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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | rogual's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 4 08:34:29 | Unstable Roads | ♥ 1 | Maybe I had bad luck, but I often seemed to get cracks appearing right next to my roads, meaning I had no way to save myself with a blocker. Since there are only a couple of exposed mountain tiles on the first level, if cracks start appearing around there, it feels like there's not much I can do to avoid a loss. I did enjoy the pixel art, and the concept is definitely good and original. Great use of the theme. I didn't make it past level one, which felt like it was because of unfair crack placement, but maybe I just suck, lol. | |
| Oct 4 10:37:46 | 2h 03m | Unstable Mines | ♥ 3 | High Score: 899 This game has unusual mechanics, so my first reaction was, "oh god, what's going on, I've just spent 48 hours in a mad rush to make a game, I want to sleep, I can't brain this". But then I re-read the instructions, started again a couple of times, and then I started having fun. The mechanics work together to create tension and interesting situations. You can't really stop and rest because you're always dropping mines, so you think, maybe I can go rest in a corner and not touch any of them, but then something else will touch one and they'll chain-explode, so you have to keep moving. Also, you want things to explode, because it's how you score and also how you stop the world being full of walls, so the game makes you cause explosions yourself by nudging your own mines, but then they set off some other ones, and some homing ones spawn, and aargh oh god you're in danger again. The game makes you think, too, because, like, aren't we always dropping mines in our own lives, and walking in to our own explosions? But we can't hide away and just do nothing. This kind of game is what LD is all about. It's one thing to try and bash out a polished genre title like a platformer or shmup or etc., but being brave and experimenting with novel mechanics is really where it's at, IMHO. |
| Oct 4 12:41:11 | 2h 03m | Gun King (HTML) | ♥ 1 | Nice use of the theme, which I usually find to be the hardest part of LD, so well done there. The first big jump took me embarrassingly long to figure out. I thought I probably had to boost myself with the gun knockback, so I tried firing down, and when that didn't boost me, I gave up on the idea. In hindsight, it was probably pretty obvious that I had to boost sideways instead. I blame lack of sleep. I found the controls a little slippery, and got knocked down the tower many times, which felt frustrating. I find it hard to do precision platforming with my left hand while aiming with the mouse in the other hand, but that might just be a me thing. Oh, I see the description now. "Rage platformer". Okay, fair enough XD |
| Oct 4 13:21:26 | 40m 15s | Tectonicalypse | ♥ 1 | I love the smooth, slick feel of this one, and the art is great. It's clear you put a lot of effort into polish, which is something I really appreciate when playing. It's one of those games that it's just fun to play with, never mind winning. Speaking of winning, though, I never managed it. Couldn't seem to figure out why some buildings just stay as little stubs and never totally explode. |
| Oct 4 13:33:50 | 12m 24s | Horse-d'oeuvre | ♥ 1 | Game where you play as a horse... okay, I have to play this one, don't I? Even if it's bad it'll be good. And it's not even bad. You know, I hated this theme when it was announced, but I'm seeing loads of great interpretations of it, and this is one of them. This game totally embodies the theme. Also, I love how the horses' legs just spin round. Great little detail. The two-button controls (that's been a past theme, right?) totally work and are a good way to keep it nice 'n simple. Oh, wait, horses, unSTABLE, I just got it XD |
| Oct 4 13:41:46 | 7m 56s | Don't drop it! | ♥ 2 | I appreciated the reminders about what the different blocks do. Lots of LD games just tell you everything at the start and expect you to remember, which I often find difficult. So, nice touch there. I also like when LD games have level design, always feels more interesting to me. Getting to see the next level is more of a reward than a "you win" or a score number going up, for me. So that was cool too. Graphics other than squares for the different objects would be nice, and would also help people remember what does what. Grey square doesn't exactly scream "danger", for instance. But it's not a big deal, since the reminders are there. The core mechanic of dragging the bomb around was original and mostly felt good, though I feel I should have been allowed to throw it fast if I wanted to. Might have been nice to penalize going too fast through the level design rather than by failing you if your speed goes too high. The theme was also perfectly integrated. Overall, I liked this one. Good job! |
