Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Feedback comment stats → Lachlan James

Lachlan James

Feedback comments for LD55

Lachlan James's games and stats for all events →

Timestamp	Since previous	Game		Lachlan James's comment
Apr 16 05:05:14		Glyph Tower	♥ 3	This was unreal. Would love to have been a fly on a wall for the development of this - I can't believe how complete this feels. Best I've played so far. My only feedback would be for the game to start a tiny bit slower to give the new player time to get a grip on things before the pressure is on. But this is amazing.
Apr 16 05:10:55	5m 41s	Metal Harvest	♥ 3	So keen to check this out - just only able to play web stuff at the moment. Saved for later!
Apr 17 04:33:04	23h 22m	Billy's Bargain	♥ 2	Beautiful art! Really thorough and complete looking for a 3 day jam. Puzzles were nice and challening. I accidentally skipped to a level at the start thinking the numbers were maybe for pages on a tutorial screen. Might be good to group the SKIP text closer to the numbers. I love the dynamic movement in the OST. Not sure if the drum layer was meant to kick in at level 3, but it happened for me and it was cool as. Would love a little more variation in sound design (say a few different goblin spawn sounds) just to keep the sounds from feeling too spammy. Overall, loved it. Great work! We actually did something really similar (Helldivers/DDR-like summoning sequences) if you'd like to have a look at ours via my profile.
Apr 17 04:45:53	12m 49s	Summoning Ritual	♥ 1	Aww. I loved this. The little scenes were inspired between the levels. Animation and art were great, platforming was solid. A few little sounds for character movement would have gone a long way into making the movement feel tactile. Parallax stuff was really well done. I don't always finish LD games - but the little story progression was beautiful and inspired me to finish it. Great work - can really tell this was made with love :)
Apr 17 04:52:47	6m 54s	Raging Hell	♥ 1	This was solid! I had a bit of performance trouble on web, but nothing game breaking. It wasn't 100% sure about what each of the units did, but everything felt pretty smooth and chunky. As said above, maybe a little more immediacy in the waves arriving would have been great - but in general, great achievement for a jam. Good stuff!
Apr 17 05:03:59	11m 12s	Amareica	♥ 2	My friends. What the hell. This is easily the most mystified I've been by a LD Jam gam. And I mean that in the best way possible. It feels like if the Cruelty Squad devs did a crossover DLC with Sportsbet. And I'm totally here for it. I have NO IDEA what is going on here, but I loved the whole thing. Or what I saw of it. One of the few things I've seen on here that I'm inspired to return to to try and figure out more about. The racing sequences were so wonderfully weird, both audio/visuals, and the interface was eerily opaque (the lips and eyes?? what???) I'm a fan. Go make more games please, I'll buy them and concern my friends and family by playing them.
Apr 17 08:02:33	2h 58m	The Summoning of IN-SI-LA	♥ 5	Killer stuff!! Only had time for one playthrough, but I was really impressed with how dynamic it clearly was, with potential dialogues being cut off by my choices many times over and leaving me curious to come back and see what I'd missed. As other have said - really cohesive too - art, text, sound and narrative all really fit together beautifully. Definitely the product of a team with a singular vision. Well done to all involved.
Apr 17 08:15:33	13m 00s	Entity Summoner	♥ 1	This was cool - surprisingly addictive once you start to see the logic of the summons and so on. I loved the loop of being rewarded with a funny new 3D model once getting a successful summon. I had some issues from time to time with dropping things in the cauldron. I feel like a bit of music (even if you just grabbed something and credited it) could have helped a little with the overall personality of the thing. But all around, great job - fun concept and executed with style.
Apr 18 02:14:46	17h 59m	Get Away Your Pitchforks from My Oak!	♥ 5	Hey, cool entry! I loved the art - really consistent aesthetic and lovely little animations. It's great you guys managed to get a bit of a difficulty curve in there to make for a play experience that built up slowly - was exciting seeing what new summon I was going to get next! Gameplay felt nicely balanced and built up in difficulty at a healthy rate. The OST was great - I loved the menu theme in particular. One of the great tragedies of making music for game jams is lovingly crafting a menu theme that the average player will spend about 10 seconds listening to - but I let it loop and I loved it :') I loved the combination of classical sounds and electronic percussion throughout - good stuff @wandering-composer ! Some constructive criticism - * A few more SFX would have been great (just some combat sounds etc, a couple of hits) * I admit when I booted it up I didn't actually know what to do at first - didn't notice the (admittedly obvious) summoning menu popout until I closed the game and looked at the GIF there. Probably my fault * Would love to see even more variation in the summons - I liked that the first one was stationary, which made it appealing to use as a counterpoint with my other ones. Other than that (as far as I got) it seemed just about mana vs power after that - so some more specific behaviours would be amazing! Well done guys, super solid entry.
