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Feedback comments for LD55
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Jeremy Ryan's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 19 03:15:26 | Midnight Cheese Quest | ♥ 1 | Great entry! I liked the primary block placing mechanic a lot, and the levels were designed in a way that took good advantage of the mechanic. I could see the same concept stretched even farther if there were environmental hazards that affected how you played (like regions you couldn't place blocks in, forcing you to be creative about positioning and making blocks fall). Of course, it's hard to scope extra stuff into a jam, especially as a solo developer. Pixel art graphics were charming and the UI was very clear. The music you chose fit the mood well, although it would have been nice to have simple sound effects as well for at least the core actions of jumping, placing blocks, and removing blocks. Always good to see more pygame developers in LD! Don't forget you can port to other platforms after the jam is over, if you wanted to experiment with getting a build in web with [pygbag.](https://github.com/pygame-web/pygbag) I made a little doodle of your wizard: guest_1.gif Good luck during the rest of play and rate! | |
| Apr 19 03:39:15 | 23m 49s | Demon Delivery Center | ♥ 5 | Nice entry! I loved all the wizard and demon illustrations, and the lore in the locations and descriptions. As others have said, the timing is super tight to be able to complete the tasks when I want to read all the descriptions! It might be nice if the first 2-3 jobs were untimed, and only after that you started having to do the tasks on a timer once you learned about more of the game. I really appreciate that key parts of descriptions were highlighted for easy skimming. While I like the spooky font you chose, it was a bit difficult to read (and read fast) in the large bodies of text. Music fit the vibe very well and I liked the demonic sounds when you start up the game! Here's a doodle of one of the characters in your game: guest_2.gif Good luck during the rest of play and rate! |
| Apr 19 04:19:25 | 40m 10s | Void Beast | ♥ 0 | Nice entry! Lets start with the things I really liked: - Character design and animation were great. The hero, scientist, and void monster all had very appealing designs and the animations were smooth. - Level layout. I really liked the progression from tutorial zone, to hub with NPC, to four individual routes you can do in any order that lead back to the hub. I felt like the layout was intuitive without a map or marker and never got lost. And some areas for improvement: - Character controller. Some of the platforming and movement felt a bit awkward, and the player felt a little slow. I'd highly recommend checking out GMTK's [Platformer Toolkit](https://gmtk.itch.io/platformer-toolkit) for some tips and tricks on making platformer movement feel good. - Camera. A few times it was frustrating when I couldn't see directly below me and it turned out to be a hazard. If the player had a way to look around or the camera was just a bit more zoomed out, that could help. Overall nice little game with a lot of personality. Congrats on finishing what looks like your first LD, and hope you come back for more! I drew a doodle of the Void Beast: guest_3.gif |
| Apr 22 03:34:03 | 71h 14m | Ancistroides Folus | ♥ 4 | Nice short entry with a lot of character! I really liked all the character designs and the funny premise of a demon who just wants to mow his lawn but keeps being summoned to fix others' problems. The gameplay itself is pretty simple but that's fine since it's secondary to the narrative. I did have a couple small areas of improvement, mostly relating to polish: - The character sprite on the lawn mowing section is scaled down, resulting in some artifacts. All the other sprites look very crisp so this one sticks out a bit. - The transitions between scenes are a bit abrupt. It might help if there was a short crossfade for the audio and/or some kind of simple visual transition like a wipe or fade. - The summoning situations were all very interesting, with fun characters and situations, but I didn't really get to look through them because I had to click through them so fast! It might be nice if it took a little while for the dialogue to read out, without being able to click through, so you could get the full experience without having to play suboptimally. I liked the music, especially the contrast between the two phases, good job to the composer. I drew a doodle of the grass demon: guest_4.gif Nice work for 72 hours! |
| Apr 22 04:05:04 | 31m 01s | To do magic, please dance | ♥ 4 | Cute rhythm game! My first time playing, the audio and visuals didn't sync right and it made it difficult to play (visuals were lagging behind by half a beat or so). Not sure what happened, but restarting fixed the issue right away. I really like the character designs, the dance animations, and all the fancy effects that happen over the course of the ritual (and how they line up with the music). The rhythm game felt appropriately generous with the timing without being *too* easy. I would have loved even more positive feedback on a successful hit, like some screenshake or an animation on the arrow you hit, but obviously only so much you can squeeze into a weekend project. After getting the cake I went back to see what happened when you lost, and I loved the animation there as well! The music was very pleasant and I liked the distinct movements where the style shifted a bit. I really liked the melody, but think the game could have benefited from slightly "punchier" sound overall since you're trying to line up your button presses with the notes --- perhaps slightly different instrumentation or other changes in the audio software could have taken it to the next level. Enjoyed this one a lot, good job team! I drew a doodle of the dancing cat for you: guest_5.gif |
