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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Honey Pony's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 6 17:14:14 | Gaia | ♥ 1 | The best moment, for me, in this game was when I was very close to losing, and the dialog advanced at that point and so refilled my health all the way. Although I imagine this is a very intentional part of the game, *in the moment* it just feels like dumb luck, which is great. In particular, this is saying that, if nature happens to get us through climate change safely, it may well be dumb luck. I don't know, it's just kind of a... fun..? take. One note on audio, is that it seems pretty quiet for me. Perhaps though I just have my computer audio set too low in the first place. | |
| Apr 7 23:45:52 | 30h 31m | Gladiwaitor | ♥ 1 | I found the combat quite tricky in this game, which I think worked out for the most part. Fighting against the normal enemies was definitely a case of developing a good strategy and then executing it very consistently, which I think was pretty fun. However, I was completely unable to score a single hit on the final boss (on the normal difficulty). It is cool to have an escalation in difficulty there, but I'm not sure I have the patience to play through the rest of the game each time while I try to develop a workable strategy. One way to make this work better could be to have the second enemy, for example, be closer to the final boss in terms of how hard they are to hit--that way I could learn how to hit harder enemies better without having to play through the entire game each time. The combat was nonetheless satisfying to nail for most of the game, and I do appreciate the difficulty slider so that I can get a more complete view of the game (e.g. for rating purposes) without having to grind it out. Good job! |
| Apr 8 00:07:19 | 21m 27s | The Great Horde | ♥ 1 | I really like the fact that this game is turn based. It makes the pressure to get back to the castle feel much more specific, as it will literally take a fixed number of turns to get from where you are to the castle. I did end up trying to stay near the castle, of course, but I feel like you can't stay right at the castle--because then enemies will be able to come right up to the castle as well. Instead you need to fight enemies a few tiles away from the castle. And that's where that pressure to get back comes from, I think. Now I did end up losing because I literally just went after an enemy who would kill me in one hit. I suppose I ended up sort of just mindlessly clicking on enemies, as my strategy. I think having a different sprite for each enemy would go a long way, so that the player doesn't fall into this mindless playing pattern. But overall, it was a fun game with that made good use of the turn based mechanics. |
| Apr 8 00:51:15 | 43m 56s | Salvation From The Alien Planet | ♥ 1 | So I believe I discovered an extremely cheesy strategy here. In particular, if you click the hand icon on the resource drop a bunch of times, you get a bunch of resource boxes--I can't imagine this is entirely intended, as it makes the game very easy very fast. Here is what my game began looking like as I kept getting piles of resource boxes: Screenshot, with lots of turrets That said, I think there was a lot of fun gameplay before I discovered this strategy (and, admittedly, I had a lot of fun building a ridiculous base as well). In particular, I think that having a small number of human characters in your base, that can be juggled between a bunch of different tasks, is a super cool way to build a game like this. It was fun trying to send out the shotgun and a couple pistols each time there was a new attack, and then sending them back in to heal. I think it would be interesting if the game dove into the narrative a bit more. It seems to me that the humans are very much in the wrong here, and it would be cool if the game played with that a bit as the player progresses. (Maybe the game could simply reveal more of the story as the player moves through it? Something like video logs that the player watches slowly through the game?) Overall, a fun, pretty novel take on this kind of defense game. Edit: I left the game on for a while and it did start getting harder after around ~6000 GB. I decided to try quitting at 6969 GB for fun then. π |