| Oct 4 13:59:46 | 18m 00s | Jampoblock | ♥ 2 | I'm pleasantly surprised how many good interpretations of the theme I'm seeing. I wasn't a fan of "unstable" when it was announced, but I'm having to eat my words. This is yet another good one. I appreciated that you included a tutorial. (At first, in the tutorial, I didn't realize I had collected the key. I kept pressing E and saying "Why aren't I collecting it"? But reader, I had collected it.) Speaking of which, I would prefer not to have to press a button to pick up the key. The challenge is to find the key. Once you've found it, you'll always want to pick it up, so you don't need to let the player choose not to. It's just something to forget to do, which I did a couple of times. "Oh sweet, I found the key... oh crap, I forgot to press E and I didn't actually get it". I liked the variety, new things being introduced on new levels, the weird two-key double-high door, and the trampolines. There were a couple of polish things, like cracks between tiles showing up during scrolling, HUD covering the text in the tutorial, having to wait for the key to catch up to you before entering the door... each of these is really minor, but fixing all of them would I think make a big difference. All in all, I liked the puzzle of having to leave a path for yourself. I felt like you used the idea of a destructible environment very well. I quite like games where you sometimes have to restart a level, because it allows for more different puzzle designs than you could do if you made a point to never let the player trap themselves. |
| Oct 4 14:20:01 | 20m 15s | Warhead Stroll | ♥ 1 | This game has it all: - Writing that made me laugh - Good art - Original gameplay - Original and apposite theme usage - Not just one, but two great music tracks The only criticisms I had is on the last outside part with the cars, I thought I was still going right, and it kills you if you go right, so I kept thinking I was hitting cars, when really I just needed to go down; and the boss is too hard for me. But it's awesome that there's a boss fight, I love it when LD entries go the extra mile. Probably my fave game so far. |
| Oct 4 14:26:23 | 6m 22s | Compo game "Flappy Crow"!! | ♥ 2 | I love when LD games are clones. I dunno why, something about the familiarity mixing with whatever twist the dev puts on it within the constraints of the theme. It's just totally my jam. I really liked the retro art here, and the music was a nice touch. I found the game itself excruciatingly difficult, though. Like, you can't stop? God, that's hard. I ended up trying to stop by alternating left/right quickly, which you can sometimes sorta do. I feel like if you can sort of stop by doing that, the game should just let you stop. I didn't make it very far, but would have liked to see the rest of the game. |
| Oct 4 14:37:21 | 10m 58s | Unstable Caves | ♥ 1 | Nice! I like this kind of thing, grid-based puzzle games. Might be nice if you could use the same button to pickup/drop things, rather than having one button per object type. And I wasn't quite sure what the rules were about when exactly rocks would fall. I guess that does fit the theme, but for some reason when a game is on a strict grid I expect it to have really rigid, legible mechanics. But I suppose there's no reason it should. Speaking of the theme, this is a really nice interpretation of it. Although I did have some criticisms, I found they didn't really affect my experience of the game that much and ended up rating it highly. |
| Oct 4 15:52:52 | 1h 15m | Kattonauten | ♥ 1 | I agree with everyone saying it's very hard! The movement is unique and interesting. I find you have to do little "S-shaped" movements, where you launch vertically, then turn and turn back in the air so you're vertical again before landing. So I'd do that in a few little hops, and when there was a big jump to be made, just blast off full speed in that direction, and probably hit a wall, lol. It would have been nice if the hover was more generous, or if the game was a bit more forgiving overall, but at least it didn't feel unfair. Like, whenever I died, it was because I legitimately failed -- the game is just hard, and that's okay. I appreciated the retro sound effects and pixel art, and the little touches of polish like the weepy cat when you die. |
| Oct 4 16:30:36 | 37m 44s | Dogs++ | ♥ 0 | Okay, this one is good. You've come up with a fun mechanic that fits the theme and feels original, and then it feels like you've thought about the little edge cases and corners that arise from that mechanic -- what if X, what if Y, and built challenges around them. I also appreciated the little quality-of-life things. The instructions are presented along the way instead of a page of text at the beginning. And when you finish a level, it's quick, bam, you're straight on to the next one. There's also lovely chiptune music, which is a joy to listen to and fulfils what I think is the purpose of music in a game like this, which is to keep you playing even when something frustrating happens. And I got to the end despite constantly falling into the single-dog-plus-food-equals-failure trap, so it worked. Really great entry. I had to give out a lot of 5s for this one, and I am jealous of your game design skills. |
| Oct 4 16:45:32 | 14m 56s | Demolition Mouse | ♥ 3 | I love retro stuff like this. I was having a hard time with the slippery controls so I laughed when level 2 started and it was literally made out of ice. I was expecting to ragequit but it wasn't that much more slippery than level 1. Even though I prefer a tighter control style, I still liked the game enough to finish both levels. Great theme usage, and I enjoyed the variety and general vibe. |
