Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Feedback comment stats → Hoichael
Feedback comments for LD52
Hoichael's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Hoichael's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 13 23:42:08 | Sacrifice to the Harvest God | ♥ 1 | Great game for a first time participant! Sito already gave great feedback on how the game communicates its systems, I don't have anything to add in that regard. But, to provide additional feedback, I feel like the game would work better as a single screen game with a static camera. By increasing the camera size/downscaling the sprites/increasing the pixels per unit ratio (and maybe slightly changing the layout of the environment) you could easily fit all the important information in a single viewport. Having all visual information and all possible interactions available at all times would probably work better for the game. Congrats on your first LD! | |
| Jan 14 00:45:33 | 1h 03m | Fall's Tome | ♥ 2 | Very impressive. Aesthetically, this game is absolutely top notch and in addition to that it's also a beautiful showcase of minimalist game design. The most important aspect of designing a jam game obviously is thinking economically, and having the gameplay systems build directly on the well realized visuals is a very elegant approach to that. Great level design, too. Nice prop composition that further enables the photography mechanic in addition to the rendering, lush foliage, natural/tame elevation, fairly big map and despite all that super easy to navigate/keep track of where you are and what lies where - great use of landmarks and a well designed initial spawn point. On a smaller note, I appreciate that there's a jump - many walking sims feel rather rigid and are littered with invisible walls - ironically I feel like that walking sims in particular really profit from a high degree of freedom in traversal. The jumping also works well in tandem with the accurate collisions of environment props - really adds to the immersion. Now, if I was to be OVERLY critical, those would be my nitpicks: Flipping through the book is very slow. A proper system using some form of input queuing would have been overkill for a jam game, but I feel like the animation itself could be played faster. The main reason the flipping anim feels slow / clunky is that (at least I would assume so) the pages turn all the way to the back of the book, but because of the perspective from which the book is viewed only the first half of the animation is actually visible - which feels like input is locked for a significant amount of time after the animation has "finished" I would lower the near clipping planes of the camera (or maybe slightly increase the horizontal extents of the player collider?). Walking into solids regularly allows the cam to see through environment props which is probably not intended and would be very easy to fix. Some additional sound effects would have been nice, like a page turning one for flipping through the book. As others have already pointed out, binding quit to main (with losing progress) to tapping escape is a little dangerous :P A decent fix that's easy to implement would be binding it on hold instead of tap. That's all :D Congrats on getting this amazing entry done in just 3 days. |
| Jan 14 01:12:27 | 26m 54s | Horn of Abundance | ♥ 1 | Great game and particularly impressive as a compo entry. The visuals are on point (especially the enemey designs and animations, really cool stuff) and the audio (minimalist but fitting) nicely ties the whole presentation together. All that combined with the high firerate of fast moving projectiles makes for some really juicy gamefeel. The balancing seems a little "off", but that's a classic jam symptom :D Also, I'm kind of split on the enemy hit particles (the white ones). They look really nice and definitely add to the feel of the game but I'm not sure if that's worth the additional visual clutter they cause (considering how chaotic the game is). Overall, really cool game. Particularly the level of polish as well as the volume of content is very impressive for a compo game. Congrats! |
| Jan 14 01:37:02 | 24m 35s | Fenasi | ♥ 1 | Cute game, I especially like the character designs :D The main gameplay loop is solid, just a little confusing at first (as others have already pointed out). I think decreasing the amount of veggie NPC's (or their spawnrate, not sure how exactly the system works) and having them deal damage to the player would add an interesting additional layer to the gameplay. The main systems for that are already in place (collisions, player health, etc...) so it probably wouldn't be complicated to implement. Right now, the NPC's just kind of exist :D Overall cool game, congrats! |
| Jan 14 02:32:51 | 55m 49s | They Are Growing | ♥ 1 | I have mixed feelings on this, but overall I definitely enjoyed it. First things first, the presentation is great. The visuals and the writing (as well as the audio, to some degree) really create an atmosphere that's rare for a jam game. I also really like the ending - it's simple, but fairly intense as it harnesses the atmosphere that has been built up. It took me a while (a couple of minutes / retries) to figure out "what's going on" and how the mechanics work/correlate. Fundamentally, I think that's completely fine, I like "abstract puzzle games". But there is a difference between cryptic communication and no communication at all, and I really feel like some kind of feedback that ties the pieces of meat reaching a certain size and the player taking damage would have been really really important. Or, alternatively, the note on the wall could just spell it out - which would be the boring solution but probably still preferable to how it works now. When I actually understood how the mechanics work, the gameplay loop of keeping an overview of the asymmetrically growing pieces of meat / trying to figure out the correct "sequence" of harvesting them and then quickly executing that sequence was actually really fun. The difficulty level also felt good to me, but maybe that's just because I'm an FPS player so I'm used to precise/fast first person mouse and keyboard input. The cycle of eerie downtime (reading the new note) and intense pressure (not dying to the meat) also accentuates the intimidating atmosphere. Great stuff. Overall, really cool and unique entry - but a little rough around the edges |
