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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | ZungryWare's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 3 00:41:23 | Attack of the Robot Crabs | ♥ 1 | Fun little shooter game. It was satisfying to line up several enemies to kill in one shot. I like how the arena resets in size after each wave to give a pacing break. Though I think the waves could have been shorter so the player can get upgrades more often. The overhead minimap was a nice touch. I think our game could have used that. I also like how the enemies fall apart into little physics objects on death. Qol note: Let the player hold down left-click to fire continuously. High score: 43300 | |
| Oct 3 02:19:59 | 1h 38m | Adrift | ♥ 1 | There's a cool idea here. Having the player plan out their resource inventory to fit the different needs creates a fun gameplay loop. But there are a lot of things that make the game not a great experience. This game has a real information overload problem. When I start the game staring down four different stations each with their own confusing-looking UI, my brain kind of shuts down. I think the solution in these cases is to give the player one station at a time and force them to make use of it to unlock the next one. That way they figure out what that station can do for them before a new one enters the mix. It's a combinatorics problem. Maybe I can figure out these four stations on their own, but anything I do in one station is completely meaningless unless I know how to use the created resource in the other stations. "I turned rock into Silicon. Cool, but how does that help me? Heck, maybe doing that screwed me over completely because I needed that rock for something else." That's my sort of thought process. It's problematic that you can't see crafting recipes you don't have the resources for. How am I supposed to know what to collect in order to craft what I need? Once my inventory is full, I need to jettison something. How do I know what to jettison unless I know how much of it I'm going to need? I had to look at your source code to figure out how whether I really needed all of that Silicon. (I didn't.) I can never seem to get enough ice to offset the loss of oxygen from obtaining it. I need to collect an ice ball every five seconds or else I'll end the excursion with a net oxygen loss. I found that to be impossible even without collecting the other asteroid types. The collision with the asteroids was also really buggy. Sometimes I was able to hold two at once but most of the time the second asteroid would bounce off me or teleport around. I was never able to beat the game because I always ran out of oxygen before I crafted my third thruster part. There's definitely some cool mechanics in this game, but there's a lot to be desired in the polish and balance departments. |
| Oct 3 03:12:43 | 52m 44s | Fac Spatium | ♥ 1 | The interface for this game is very unique and impressive. It looks like it was a lot of work to implement. I just wish you had had more time for the puzzle mechanics. I managed to win really easily just by bringing two squares and a triangle to a planet with a circle on it. Though I tried it a second time with just one square and I lost because the game assumed I was stranded. I don't see a use for the robot arm/conveyor. I figured it was for automatically transporting shapes from a drill to a railgun so you could send resources to another planet automatically. But the railgun doesn't seem to accept shapes. The controls feel a bit clunky. I think it's the fact that the order you click on things completely changes what will happen with little visual feedback to indicate this. Not a big deal though. I would really like to see what could be done with this game's mechanics. I think the base mechanic is interesting enough to create a good puzzle game with some more mechanics added. |
| Oct 3 03:40:59 | 28m 16s | Windowed.exe | ♥ 2 | Clever idea! I love how the status indicators were the title of the window. I found the game to be really easy though. You know the phrase, "couldn't hit the inside of a barn"? Well that's kind of the problem: I *can* hit the inside of a barn. No matter what direction I aim, I always hit my target. I just have to alternate between aiming vertically and horizontally so neither axis can close in too much. The difficulty definitely needed to ramp up faster. I got to round 16 before I called it quits. But the idea is clever and the gamefeel and music were great! Nice work! |
| Oct 3 04:14:57 | 33m 58s | Parking Garage Rally | ♥ 1 | It's official: The Nintendo DS nostalgia wave has begun. And I am here for it. This game looks really good. I'm wondering how you got the car's animations and physics so polished in time. It looks and handles like a fully-fledged racing game. I love the design of the race course. It has great gameplay and setpieces while still feeling like it could be a real location. Great work! |
| Oct 3 06:18:06 | 2h 03m | Alien Abduction Adventures and Astral Anomalies Abound | ♥ 2 | I love your choice to give names to the abductees, and right before we're given the option to crush one of their roommates into a flesh cube. Way to show you're not messing around here. "May your future be bright, random alien I am selling into slavery!" I think this has a similar problem to your previous game in that the writing doesn't affect the gameplay. When I have to click through four text prompts to warp somewhere, I'm probably not going to stop to read the flavor text sandwiched in the middle. It got to the point where my brain wasn't even deciphering the text anymore; I was just looking for key icons and values on the screen and clicking them when they showed up. The game felt way too long for how much content there is. I abducted 35 organisms at the end and since about two-thirds of them escaped, that means I probably had to visit over 100 essentially identical planets in the full playthrough. While it is satisfying to sell off a full cargo hull of aliens, I don't think it sustains for long enough. I think what makes it feel like busywork is that there's rarely ever more than one possible option whenever I'm presented with a choice. If my cargo hold is full, travel to 0-body systems. Otherwise, travel to whichever system has the most bodies. I think the only mechanic that offers real choice is the storage mechanic. If you abduct a creature without enough room for it, you have to weigh the value of your other creatures by their sell cost and health. But you don't make this choice very often since if you have a full cargo hold, you're trying not to travel to systems with life in them. I feel like there was a missed opportunity to have dialogue with the aliens you abduct. Maybe by the end they convince you to give up your slave-trading lifestyle for good. |
