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Feedback comments for LD52
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Random-storykeeper's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 14 09:39:57 | Harvest Timing | ♥ 2 | I enjoyed the concept of this game a lot. I think it works great as an educational game, especially for younger children learning about numbers and number patterns. The names were quite fun to decipher and I spent an embarrassing amount of time refreshing my memory on what the sequences were and what days to water. What I enjoyed: - The choice of graphics paired with the music work to create a very comforting and inviting experience. The music track has that hint of Stardew Valley in it that works in favour of the mood (however, it is a bit on the soft side). - Native gamepad support is much appreciated! - Being able to harvest a day earlier for a lesser amount of points was an interesting and welcome touch. - The incorporation of the instructions and controls as part of a note that works as a preface to the story. I enjoyed the humour in this, too. I guess this explains why the character is just one colour, although I don't know how many nude people out there have hair that matches exactly the colour of their skin. I guess the character could be bald, but the bump makes it seem like they have hair. 🤔 What I had some issues with: - While I agree that player movement is on the slow side, I don't find it as tedious since the playing area is kept very small so there's less need to move around a lot. That being said, the actual playing area being smaller than the game window screen gave a slight sense of claustrophobia, being so limited in where you could actually go and do. - The game could definitely use more player input feedback. The watering can sound effect was a good start, but the lack of other sound effects did lead to a rough start when beginning the game as it was hard to tell when I was actually planting things. Plus sound / a visual effect would help give that satisfaction from a successful harvest. - I do think the game could have made it more obvious as to what seeds were planted, but there also isn't really an incentive to plant other seeds. Most of the time, I just planted all of one seed and watered all spots as I thought were needed. - A visual indicator as to what spots were watered that day would have been more beneficial to the gameplay experience. It felt like the main bulk of the puzzle is focused around figuring out which days to water on and adding a watering "memory" puzzle on top of that - right at the start - does seem unnecessary. I think it would work if the game had more progression in terms of how it introduces mechanics or for a hard mode. However, it wasn't a huge issue since I just planted all of one plant in later runs and systematically watered everything in one go. Still, visual indicators would be real nice for watering. - The Interact and Use Tool button are basically the same function that are completely location dependent. If the Interact button is just used to sleep, then I think it would have made more sense, player-wise, to have just one action button for executing the tool and going to sleep, which is triggered based on what tool you've selected or where you use the action button. - When they are two separate buttons, it gives the implication that the Interact button can be used elsewhere. I thought it would be used in front of plants to provide a text box of what was planted, but such was not the case. Lastly, I felt like I was having some trouble understanding the watering system and the numbers for some of the plants. The carrots were straightforward and I was able to harvest them no problem. I also was able to grow the turnips. However, the corn (which I assume is supposed to be watered evenly) seemed to give me trouble. It's days after planting and not the numbers of the days, right? Well, I planted it on day 5, watered on day 6, left unwatered on day 7 and then on day 8 it died. This was weird to me since the name implies it's to be watered every even day, but I'm not sure why my corn died unless it was supposed to be watered on the first day. | |
| Jan 14 23:00:25 | 13h 20m | Monkey Oolong Harvest Bop | ♥ 2 | I had a lot of trouble with the gameplay in this, and I think a big part of it had to do with the game's performance. I play on Chrome and for some reason, I was experiencing a lot of dropped frames and I think the controls had a bit of delay on them. Every time I launched my monkey, instead of it going in the direction it pointed in, it would get flung off to the side. Then I started launching off to the side and sometimes, I would make it up the tree. I did watch the gameplay video and it doesn't seem like that was supposed to be the case, like everything is supposed to be very smooth and when you launch when the arrow points up, it's supposed to go up. That aside, I think the game, aesthetically, works pretty well. I like the blend of Chinese paintbrush style with the cutesy vector monkeys. I think the clouds they sit on help to connect these two art styles together. I also enjoyed the simplicity of the gameplay itself. It's one of those easy to understand and difficult to master mechanics and I love the added addition of being able to chain throws and plan how to launch the monkeys in advance. I wasn't able to get more than 2 leaves and I do suspect it is mostly because of performance issues. But I think the game overall is simple but well executed. |
| Jan 14 23:40:03 | 39m 38s | Otter Seaweed Restaurant | ♥ 1 | The graphics are definitely the standout in this entry. I particularly like the use of crinkled paper coloured blue for the texture of the water. It has a lot of charm alone. I played with a controller and my experience with playing the game like this was overall positive. I think the controls generally worked well for what the game is and most of my issues were more in the execution rather than the fluidity or performance. There was a good setup for the gameplay and it took a bit, but it was relatively easy to pick up. If this is a score based game, I don't think the game should loop back to the beginning once time runs out. When that happens, there's less incentive to share your score as you could miss it if you're not prepared. I think the game could have benefitted from at least having a game over screen where the player presses or clicks a button to replay on their own volition. Of course, some audio and additional complexities in the gameplay (like customer satisfaction, different types of harvests, etc.) would elevate this entry further, but for what is presented, I think the basics are there, boosted by its cute and stand-out art style. |
