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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | JoeShanahan's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 16 16:41:51 | The Wrong Book | ♥ 1 | Incredible entry, it feels super complete, the voice adds so much and is also very funny. It's often risky for a dev to do their own VO but you pulled it off perfectly. And the ending was brilliant too. I love a good incremental game. This will definitely score near the top for humour, and I think pretty high overall too - loved this one! | |
| Apr 16 16:52:00 | 10m 09s | Fiend-Zone | ♥ 1 | This was really creative, having the demons attack *everyone* (not just your enemies) feels very thematically appropriate, and taking the time to explain the game mechanics inside the game is very much appreciated. The biggest issue I had was the hitboxes, I would've liked them to be a bit more generous, but overall a solid entry! |
| Apr 16 17:01:49 | 9m 49s | Pest Control | ♥ 1 | Really love the art style on this one, the sprite work has a lot of personality. I too cheesed the boss by standing on the ledge and summoning birds, but what's the point of being a summoner if you have to stand close to those attacking you? π I didn't really see the point in using anything except the bird, the rats just seemed like less good birds. Also the camera (using cinemachine?) felt a bit off to me, maybe the lookahead a bit too aggressive? But then when I actually wanted lookahead (when falling downwards) I didn't have it. That's my only real gripe, otherwise - great job! π |
| Apr 16 17:26:00 | 24m 11s | Incorporeal | ♥ 5 | For some reason I imagined I was about to craft a squirrel with a knife, and I guess I slipped or something because that is not what I got. And the demon was not happy about it. I like the idea of the two phases, I wanted to make a game like that myself before (feast on villagers during the night, build a fortress during the day) but ran out of time before even half was done. Implementing both of them and making them interlinked in the way they were was really engaging. I'm glad there was a time limit just because otherwise I would've spent way too long outside exploring, but then also not sure it added anything to the crafting section. I enjoyed my playthrough, but after I lost I didn't want to do all of that again to have another attempt, so stopped there. |
| Apr 16 17:44:43 | 18m 43s | Bugs VS Bugs | ♥ 2 | I didn't immediately realise that summoning bugs was reducing the health, so I spawned a LOT of bugs right at the start. I also couldn't find the way to unsummon them? It seems like if each bug does as much damage as an enemy bug, then effectively you have a finite pool of health and so a finite number of enemies you can kill before you necessarily game over. On my second attempt somehow I managed to go below 0 health just fine, and so I insulated the planet in a coat of bugs so thick that not even sunlight could get through. I think that means I won π Screenshot 2024-04-16 at 18.42.26.png |
| Apr 16 20:25:41 | 2h 40m | Turret Queen | ♥ 1 | I was thinking "wow, I don't even have to look at the enemies, I have so many turrets that I can just focus on collecting instead" and then I got hit and then basically the whole game was over π |
| Apr 16 20:39:26 | 13m 45s | Poltergeist for Hire | ♥ 3 | I had a lot of fun with this because while the physics make precision very difficult, the game doesn't penalise you for that, so throwing plates across the room into jars is considered a valid way of opening them. When I completed it I thought I'd accidentally pressed a button to reset the game, it came so abruptly, so it'd be good if that was made more clear. But really more than anything I just wanted more tasks to do! |
| Apr 16 21:01:53 | 22m 27s | PolyMancer | ♥ 1 | This was incredible. Even with such a minimalist art style, there is so much juice and polish - it feels like it's already a complete game. The gameplay is super creative, and I'm pretty sure it'd be amazing if I had a wacom tablet or something, but even just mouse and keyboard was a lot of fun. This is definitely going to be top 100. |
| Apr 16 21:42:03 | 40m 10s | Process Server | ♥ 2 | This was a funny and clever take on the theme. I have a dilemma though because when I saw dialogue, I started reading it out loud, and now I have a 7 minute video of me reading the whole game. Not sure how interesting that's going to be for you to watch back, but I guess we'll see when I put together the edit tomorrow π |
| Apr 16 22:04:19 | 22m 16s | Illegal Summonings | ♥ 1 | "this is my very first Ludum Dare! So of course I totally overscoped" this is my 8th Ludum Dare and still I overscope π What you've got here is super impressive, although it does require a huge amount of content for a very short amount of gameplay. I could see this being a really engaging game mechanic in a bigger game, where they can use the assets/environments they already have to be able to make lots of different puzzles without needing to make new assets each time. I definitely wanted to play more once I got to the end, although I did wonder if it'd be more engaging if there wasn't always exactly one thing wrong, that you get a better score if you get all the checkboxes right. As it currently was, all I needed to do was see the one thing wrong and then not check anything else. ...to be fair with the second puzzle I didn't see that one thing until after I'd counted everything in the room, so I think you did already think about that. Either way, really cool entry, with a super original idea! |
| Apr 20 10:55:24 | 84h 51m | Bail Out! | ♥ 1 | Really love the pixel art on this one, and amazing job getting this finished for your first solo LDjam! I didn't read the instructions close enough at first, so missed that I had to get to the court as well, it would've been nice to have an in game notification when I had enough money to now get to the court. I did also find starting in debt a bit confusing, and that you can only pay the court once you get to 0 dollars, did you consider making it a number like "0/1300" instead of starting off with -1300 and trying to get to 0? |
