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mhorth

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		mhorth's comment
Jan 11 22:41:56		Hectic Harvest!	♥ 1	I had the same experience as @ale where I thought I'd achieved my goal when I harvested the produce, and tried taking them directly to the conveyor belt. Figured it out eventually though. The game worked great, and evoked a real sense of urgency which I think is exactly what you were going for! My main suggestion for improvement is just the user experience and onboarding. You had it in quite a few places, like if I tried to water the ground when there were no crops, I got a error blip noise, that was helpful to tell me I'm doing the wrong thing. A bit more of that and I think your players will understand exactly what they need to do. Understandably this was Compo (congrats on that!) so you may have been working towards that anyway and just ran out of time. Definitely something to be proud of here, nice work.
Jan 11 22:57:06	15m 10s	Orchard Alchemy	♥ 1	You're a front end developer I'd bet, right? The UI was great and smooth from the start, but the most satisfying bit was that your right side drawer closes if I click anywhere else on the screen. That's some good UX 😄 I did get stuck not too far in unfortunately. I bought the lab and was directed to research a quince. I made a quince and put it right next to the lab, but nothing seemed to happen. If you can tell me what I might have missed there, I can come back and see what else you had in store for me in the late game.
Jan 11 23:09:57	12m 51s	Beeline	♥ 2	Nice job team and congrats on your first LD! It was nice that the gameplay goals were extremely clear of what we wanted to do, but I think I had a few instances where I died and restarted the level, and some of the flower images stayed in their pollenated state, but logically weren't actually pollinated. That along with the graphical distinction between the states were my biggest gripes. You had particle effects spawning from the source plants, I think those would have been placed well on the target plants. But, that is minor improvements to a game that works, has a perfect level of challenge, and is fun to play.
Jan 11 23:24:55	14m 58s	Shred-A-Bunch!	♥ 1	The music and the slow-mo made hitting zombies feel sooooo visceral, very nice job conveying those impacts! I was experimenting to figure out what the controls were, and it seemed like spacebar was just increasing the bar at the top of the screen (I think that was a score of some sort?) Was that perhaps a dev cheat left in there? 😉
Jan 11 23:54:56	30m 01s	Monkey Oolong Harvest Bop	♥ 4	I'm gonna tab back and give it another go in a second, but shame on you for making me feel so bad when I tossed my little monkey teammates out of the tree to their death 😆 The little noises and facial expressions they make as they're flying and trying to grab onto something make it feel so real. I'm panicking at my keyboard trying desperately to grab onto the last branch, and the monkey on screen reflects my desperation with a look that knows he's about to die. The emotions during this run all the way from "oh nooo Nooo NOOOO!" to "hell yeah that was such a nice lineup!" I loved the gameplay depth you all created here with a mechanic that seems so trivial on the surface. But every move had the consequence of where you'd end up. This made me feel extra rewarded once I'd spaced out my monkeys into strategic areas of the tree, I could put them on a line that they'd collect a leaf, get caught by another teammate, and toss them back to their original position to not mess up my spacing. The zoom out mechanic was an excellent addition to let us plan out the throws. My favorite ones went up first, then fell through a line of two or three leaves and ugh it just felt magical to pull it off. My best score so far, but I'll be back later in the rating period. Screenshot 2023-01-11 184622.png As always, love the art style that this team brings. It has a great artistic touch, yet it's still able to convey what everything is perfectly. Hats off to you, this was a ton of fun.
Jan 12 02:50:33	2h 55m	Dead End Job	♥ 3	Holy crap. As soon as I saw the menu I knew this game had some serious talent behind the graphics. Everything was rigged and animated very nicely. I played on a controller, and this could absolutely be an issue specific to my controller, but my character kept flicking opposite directions than I wanted. As if there was no deadzone. So if I was kiting away from enemies to the left, then pressed right to do the attack, but then let go of right, I would flip and end up attacking left. It didn't detract from the experience as a whole, still had a nice difficulty that lets us experience all 10 shifts without demanding absurd skill, just maybe something to consider for next time you do controller support. Though again, that could be specific to just my controller. The audio was also fantastic, from the sound effects to the perfectly fitting music that got me in the mood to harvest some souls. Thank you for making this, I truly did have a fun time with it. Well done.