| Apr 11 19:14:29 | 90h 23m | THEMARUNGA | ♥ 1 | I really like the framing device this game uses. It is essentially a conversation that THEMARUNGA is having with the player, and it's just a lot of fun, in my opinion, to have this demon entity simply placing games in front of me and challenging me to play. And of course, as usual, the transparent window is a great way to make things more meta and more personal. The animation of THEMARUNGA is also very good, I think. The different faces moving around, with the hand gestures, works really well. Additionally, it's super fun to tie the story into Ludum Dare directly. I think it would have been really cool if the game had asked for your Ludum Dare username and then, like, grabbed the title card of your game and used it as a sprite (or destroyed it, or whatever would have been most appropriate). That would be a great way to extend the meta nature of the game farther. The gameplay itself seems quite finicky to me. A lot of this is of course because the combination of mechanics is simply very hard to control, which seems to fit a game with a demon, but some of it is just finicky controls and physics interactions. The game description says there is a way to "truly win"--if truly winning requires mastering the game mechanics, I am almost certainly not going to truly win. π I did try collecting 0 stars so that I scored 0 total lost souls... perhaps that is a victory of some sort? I think the stars are actually a really clever mechanic because any player is almost guaranteed to grab one on their first playthrough either by accident or intentionally. But of course, because they are a multiplier, a x0 multiplier is also possible, which is just really cool. Overall I really like the narrative aspects of the game, and the character of THEMARUNGA; the one primary change I would prefer is snappier controls for the gameplay. |
| Apr 11 19:32:49 | 18m 20s | The Adventures of: πΊπππππ π±ππ | ♥ 1 | Cool little endless runner (literally). Like others, I like the spritework and the cold effect when you max out the meter. I do have some nitpicks with the gameplay: - The difficulty does ramp up a little slowly, which makes additional attempts somewhat tedious. - I think it should not be possible to collide with the sides of the platforms, as it is somewhat annoying. You could have walls as a separate obstacle though. Something I really like is the ability to start freezing in midair. This enables you to do some regeneration during otherwise dead time, but does require some thought so that you don't plunge yourself into lava. I think it's a really good mechanic. Also, the music goes hard. I'm kind of surprised it's AI generated. π |
| Apr 11 20:14:31 | 41m 42s | A Drag on Chaos | ♥ 1 | I was able to complete 2/3 of the challenges. I think the number indicators are overall a pretty good idea, as they indicate that there is a challenge very nearby to the current state. However, I find that sometimes they seem to obscure the challenge. In particular, the center indicator seems to always count down, which is confusing as from what I can tell the actual condition is having the pendulum near the center for a long enough time. Perhaps the problem is that it disappears quickly enough that it always seems like it counts down to zero? I'm not sure. Like others, I had significant trouble with the mouse. It felt kind of laggy, and I honestly wasn't sure if the game was actually experiencing lag or if that was just the intended physics. So I definitely think snappier controls would be better with the mouse. The dynamic music is extremely fun. It really does make me want to keep playing just to keep the music going, which is great. This gameplay is like, the definition of intrinsic motivation, and I think it really works to hook the player. The lack of a specific loss condition is also probably important for that. In any case, it is really good. |
| Apr 11 20:32:45 | 18m 14s | Riposte | ♥ 2 | Wow, this game is really cool. I love the graphics, and the sound design on the ball is just perfect. The core mechanic works really well, as it's a very sensible twist on tennis, and the difficulty of actually hitting the ball is pretty substantial so it is fun to keep retrying. I only managed to score 3,337 so far. I usually lose at around the 1500 mark, as the speed of the volleys starts increasing. I think the increasing volley speed is a good mechanic, because, along with hitting the ball at an enemy, it means the rhythm is constantly changing--so you can't just get into a rhythm, you have to constantly be on your toes. I was confused because for a while my high score was supposedly ~2000 even though I had never gotten above ~1500. That's when I realized that pressing buttons while on the title screen increases your score. That seems unintended, lol. I did try playing with a controller and it is really fun. The one complaint I have, both with the gamepad controls and the regular controls, is restarting--you have to push the button twice, which I think is kind of annoying. Also, with the controller, I think it would be fun to be able to restart with the shoulder buttons, as then I would only need to use those two buttons to play (which seems like a very fun control scheme). Overall though this is a really nice game (best one I've played so far!), just fantastic execution on a simple and extremely good concept. |