| Apr 20 11:16:49 | 21m 25s | CrateCaster | ♥ 1 | I think this is actually a pretty decent amount of content for a jam game, you're selling yourself short with "only 6 tiny levels", this is a lot of stuff! You've got a nice little puzzle platformer here, which has some well thought out levels. The final level was too much for me, it seemed like it needed some pretty precise timing and I just didn't have it in me. I appreciated the skip level button though, so I could experience the whole game. I also got a bit confused on how many crates I actually had from looking at the mana bar, being a bit more explicit about "you have three crates" in some way on the UI would be nice. Overall though, fantastic job! |
| Apr 20 15:15:44 | 3h 58m | Summonundrum | ♥ 1 | This game was amazing. I didn't fully understand the game until my third playthrough, but after two I was so pumped to go again that I couldn't wait to get going again. The risk/reward of waiting for a chain vs getting rid of enemies as fast as possible, and the split second decisions of which hero to use for the abilities that are shared - it's really great design. The difficulty ramps up at a good rate, the music is a bop (even if you didn't make it, still adds to the experience) and I enjoyed my time with it a lot. Fantastic job. |
| Apr 20 15:26:48 | 11m 04s | The Summoning Goes On | ♥ 1 | Took me a while to understand what I was supposed to be doing, but thought it was super original once I understood properly. The idea of summoning circles being like mouse traps for demons is conceptually hilarious, and haven't seen anyone else think of something like that. Needing to learn the different types of trap takes a while, but isn't too complicated. I do think the number of traps builds up too much too fast though. You end up just in an impossible state, where you'll have overlapping traps where one requires you to zoom past it, and the other requires you to stand still, so no matter how good you are - that part of the screen is now off limits. Being able to have the difficulty ramp up a little slower would allow for longer games, where the pressure builds up in a more satisfying way, rather than hitting a wall of impossible. Overall, really cool idea and great job executing on it! |
| Apr 20 16:43:26 | 1h 16m | Wrath of Wrathmus | ♥ 1 | This was a really creative game, and a very polished jam entry too! Some of the mechanics took a bit of time to click with me, I thought at first maybe it was one of those games where the enemies move when you move, and only being able to turn by moving was pretty unintuitive too. I wasn't totally sure if that was intentional in order to force to player to play a different way or not, but I definitely got frustrated taking damage bumping into him when I wanted to face him to attack. Managed to work out a strategy in the end though, even if it took me a while to be able to execute on it! The picking of the body parts was an interesting way to let the player choose their own difficulty level, although it seemed like on pretty much every level there was basically only one configuration that'd be accepted, which made it feel a bit like a false choice. But I don't mean to be so negative, I thought this was a really strong entry, it felt very complete, and had a lot of good humour too. I think it's going to score pretty well overall! π |
| Apr 21 11:30:02 | 18h 46m | TrollDoom | ♥ 2 | I was really struggling to do any kind of crowd control, and then I unlocked flame breath and that carried the rest of the game. I played twice, and both times it seemed like I went from 100% health to 0% health in a single hit against one of the larger enemies? It was an abrupt way to end both runs, which otherwise felt like they were going pretty well. But other than that, this is a really original spin on this type of game, and the only limitation on spell casting being how fast you can draw them means you can be a better spellcaster if you're a faster player, which feels fair. Great idea, great execution on that idea! |
| Apr 21 11:39:05 | 9m 03s | Sick of Summoning | ♥ 1 | This is a neat little arcade game, that feels like it was perfectly scoped for the few hours you had available. You picked the right things to work on so that it could still be a fun experience, while dropping anything like title or game over screens, and I think that paid off! I do wish the restart button wasn't right next to shoot though, I did hit that by accident once! |
| Apr 21 19:19:20 | 7h 40m | Demons On DemandπΉπ¦ | ♥ 2 | It seems like this is somewhat adjacent to Overcooked, but with putting together demons? I really like the idea conceptually. I found the actual experience of playing the game more frustrating than fun, unfortunately. Especially once there were multiple screens, and I had to run around just trying to remember where everything was, rather than focus on prioritising my orders. The timers on the orders were too fast for me to properly plan ahead, I basically had to just pick the simplest one at all times. The single button for everything makes things pretty simple, but it's quite difficult to reliably get things to go where you want, so not was only I spending a lot of time just trying to find things, I was also spending time trying to pick things up and struggling. I don't want to be just negative though, because the game has a really great art style, this 2.5D almost paper-crafted in places, and it's super high quality everywhere. There's a whole load of polish on the UI as well, I think this game scores high on a bunch of the voting categories. I just wish I found it fun rather than frustrating. |
