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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | japes's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 3 18:43:47 | Merge Barge | ♥ 0 | Quality entry! Level of polish is such that you don't even notice the sounds/art/animations, which is a good thing. Everything just feels right. (A nice satisfying "squish" or "clunk" sound on merge would be cool though!) I found the rules quite intuitive to pick up, took me about 2 rounds to grasp it. I've played an unhealthy amount of Triple Town in the past, so I found this a bit easy. One could probably scale the difficulty quite easily though, by adjusting the relative frequency of crates to smoke stacks, being more brutal with fuel, etc. Agree with comments saying that the clouds freezing on mouseover (mouseunder?) was a bit distracting, and that it would be cool if the sea scrolled as well so that it felt like the barge was moving. Unfortunately I didn't finish it, I ran into a bug on the 3rd level where things wouldn't merge anymore? And I could place things on top of occupied spaces? All in all a cool idea and well executed, and lots of room to tweak/extend. Well done :) | |
| May 3 19:19:08 | 35m 21s | No Matter the Cost | ♥ 2 | Thanks for that, I enjoyed myself, and completed my quest! Brought back nostalgic memories of playing/reading the "Lone Wolf" gamebooks as a kid :) Nicely polished, art and writing are great, music gets a bit repetitive but is passable! It would be great if your current position (and your destination) was marked on the map. I just had a vague feeling that i had to head east, but didn't have a clear idea of how close i was to the goal. Was not initially clear what exactly the icons next to the choices mean. Would it cost those resources? or was it an opportunity to gain them? or both? (it's both, right?) I think I hit some bugs where a decision would do nothing, and I would be frozen at that place (specifically, heading for the wise men in the promenade, and choosing between the left/right fork in the darkling passage) I think the resources were balanced nicely, I started running out of certain things towards the end, and the last few clicks were a bit tense, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. SPOILER AHEAD the option to refuel at the elf kingdom felt like it came just in time, which added nicely to the immersion. Great interpretation of the theme, well done. |
| May 3 19:38:35 | 19m 27s | Broomstick Blitz | ♥ 1 | Great polish as always, art, music and writing are all great. Nice that you guys tried something a bit different to your previous entries. Agree with other commenters that the controls feel a bit wonky/unsatisfying and that it wasn't quite clear what I needed to be doing at first. Zooming past a destination at high speed because your aim was slightly off is also a bit frustrating. I think the idea could have promise with a bit more balance/tuning. It's a cool concept and I liked zooming around the little world :) |
| May 3 19:51:32 | 12m 57s | Package Delivery | ♥ 1 | Graphics/sounds were great, as was the menu/instructions. Though I think the instructions could be displayed for a little longer before disappearing. Perhaps make them stay until the player clicks something. Great effort for a first entry! The gameplay got a bit tedious though, some puzzles/challenges would've made it more interesting. I was able to give the last package to the wrong person, and they were ok with it? |
| May 3 20:04:48 | 13m 16s | Two For Flinching | ♥ 1 | Cool idea, the artwork and story was cool, especially like the intro document :) Agree with others that said that a clear indication of which planets you've already hit would be nice, and accidentally flinging a package far into the outer rim breaks the flow of the game as you sit and wait for it to return. I think it would be a big improvement if the scrolling was smooth i.e. there weren't set zoom levels, you could smoothly zoom in and out. Luckily I managed to beat it by pure fluke, so I got to see the ending :) |
| May 3 20:33:08 | 28m 20s | Spatial Delivery | ♥ 1 | Pretty cool how intuitive everything was, love that the start button is also your first instruction to the drone. Also love the progression from moving your drone around, inevitably clicking the "buy drone" button, and then realizing that the game is more than you thought, it's about multitasking the management of all these crazy drones. Also it's not so much about successfully making deliveries as avoiding getting overloaded with junk! I think this is a very interesting idea that could really become something great with a bit more work. It gets a bit too crazy when you have more than 2 drones, almost impossible to plan anything. perhaps if drones didn't automatically collect everything they touched, but you had to click on a thing to specifically tell it to pick it up? Well done, thought this was great. |
| May 4 17:10:10 | 20h 37m | Stand and Deliver | ♥ 3 | Brilliant idea, and a creative take on the theme :) I reckon this is something that could go properly viral with all the chatgpt hype atm. Definitely the most interesting entry I've seen so far! graphics/ui/sounds were all pretty basic but passable! |
| May 4 18:13:44 | 1h 03m | A Town in Labor | ♥ 1 | Super interesting idea, I'm afraid I couldn't quite figure out a strategy though! But this was surprisingly polished and nicely presented for an excel game, and it seems like it could be an interesting brain teaser if I could wrap my head around it! |