| Jan 14 13:28:33 | 10h 55m | Day of the Serfs | ♥ 1 | Really fun game, definitely a standout entry in terms of presentation. It's obvious you had a lot of fun working on this :D |
| Jan 14 13:52:47 | 24m 14s | Avian Reaper | ♥ 3 | Absolutely beautiful presentation, very unique too - like a hieronymus bosch painting came to life :D The systems are, at first, a little cryptic. Not a big deal though as the time it took me to understand the mechanics was nicely bridged by getting lost in the audiovisual allure the game exudes. Really really really great stuff. |
| Jan 14 14:21:23 | 28m 36s | GAKKI the Water Harvester | ♥ 1 | Nice game, coherent gameplay + presentation which is already very solid entry for a first time participant. Also, even though the mechanics are very simple, it's surprisingly satisfying to just roll around and collect stuff :D 2 minor nitpicks: - not sure what to do after collecting 60 canisters. I would assume that was supposed to complete the game but you had no time to implement a proper win state? Very understandable for a jam game of course. - the player droid sprite looks like it's almost exactly the size of a one tile but can't fit through single tile gaps between environment solids. This is really not a big deal but details like these are always good to keep in mind since they do have "quality of life" implications (small ones, but still) and are usually easy to fix. Definitely a great first time entry, congrats! |
| Jan 14 14:59:28 | 38m 05s | Strange Orchardist | ♥ 1 | Really impressive game for a jam entry. Very well realized presentation, audiovisually coherent and great level design. The movement took me a little while getting used to but once I did it felt natural and quickly executing a pre planned route became very satisfying. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the way n++ feels. The levels looping is a neat, economic solution to the time limitations of a jam in the context of content. |
| Jan 20 08:32:14 | 137h 32m | Auger Hogger | ♥ 1 | Fun game! Physics based jam games are often a little iffy to control (due to balancing / polish in the context of limited time) but this was very well executed. Neat presentation too, especially the outlines. |
| Jan 20 09:11:33 | 39m 19s | When The Wheat Grows | ♥ 1 | Really cool game. Rare to see a fully fledged point and click adventure with branching dialogue in a jam. Great writing and visuals (particularly the characters). Some elements of the game are a little cryptic, but honestly, that might even add to the overall atmosphere. Also, very unique setting. Cool stuff. ! ! ! SPOILERS AHEAD ! ! ! (I'll try to keep things cryptic as well :D) On the ending: I was expecting something like that due to the phrasing of the initial task. Still worked great as an ending! Out of curiosity, did you paint over the, uh, "elements", for "censorship" reasons / to tone down the intensity? Seemed a little off. Also, would have been cool to have the amount (and "likeness") of "elements" correlate to the amount of people you managed to convince. Really cool entry. Well executed and unique in more ways than one. Congrats! |
| Jan 20 09:57:37 | 46m 04s | H.A.R.V.E.S.T. Harvest And Recon | ♥ 1 | This is really cool. Certainly one of the more unusual / unexpected games this jam has produced :D A little rough around the edges, but that's to be expected from a jam entry. Overall, fun game. Congrats! |
| Jan 20 10:11:46 | 14m 09s | Ethereal Fruits | ♥ 1 | Great game, particularly the presentation - clean, high fidelity rendering meets surreal design. The gameplay is minimalist but fits perfectly with the presentation and ties everything together nicely. Congrats on this coherently designed and well realized entry! |
| Jan 20 17:31:11 | 7h 19m | Kilzpacho | ♥ 1 | Fun game! Upgrading your stats and getting better weapons makes for a very satisfying gameplay loop, despite the actual gameplay being so simple. Nice music too, I was playing for quite a while and it didn't feel repetitive at all. My only criticism would be that holding the attack input isn't supported - that would make the game MUCH more comfortable to play. Oh, and the "farting" enemies made my game lag, especially in later waves :P Overall, great entry. Congrats! |
| Jan 20 18:20:24 | 49m 13s | Les Fleurs du Mars | ♥ 2 | Really cool game. The mechanics are simple but work well. Nice idea having the "critical height" not be a straight line but form a circle - particularly elegant as the circular form doesn't just add additional depth to the mechanics/decision making but also coherently ties into the visuals - cool stuff. Also, great music - which is where my only (minor) criticism lies. As the music is pretty intense it would heavily profit from a proper seamless loop that begins after the initial buildup of the track, instead of just looping the single track over and over again - but I guess you guys thought the same and just didn't have time to implement that, same thing is the case with our entry :D |
| Jan 20 19:09:20 | 48m 56s | It's Corn! | ♥ 1 | Wow, I really really enjoyed this. Super clean presentation, minimalist but adequate - all the visuals feel very polished because everything is stylistically coherent. My only nitpick is that the dead crops kinda look like crows, which cost me a crop once or twice (when things got chaotic) :D Great difficulty scaling too - too slow for me to try another time after my first game over but probably the best possible difficulty scaling in terms of providing the highest amount of players with a satisfying experience. Also, I found there to be a surprising and satisfying amount of depth to the gameplay - the trifecta of leading your shots to compensate for travel time, keeping an overview to prioritize certain enemies over others and trying to keep your character centered to reduce the average travel time really made for a skillful and rewarding experience during the later waves. Also, I beat your PB :P cornscore.PNG Congrats on this very well crafted entry! |