Jan 12 03:09:56	19m 23s	Goblo The Harvester	♥ 4	The level design feels professional here. There's usually a feel in the quality of these jam games where you can tell an amateur developer made it in a couple of days. Not here, the aesthetics feel perfect, very very good world building. I couldn't get comfortable with the controls to get very far in the game, but it looks like your team is aware and already has plans to change them. One super minor thing I can offer, since I've seen Tricky_Fat_Cat's posts about having prototype plugins... The buttons on the pause menu are blocked by the text. If I hover my mouse over the text itself, I cannot click the button. I have to hover over the background image of the button. No big deal at all, definitely not game breaking. But that could help improve your plugins for next time.
Jan 12 22:25:28	19h 15m	Powered Plants	♥ 1	Oh man this was good! Fantastic all around, especially the sound was really well done. I very much appreciate the little detail that you don't let me purchase a plant that doesn't stack when I already have one. You made it clear with the description, but then not letting me purchase it anyway was icing on the UX cake. I think I hurt my chances by not fully understanding what each plant did the first few rounds, and made a pretty poor setup. But as it became clear what each one does, the gameplay became very interesting and revealed strategic choices, love it. The beams reflecting onto a nearby enemy is always a great mechanic, and I'm impressed how well you got all the upgrades interacting with each other. Great job!
Jan 12 22:49:46	24m 18s	Heroic Harvest	♥ 1	This played great! Once I got the sniper rifle(?) and was no-scoping all the bad guys, there was no stopping me lol. Everything was clearly communicated and the sound effects complemented the gameplay well. I played on a typical 1080p monitor and had large yellow images on the sides of the screen, really narrowing my field of view. Was that intentional difficulty or a bug?
Jan 12 23:04:37	14m 51s	Crop Rush	♥ 1	Took me a few restarts of trying to complete levels as fast as possible to aim for 3 stars, before I realized it was the move count that mattered. After that I realized it was a puzzle game, not a speed action game. My puzzle brain then engaged and it was really enjoyable trying to plan out my routes. Nice small scope for a jam, and very well executed. I had no bugs or anything, just good pure harvesting crops! Well done.
Jan 12 23:22:14	17m 37s	gatherAI	♥ 2	Wow wow wow! Top marks for the mood without a doubt, this game really struck a chord with the isolated character roaming around an alien landscape, and the background music really sold that feeling. Great job. And then the gameplay and content as we were impressive, was not ready for the jump to 3rd person, I was like "whoaaa what is this now?!" Really excellent story progression and telling.
Jan 12 23:30:31	8m 17s	Night of the Werevester	♥ 2	Woooo a 3D game with cutscenes and werewolf converting animations?! Damn this is impressive, great job everyone! I found the steering to be a little bit floaty and hard to control exactly where I wanted to go, but I guess the game probably would have been too easy with perfect steering?
Jan 13 01:14:34	1h 44m	Reap 'n' Roll	♥ 1	Congrats on compo! That alone is always an impressive feat to me. It's a great base and I'm happy to see your comments that you want to continue taking it even further.
Jan 13 22:50:09	21h 35m	PROTECT THE HARVEST	♥ 1	Your first LD, compo, and first 3D game? Very well done! That's a super impressive combination. I think the difficulty was tuned perfectly with the small area but the enemies being smaller than the hay bales. We still had to constantly move around and check the corners. I do think just a crosshair in the center would have been the biggest upgrade you could have made if you had any time left for it, but the game was still fun to play.
Jan 13 23:07:09	17m 00s	Oasis of Souls	♥ 1	Take notes everybody, this is how you get top marks in Mood lol. Great job to the team, this was visually amazing! The only gameplay issue I had was sometimes when the camera was right behind me (or at least I thought it was), holding W to walk forward took me in an arc, slowly turning to the side and veering off course. Not a big deal at all.
Jan 13 23:37:29	30m 20s	Pineapple Surf	♥ 1	Quite a risky decision you took here to base the game around a nostalgic mechanic that might only capture a small audience. But I think you did it in a smart way that even for the people who couldn't get the hang of bunny hopping (me) there was still fun to be had in optimizing paths for a good time. So great job with your game design!
Jan 13 23:41:52	4m 23s	Harvexo	♥ 1	I completely agree with WhaleJam's feedback. This was simple, but in a good way. There was no clutter and everything was clean and polished, well done!
Jan 14 16:41:47	16h 59m	Boar'd'Hell	♥ 1	Dang, this was a lot of fun and really really unique! Even more impressive that it was the first Ludum Dare for most (all?) of you. The key rebinding is amazing, and really helped. In my brain it made more sense for down arrow to decrease throw distance, while up arrow increased it. Once I changed that, I was really able to get into a flow and had a great time.
Jan 14 16:50:51	9m 04s	Cosmic Dust	♥ 2	The spherical planet gravity worked perfectly, great job! Any tips on how you pulled that off?