| Apr 11 21:28:50 | 56m 05s | You will die anyway | ♥ 1 | I think the physics based puzzles are a really interesting component of this game. On the one hand, they are often frustrating--I can't figure out how to get a box back across the conveyer on the second level, and it usually gets stuck so I have to reset it. But--one of my favorite puzzles is the very first one, where you have to realize that you can push the box by sneaking below and around it. This depends specifically on the fact that your hitbox is skinnier than it is tall, and so would not be possible in an entirely grid-based game. I also kind of like how it's possible to push boxes out of corners. It is somewhat janky, maybe, but I had a generally good time squeezing them to where I could use them. So I think the physics mechanics can really shine with the right level design. In particular, I think the lava needs some major reworking, as it is very easy to hit, and the screen shake effect on it kind of makes me nauseous. Also, a boring note, but I think you might want to change the filter modes on your sprites so that they are crisp pixel art rather than blurred. In any case, I'm glad there was that first puzzle, as it really was a cool moment of discovery, and I think was a very good use of the physics engine. |
| Apr 12 00:00:08 | 2h 31m | MoonDoggle | ♥ 2 | I think it's cool how the gameplay in this evolves over time. At the beginning, I was very carefully aiming at each individual bug, and shooting a single bullet, due to the long cooldown. Then, as the bugs started coming faster and my cooldown decreased, it made more sense to aim less carefully and simply try to hit everything in sight. I agree with everyone else that there should be a way to keep firing without repeatedly clicking. I actually tried playing using a macro to click the mouse, and interestingly, I only got to 3 minutes in (I had gotten ~1:50 without the macro). I think the game definitely manages to create an inevitable sense of being overwhelmed. It is especially cool how the slow bugs become extremely important as the end of the game approaches. At first they are just a nice bonus, but at the end of the game, the only real hope is to hit a slow bug, otherwise it becomes increasingly impossible to kill all the bugs due to the huge range of directions you have to aim. So, overall, this is a nice little game that builds a substantial gameplay curve out of a very small number of mechanics. |
| Apr 12 00:40:45 | 40m 37s | Morituri | ♥ 1 | Nice take on the theme, there are a lot of stories that could be told along these lines and I think you all did a pretty good job making a sincere project. I do have some points I want to make on the dialog system, as it is a significant component of the game: - In almost every game, the idiom is: press the dialog button to display all of the current message, and then press it again to advance to the next message. But in this game, pressing the dialog button will just advance to the next message without finishing the current message. This meant that I accidentally skipped a message on day 11, and at that point I just restarted the game so that I could get back to where I was. - The text is line-wrapped as it is written out, which means that it tends to flash out the side of the box temporarily as the message is written. If the text is pre-formatted to fit in the box from the get-go, it will look better. (This is somewhat tricky to do completely correctly, but if you have time to polish a text box, it could be worth getting this working right). - There was one spot where the dialog did not fit vertically in the box. There was also one inconsistency I noticed in the story, I believe on Day 45, where the doctor told me I had exactly one patient for the day, but then when I was talking to the patient I said I have to go help my other patients. Now these things didn't really affect the experience for me that much, they're just the things I think are most valuable to point out as possible areas of improvement. These nitpicks do not really affect the story that much overall. As far as the story itself is concerned I really like how it focuses on a small set of characters, and how the third patient comes back for the end of the story. The idea of ending up in the exact same spot after being literally a month away from death is just pretty compelling, I think, and it is especially compelling in this format. The relationships that are developed between the player character and the patients are compelling as well; I think you did a good job having enough reoccurring narrative elements that it feels like a connection is being built, while also having developments in the plot over time. |