| Oct 3 07:35:39 | 1h 17m | Space Stitcher | ♥ 1 | I tried for a good 15 minutes but I cannot figure out level 2 or 3. I don't even really understand the game's mechanics. I can wrap my head around level 1. The two devices each create a portal between the two walls they are attached to. But I can't even comprehend what's going on in level 3. It's important to have puzzles that make sure the player fully understands a mechanic before you start adding twists to that mechanic. And that goes double for games with wild space-bending mechanics like this. For level 2, I don't know what the grey box does at all. It doesn't seem to create any portals and I can't find any use for it as a plain physics object. It's a shame because this seems like a super cool mechanic with tons of design space for puzzles. If you make more puzzles and fix the learning curve I would definitely give it another shot. |
| Oct 3 08:08:42 | 33m 03s | cyber_serpent | ♥ 6 | Fantastic graphics and polish! This game just feels good to play. I especially liked the teleport animation even if I didn't use the ability much at all. The fact that you only have one life makes things very tense all the way through, so there's no real rest break. There's a lot that can kill you in this game and missing one thing sets you all the way back to the start. I lost most of my runs to the Lazy Laser since there's no warning before it shoots. You just have to recognize the enemy by its model and know to stay out of its way. That's really hard to do when you have seven other things to keep track of. Oh, and forcing me to take my hand off the controller so I can click the submit button after every run was rather annoying. But overall this was a fun and well-polished game. Great work! |
| Oct 3 08:26:09 | 17m 27s | Swarmed In | ♥ 2 | I have a pretty beefy computer but I was getting a lot of lag if I fired my weapon for more than a second. Let me know if you fix this so I can give this game another shot. Aside from that though, this game has very good gamefeel. The impacts and mucus splatters are very satisfying. The gameplay is simple but still fun. Maneuvering around those crates to avoid the insects is challenging near the end. The difficulty curve feels just right. The grappling hook is cool but I move so fast I never felt it was necessary. By the time my hook extends to the wall and pulls me in, I could have just moved there. |
| Oct 3 08:43:51 | 17m 42s | Stretchmancer | ♥ 4 | You guys seem to have a real talent for making weird and wonderful games. Such a strange mechanic but it works so well here! I feel like a lot more could be done by adding some augmenting mechanics. This is definitely full-release worthy if you explore the puzzle design potential some more. Fantastic work! |
| Oct 3 19:37:06 | 10h 53m | The Ones You Keep | ♥ 3 | Phenomenal voice acting! Well, Marius's wise-guy accent was a bit hammy but aside from that, the characters all felt really believable and unique from each other. Great writing for sure. I enjoyed piecing together the events of the wedding and trying to decipher who did what. I gotta say, whoever wrote that letter is a damn coward. That is information you provide *before* the wedding, not during. This had me engaged all the way through. Great work! |
| Oct 4 01:14:49 | 5h 37m | Iceolation | ♥ 4 | There are a lot of little touches that make this game work. Making ice crack before breaking gives you a chance to move to a safe spot, but you have to be quick. I like how you can collect new ice pieces and have some choice over where they get added. And the ice-control physics feel very smooth while still being a challenge to maneuver. Great work! |
| Oct 4 01:32:34 | 17m 45s | Space Ltd. | ♥ 1 | Man, I was way too picky. I only ended up sending three people. (Well technically, I guess it was five.) I have to decide whether or not to save someone without knowing what the future candidates will be. I enjoyed the character profiles. Nice work! |
| Oct 4 02:23:02 | 50m 28s | Vade Ratro | ♥ 0 | Really good pixel art with great graphical touches and animations. I found the kick to be slow and fiddly to move that I never moved the lantern on my winning run. It's way to slow to be able to use it reactively to dodge incoming projectiles. And there's no benefit to using it proactively since you're no better off with your lantern on right side of the screen as opposed to the middle. I noticed later that it shoots flames out of it when kicked, but I still don't see a reason to do that when I could just shoot the enemy with my gun. |
| Oct 5 20:57:00 | 42h 33m | Troubled Turtles | ♥ 3 | Nice sokoban game with a fun central mechanic and some great puzzles! In particular, the ability to use turtles to block other turtles was what made this game work. Levels 11, 14, and 17 were my favorite. Some Qol notes: An undo feature would have been very welcome. In level 17 especially, I constantly inputted a control wrong and had to restart the sequence of moves completely. Also, if you have a forced delay between inputs, it's best to let the player hold down the key to perform the action repeatedly. But overall I enjoyed this. Great work! |