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Celtican

Feedback comments for LD52

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		Celtican's comment
Jan 10 00:17:19		Lavender Fields Forever	♥ 2	Really nice work from an excellent team. There are definitely a lot of small problems with the game, but it's impressive what you guys managed to create over the course of one weekend. I love the graphics, music, and sound effects, they tie really well together, although I felt a distinct lack of exposition the entire time I was playing. How the heck am I building stone foundations with lavender, why do the gnomes despise me and my friends so? Regardless, I really enjoyed the game (this is a seriously great base for a seriously great game). My game time ended with me surrounding the base with walls causing a pathfinding crash, oops! Some thoughts: - I felt no need to explore at all. I wonder how different the game would be if you had to explore and pickup the perks and upgrades instead of spending lavender on them. - Eventually this felt like a "automate everything" game, but I never got to the point where I could place down enough towers to automate the gnomocide. Perhaps a buff to the towers was in order. - Because I couldn't destroy tiles, I ended up restarting the game when I understood how things work so that I could create an optimal base. - At first I was confused when I realized I could shoot as fast as I clicked, but I actually really like the idea! Especially for a small game where you'll be playing it for less than an hour, you might as well let the player have fun! - Unfortunately the final build of the game has the hammer tool build menu open instead of the default tool view, so it took me FOREVER to figure out the controls. The first thing I figured out was "press R to draw gun" and I was thoroughly confused. _I'd really recommend putting the controls on the LD/itch page._ - Can we talk about how the animals are called "friends" instead of "workers" or "animals" or the like? It really tied the game together cuteness-wise. Whoever first called them "friends" deserves a metal or something. Great game! I'm excited to see what you make next time around, too!
Jan 10 22:59:57	22h 42m	Inter-dimensional Asteroid Harvester	♥ 1	I felt like I had to play this game since there were many similarities with my own submission (mining asteroids, space pirates, warping into new sectors, etc.) 😂 A fun arcade game in the spirit of Asteroids. It's really satisfying to destroy the asteroids and watch them blow up into smaller pieces, and then collect the goods within. The game as a whole felt like it had an amount of challenge appropriate to an arcade game, the pirates especially felt fun and interesting when I realized they were aiming for the side of the screen to shoot me and I could aim at the side of the screen to shoot them. I'd say the first thing missing from this game is a sound effect that plays when you take damage. At first I thought asteroids couldn't hurt me. I would have also liked to see more drops from destroying asteroids to better fit the theme—plus it would just be so satisfying. Fun game all around, the screen wrap was fun to play with. I hope to see you in LD 53!
Jan 10 23:24:18	24m 21s	Scarecrow's Dangerous Job	♥ 2	I really wanted to make a game where you play as a scarecrow as well, but I went with something completely different. I'm glad to see another team picking up my slack 😂 I agree with Pengu, decrease the time between waves and change the shoot/plant to left/right click. I'll also add on that note that it may make more sense to plant things where the player is standing instead of where they are pointing, just because that's how other games do it and so that's how I expected this game to do it. Some thoughts: - I love that the plants fight back. I was expecting this to be a game where I had to protect the plants, but no, they're practically protecting me! It felt like a throwback to Plants vs Zombies, in a good way. - Sometimes the plants disappeared. I think there was an expiration mechanic? It wasn't very clear. Maybe the expiration mechanic could just slowly decrease their health over time instead of hiding their lifetime invisibly—I could have made more strategic decisions and generally felt more satisfied. - I noticed the green bar on the plants are how close they are to growing and the blue bar is their health. Switching these would have been more clear: green is already associated with health in this game, the plants should be no different. Better yet: just hide the blue bar and make the green bar associated with both health and growth. - The game was quite hard for me. I made it to Horde 4, reset, and then made it to Horde 5. Developers tend to be better at their games than their players, so usually the way to make games appropriately easier is to make them way easier than you think they should be and playtest it with other people while developing it. (I think it was just the blue wisps being very fast that made it hard, but still) Lovely game, I had fun playing it! I hope to see you in Ludum Dare 53!