| Apr 12 00:57:00 | 16m 15s | Salary Zombies | ♥ 1 | Really cool game. It seems a bit like a board game, and I think leaning into that could be a fun direction to take it. In particular, if the moves were represented as cards, I think that would just be a more fun aesthetic direction than a plain list of bullet points. But in general this game is very good. It's easy to pick up, fun to play, and thematically works pretty well. I think the only real critique that can be made is that it could be nice to have some features for mitigating the RNG a little bit, as others have suggested. I don't know if such mitigation is strictly needed, but it could make the game more fun. One idea I can contribute there is that perhaps moves could be generated using a "grab bag" approach like modern Tetris games--essentially, modern Tetris games have RNG that will never generate a long sequence of S and Z moves, and a similar concept could apply here, where the RNG is designed so that there is a nice balance of actions available at all times. My first score was 6927, my best so far is 7011. One thing I like in particular as I play a couple more rounds is how paying attention to when the zombies are attacking gives you a lot of information and a lot more options. I didn't really realize exactly how the zombie attacks work when I first played, but their attack freezes them in place for a turn which can be exploited in some interesting ways. |
| Apr 12 03:35:50 | 2h 38m | Jelly Defense | ♥ 3 | I thought the gameplay curve here was extremely good and I disagree with 100th_Coin that allowing the towers to be placed on the center is a bad thing. On the contrary, I think this game incentives moving the towers all over the place very well--it is absolutely necessary in the early rounds to harvest as many gems as possible, and so the early rounds are all about defending as many gem spots on the map as possible. Then, in the mid game, it is still technically possible to harvest gems but the enemies are pressing you much harder. Here, you have to essentially try to harvest some gems at the beginning of the round, and then retreat so that all your towers cover the queen. And then, in the late game, there is no real hope of harvesting more gems, so you get to see how well your previous efforts paid off. This is the point in the game where the "inevitable" part starts to kick in, and it is just a matter of time until you lose. I think this is an especially cool narrative arc because at this point in the game, you will probably buy your last upgrade ever. And that's just kind of cool. The fact that you'll probably never afford another upgrade again is not part of the narrative arc of any usual tower defense game, but it is here. I made it to round 15, and I might have made it slightly farther if I hadn't lost a bunch of health in one of the early rounds. Either way, it was a super fun arc, and I think every part of the gameplay works really well. So I think the fact that the towers can all be placed overlapping, but that that strategy is a terrible strategy for a huge part of the game, actually works really well. There are no explicit constraints on what the player can do, only constraints in terms of what kinds of strategies will lose--and the strategies needed to win are constantly changing. It is especially cool how the towers sort of change roles--at the beginning, the laser tower seems like it is slower at killing enemies, but by the end of the game, it is all-important. In fact, I have to wonder if I would have gotten farther had I only upgraded the laser tower and the ice tower. Overall though, this is a great entry. Besides the gameplay which I have documented my appreciation of above, the graphics and audio are polished and straightforwardly good. In total this is hands down the best entry I've played so far. Edit: reading through some of these comments, it seems some other players didn't figure out that you need to protect the gem-things in order to get more gems... I suppose more explicit explanation of the mechanics would probably be an improvement. However, I think my playthrough is evidence that, if the player does know what all the mechanics are, the gameplay loop is very compelling. |
| Apr 12 15:44:09 | 12h 08m | Princess: Unwed | ♥ 2 | It took me a while to figure out exactly how the letter writing mechanic worked. At first, I thought I should track the suitor through all the regions he went to, and then go back and write to the other people in each region--but when I went back to write to the others, they said they hadn't seen him. That's when I realized that you have to send all the messages you want from a particular region at once--I think that clarifying the way this mechanic works would be the best way to make the game easier to get into. Once I realized that I should basically just be writing a letter to every person every time, the game started making a lot more sense, and I started writing down notes about each region. This was fun, as I was building up some documentation about every region, and so there was sort of an implicit goal of just finding all the information about each region. I did note that this started to become less interesting once I already had most of the information on a region--at this point I was still writing down every clue, but then I just had to find which of my existing clues that already matched. This started to become more tedious. In particular, I kept tabbing