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Feedback comments for LD51
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Mateu's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 3 21:34:39 | Terminal Velocity | ♥ 1 | As always a super solid entry! The graphics look really good, the audio does a great job at making the gameplay cohesive and understandable, and you have a pretty good gameplay loop. There are a few games that this reminds me of, I just can't think of the name of them. I love the use of online leaderboards. They really add a lot in terms of replayability. My biggest gripe with the game is the difficulty scaling. It's super easy for a few minutes and then it suddenly gets noticeably more difficult with the addition of more obstacles. Sometimes it's too hard to see what's coming up which is also frustrating, as it makes it feel like I wasn't in control of when I got slowed down. Once you do get to the more difficult part, it doesn't get any more difficult, so then it just becomes a test to see if your reaction time is fast enough. I definitely like the take on the theme, even if it is a bit loose, and I can tell there was a lot of effort put into this. Great job! | |
| Oct 3 21:50:18 | 15m 39s | 10 Seconds, 9 Lives | ♥ 5 | This was pretty nice. I like the PICO-8 style! The theme was pretty simple, but it works well. I loved when the cat would sleep, that was a pretty funny addition. Unfortunately I wasn't a huge fan of the gameplay. The controls were a bit too floaty for my style, and the difficulty scaling after a certain point made it impossible to get any further. As far as a concept for an arcade game goes, this one is really cool and with some polish (and heavily leaning into the )this could actually be a decently fun turn-off-your-brain game. |
| Oct 4 01:52:45 | 4h 02m | Pancake Simulator | ♥ 1 | This was super creative! It was such a small game, but you delivered so well! I will say though, that it was quite difficult. I believe the best I did was around 80 on each pancake. Everything works really well together. The art, sounds, and gameplay are very cohesive. There's not much bad to say about this except for the fact that I do not know how the theme is incorporated at all. That's kinda a minor gripe though. Great job! |
| Oct 4 02:00:02 | 7m 17s | Gravity Run | ♥ 4 | This was a super simple take on the theme, but it works really well. I think with a bunch of polish this could actually be a really awesome game! I would have loved to see different types of environment changes that force me to change up my playstyle, but I think two is a good starting point. Wasn't expecting too much based on the visuals, but I guess you can't judge a book by its cover. |
| Oct 4 02:11:19 | 11m 17s | Escape the Island | ♥ 0 | This was a nice entry. It has quite a bit going for it. The entire concept of the world getting more destroyed as you go collect items to fix your helicopter was cool. I really liked when you would have to build while running, there was definitely some fun to be had there. My biggest concern though was the graphics. To me they didn't feel very cohesive, and it felt like lots of different models and animations were put in the game from a variety of different sources. Overall though, this was pretty decent. |
| Oct 4 04:22:03 | 2h 10m | Hourglass | ♥ 1 | This was a cool concept and I think with a bit of work it could be a super awesome game. The concept of going forward in time was pretty neat, and I think if you leaned into that more, you would be getting somewhere. Unfortunately right now it was very hard to tell what was going to happen after the 10 seconds were up, which left me wishing for some indicators or something like that. The audio and visuals were decent and the controls were relatively good. Good job on this entry :) |
| Oct 4 04:44:02 | 21m 59s | Game Name | ♥ 5 | Yooooo this was so amazing!!! This concept was so good I can't even describe it. I got like a 4.75 overall score at the end =D There's not much criticism I can give. Usually I have lots to say, but the fact that I'm not really speaks a lot. The only problem I had was that by the end of the game some of the minigames were getting a bit stale, but really that's not a huge problem. Everything was fantastic, wonderful job! Also, was that a rickroll you snuck in there?? |
| Oct 5 01:20:01 | 20h 35m | Esgobert's Escapade | ♥ 3 | This has some good stuff going for it. Visually, it looked very nice. The environment change was also really pleasing to look at. Unfortunately I think the gameplay left a bit to be desired. The whole concept of running around fighting enemies and changing your environment is super awesome, but there was no goal except to survive as long as possible, which usually just meant running around for a while while shooting back at enemies. Also, some audio would have been nice but of course it's a game jam game so that can be excused. Overall very nice job. I very much enjoyed the graphics and I think you have a really cool concept going for you! |
| Oct 5 17:48:06 | 16h 28m | Beat Survivor | ♥ 2 | Wow this was sooo good! Very glad I played this :) There were so many good things about this. The gameplay was really smooth, the visuals (even though simple) worked pretty well to convey the point of the gameplay, and the audio was pretty decent. There are a few minor gripes that I'll talk about, but don't take this too harshly because the game was super fun to play in general. I would have liked to see the theme being incorporated more. Every 10 seconds enemies spawned, which I didn't think was very creative. The only time I ever messed up on the timing of the shooting was after the upgrades menu disappeared. This was a little bit annoying, because even though you gave a timer, it still felt unfair when I would lose my combo. I would have liked to hear some other sound effects, such as damage or something similar. It was really hard to tell when I was taking damage. Last thing, but I would have rather had less upgrades that felt more impactful. It was very easy to get to the next upgrade which I felt hindered the flow of gameplay. If you made the upgrades more powerful, but less of them I think this would not have been an issue. Overall wonderful game. It was super fun to play and I really enjoyed my time with it! |
| Oct 7 01:50:17 | 32h 02m | The Forgotten Crawler | ♥ 1 | Wow this is so good! There is so much crammed into this little game, and it's honestly so impressive. I only did one ending, (good 2/4) but the fact that you managed to cram four into this is so awesome. The world really did feel like it was changing around you which added a lot to the intensity. The graphics are very nice. Everything felt super cohesive and looked good. I only have 3 minor gripes. 1. Backtracking was super confusing. Lots of the rooms looked pretty similar, especially when the world was falling apart. Having a distinguishing feature per room would have been nice (which, yeah you did do. Trees, lava, water, sewer, etc.) It still felt confusing, but maybe it was just me. 2. The lack of audio was kinda disappointing, but considering you did this by yourself and intended it to be a compo, it's completely forgivable. You managed to put a ton of stuff into this, so I wouldn't worry too much about something like that. 3. The HUD was way too big. It obscured at least 1/3 of the screen, which I don't really think is acceptable. Luckily it didn't take away from the experience, but if I was playing the web version, it might have been pretty bad. Those were only very minor gripes, and when I have to get nitpicky you know you did a wonderful job. Also, I loved the humor of the NPC's. They were so self aware, had references to other games, and in general were just super funny. Great game. This is super impressive! |
