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Feedback comments for LD55
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Koolruz's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 16 01:51:52 | Ghostdusters | ♥ 4 | I had a very hard time figuring out how to summon ghost helpers (at first, I thought the bad ghosts were my helpers, and were very unresponsive to input) - It might be worth mentioning in the description that you need to be in a specific room to summon them (and that they're dismissed if you send them back to that room) Otherwise, this was pretty cool! My run unfortunately ended with me getting stuck in the summoning state - It looks like if you hit space as you're leaving the summoning room, you get stuck singing for no one 💔 | |
| Apr 16 02:03:06 | 11m 14s | Out of Chalk | ♥ 2 | Really interesting concept - I've never played anything like this before! I absolutely loved the art and music - Whatever instrumentation you were using for the high notes really gave me gameboy Zelda vibes which I was totally digging, and the art style was great! |
| Apr 16 02:08:18 | 5m 12s | Bowl n' Bawls | ♥ 2 | I got a good laugh from the peek behind the scenes in the back room :) Thanks for sharing! |
| Apr 16 02:34:28 | 26m 10s | Summonware | ♥ 3 | The graphics were incredible, and I loved the little winking nod towards WarioWare in the "Bow" microgame. In fact, the humor in general had me chuckling throughout (the scroll of cool S, legally-distinct Sans, etc)! My one complaint was that the instructions for each game were pretty unclear - I eventually noticed that there was a window in the upper right explaining what to do, but I missed the snappy summations that WarioWare would generally give - When you're context switching so quickly, having a quick prompt really helps get your brain in gear to understand what it's looking at. Despite how great the graphics were, I had to play several of the games multiple times before realizing what was happening, because they were over too soon! Overall though, such a cool and highly polished entry! :) |
| Apr 16 02:47:11 | 12m 43s | Dicey Demons | ♥ 6 | This is absolutely my jam, and I will be playing this for the rest of the night (or until I have beaten it) - The creature art is great, and I love the chill vibes. I can see exactly what y'all were going for here, and I think the world has room for another dice-based roguelike. I was pleasantly surprised how differently this plays from Dicey Dungeons, based on the name - It's really its own thing! In terms of constructive feedback, I'm not sure that the mixed media between hand drawn and 3D graphics quite works - I love the hand drawn graphics, but the 3D models don't feel like they fit alongside them. I get that it was probably an efficiency thing for the jam though! :) Overall, great job - I'm going to go back to saving for another Hugh Bun-Gus Edit: The more that I play, the one piece of gameplay-related piece of feedback that I have is that it doesn't currently feel like your lineup's order matters right now. Because your back line only attacks after the front line dies, adding something like a sheep to the front of your line doesn't actually tank for your weaker monsters - They still only get one attack in before they're killed. |
| Apr 16 03:00:16 | 13m 05s | Summon Deeds Done Dirt Cheap | ♥ 3 | It looks like there's an issue with how you're serving the web build - I'm getting an error and extremely slow (or stalled) load times Capture.PNG |
| Apr 16 03:01:07 | 51s | Call The Right One | ♥ 1 | FYI - Your game is currently password protected on itch, so I couldn't check it out! |
| Apr 16 03:08:12 | 7m 05s | Elemental Path | ♥ 1 | Made it through to the end! :) I didn't *quite* understand what the highlighting on the floor meant (and I ran into some weird issues in the final puzzle where I kept moving the opposite direction that I expected when casting a spell to move right), but overall I had a good time with the game! |
| Apr 16 03:55:42 | 47m 30s | Sick of Summoning | ♥ 1 | For a couple hours of work on a Monday, this turned out really well! I love the super chunky lofi artstyle that Pico-8 games lend themselves to, and you've done a really good job keeping everything really readable and appealing! It's not easy when you're working with so few colors and pixels! |
| Apr 16 20:52:58 | 16h 57m | The Ballet | ♥ 1 | This was a really cool sokoban variant! At first, I was breezing through the levels, until I got utterly stuck here - I spent a good ten minutes or so, and could not crack that nut. Very engaging, though! :) Capture.PNG |