out of the game to a notepad and tabbing back in, and at some point this starts getting more annoying. I think one way to make this work better could be to just have the map be the only source of info. Then, as we get clues throughout the game, we could, say, draw the crest for each country on the map, and write down which alliances it had. That way we could figure out which country was next just by looking at the map, instead of having to write down multiple pieces of information that are difficult to visually scan quickly, and without having to keep context switching to notes written outside of the game. I do have one specific complaint about the gameplay, which is that, once you hit zero weeks, if you send another letter, you just lose. I think there should definitely be a UI warning for this, saying "if you send this letter you will be lose and be married" or something, because I wasn't sure what would happen, meaning I lost my first game and had to redo the entire first suitor. Overall, though, I do think the information collection process in this game is pretty fun at its core. It just needs to be streamlined a bit to really shine. Good job! |
| Apr 12 19:45:18 | 4h 01m | Over Horde | ♥ 1 | This was a nice little game. The combat mechanics are simple but satisfying, and it is especially satisfying to upgrade the firing speed all three levels; each level gives a substantive improvement. Interestingly, it seems like I do worse when I try to use the build mechanics than when I simply build nothing and kill enemies as they spawn. The Cover building does seem potentially powerful when used correctly, but when I build them it seems I obstruct my own movement significantly enough that I do worse overall. I do think the building UI makes the building mechanics slightly worse, as you have to be somewhat precise with where you place them, and there's no indication that you're currently trying to build somewhere invalid. Moreover, aiming the direction of the building is strangely awkward--I think it's because, if I have the building facing in the correct direction but not in the exact spot I want it, then repositioning will change the angle. Perhaps it would be better if buildings could be positioned with the mouse, given that the mouse would solve most of the precision problems. However, I'm not sure how the angle would be computed in that case. In any case, I think better placement UI could be a major improvement to the building mechanics. The game was still very fun to play through and unlock all the upgrades in even though I couldn't master the building mechanics. It was neat to try different strategies and to figure out that I'm best at just plain combat. So overall, very nice job. |
| Apr 12 20:27:53 | 42m 35s | Mr. Fuse | ♥ 1 | I think there is something quite fun in these bomb mechanics, and I want to try to explain... So my favorite moment when playing happened when I was on the yellow platform straight above the starting area. Here, I figured out that I can let the bomb bounce to the left wall, and then jump up under it (as long as it is currently bouncing high enough). This feels like a very natural technique built on the bomb physics, and it works well and feels good. I think what would make me really enjoy this game is if the bomb physics were tweaked so that this kind of feeling is more consistent throughout the game. Most of the time, the bomb is just bouncing up and down in a sort of tiny hop that doesn't really make sense to try to control. So, the physics most of the time are just about running into the bomb and hoping it helps some how. But those moments where the physics have some controllable nature to them (even though they are still chaotic) are the best, I think. Because it is fun to try to manipulate chaotic physics when they react in an intuitive way with the player. I mean, that's the core mechanic of Getting Over It--physics that are very strange but nonetheless eminently controllable and learnable. So I think this game has a lot going for it as a difficult platformer. I also think that the graphics and audio come together pretty well here; I especially like the ridiculous grin on the main character's face. The only changes I would make is to hone in on the fun part of the difficulty more precisely. |
| Apr 12 22:54:17 | 2h 26m | Box Blocks | ♥ 1 | The double-use of boxes as both the item that you need to advance as well as the item you need to protect yourself is great; it is a very simple mechanic and yet is able to drive the entire game forward pretty well. Tradeoffs and decision are the direct gameplay of the game. It's very fun. It did take me a while to realize that the refresh button was actually faster than dragging boxes out. But, it's a pretty good mechanic as it means that every single box you drag out has an opportunity cost. I imagine in the right circumstances it would even be a better choice to sacrifice a star with very quickly advancing lava... So overall, a very nice small game. |