| Oct 10 05:10:41 | 75h 20m | Lost Depths | ♥ 3 | I have lots to say about this game. Some of it's good, some of it is not so good. I want to preface this by saying I do not want you to think that I disliked your game, or that it was somehow bad. On the contrary, this is one of the most ambitious, awesome projects I have seen, but with a few major problems I think get in the way of making it something amazing. I'll first start with the good. Your atmosphere in this game is unrivaled. I've played a lot of game jam games, and I don't think I've found any that are quite like this. Somehow you manage to capture a haunting, lonely, terrifying feeling from such a simple concept. The fear of the ocean/exploration/unknown is something that is so hauntingly scary and you do a wonderful job of capturing that here. Everything is so immersive, whether that be through the display indicators, the radar, the submarine light, or being inside the submarine. The scale of your game is absolutely massive. The map feels endless, and the cities are so cool. I love how the underwater city just blends into the environment and works so well to make the game feel natural. The radar really compliments the game as well. It's a really cool concept to only be able to know what's around you every 10 seconds. It's quite unnerving to think you know where you're going, but only for sure once the radar light turns on. As far as some of the bad things go, direction and control are major flaws I think this game suffers from. I'll talk about each individually. Having complicated controls is not a bad thing in video games. In fact, in can be quite rewarding to master a complex control scheme. Unfortunately, in this case complex is not good. Most things felt clunky, if not outright bad to control. Specifically, accelerating and decelerating, resetting, and turning left and right. When accelerating, you would have to press space to go in the direction you were facing. When decelerating, rather than stopping, there would be a force applied in the opposite direction of your accelerating (I think?). This made me quit using the deceleration feature and only reset to stop. When I was turning left or right, I felt like the roll should not have changed, and yet it did. I would have to compensate by turning while rolling, which was very uncomfortable. When I was first playing, I assumed you needed to navigate through the underwater cities, which led me to crash into many things because I thought I could fit. Controls being easy to pick up in a game jam game is essential. If a player does not feel like they can control the game, they are going to quit rather quickly. As far as direction goes, I am not referring to the actual direction of travel, but rather the player's sense of "what am I supposed to do?". I felt that there was very little in the game to tell you what to do except for "go find treasure". On my first attempt at playing, I was trying to get acclimated to the controls which pretty much resulted in my flying around into nothingness. I reset the game and on my second attempt all I did was traverse the closest structures to you. I had no clue what I was supposed to be looking for other than "treasure". On my third attempt, I finally thought to myself, "the radar feature is pretty prominent, maybe I should actually attempt to use it", which led to me discovering a cave and finding the treasure. I ended up getting 3/10 treasures on that attempt, after about half an hour of playing. (I never found the monster). With all that being said, do not be discouraged at all by what I have to say. The fact is, I'm writing so much about this because I see a lot of potential in this. The mood, audio, and visuals are phenomenal but the game design and fun are very much lacking. When it comes to game jams, the most important thing is to have a quick hook and easy to understand gameplay. I'm definitely not one to talk, and struggle from this a lot myself as well, but I feel like it's such an important thing that often gets overlooked. (Congrats on being my longest comment ever, I maxed the character limit) |
| Oct 10 16:59:53 | 11h 49m | The Hardly Fair | ♥ 2 | I think you did some things really well here. The atmosphere/concept is really cool. The idea of being in a circus trying to go quickly to the next act is super fun and I really enjoyed that part. The sound effects are really good, and the creepy voice is pretty cool as well. I think where this game struggles a little bit is in the controls/replayability. I made it to a score of like 65 before I got bored and just stopped playing. After a certain point, there is just no reason to continue playing because you've done everything. Granted, I had a lot of fun playing it at the beginning, so I think that makes up for it. What I'm saying is having some sort of win condition would be nice, and then anybody who wants to shoot for a highscore could do that. Overall very nice job! |
| Oct 18 17:15:41 | 192h 15m | Justin Time: Man of the Hour | ♥ 2 | Omg yes this was soooo good! I was a little bit hesitant at first, because I didn't really think I was a card/turn based type of person, but this is executed really well in a fast paced manner, and I really think it just goes above and beyond what is required from a card game. Everything flows smoothly, doesn't feel confusing to play, and just overall is really fun. Using time as a resource really requires you to make quick decisions have fast reactions. If I had to give you a critique, I would say that the gameplay gets a bit stale a bit too quickly (or maybe I just played for too long). After the first few rounds I understood how the game worked, and from there I had no challenges defeating the enemies. After a certain point I got to the 76 round level and just decided to quit, because quite frankly that is way too much time to play the game I felt I already mastered. Honestly though, this is probably a good problem to have, because it means that you have a good foundation for your game, and it just needs to be expanded upon. Another thing is that some audio and visual feedback would have been nice. The time indicator in the center was super small so it was sometimes difficult to see the impact my cards were having on the timer. Some SFX like error sounds when you try to do something you can't or success sounds would have been nice. These problems are pretty minor overall though, and you have a really fantastic game here! Congrats! |