| Apr 22 04:50:05 | 45m 01s | Throes of the Javelin | ♥ 5 | Caught this one on stream and had to go back and play it. The main mechanic of the javelin is the epitome of an "easy to understand, difficult to master" game mechanic. The momentum management that is secondary in many precision platformers like Celeste is this game's bread and butter, and the open-ended obstacles tempt you to try different approaches and develop mastery. I particularly like the fact you get a momentum boost when recalling the javelin, allowing for really interesting setup-and-payoff moves to cross tricky jumps and scale ledges. For a jam game, the art and audio are off the charts. The visual direction is very distinct and legible, with tons of little bits of polish like particles, parallax, and the various effects on the javelin itself like the ribbon and wobbling animation upon hitting something. It's clear the team was in extremely close communication and had a shared vision for the game to be able to execute on it so well. I've participated in 17 Ludum Dares, and this is on my short list for favorite entries ever. The actual ratings for LD are unpredictable, but I would not be surprised at all to see this one in the top ten or even in the top spot. Excellent work to the whole team! I drew a doodle of the main character: guest_6.gif |
| Apr 23 00:23:29 | 19h 33m | Raising the Bread | ♥ 4 | Had a lot of fun with this one! I absolutely love the premise, character designs, and jazz soundtrack. My best strategy seemed to be getting a critical mass of cookie monsters which would kill just about any other enemy on sight (and a few gobblers to tank damage if needed). As others have said, a little bit more "oomph" to the combat system could have gone a long way toward making it more satisfying. Maybe some particles/screenshake on hitting an enemy, or a brief animation for spawning in a minion, etc. Of course there's not much time in a game jam and you added an impressive amount of content as-is. I drew a doodle of Rakodi: guest_7.gif |
| Apr 29 04:52:18 | 148h 28m | Demon Well | ♥ 1 | # Oops! I exploded! Finally made it to playing yours after dodging it on at least one stream to avoid spoilers... and it was worth the wait! As always, the characters, writing, and humor shine through. I'm always impressed by your ability to create games that are extremely different from each other while still being instantly recognizable as a Chris Siebert game. Highlights for me: - The first ~30 seconds of the game that set up the premise, the characters, and the delightful exchange of "Oops, I exploded!"//"Yeah... can we talk about that?" - The freeze frame on every single exploded - The design of the necromancer - The a capella boss fight music Also a relatively small detail, but I really liked the objective recap at the beginning of each level. Especially since you're being told to do one thing by the characters in-game and another thing by the game, it helps that it's laid out very clearly and there's never confusion about what your goal is. (I also like that the dialog box has demon horns) The gameplay itself is pretty barebones, and sometimes led to some feels-bad moments where you narrowly lose because Henrick is too fast. But it does its job well enough since it's primarily there in service of the story and premise, and it switches up frequently enough to not get stale. The player's focus on the graphics side is often on the characters and props, which are intentionally in a very simple black-and-white hand-drawn style, but I found myself looking at the environment a lot because it was so well done! I particularly liked the look of the trees and the grass. Great work, and good luck in the rest of play and rate! I drew a doodle of the demon: guest_8.gif |
| Apr 29 05:24:01 | 31m 43s | Druid Island | ♥ 1 | Nice entry! As others have said, a little more tutorialization would have gone a long way (or just more instruction on the game page). It took me a while to figure out the basics like running into flowers to collect them. After playing for a bit, I was still mostly clicking random ingredients because I didn't remember what the different combos did even though some of the creatures seemed much better than others. I loved the look and feel of the island, the little wobbly sprites, and the 4-bit color. There were enough tiles and types of behavior from the animals and settlers for the island to feel "lived in" despite everything's behavior being very simple. I'm not sure exactly what the druid is supposed to be, but the sprite looked sort of bird-esque so this is how I drew him: guest_9.gif Great work and good luck during the rest of play and rate! |
| Apr 30 03:18:47 | 21h 54m | Summoning Song | ♥ 1 | This was a very entertaining and unique entry! There was an impressive number of birds and the "signal processing" side worked surprisingly well (although there were occasionally sounds I feel like I nailed but still got rejected). I appreciate all the little details like the birds approaching from the trees, and the victory screen at the end. I drew a doodle of the owl: guest_10.gif |
| Apr 30 03:48:32 | 29m 45s | Protect the Realm | ♥ 1 | Had a lot of fun with this one! I like the 2.5D look, and the camera movement felt very fluid and was easy to use. Moving around the units, building towers, and the slowly escalating carnage were really satisfying. One nitpick is that it felt like the units could have been "smarter"... often I had a tower completely surrounded by troops, but some zombies were at the base of the tower damaging it because they hadn't actually collided with any of my units. It would be nice if they had some range they would attack zombies within without direct instruction so you don't have to micromanage quite to the same level. My best score was 104391! I drew a doodle of the friendly unit: guest_11.gif |
| May 3 06:12:53 | 74h 24m | Stars Align | ♥ 3 | Nice work as always! There have been so many Sokaban-style games at this point that it's surprising that this one feels so unique even though there are only really two changes to the core game: - You suck instead of push - The blocks need to be arranged in a certain way It turns out those two things make a big difference! Along with good level design, they led for a number of "aha" moments and head-scratcher situations where a deceptively simple problem required several steps to execute on. A slightly awkward byproduct is that you could never bring the blocks quite to the edge, since you're in the way, but you play this to its strengths by designing levels where you have to avoid boxing yourself in or where you're separated from the blocks by a big chasm anyway. But there are some moments where this feels a little weird because the level looks very open but plays like it's cramped --- and you have to mentally subtract the one-block border to find navigable paths. Graphics and audio are charming, I like the lizard wizard as a protagonist! Here's a doodle: guest_12.gif |