Jan 15 19:02:52	26h 12m	Corny Heist	♥ 1	Nice job on this one! It's really generous of you that we're a bit faster than the farmers, so even when I got caught, I could run away and get back to stealing corn. Thank you for that. I'm always curious in these types of games how the detection is programmed. The graphic representing their field of view was great and super helpful, but what did you do under the hood to match that graphic? (If you don't mind sharing your secrets of course).
Jan 15 19:12:51	9m 59s	Picking Apples 1.3	♥ 1	Nice game and congrats on your first Ludum Dare! I was going to come back and mention the same thing about having a checkpoint after level 1, but it looks like you already have plans to take care of that. The next thing I would suggest working on is sound effects. A game gets much more immersive and enjoyable when there are sounds, even if nothing about the gameplay has changed.
Jan 15 19:54:57	42m 06s	Underworld Management	♥ 1	No one survives the death tunnel! Screenshot 2023-01-15 144854.png I love tower defense games like this. Even after beating all the waves, I knew there was more fun to be had coming back in and building cleaner and better. If you didn't touch the gameplay at all and just added sounds and music, this would be a 10/10 game. Tiny tiny bug I found that worked in my favor, sometimes placing down a summoning circle brought in 2 demon workers? Not a big deal at all, but with the obvious strength of programming that went into this, I bet you can figure it out.
Jan 15 20:25:28	30m 31s	Froot	♥ 1	It's hard to balance out upgrades and create a loop that feels good during a jam. You nailed it. The upgrades were all so satisfying, and I really felt the impact of each one. On the last few levels I don't think I ever delivered any Froot to the truck, I was purely on rat slaying duty, and I loved how that evolved over the course of the game. The only thing I can critique is the sounds. I see your description that you were otherwise aiming for compo, so generated sounds make sense, but they seemed to clash. I think you even had the same sound effect for bats dying as clicking on an upgrade that I didn't have enough money for? That's super nitpicky, but that shows how good your game is. The only fault I can find is that the sounds weren't amazing.
Jan 15 20:31:42	6m 14s	Untitled Squirrel Game	♥ 1	+1 to the comments about the fixed camera, though I do realize that it made the challenge what it is. Aside from that, it worked great and was a very pleasant mood after all these soul harvesting grim reaper games 😆
Jan 15 20:45:33	13m 51s	Reap N' Sou-l	♥ 2	As you've already heard, the graphics of the game are excellent. Not only was it pretty, but everything had a unique look that was clearly communicated. So there was never a question of "what am I looking at?". Nice job there. After I realized enemies could take souls out of the well, I decided my best strategy would just be to collect 5 and dump them in all at once. Upon doing so however, the level didn't complete. I re-read your description and realized the day ends after 3 minutes no matter what. This makes the objective feel pretty contradictory, like the best strategy is to hold 5 souls and them dump them right when the day is about to end (unfortunately, I didn't see any countdown to let me know when that would be?). I'd suggest a slight tweak that the level can end as soon as the target souls are reached. But that's just what I'd find fun. If your goal with the gameplay design was to make us collect and defend, then mission accomplished.
Jan 22 16:27:17	163h 41m	Eden Harvest	♥ 2	Really great storytelling on this one, very high points for mood. I definitely appreciate the tutorial/backstory being told in game, somehow that's more digestible than reading it typed out on the submission page. The use of color was really cool, desaturating the flower colors unless I walked far away from them. My brain can't connect why it made the gameplay more engaging, but it certainly did add something. Selfish question: what was the main font you used for the text? I really liked it and might want to save that for future projects.
Jan 22 17:21:56	54m 39s	Tile King	♥ 1	I'm very inexperienced in this genre of game. I got frustrated on my first play thinking the numbers were tuned much too harsh and that it was near impossible to get very far into the game. Coming back to read the comments, I saw a lot of praise and people making it much further. So I started another round and realized the starting tiles are randomized per run. This might be common for the genre, but may I point out a flaw as a newbie? My first run had no water tiles in the starting area, which meant I had no way to gain fish, which meant I couldn't build a lighthouse to reveal further tiles. Maybe the start area should be static so you can give players an "easy" start, and then randomize as it expands outwards? On my next playthroughs I kept restarting until I had a gold mine and water in the starting area, which felt like a much more friendly start. After that, the game kept me playing through quite a few restarts, trying out new starting strategies, is it better to go for the town or the gold mine first, etc. Definitely got into it after a while, so I think all the frustration was simply on me not having played games like this before. Thanks for introducing me!