| Oct 4 17:08:07 | 22m 35s | Dream Dog Dilemma | ♥ 1 | You beautiful bastard, you actually made a NES game for LD. Works great on OpenEmu (Nestopia). I played with the CRT filter for that genuine 1989 feel. Screenshot 2021-10-04 at 17.51.18.png Random observations: - Good music, and nice trick messing with it to get more mileage out of the one track - Good layer system. Was originally confused when I thought there were just 2, and I also wasn't sure what each radio would do, or if their colours had a system or meant anything. - Game crashed when I walked off the right side of the island after the 3-key door; not sure if that's the end or not. You can never tell with a theme like this! - The "tiny bushes" blocking my path early in the game made me think other similarly tiny things later on were solid, but they weren't. Not a big deal though, I figured it out easy enough. Great entry. |
| Oct 4 18:00:35 | 52m 28s | SCANLINE | ♥ 1 | Very stylish entry. I like the black-and-white graphics and hacker aesthetic. Is that the old IBM font? The sokoban block-pushing puzzles were well-implemented and made me think (though the ability to move continuously while holding down a key would have been quite nice). Once the "twist" happened things got a lot harder. Couldn't always figure out why the doors were closing on me and killing me. "Players frustrated," lol. |
| Oct 4 20:28:25 | 2h 27m | Radioactive Horse Escape! | ♥ 0 | I enjoyed your art and music, and I also liked how different the two levels were from each other. The mechanics were standard but well-implemented; even when I missed a jump or got crushed it never felt unfair. This game would have been a good fit for LD#14 "Advancing Wall Of Doom", but it fits this theme well too. Nice job. |
| Oct 4 20:33:52 | 5m 27s | The Vortex | ♥ 1 | Loved the creepy whispers of the ghosts. |
| Oct 4 20:52:49 | 18m 57s | Raiders of the lost gems | ♥ 0 | Oh yeah! Crunchy pixel art, tight controls, good puzzle design... this is my jam. I got to level 20 but couldn't do that one. Maybe my brain is fried from LD, or perhaps I'm just dumb. It's late... I'll try it again tomorrow. This is a really solid entry, though. If I had one criticism it might be that the player sprite has no outline but everything else does, so he gets lost a bit. Also a lighter background would make the blocks' outlines show up better. But that's super minor, and I'm only mentioning it because there's nothing more substantial to criticize. The graphics are already really nice and legible. And I like that rotated not-quite-isometric projection you're using. You don't see it a lot and it looks great. Oh, also, the effect when changing levels is really nice. I like it when LD games have little bits of polish like that. |
| Oct 5 09:10:35 | 12h 17m | Steady Grounds | ♥ 1 | I like how this game embraces the floaty, silly feel that physics engines have. The motion these engines produce is inherently funny, and it leads to ridiculous results when games use it while attempting to be realistic. Using a physics engine in a game like this, which embraces the ridiculous and, indeed, unstable feel, is a great move. Really nice graphics, too, and you even did a logo! Some super minor criticisms, which didn't affect my rating, and just because I have no real complaints: - I would prefer not having to press or do anything to restart the level when I die or move on to the next level when I win, but it's not a big deal. - Humans with animal heads creep me out, but that's a me problem and does not reflect badly on your game. Great entry. |
| Oct 5 11:25:09 | 2h 14m | Crumble | ♥ 0 | I won! 2:41. Nice little game. Short and sweet, which is probably the way to go for LD. I felt like it spawned health packs more often when I was low on health, which was a nice friendly little touch, unless I was imagining it. I like simple retro stuff like this, when it's well-implemented, which this is. Good theme use and audio too. Super solid. |
| Oct 5 11:29:46 | 4m 37s | Infiniraft | ♥ 1 | I won! 2:41. Nice game. Short and sweet, which is probably the way to go for LD. I like retro stuff like this, when it's well-implemented, which this is. It felt like the game spawned health packs more often when I was low on health, which is a nice little friendly touch, unless I was imagining it. Good audio and theme usage too. Super solid. |
| Oct 5 12:46:34 | 1h 16m | Shifty Showers | ♥ 2 | This is really nice. I liked the art and the music, and I appreciated the happy vibe. There's enough sadness in the world. I also liked that the game was very forgiving. If I didn't get all the coins, it wasn't all like "you FAILED, do it AGAIN", it just went to the next level, like it was saying, good job. It feels like you just want people to have fun. And it counts your score so people who do want the challenge can have it too. Great decision, especially for LD where the sheer number of games to play can feel overwhelming. One thing I would say is that I feel the mouse controls weren't a good fit. You can only move in 4 directions, so it would have been nice if it had keyboard controls so I could use my gamepad. Not a big deal at all, though. Great game, thanks for making it. |
| Oct 8 11:39:09 | 70h 52m | Burning Ravager | ♥ 1 | Amazing work, well done for creating this on your own in three days. I saw it on your blog post and had to come try it -- and I wasn't disappointed! I love explorey games like this, it's my favourite genre. Controls were tight, everything feels right and satisfying, and I never saw it drop a frame. Really nice art and music, too. And there are even several tracks! I'd be interested to know what you used to create it -- what language, what libraries, which DAW or tracker, which art program? I liked reading the post about your process making this, but would be interested in the technical/tools side too. Of course, if these are trade secrets of yours, no worries ^^ |