| Jan 15 01:16:59 | 1h 36m | Harvesting Time | ♥ 1 | This game is really cute and fun. I love the look of the ghosts and the concept of using time as a cost factor was also interesting and I like the approach. It was interesting that the pickups had a time life of their own based on when you kill the ghosts, but it also felt disadvantageous especially when the ghosts become numerous and killing them quickly becomes near impossible. I didn't last super long in most of my playthroughs - the longest was 72 seconds, but I like that it was a quick play and I could easily get the gist of it going in. I do appreciate the auto-firing too. Overall, nice job! |
| Jan 15 02:51:16 | 1h 34m | Galactic Garden | ♥ 2 | I only made it as far as wave 7, but I sunk a (relatively) large amount of time into this game. There's a lot of depth to the gameplay and I love that it's this harvesting tower defense. The humour was pretty great and the atmosphere was good. My only gripe against the audio is that once the later waves kick in, the sound effect of the crows firing gets REALLY loud. I also appreciated the zoom options and the ability to boost was very helpful once I actually understood how to use it. It made the large map and slower movement seem like less of an issue. I found it surprising that forwarding the dialogue was not entirely player-initiated. When I first played, the dialogue automatically proceeded too quickly for me and I do wish it paused until the player presses the button to go forward, especially since there's options to skip the dialogue entirely. While I do appreciate the keyboard controls for pausing and skipping dialogue, I think having on-screen buttons for these functions would have made more sense given the mouse-based aspect. Regarding the weapons, I appreciate that there were a large amount of upgrades in the game, but I do think they could have used a touch more balancing. One example that comes to mind is that I don't think the basic firing gun really needs to keep the lower tier versions as you purchase the upgrades and that they should replace them. There isn't really a need to go back to your good old single firing gun during wave 7, especially when some of the higher tiers don't really consume that much energy (or any energy at all). Overall, I enjoyed this entry and had a ton of fun playing it. Let me eat my vegetables, crows! (Also a side note: I downloaded the rebalanced version and played it out of curiosity, but most of the controls weren't working. I was only able to click to shoot and plant, but I couldn't move nor rotate my ship with the mouse. I can play the original without any problems, but the rebalanced seems to not have any working controls except for the left and right mouse buttons.) |
| Jan 16 06:51:54 | 28h 00m | Fall Faybound Festival | ♥ 0 | Card-based RPGs aren't really my thing, but I like the amount of progression and upgrades that were implemented into the game, especially given the time period. Unfortunately, I seemed to have an issue with the game where the screen wasn't big enough to see everything. My third Faymon was always just outside of the screen view, as was some of the HUD. Thus it was very hard to figure out what I was supposed to do. This is a screenshot of what I see when I download the game, and I can't full-screen to see more of it. Fall Faybound Festival.png Despite the confusion, however, I was still able to keep at it until I actually won a round, which ended up feeling pretty satisfying. I appreciated the XP that you could collect to upgrade so it felt like progress was being made even after each loss. I also really liked that you could easily see a preview of how your attacks affect the other enemies, but it seemed weird that they didn't stack, like the preview only showed you how much damage that particular card would do to that enemy even when you're attacking that enemy with other cards. It would be nice if, when playing the attack card, you could see where that card was being played (although now that I think of it, I'm not sure if this is a thing that's just outside of the game window). I also thought that the art style did have a palette that felt like it suited this whimsical farm sort of setting. The sound effects used were pretty weird - a mishmash of recorded voice and what I assume are sound effects generated with BFXR. The latter is much too loud and punchier compared to the voices and the combination of these two types of sounds don't feel like they complement the graphics that much. Honestly I feel like the voices worked better with the art style, so I think going with the more acoustic/recorded sound effects for everything would have made it click more, at least with me. Overall, this was an interesting experience that I felt like I understood the gist of in a short amount of time. Nice work! |
| Jan 18 02:01:46 | 43h 09m | Harpvest | ♥ 1 | I never thought I'd play a horror game about harps, and this one was surprisingly well done. The gameplay premise is simple enough to understand, with the skill coming from harvesting before the predator harp comes to get you. I only saw one enemy, but if there are more, then I'm going to be in big trouble because I freak out easily. One thing I noticed when starting up the game was that the menu buttons were extremely blurry? I tried this game in two different browsers and it seemed to be the case for both. It was only on the menu screen for me, which was very strange. Harpvest 01.png The best thing about this game is the atmosphere for sure. I love the low ambience paired with the zoomed in camera and mostly cloaked-in-darkness area. The enemy constantly pursuing me was especially scary since the distance I could put between it and allowing myself to harvest meant that I couldn't see when it was coming or if I did, there wasn't enough time to finish the har~~p~~vest. Actually that added to a lot of the fun, but I admit that I feel the gameplay experience would have been more positive for me if the: - **Harvesting time were cumulative or slowly diminishing** - I don't know if this was actually a thing or not, but if it isn't then, I think that would help to balance out the challenge, giving players some time to harvest, but not completely lose their progress if they have to dodge an enemy. If it is, then an indicator would definitely be helpful. - **Harp locations had more indicators** - By means of a simple arrow pointing to the general direction of the harps that slowly adjusts itself based on your current location and/or a general map that shows the layout and the locations of the harps. I think, overall, the premise was fun and I liked the unsettling atmosphere. The beginning cutscene with the clipart was amusing and I think set the right kind of tone given the ridiculousness of the premise. |