Jan 13 01:52:37	50h 28m	Reap what they sow	♥ 1	I like the game, although the only time I won was when I didn't bother to buy any cards and immediately sold everything I drew (luckily I only drew crops/crows). I ended up at 24 coins while second place had only 2 coins. Some balance is in order, me thinks! Some thoughts: - My favorite part of the game was planting asparagus/potatoes and watching the piles get huge. I really like how you randomly rotate cards in piles, and how the coins scatter absolutely everywhere! It makes it feel like a real-life messy tabletop game. - I thought I would win about half the time, but I ended up winning only about 1/6 of the time. Maybe the NPCs should start with less cards in hand. - The coins didn't really feel like they played a major role in the game until the ending tally. Some options to offset that would be: - Get rid of them altogether and have the end score be based off a tally of each player's cards on the field and in the hand - Make some cards cost coins to play. - Other people want the shovel to be more common and for it to only effect your own field, but I think it's fine the way it is. I'd instead like to see recipes be able to use crops from your field. I was never able to use recipes though, so maybe I just don't know how they work. - You could add some more strategic decisions to the game by reworking the shop. Split the shop into three separate piles and keep the top card on each pile revealed, for instance. Too often did I receive recipes for crops I didn't have. - I might be biased about the recipes since I never got to play one, but reworking them a bit could make some interesting results. I propose the recipes be removed from the shop pile and instead there be three recipe zones that are available to everyone: when a player uses a recipe, they get the coins as normal and a new recipe is drawn in that zone. - I really liked the different NPC profiles/playstyles. It made it feel a little more like I was playing with real people! - It felt bad when I had to pass a turn and get rid of extra actions I could have taken. Perhaps drawing a card should be free to offset that (and then also remove the free card draw at the beginning of the turn). I was thinking that gaining a coin could also be an action, but that would probably just make players gain 3 coins every turn and pass. All in all I'm really glad to see this take on the theme, card games are rare in Ludum Dare but they're always soooo good! Nice work!
Jan 13 02:22:39	30m 02s	Combative Crops	♥ 2	Definitely a solid idea, it's reminiscent of the LD 41 Jam winner—Dark Soil—but with a different take. Lots of potential! There just isn't enough stuff yet to make it really satisfying. But you're very close! For some constructive feedback: - I would have played the game longer if there were more colors of slimes and more pitchfork upgrades. That's all this game needed to feel like a good incremental game. - The attack-as-fast-as-you-can-click mechanic felt weird at first, but it felt nice to just be able to spam click to win. Just like an incremental game! - There wasn't anything stopping me from just placing down one slime each day. Perhaps the easiest way to offset that is to have the player pay "rent" each day, with the rent increasing slowly and constantly. - I'd say the healthbar isn't adding much. The enemies are already really easy to kill, and removing it would make me okay with placing down more slimes. - More kinds of upgrades would have been nice to see: area of attack and movement speed come to mind. - I'd increase the size of the farm. It feels really cramped in there, considering I'm supposed to be fighting in it. Alternatively, get rid of the fence and allow me to plant/fight slimes everywhere. Seriously, I think this game has potential to become a really satisfying incremental game, on the same vein as Leaf Blower Simulator. Kudos to you for coming up with it, I hope to see you in LD53!
Jan 24 23:29:25	285h 06m	Bogged	♥ 2	I'm surprised I hadn't seen this game yet since one of you were the first to comment on mine! I love this. Besides delicious cranberries and friendly spiders, this actually hits a lot of things I talk about a lot and want to see more of in games: - Water is 70% of the planet, we should see more water in media. - Games with a little bit of physics tend to be more fun. - Unique mechanics make unique experiences. - Shaders make games more visually appealing. - Non-violence in games leads to greater creativity. Definitely not the prettiest game. But looking past that, I enjoy this a good bit!