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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Alphish's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 5 18:37:22 | Death Is Inevitable | ♥ 0 | My final time was about 493 (might have misremembered the number). After like 7 minutes of walking around and crafting stuff, I ~~finally managed to find~~ was found by the monster. Then I ran around some more, used the speedy potion for a good measure, crafted and used the squeaky mouse (which was apparently a toad) and died in the blast - I am the master of my fate, and it's also up to me to end it so foolishly. Death may be inevitable, but getting killed by monster isn't. ;) So yeah, I won't be original in saying that it took quite a lot of time to even find the monster at all. ^^' The crafting system was perfectly functional, though I was pretty clueless how should I actually use the items (the healing potion was very straightforward, at least). The maze felt a little monotonous - I don't even know whether or how much I was going around in circles, having some characteristic spots would be nice. I'm not saying the game should take place in some fair (though I guess Five Nights at Freddy's did a nice job using usually cheerful elements and building horror elements from that?). At any rate, the game had some proper unsettling/tense mood (with graphics and music alike), though I wish it had more visual variety to break the monotony of running through the maze. One last thing - way too often I found myself seeing through the walls when I got close enough (especially around the corners); maybe it's got something to do with camera or such? | |
| Apr 5 20:28:25 | 1h 51m | Life Finds a Way | ♥ 1 | I know that evil overlords love their red, but I wish they colour-coded their gardening tools! Also, finally a survival-type game where the goal is to keep things *dead* for as long as possible. Didn't know I need one until I tried one. Aside from that, I liked the audiovisuals, and the goofy minion is my favourite (still needs colour coding, though). I found it tricky to keep juggling between various gardening tools, and would often pick up the wrong tool for the job (especially shovel and hammer, since saplings and cut down trees are pretty similar) - that aside, the experience was enjoyable, though it might need some additional balancing. Overall, I lasted 150 years. For some reason, the Desktop version has no menu buttons, so I had to stick with the web one. |
| Apr 6 18:50:04 | 22h 21m | 50 Second Apocalypse | ♥ 1 | I really like how the gameplay and scoring mechanics are balanced here. It's good to kill as many zombies as possible in a loop, but you shouldn't start shooting too early or you won't restore your bullets (also, with limited bullets you want to aim for groups of zombies rather than single ones). Also, with each loop you lose at least a bit of time overall, so the game won't drag on forever (which further makes efficient scoring in a single loop imortant). The only thing I'm missing is some bonus points for health remaining after 50 seconds pass (e.g. 10 per health remaining), to slightly push the score boundaries even further for those who reach the apocalypse without getting hit. Also, it would be nice to get online leaderboards, but I understand why it wouldn't make it in the Compo scope. ^^' It would be nice to have some more spectacular apocalypse (at least screen gradually turning white or something with some noise and maybe screenshake), so I can tell I died from the apocalypse and not from a zombie. On the other hand, the time rewind mechanic was very satisfying to watch. ^^ The game kept me engaged until I reached the apocalypse while still trying to get as much score as possible - I eventually ended up getting the score of 125. Well done! ^^ |
| Apr 16 11:55:57 | 233h 05m | Rat King | ♥ 0 | Neat concept, I like how the rat king legend was incorporated and the sprite of the rat king is especially cool. For a moment there I thought that with the game having 8 levels and rat king also being composed of 8 rats, each level would be actually serving a different rat, though the 8th level kinda breaks out from that trend. The gameplay mechanics generally worked well enough, and there were interesting puzzles built with them (though often I had to make multiple attempts at a given level because I had to figure out some remotely optimal route). My complaint would be mostly about sometimes unresponsive jump. Also, the fact that I collect the bag from any place and position was a hindrance sometimes, e.g. when a bag landed near the platform edge, I automatically grabbed the bag, and then I landed on fragile tiles and fell down. I guess it could help if the player had to stand on ground to collect the bag (might be tricky if the bag is lifted by fountain, though) and/or they'd need to hold down a special button if they wanted to collect the bag from non-standing position. At any rate, a well-made game overall, and with some pretty cool concept and mechanics too. ^^ |