| Apr 16 21:07:43 | 14m 45s | Lexicon | ♥ 1 | I also solved several missions, but couldn't really figure out how to control my progress. I think I understood what the missions were asking me to do, and I was able to carry them out by applying names to things, but at a certain point I felt as though I must have been missing something, because I would spend quite a bit of time waiting for the character AI to randomly move towards the correctly named objects to solve a mission. I would have expected that naming an object changed the AI's behavior, but that wasn't my experience. For example, when I had to feed the wolf, I quickly understood that I needed to name the humans and turn them into donuts, but after doing so, it took a minute or two for the wolf and humans to randomly run into each other - There didn't seem to be anything else I could do but wait It's definitely a really cool concept, I think there might just need to be a little bit more of a tutorial for the player to help them onboard and understand both the AI of the different characters, and understand what they're able to do to influence the world. I felt a little bit thrown into the deep end when nine characters were running around my screen within seconds of starting things up 😅 Overall though, I really liked the idea! |
| Apr 16 21:26:57 | 19m 14s | summon that star manz | ♥ 2 | I don't fully understand what I experienced, but I summoned that star, manz! Twice! :) |
| Apr 16 21:37:52 | 10m 55s | Dungeon of the Bone Summoner | ♥ 1 | By far the worst crime that these heroes committed was trampling my poor skele and destroying the mushroom that he was carrying >:( I am absolutely awful at anything resembling an RTS, so unfortunately I can't give much feedback on the gameplay loop itself 😅 |
| Apr 16 21:47:45 | 9m 53s | The Summoner's Trial | ♥ 2 | Really liked the summon mechanic - It reminded me of old DS games that would use the touch screen in interesting ways as part of the gameplay! I did have a really hard time reading the UI of the summoning mechanic at first - Even though the dot that you currently needed to move towards had a big glowing red circle around it, my eyes kept landing on the other marker which showed where you were needed to go *after* the current dot. I'm not sure why my brain kept skipping over the big glowing red icon (and it is probably a *me* problem,, rather than a UI problem), but I figured I'd pass along the feedback - It might have been a little bit clearer to only indicate which dot the player immediately needed to mouse over. Overall though, nice job! :) |
| Apr 16 21:59:33 | 11m 48s | Druid's revenge | ♥ 1 | I really liked the gameplay here! My only real complaint is that I wish that I could have retried from the level that I lost at, instead of starting over when I died - I got stuck on the fight with the two enemies on the left, and an armored knight on the right, and it was a pain playing back through the entire game to retry. I ended up not being able to finish the game because of that, after my third death :( Overall though, I thought this was a really cool idea and I could see the mechanics being really fun in a deckbuilder type of game, if you were going to explore it further! It hit that sweet spot between having enough complexity to keep me engaged, but not being so complex that I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. Well done! :) |
| Apr 16 22:12:54 | 13m 21s | Hell's Helper | ♥ 1 | I don't know if this was a me problem, but I had a really hard time with the controls - Having active combat skills that required me to move my fingers off of WASD in order to use them was a struggle. I actually had to stop playing because the constant movement from W to 1 and back started cramping up my hand before the end of the game. The controls would have been a lot friendlier if they had been spaced out with one hand controlling movement, and one hand activating abilities. Other than that, it was a cool game! I really liked the way that you had implemented leveling up, where you really wanted to do well at each mission so that you could get a large boost every time! :) |
| Apr 17 03:23:35 | 5h 10m | SummonInn | ♥ 1 | This game was *really* good - I would gladly pay for a full roguelike version of this. If you do expand on the game, one thing that I was really pining for while I played was an ability to see the other faces on the dice I was rerolling - There would be times where I would have two dice which rolled the same attack, and I wasn't sure which die would potentially give me a new ability that I needed if I rerolled it, and which one I should keep I also either didn't fully understand how the charm ability worked - I would see the hourglass and expect an enemy to skip their turn, but I think it was a holdover from the previous turn? It's a minor UI quibble, but it definitely confused me! Overall though, this game was awesome - I saw someone streaming it, and I had to go try it out because it looked so cool. Amazing job! Edit: I died on the final boss before leaving the above review, so I have a bit more feedback after replaying the game. There was a strange friction with the way the dice rewards worked - After a few fights, I stopped caring about rewards, because I had a setup that worked well for me, and because of the way the cost system worked, I wouldn't be able to fit any new faces onto my dice - There was no real path towards upgrading any of my dice after I had spent all 20/20 points for each of them; even if I got a better face, I wouldn't have the spare room to place it anywhere without taking apart my entire build I also ran into one unfortunate game-breaking bug on my second play through. The game got stuck with an empty table after one of the fights, and didn't progress any further. During the previous fight, I had also ran into a weird freeze after rolling my dice - Two of the dice were resting against one another and the game didn't seem to register that they had finished rolling, but I clicked and dragged one of them and everything jumped back into place. Either way, everything still stands - This was an amazing game, great job with it! :) |
| Apr 17 04:07:34 | 43m 59s | Make New Friends | ♥ 1 | Very sweet game! At first I was trying to play this like a rhythm game - It took me awhile to realize that this was actually a reflex game where you wanted to press the button as soon as you saw a shape coming towards you! Once I realized that, I feel like the game got a whole lot harder (in a fun way) My only real complaint was that I had such a hard time remembering which shape/color corresponded to which arrow key - I would have definitely preferred if there was some sort of visual cue for which direction to press, because I apparently have the memory of a goldfish and had to keep looking down at the key in the corner 😅 I think this is in fact what the kids call a "skill issue" though - The game was just emphasizing a skill that I don't have! Overall, really good job! I had a lot of fun! |
| Apr 17 14:47:28 | 10h 39m | TNT Summoning Master!!!!! | ♥ 2 | Capture.PNG This was a really cool game! It was engaging enough that I actually played through it three times in a row to figure out exactly how I felt about it, which is always a good sign! :) I thought the graphics were super clean and appealing (I especially loved the distortion you applied as time slowed down and you summoned TNT), and the gameplay felt really satisfying when it went well. My only real critique is that the dropoff for TNT's explosion felt really chaotic - It felt like if I were one or two pixels away from where I was on a previous attempt, I would get a vastly different outcome. Combined with the delay on summoning TNT and how sensitive the spike hitboxes were, some of the later levels became more about trial and error of the same idea again and again, rather than figuring out the puzzle, which was a shame. Because of how little direct control you have over the player's movement, I think it would have felt a lot smoother if the spike hitboxes were shrunk down slightly - As it was, I would often die without even perceiving that my character had touched a spike. I loved the quick resets, but a (skippable) death animation would also have gone a long way towards making deaths feel more impactful/obvious when they happened. Overall though, this was *really* cool, and I would have never thought this was a first time entry if I hadn't seen your comment above! Please don't take the above nitpicks as anything but nit-picking to give you some constructive feedback! Great job making something so polished, engaging, and fun! |
| Apr 18 17:37:17 | 26h 49m | A Following Wind | ♥ 2 | I absolutely loved the music on this! I agree with BadPiggy that I kept *feeling* like I should spam the wind, even though I knew that I didn't have to do so, because of the way that the ships would slowly turn to meet it. Your suggestion of having the sails meet the wind first, then slowly turn the body of the ship to match sounds like it would be a perfect way to give the player more direct feedback as they blew the ships around :) I ended up playing this way longer than I normally play score chase games because the vibe was just really enjoyable! I did eventually stop before I died, because it felt like I got into a sustainable rhythm and was gaining more faith than I was losing on average, but it's a game jam and figuring out the exact balance for endless games is really hard to do in 48 hours :) Overall, it was very enjoyable, and an awesome first time entry! |
| Apr 18 18:08:24 | 31m 07s | Boiled Hell | ♥ 2 | This was really fun - It felt really cool to have half the spells memorized, and to flip my glance back and forth from the summoning circle to the spellbook and back for quick references of ingredients that I didn't see very often/hadn't fully memorized yet The art and sound is also great! The sprite art is executed extremely well, and I love that you're presenting everything with a consistent pixel size, and nearest neighbor scaling so it all looks crisp and consistent! My only suggestion here is absolutely a nitpick, but I think it makes a big difference in pixel art presentation - If you make sure that you're using integer scaling of your sprite art (eg: scale up to 2x size, 3x size, 4x size, etc, but not 1.5x size), you can get rid of the shimmering effect