| Apr 12 23:10:38 | 16m 21s | Exclusion Zone | ♥ 1 | I absolutely love the music here. Very appropriate for the gameplay. I think my biggest gripe is with various UI issues. It's not clear when you have actually successfully chosen a house to move, so I ended up repeatedly wasting a wall by accident and then just restarting the game. Similarly, if you actually click to close the help menu, it'll place down a wall, which meant that multiple times I restarted, clicked, and then had to restart again and remember to press a key instead of clicking. But these of course are basically nitpicks. The rest of the game is pretty solid, although I agree with others that it could possibly be more interesting if the radiation spread was contained within the walls. That could enable some different kinds of puzzle designs, although I imagine the rest of the mechanics would have to be rebalanced. Overall though I had a pretty good time playing a couple times and figuring out how to win. There's just enough mechanics that you kind of have to learn all of them through a couple attempts, but there's not so many that it's impossible to learn. Good job! |
| Apr 12 23:35:53 | 25m 15s | Baggy & Maggy | ♥ 2 | Very nice little platformer here, very polished in terms of graphics and sound--I especially love the various graphical touches like the vines and the splashing tea, and the music layers that get added as you progress through the game. I do have two thoughts about the platforming itself: - There doesn't seem to be a variable-height jump. This becomes annoying when you have to climb up the sets of platforms on the side of a wall, e.g. when getting the lighter. In particular, the platforms are placed so that your jump overshoots them by quite a bit, making climbing up these areas kind of tedious because you are in the air much longer than you need to be. - The swinging physics are, in my opinion, not as fun as they could be. In particular, clicking a swinging pivot kind of just teleports you to be swinging there, without much in the way of maintaining your momentum. I think that swinging physics are a lot more fun when they incorporate your existing momentum and the character flows naturally in and out of the swinging state. I can't think of any game examples off the top of my head, but I hope you can see what I mean. All that said, this was a pretty fun game to play through, and I also went back and got the Speedrunner achievement, which was fun. It was especially cool that jumping into Maggy would skip the cutscenes for that. That was a very nice touch. I also think that the large variety of mechanics was cool. In particular, it was neat how the teabag string was used both for swinging and for grabbing the candle, and it was cool how there were multiple kinds of item interactions (picking them up, pushing them, and grabbing them with the string). So overall, a very good entry, definitely the best platformer I've played so far this Ludum Dare. π |
| Apr 13 00:03:25 | 27m 32s | Tartarus Panic | ♥ 1 | It's very cool how there are 8 different minigames here, and it's cool to see a game inspired by existing mythology. I do think I would probably be able to manage the ocean task and the filling jug task indefinitely, or at the very least for a long time. However, it is definitely fun to try to keep all or almost all of the tasks going as long as possible. I do think the contrast between the simple minigames and the actual narrative content here is quite fun. This kind of simple minigame isn't usually something you would see with a very dark narrative, and so it's a combination that I find novel. |
| Apr 13 01:03:18 | 59m 53s | Timeflight Alpha | ♥ 1 | Solidly fun entry. First run I scored 456400 points; my highscore is 894700. Shooting things is a lot of fun, and the upgrades are a lot of fun as well. I think the arcadey spaceship mechanics work pretty well here. One interesting thing, my first run, is that I actually totally missed that I had got the objective when I lost. That is--I had apparently collected it, but somehow I completely did not realize until right before I ran out of time. I don't think this is a serious problem with the UI indicator at the bottom, as it's probably more my mistake than anything, but it is I think somewhat interesting that I somehow was completely blind to it for a minute there. Another interesting thing is that it seems like finding the GET IT is possibly quite random. My first run I got through level 4 and had collected the GET IT on level 4, but on my high score run I had a very hard time finding it on level 3 and could not find it on level 4 at all. (Note: I had read your above comment about how the GET IT spawns at this point). I really like how the hazards in this game are implemented as bouncing the player ship around. This works really well, I think, as there really doesn't need to be anything but the time pressure driving the difficulty. I also think this helps make the single-stick controls work better, as it is much harder to use single-stick controls when you also have to dodge enemies and use more precise movement. So overall, very nice entry. |