| Apr 17 16:16:11 | 28h 20m | Mia's Bear Service | ♥ 1 | That's a nice sweet game, with some good degree of polish. I particularly liked how the bear's clothes and accessories appeared on the finished bear, and how bears had varying colour and head-tilt, giving an additional sense of uniqueness/variety. I managed to reach the Fluff Core Meltdown without missing a bear or making a mistake, so I'll count that as a success. Took me a bit to discover the dash functionality (mostly when things got hectic and then I started wondering if I can speed up), but I found the control for it without a problem so it's actually good. One visual bug I noticed is that when a bear asks for a watch, the watch image is much bigger than other images on the price tag. Nice and fluffy game overall, and I like how at the end there are the bears from before everywhere. ^^ |
| Apr 17 21:54:47 | 5h 38m | Sun Chaser (Survival Platformer) | ♥ 1 | Nice little endless runner, I like the aesthetics, but the controls feel a little too floaty on the one hand and the jumps were somewhat uneven - sometimes when pressed against a tree, it would take me a few attempts to make a jump high enough. Over time, I figured out how it's possible to do some strategising in that I could jump not just off the ledge, but sometimes a little earlier so that I could react to subsequent trees without losing too much momentum. I just wish that trees themselves weren't followed by pits between platforms that often, because then I either slow down or I fall into the pit. And the sun is really challenging to keep up with. Speaking of the sun, maybe instead of "ahead of sun/behind sun" messages there would be some bar in the bottom middle, with the center corresponding to the current player position and the sun shown relative to it - it would be easier to see how far ahead/behind is *too* far. And if the loss condition is based not only on the distance to sun, but the time the flower was outisde of the sun, it would be nice to have an indicator of the flower's health. Anyway, got 50s on my best run. Really pretty game overall. ^^ |
| Apr 17 22:55:54 | 1h 01m | Paper Plane | ♥ 1 | That was a fun little upgrade-launcher game. Graphics weren't exceptional, but they serve their purpose. It's pretty satisfying to go from the aurosphere to carbosphere, and finally launch into the gratisphere (then again, reaching it was inevitable, not matter how delayed). Even when I reached what seemed like the final layer, I still play around some more to upgrade even further and hone my diamond surfer skills - so well done on getting me to play past the "ending". |
| Apr 18 07:53:53 | 8h 57m | The Final Clue | ♥ 1 | The moral of the story: if you learn fast reading, you can pull off any crime you want. ;) But yeah, I concur with others that the story-driven and real-time natures of the entry are at odds with one another. Having each event take a fixed amount of time (rather than having the clock tick in real time) would definitely help to make the mechanics more balanced, in the sense of letting the player enjoy the story at their own pace. I still tried to read as much as possible - skipping through parts I read already on my earlier playthroughs - but it would be a lot nicer if I didn't have to restart because I took my time to read descriptions along the way. Technically, since you can succeed in the game, getting caught by the police isn't inevitable, but I can forgive that because the alternative would be yet another of these depressing games where losing is the only option. Aside from that, the story was enjoyable, there have been some nice remarks too (like the fact that countries without the extradition treaties tend to be the kind of countries one doesn't want to live in). Well done, overall, it just needs the timeout mechanics that don't punish enjoying the story. |
| Apr 18 09:53:04 | 1h 59m | We Have to Talk | ♥ 3 | Nice little adventure game, it was already off to a great start with white-on-black colour scheme - one which suggest a night - only for the girlfriend to point out it's actually daytime. From what I can tell, I managed to complete all the mini-quests, which gave me a slightly different ending than the first time round, so I assume it was intended to be the 100% completion ending, where it still turns out the guy was just delaying the inevitable. And... it might not be satisfying ending in the sense of accomplishing the original goal (keeping the girlfriend, but it fits the theme. Also, I like how it defies the trope that throwing enough gifts at the girl (...and robbing the jewelry shop in the process) will eventually make her love you. The fact that she was more considerate in her last speech (compared to the SMS in the incomplete ending) is also a nice touch. I can totally imagine her being internally like "dude, those gifts are all sweet, but it still doesn't change the facts we're not compatible, dude, please". Well executed entry, I enjoyed it quite a lot. ^^ |