| May 4 18:42:20 | 28m 36s | Chain Mail | ♥ 2 | As others have said, graphics/music/ui/polish is super good, as good as anything I've ever seen on ludum dare. Loved the general tone of it, the way information is conveyed by means of official reports, and the lighthearted mission descriptions (I loved the last one, actually had a chuckle) Mechanics wise it was solid. A little easy (beat it on the first try, only failed 1 mission, it was "doomed" but I tried it anyway), and I thought the personality type synergy could've been a bit deeper. I basically just hired pragmatics, and so I often had good synergy. Perhaps thats an RNG thing, maybe you could weigh it so that it doesn't offer loads of guys with the same trait. Perhaps there could be a more complicated rock-paper-scissors thing instead of just likes/hates. The other mechanics are great though, the terrain types are intuitive, the "push your luck" element where you could try a dodgy mission with your last few remaining guys, or wait a day to create a better team. Well done! |
| May 4 19:15:08 | 32m 48s | Sails | ♥ 1 | Technically, this is an amazing achievement. The scope is really impressive for a compo! Loads of features, most of which I only noticed on my second playthrough: the wind, the canon-reload indicators, the fact that the map and towns are randomly generated. The trading system. The fact that enemies drop loot. Sailing feels great, and is much more intuitive than I thought it would be by reading the intro. I would do away with the mouse controls for steering/firing, and you just need 1 key each for main menu/toggle full screen. Agree with some other commentators that the UI and onboarding could use a bit of work. Took me quite a while to figure out what was going on initially, and how to start sailing. Perhaps somehow make it clearer which side is "yours" and which is the "towns" (Maybe pictures instead of names). And how to exit the trade screen and start sailing. Also I would pause the game while at port (so that enemies can't keep attacking you) and have a UI button to leave. It would be cool if the average price I'd paid so far for my cargo was displayed, so that I have a better idea of whether or not it would be a good time to sell. With that said, once I did get it, it made sense and was easy to use. Polish/aesthetics wise, the graphics were great, the sounds were passable. The writing style and UI sounds don't quite match the style of the game, though. This is a super impressive prototype which could easily be made into a full fledged game, I think. A bit of polish, tweaking the difficulty curve of enemies, ironing out some kinks in the economy, adding a fitting soundtrack. You'd get a steam wishlist from me! |
| May 4 19:25:17 | 10m 09s | Eggs Delivery | ♥ 1 | I got 1399 eggs by button bashing all the keys :) Cute little game, i lol'd at the eggs being spammed out at such a fast rate |
| May 4 19:56:42 | 31m 25s | Mail Day Mayday! | ♥ 0 | Slick presentation, and a great tutorial (which is often an afterthought in compo entries). other extra frills like the stars, and the amount of content make this a complete game imo. Question: why make all the pipes green? More easily distinguishable colours would've been better. I was worried it would be very simplistic, but then around the first level with multiple machines I knew it was something more! some of the levels were very fun and were satisfying to nail perfectly. The whole thing felt super satifying, actually. I could do this for a living... Unlike some other commenters I found the pick up/drop ok, it seldom went where i didn't want it. the pace was chilled enough that the occasional mis-drop could be corrected. Keen to try the rework, though. well done, this is a solid entry! |
| May 7 14:58:29 | 67h 01m | The King is Dead | ♥ 6 | Probably my favourite entry so far! Definitely one of the most solid entries I've seen. Love the look and feel, the fact that it's a little board game and has a cool medieval sun-dial thing at the back. The little minis are cute and get the point across perfectly. +1 for some comments that have already been made: - needs a fullscreen button - was tricky to figure out at first, unfortunate that you need a separate guide page - a clearer indication of how far away the end is. Is the size of the deck on the right supposed to do this? I also wondered if it was infinite at one point. I would add some standard deckbuilder features: - some tools to keep the deck lean (e.g. drop party members, skip adding a party member) - way to view your deck Mechanics/balance: - I love the core mechanic. The tradeoff of dealing with immediate threats vs working on the bigger obstacles is interesting. - As is the tradeoff of being efficient with your hours, vs dealing with important enemies and being a bit wastefull. Some questions/suggestions for balance: - what is the point of the paranoia card, it seems like it only hurts if you play it? - I think the "big" obstacles (mountain, king of wolves) are a bit OP. I quickly figured out that 1 king of wolves is the equivalent of 14 wolves worth of damage, so it's a no-brainer to focus on him first. If he was nerfed a bit, the decision of what to focus on would be more interesting. - But with that said, the balance was still good enough to make this thoroughly enjoyable! This is a really cool idea, the core mechanic is solid. I think with some polish, balancing, and adding a bit more content, this could easily be steam-worthy. I would buy it! |
| May 7 17:57:20 | 2h 58m | Lexicon | ♥ 2 | Thanks for this, art is great and the writing/music makes this suprisingly immersive! I really felt a sense of excitement/nervousness at meeting the extraterrestrials :) impressive technical achievement to detect the patterns and generate audio based on the position of the cursor. Was pretty hard to figure out at first, mostly because of the difficulty. If there was a gentler introduction, say for example a level where you had as many attempts as you like to just generate a single word, I think that would've helped. Agree with previous comments regarding difficulty. It's too brutal even on "easy" setting, and harsh punishment to restart from the beginning each time (and click through the text). I'm bummed I couldn't see the ending, but after multiple tries (using handwritten crib notes next to my screen), I gave up. I think i was on the final level, and just couldn't get a certain word, I think it was "knowledge" |