one horizontal bit in the pre-pachinko vertical climb... which knocked me all the way back down to the very start. So really fun! But I got savaged. Not that that's a bad thing or anything. Super compelling entry.
Oct 19 03:26:11	29m 32s	Serene Stability	♥ 0	Great vibe to this, it's calming and interesting. I played a while, and got past the run of double-object-type levels. I stopped at the one with a pink circle-wall in the center just because I'd had a good run and was getting tired of things. I might have played even longer if the restart was paced a bit more briskly. The various graphical effects and audio sounds really work well to create the mood, but that fade-out-fade-in on restart takes quite long and I experienced it SO many times while playing that it dragged on me a bit. Especially when I had to fiddle with the circle-bouncers, which have such enormous swings in output per tiny change in position that they require quite a lot of attempts. Didn't mean to focus on the critique side, because I really enjoyed this. It was relaxing and fun to play around with, a number of cool puzzle ideas packed into a nice aesthetic presentation that I enjoyed spending a bunch of time with. Well done!
Oct 19 04:05:20	39m 09s	Limbs & Squircles	♥ 1	This game is INCREDIBLE! The physics are so good!! I did all of these intuitive things, like grab a ledge with my hands to pull myself up, and it just WORKED. I was really impressed with the core system. The art style really worked well, and the limbs of the character gave so much life to him through his struggles. I played until I won, and really enjoyed it. Here is one of my early attempts at shelter, which obviously failed: earlyhouse.png The challenge of sheltering from the rain was a great choice. It really forced me to engage with the best part, the physics. I had to make plans at a macro level ("What will my shelter be and how will it stand up to the rain") and at the micro level ("How will I weigh this cross-beam down while I get the stone shingles in place?"). At first I got more complex than that early house, but in the end I won with a MUCH simpler house that I won't show here to avoid spoilers. I don't know if this game is for everyone, but it was for me.
Oct 19 04:57:59	52m 39s	The Landscape Hates You!	♥ 1	I played the whole thing to the end and I thought this was good, and a really complete experience for a jam with lots of levels, a variety of mechanics, and an ending. I especially liked bouncing on the boing blocks and the sick hangtime that I got from it. I think the level where you have to find the pairs of adjacent boing-blocks was a standout. The animations of each block type doing its thing were another nice touch. Sorry the jam was a tough experience for you.