| Apr 13 04:02:44 | 2h 59m | OozGlorp in the Dungeon of Zlorx | ♥ 1 | I quite enjoy this game overall, including the aesthetic. I think the neon colors are pretty fun, and are actually probably the reason I clicked on the game in the first place π So far I have managed to get as far as the realllly long set of pink spikes past the first cyan spikes. I haven't managed to make that jump yet. I think my favorite part of the platforming so far actually is the cyan spikes. The precision is pretty fun in my opinion, and there's a pretty good variety in the kinds of jumps you have to do in that section. My least favorite part of the game is the green walls / acid spitters. There are several reasons. First, of course, is that their collision does not seem to correspond with their visual as everyone has discussed. Second, the window of time where they are safe seems extremely small--this may be slightly untrue, but the window is small enough that the visual problem becomes pretty hard to deal with. Third and finally--they are green, which is a color that is otherwise used to represent good things or neutral things (including wall decorations that are *also* spitting green particles!). The first time I encountered the acid spitter on the small platforms after the cyan spikes, I literally did not parse it as a hazard when I saw it, and so I died pointlessly, which was rather frustrating. I'm not quite sure the best way to deal with that, as I admit I kind of like the green color aesthetically. Perhaps fixing the collision problem would be enough to make the unreadability less of a problem. And honestly, that one I died to after the cyan spikes could probably just be removed from the level entirely, as the camera angle also makes it hard to see it. I think the fact that getting a new slime jar does not give you extra time for the current run is a very interesting mechanic. It is in some ways annoying, as it means you have to replay the same part of the game over no matter what. But on the other hand--it is kind of compelling, as it forces you to replay the same part of the game over no matter what. π Seriously though--I'm kind of torn. I think that having to redo the same thing a couple times is kind of an interesting twist and even kind of fun. In any case, this was a pretty fun platformer overall; the aesthetic is quite good and the platforming physics and level design were able to present a pretty substantial variety of challenges. And I do enjoy the difficulty overall as well, even though I haven't been able to finish it yet. |
| Apr 18 02:59:19 | 118h 56m | Shootzilla | ♥ 1 | The player physics in this are really nice. As soon as I started moving around I was having a good time. I do think that the dark environment that sometimes shows up sort of contrasts with this... the mood I was expecting was a sort of fun arcadey shooter, but the lighting is sometimes very dark and makes it hard to see. I personally would probably just prefer constantly bright lighting. However, I can see how the darker lighting gels with the music and perhaps the narrative a bit, so it is I think a fine choice as well. A small detail that I think is surprisingly good is just how fast the game loads. It really is frictionless to play in a way that I feel like matters. I honestly haven't seen anything else like it this Ludum Dare--which makes sense, I personally I almost always use Godot these days--but it does make me think, about just how much of an impact even the loading screen can have on leaving a positive impression. Looking into it, it looks like this is written with your own C++ library? Very cool. So overall this is a very technically slick, fun little shooter. |
| Apr 18 03:18:03 | 18m 44s | Probee | ♥ 1 | I think this game makes very good use of the theme. The idea of sending a drone that will crash into a planet (or, at least, be destroyed by weather conditions on that planet) but will be able to send some useful information seems to make a lot of sense to me, and is one of the more creative uses of the theme I've seen. I also like how science is measured with a single number. That is simply fun. On that note, my best Science was 159 Science. The way I scored my highest scores was by using one particular strategy: flying left (although I imagine right would work as well), and then essentially just hovering. My high score came because I was lucky enough to hit a random fuel bubble and so I was able to hover for much longer. I may have been able to score even higher had I held left less... it seems like the directional movement uses a lot of fuel, and I imagine I didn't really need to move left as much as I did, I probably could have kept going with a lower momentum. Either way, it's a fun game to play around in and look for different strategies, especially