| Apr 18 10:13:00 | 19m 56s | A drop of water | ♥ 1 | It's a fun concept, but platforming mechanics could use a lot of improvement - in particular, how the movement is very floaty and hard to control precisely, and how the droplet seems to appear above ground (or at least above steam clouds, since that's where I observed the effect). One thing I do appreciate is how the game naturally teaches its mechanics - e.g. in case of the fire, you are pretty much forced to do "something" with it (that something pretty much *boiling* down to going into it) and that reveals how droplet + fire results in making steam. The audiovisuals are cutesy, but the visual side is bogged down a bit by some visual glitches - mostly the droplet seemingly floating above clouds, and sometimes the level end animation not being executed properly. The idea for the theme is nice, and it's nice to see someone actually making a meta joke about game jam development being all about fighting against the inevitable deadline. 😛 Nice entry overall, though it could really use some mechanical polish. |
| Apr 18 20:56:32 | 10h 43m | Debt Train (card construction game) | ♥ 1 | There's a special fun to be had when trying to build larger and larger railway, and I'm a little disappointed in how the theme gets in the way of this fun, instead of harmonising with it. I mean, being able to connect every single house in the game for 100% would be so magnificent! I felt there was too much card manipulation - drawing cards, accepting cards, placing cards. The more debt cards I got, the more of a chore the game became (another reason why the inevitable debt is a poor fit for this game). Rather than cards, these could be abstracted as random events: +1 funds, -1 funds (i.e. debt), +1 track, +1 station, and then placing tracks and stations would just be a matter of drawing-and-accepting the tracks, or finding the right spot for the station. Having to draw a track, then place the cards on that track is such a drag (and drop). Having to pay the debt manually instead of it cancelling my funds is even more of a drag. Other than that, the game played pretty nicely and kept me entertained for the while. Once more, I just wish I was able to actually integrate every single household into the railway network. ^^' |
| Apr 19 15:30:50 | 18h 34m | Their Next World | ♥ 1 | That was a nice little entry; didn't see much of environmental messages here, despite them working well in this context (I know it's them humans who keep lighting the fuse! Give them some more thousand years, and the next planet will be on fuse again!). The tutorial explained things well, but it spent really long time on certain messages; I'd rather have the ability to advance to the next message instead. Also, I feel WSAD + mouse controls would work better than mouse alone, since right now using the powers - especially the fuse-blowing ones - interrupts the movement. The game still worked pretty nicely, and I sorta wished it had more levels - with proper level designs, there's lot of opportunity to strategise (possibly with some extra gameplay mechanics). The audiovisuals were cute, especially these noises. It's just regrettable that there doesn't seem to be a selfie mechanic at the end of tutorial. I guess I'll need to settle on approaching the human for posing... |
| Apr 19 15:54:06 | 23m 16s | Project Timeswall | ♥ 1 | There's some mechanics stub there, but it still needs some more polish and variety. In particular, there's the troublesome bug with portal spawning right on the altar, or the issue with sometimes being unable to find the altar in the first place (and it's quite crucial in a game like that). Also, it needs some kind of score/progress tracking - don't know if the metric would be times teleported, or zombies petted, or total number of memorabilia collected, or maybe the score would be a combination of all of these. Tracking the score would definitely improve the replayability. ^^ Visuals are nice (though some more variety would be welcome, e.g. different types of areas, enemies etc.). No audio to speak of, as far as I can tell. u_u' |
| Apr 19 16:22:27 | 28m 21s | Escape Grades | ♥ 1 | A game where you avoid being unfairly beaten up for bad grades by giving mom excuses to beat you up even more... I guess? (not that beating up own children can be excusable in the first place, barring extreme cases like self-defense and such) Anyway, it took me a while to actually complete the game - in part because the punch animation is offset in relation to the actual targeting. Hint for the future players - *you need to aim your cursor at the items, not try to aim your punch animation*. Other than that, the goofy premise is pretty enjoyable (as long as it doesn't hit too close home, I guess). One particular glitch that caught my attention - if there are multiple dialogue lines scheduled to be typed out, they start interleaving with one another which leads to some really weird words, kliinkde tohfi s. |