| Apr 21 19:39:49 | 20m 29s | Blort's Big Adventure | ♥ 1 | Love the art style, and the personality that you added to the dialogue is nice too. I second the thing about air movement, some games don't let you do it and that adds to the game feel, but here it just felt a bit clunky. Being able to reposition things would probably break some of the puzzles, but being able to undo would be appreciated - for when I accidentally place something I didn't mean to and now have to start over. Neat little puzzle platformer here, great job! π |
| Apr 21 20:01:22 | 21m 33s | Lucky Little Darlings | ♥ 1 | I haven't played a huge number of hidden object games, but the ones I have tended to hide objects in places they didn't belong, but blended in so you had to look carefully to find them. All of the objects in this game looked like they belonged, so it didn't feel much like "hidden object" so much as it did "click on all the objects and hope that some are interactable". I spent a while clicking on a mirror because I knew I needed one, only to find out I should've been clicking on a *different* mirror. Outside of that though, this was a cute game which clearly had a lot of love put into it - which has a ton of personality to it π |
| Apr 23 20:40:36 | 48h 39m | Summongrel | ♥ 1 | Really fun little puzzle platformer, I'm so used to these being 2D that I was struggling to work out if this counted π Impressive amount of content, and not too many mechanics either, so you get to explore the different ways they can hinder/help you. I do wish it were possible to respawn the dog if you fell off, instead of needing to re-place all the platforms - especially if I already knew they were in the right place, but that's a minor gripe, I enjoyed this one a lot! |
| Apr 23 20:53:41 | 13m 05s | DUSK | ♥ 3 | This game is really sweet - the combination of the hand drawn animals, the emotive yet subtle background music, and just generally chill vibe - it makes a really nice experience. The character jump feels a bit too heavy for me, they accelerate *really* fast downwards, but other than that I had a really nice time with this one π |
| Apr 23 21:05:30 | 11m 49s | The Unsummoning | ♥ 3 | > Will you be able to reach the Demon lord ? Well I made two attempts and didn't manage to reach them, so I guess the answer is no π Really nice art style, and the mix of fast moving easy words and slower moving complex words makes for some nice balance. I think the demon lord was talking, but I have absolutely no way of knowing because I was fully concentrating on the words I needed to type. |
| Apr 25 18:32:57 | 45h 27m | Demon Doodles | ♥ 2 | This was fun! I got 100% on level 2, and I wasn't quite sure I deserved it, so then I spent a while trying to work out if I could exploit the scoring system, but it didn't work π The artwork is really nice, and the game feel is very good, I think the only addition I'd really like is a button to start the game, because I didn't realise I was playing the second the game loaded. Great job with this one! |
| Apr 25 18:50:40 | 17m 43s | Conjurer's Game | ♥ 1 | A lot of polish here, and also just generally a really well designed game that doesn't feel like anything is missing. I was fairly sure I was going to lose by a single point because I was down to my last two cards, then somehow managed to end up one point up - what a rush π |
| Apr 27 14:16:31 | 43h 25m | Summone 2 Luv | ♥ 0 | Took me a while to work out why things brooding kept appearing, and also wasn't clear that I was supposed to date one person until the heart was full rather completing one date with every person. Although this was mostly due to a glitch where I tried to click on a person for a second date and the whole game stopped working π Once I got the hang of it though, I managed to work out a few strategies to be successful, making sure I saved my Discard for the right time, and sometimes tactically used negative cards to make sure the hand I was discarding contained as many of my negative deck as possible. The biggest thing I think this game needed was some music, just something inoffensive that might play in a cafe, because the silence didn't really fit with the rest of the vibe of the game. But that's mostly just polish, so otherwise you did a great job with this! |
| Apr 27 14:31:34 | 15m 03s | High-Bird 2: The Summoning | ♥ 0 | I love the aesthetic of this, and the whole vibe is really nice and chill. Unfortunately, I think the way procedural generation has been used here has only contributed negatively, making an endless world where you can walk for five minutes and everything around looks exactly as it did when you started. Procedural generation is at its best when it can provide variety, but here it's just infinite amounts of sameness. That doesn't make an enjoyable experience to walk around in, and I couldn't tell while following the breadcrumbs if I was following them forwards or backwards, so had to give up eventually. I think this art style and even the gameplay, would work a lot better with a handcrafted world. Even if there was just a single level, it would be better than having multiple that felt like they had no-one hand crafting it to be an interesting experience. |
| Apr 27 16:19:39 | 1h 48m | TAKE ME HOME | ♥ 3 | I appreciate with this game that there are no gotcha's - like it's not trying to trick you into thinking something might not be sick, or not be a mutant, it's just up to you to pay enough attention. I did at first send away the horse because I thought it looked sick, but I guess that's just how it looks π I also really love how you managed to build these animals in a modular way where you can fit giraffe legs on a turtle and it still animated properly. The turtle did appear to be making the noise it makes when it's getting a little too friendly with a shoe, which made me laugh. On the final two levels, even though I didn't make any mistakes, the level ended before I got the full score. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not? |
| Apr 27 16:34:36 | 14m 57s | Kobold Pet Shop | ♥ 1 | Super cute game, with a pretty original premise as well! The completionist in me really wanted to be able to get a perfect score, but I guess that's more a me problem than anything else π |