because there are a couple different things to try. The geysers seem to provide an opportunity, and staying in air seems to provide an opportunity (especially because you can fly up to space...) so I think the core gameplay loop provides a nice sort of sandbox puzzle, which is honestly kind of novel. So overall, I really like how creative this game is and how it is open-ended yet still has strategies that can be developed and refined. Edit: Okay, so I went back and played another round after writing this comment. And I found out my strategy is totally broken. So, this time, I didn't accelerate left as much as I did before. As such, I didn't waste fuel accelerating left... but more importantly, I just kept colliding with bubbles, over, and over, and over again. I was sure I was going to lose at some point, but I just kept hitting bubbles. I eventually resigned myself to just giving up once I hit 1000 science, as my fingers were getting tired from mashing to hover. And yup. I reached 1000 science. And then I spent the rest of my fuel accelerating up and left. I still had enough fuel that I hit the ceiling at the top of the space area π and then I of course fell down and lost. I ended up with 1022 science total. The lowest my fuel ever got to was like 8... but near the end there I was hovering between 25 and 30 fuel most of the time. So that's crazy. This game really has a lot of depth as far as the strategy goes... my initial attempts I thought I would never get above ~40, then users here got 100... and now I've found a strategy that blows that out of the water. Although... it is too much button mashing for me at this point. π 1022 Score Screenshot |
| Apr 21 13:58:11 | 82h 40m | Distant Colony | ♥ 1 | Cool little game! I didn't quite realize the first time I played that wall building was so important to the game. That mechanic is very cool though, using walls to redirect the enemies more efficiently than they can be killed by the towers. I did unfortunately run into the same lag problem as everyone else. I think the building mechanics here though are quite nice, and that's for one reason--the way that the base and the mines are built directly on top of the crystal clusters in 3D is extremely fun. I honestly think I could have a blast just playing an idle game or something along those lines with the same graphical style. I do think it is difficult to tell exactly what the towers are doing. I can see some small particles they are shooting that I assume is their attack, perhaps those could be drawn a bit bigger. I also couldn't figure out what exactly the large crystal in the middle represents. Presumably if I deplete the entire bar I will have mined all the ore on the planet? I'm not sure. Overall though this is a nice little tower defense game with some extremely fun graphical touches. |
| Apr 21 19:49:31 | 5h 51m | Dilley and the Sacred Stones | ♥ 1 | This was absolutely hilarious. I was laughing the whole way through. Really good job implementing a story with lots of cutscenes, and it was super fun as a parody of Infinity War. Something I like about the gameplay itself is the specific use of the theme. At the beginning of the compo I had thought about trying to make a game where the "inevitable" part is something positive, such as winning, and I think this is the only game I've seen so far that really went for that. The rhythm part of the gameplay, I think, can be fun--there were places where I would shoot three bullets in a row all on beat during a specific part of the music. However, it seemed to me like usually lining up the shot with the correct square made it impossible to actually hit the button on beat correctly. I think perhaps it would work better to have no movement keys at all, and just have maybe like 4 different quadrants for the spaceship--then each quadrant would be assigned a single button, and the button would do move and shoot. Then it would just be a pure rhythm game, which, while somewhat less novel, would probably make the gameplay flow smoother. That said, this was definitely one of the most fun entries I've played. It's just a good time all the way through. Very good job there! |
| Apr 21 20:55:40 | 1h 06m | International Shipping Simulator | ♥ 1 | I think the core gameplay loop is fun here. It is just kind of fun to connect the different nodes together and to try to build as many paths around as possible. I have not been able to win yet, however. I have tried a couple strategies, but so far no luck. I suppose part of the problem is I'm not entirely sure what exactly causes congestion and what can relieve it. It seems like having more paths should be able to reduce congestion but when I made a graph with many paths to the same places it seemed like maybe some of them were unused. I suppose I should pay closer attention. The sounds in this game are quite fun, specifically the various messages that the player hears. So overall, a game with very cool mechanics, but quite difficult to win. |