| Apr 19 16:42:53 | 20m 26s | Watch Your Step | ♥ 1 | "G O O D E N O U G H" Best ending message ever. I enjoyed it quite a bit, though it was really tricky to see where should I go next - maybe camera could be placed better, or the player could be given an ability to move it around (e.g. by moving mouse). Another thing - rather than F1 to restart, I'd prefer something like R instead (or just good ol' "press any key"). Having the tiles become gradually darker the further down they are was a helpful touch. The entry could use some visual polish - though the zoom-out at the end was *really* nice. Also, any audio at all, like e.g. a clock sound when you press the button to temporarily stop the disappearance of tiles (or at least that's what I think it is). The entry was enjoyable still. ^^ |
| Apr 19 18:44:53 | 2h 02m | Kiwis Can't Fly | ♥ 1 | "I won't cry, you will cry" Ahh, this was such a beautiful experience, loved how all these sounds came together, even if in some areas towards the end I was pretty much slamming the bounce-able objects towards the kiwi (still managed to make a hit with each of them). The story is super-adorable, too, and it actually executes the theme in a way that keeps the most common interpretation (the player delays the inevitable failure) yet ending it in a hopeful rather than defeated note. Great job, as usual! It's always a delight to see your entries during Ludum Dare. ^^ |
| Apr 21 13:55:51 | 43h 10m | Procrabstination | ♥ 2 | The largest crab has legs spanning 4 meters or 13 feet? That's a lot of feet for one leg! Crab Apple doesn't seem like that good of a pun, but when I thought of the alternative (Crapple), that wouldn't be too favourable either. Crabble, maybe? Or even Crabple, to have "b" stand next to its vertically flipped counterpart "p". ...Crab pie? Crab Wars: Got 8 points on my first go, possibly because I tried to avoid all these bullets which as later turned out might have actually been stars or something. On my second run I got 245 points. Would be nice if I could hold down mouse to shoot automatically, instead of click-spamming. There's already another click-spammy game here. Crab Clicker: Managed to get up to the 800-costing claw and 1000-costing auto-crab before proceeding to other types of procrastination. The crabs appearing in the background were nice. Crab Fantasy: Rather than being another click-spammer, I wish it instead had two commands - Attack and Heal - and it would be properly turn-based. I mean, isn't it what lots of jRPGs boils down to - cast recovery abilities when things get tricky, and spam attacks otherwise? One more thing: wish the attack sound effect wasn't so loud, because it prevented me from enjoying the music. I can relate to delaying laundry more than I'd like to admit. Though in my defense, I'm not procrastinating from doing my laundry *right now*. Overall, this was nice little crabby silliness, I admire the dedication for crabs and the amount of content. It was enjoyable, but I'm also sort of glad there wasn't too much of it, so it didn't overstay its welcome. Well done, I expect some high Humor rank for this one. ^^ |
| Apr 21 15:02:10 | 1h 06m | Avoid Him Like the Plague | ♥ 2 | It was pretty fun. I like how the game neither goes on forever nor ends with some forced end that doesn't differ from usual loss, but actually has a proper ending with dialogue and such. Also, it does seem like while the plague was there before the plague doctor died, it might be actually him that made the losses even greater, which is also a nice twist. The gameplay mechanics were nice, I like how the attack has the dual purpose of taking down the human and performing a dash - it was especially useful in the later stages of the game. Level design is also nice; I'd just prefer if the side scrolling advanced faster if I was near the edge, so that I wouldn't need to wait for the next part on another of my playthroughs. Audiovisuals were fine, I just sort of wish the gameplay had these hi-res graphics as seen on the menu, rather than the pixel art. Not that there's something wrong with pixel art, I just would like to see other styles more often for a change. ^^' |
| Apr 21 16:25:49 | 1h 23m | Fire Up! | ♥ 0 | I would much prefer if I could move independently from my shooting - right now I pretty much need to fly towards the enemy (even if only briefly) to shoot them. Good old WSAD and mouse allows for much better maneuvering, which in turn gives more room to make the enemies more challenging. Other than that, the game is pretty nice, I like how there's a game-clearing goal - I managed to rescue 30 ships on Easy, which I consider to be equivalent of completing the game (as opposed to getting shot down, sucked in by the black hole or running out of time). Speaking of different ways to end the game, it would be nice if the game end message differentiated between causes of ending, with rescue ending presumably being the best one. Other than that, maybe being able to detect some nearby distress signal (maybe even jammed by enemy signals) would help too, so that the player doesn't look for allies to rescue completely blindly. ^^ (on a side note, after a while I noticed that enemies stopped coming after me; is it because they started spawning near the black hole, or what?) |