where sprites gain or lose an extra row of pixels as they move around. It looks like you might currently be scaling things up by a non-whole number of pixels, which means the nearest-neighbor interpolation occasionally has to double up the height/thickness of certain rows of pixels. You can see what I mean in this screenshot, where the two "l"s in "willingly" are different widths: pixel-scale.PNG Hopefully that makes sense, but I am happy to try to give a better explanation of what I mean if not 😅 Like I said, this is a total nitpick, but it's one of those things that can add an extra layer of polish to already amazing sprite work Like I said, the gameplay was a lot of fun! My only nitpick there was that the recipe would occasionally change while an ingredient was falling into the pot, which felt pretty rough. I also didn't notice the timer to the bottom right of the cauldron at all for my first several playthroughs - It might be clearer to the player that they're on a timer if you move the timer towards the recipe, so that all of the information that they need is available in one glance :) But really, those are nitpicks, and I'm only writing them up because the game was fun and engaging enough that I was able to develop opinions about the most minor things :) Great job! |
| Apr 19 22:31:01 | 28h 22m | My Little Demons | ♥ 2 | Thanks for submitting your game to my stream! I had a bunch of fun playing it, even if I didn't solve the last puzzle correctly ;) Like everyone else, I absolutely loved the sound effects that the summons made. They were *so* good |
| Apr 19 22:36:48 | 5m 47s | Ancestor Rain | ♥ 4 | Thanks for submitting your game to the stream! I had a bunch of fun, and I was shocked that I only had to retry the last level once! I loved the "wrong summon" ending, and the music was great - Overall, really well made entry! |
| Apr 19 22:43:35 | 6m 47s | Summoning Guidebook | ♥ 1 | Thanks for submitting your game to the stream! Like I said on stream, I had a lot of fun solving the puzzles once I figured out the mechanics (and I totally should have read the screenshots to figure them out sooner 😅). My main feedback was something that you already knew (based on the description) - It can get a bit grindy to gather the resources that you need to solve the puzzles, and it would have been nice to reduce the time between the eureka moment when you solve the puzzle, and the actual implementation of the solution. You had some good ideas for how to reduce that friction in later builds though! Overall, this was a cool entry with a really unique idea main mechanic, and just needs some extra quality of life polish to make it more approachable - *Really* great job for a first time jam game 😊 |
| Apr 19 22:45:31 | 1m 56s | Harod: The Eternal Summoning | ♥ 2 | Thanks for submitting your game to the stream! I had a lot of fun discovering the various endings 😊 It was very satisfying to turn around and get the good ending after being summoned back and forth a couple times. |
| Apr 19 22:47:54 | 2m 23s | PolyMancer | ♥ 1 | Absolutely loved this game - Thanks for submitting it to the stream! I had such a hard time talking and playing, but it was incredible |
| Apr 22 19:52:03 | 69h 04m | Illegal Summonings | ♥ 1 | I thought this was really cool! That second scene was set incredibly well - It told a very tense story about what was happening in the battle, and the music perfectly reinforced that. I only really have a couple pieces of constructive feedback, which hopefully don't take away from how cool I thought the game was! For the second puzzle, as much as I thought the scene setting was amazing, the actual solution felt like a let down because it didn't involve investigating the cool scene - It was dissatisfying that the answer ended up being to ignore the battle and instead look behind a rock to notice the ghost. It would have been a lot more fun if the rules were less about whether or not you spotted a critical piece of information, and more about whether or not you understood the story being told by the diorama. As an example, instead of the rule being, "No Ghosts", it could be, "You must be the last member of your adventuring party left standing" - Suddenly the player would need to understand what was happening in the fight, instead of simply looking for certain objects against a cool-looking backdrop. My only other feedback is that it's important to add a sensitivity slider for the player's turning speed when making an FPS, because of how different each person's setup can be. With my mouse settings, moving my mouse about 2.5cm would cause me to do a complete 180, which made exploring each scene more difficult than necessary. Overall though, I thought this was really good, and the only reason that I have so many opinions to offer is because the game drew me in enough to make me care about it! It was really innovative, really interesting, and really well put together, and it is especially impressive as a first time jam game! Great job! |