Apr 18 09:09:45	6h 54m	The Summoners	♥ 1	Hey, well done, especially for a solo! Very ambitious stuff setting out to make something this mechanically complex, and it seems you've executed it really well. Fights felt pretty balanced and challenging, progression was solid, and I had to make genuine strategic decisions - more than could be said for most jam games, where balance is a nightmare. Hope to see you make more stuff like this in the future.
Apr 22 05:36:55	92h 27m	Summonpalooza	♥ 1	Great stuff! There's a really impressive amount of art in this game, and it's all got a wonderfully consistent style. Mechanics are interesting and make you think strategically, and the music is a great vibe for the setting. Well done all.
Apr 22 05:44:18	7m 23s	Untitled Witch Game	♥ 2	Hey, this all felt really tight. Nice concerted vision re: sound design, visuals, music and gameplay. Loved the weapon randomisation and changes between camera angles. Was awesome that all the different weapons had SFX to match - really sold it. Controls felt tight and gameplay stepped up in challenge in a satisfying way. Nice entry!
Apr 25 04:39:51	70h 55m	DESTROY THE WIZARD	♥ 1	Hey, this was COOLLLLLLLL (see what I did there?) Very simple assets (both sfx/visual) but super readable and tight to play. Not sure if there was meant to be music after the menu loop, but it disappeared for me. Difficulty escalation felt fair and rewarding. I got a bit excited about my bow and lost all my arrows and bombs but that's probably on me. Loved the leap animation effect with the berserker(?) enemy type. All in all, solid as. Constructive criticism: Not sure about the summoning link, really (I get that there was a wizard and he may me have been summoning the enemies...???) Feels like maybe it could have been made for any jam.
Apr 25 04:52:43	12m 52s	Hell's Company	♥ 1	Yo! Neat response to the theme, I think. I like what I can figure out about the game world it's set in, but something a little more prescriptive about what's going on might help sell the thing a bit more. Why am I summoning...? Is my boss the devil? Why doesn't he like me summoning? It's definitely a cool setup, but I just needed a little more info for it to land for me. I like how dynamic the job requests were, the boss added nice pressure (though I agree with comments about about the spacebar thing), and visuals were solid. Audio was solid too. Overall I liked it, but would love to see what it could turn into with a little more time in the oven.
Apr 25 05:03:00	10m 17s	rotator	♥ 0	Thank you for opting out of ratings - from your comment about wanting rock/paper/scissors to win, I am guessing that you started on this early and just committed to it regardless. And isn't that one of the greatest things about this community; to still get a chance to have you game up there and have some feedback and dialogue about it! I was a little confused about the mechanics/actual 'game' at the centre of it, but the art is undeniably great - really consistent aesthetic and overall, quite a vibe.
May 3 01:29:58	188h 26m	Demanager	♥ 3	Hey, I really liked this! I didn't initially think that the mechanics you'd set up would have had as much staying power as they did, but the variation kept it interesting and the actual gameplay loop was satisfying. Art style, music, sound, aesthetic, all awesome. Loved the clock-eyes - nice touch. It's a minor gripe, but the scrolling text at the start was a big issue for me as a player - as someone who reads quickly and has pretty spicy ADHD, having a 'tap to finish sentence' button is VITAL. I didn't want to press the 'skip' button because I imagined it would skip to the next sentence - but I actually missed most of the tutorial because it was going too slow for me to read it... if that makes sense. Hopefully this is useful feedback! Obviously not a big deal for a jam game, but for a retail release I'd have lost my mind.
May 3 01:43:32	13m 34s	Dominion	♥ 1	This was really tight! Lucky this one got streamed and picked up some extra ratings - be sure to play and rate in future jams to qualify. You've done a great job here, it's super complete. Everything was really clean.
May 3 01:51:32	8m 00s	Asmodeus Web Summons	♥ 0	This was wild. I liked the art a lot. I had a good laugh at the slapdash 'NO :(' and the game just closing to desktop on victory. Fun submission, good luck for future jams!
May 3 01:56:53	5m 21s	Crimes Against Carrots	♥ 0	Hits the mark with its nice graphics that catch your eye right from the start. The sound design is good, even though you opted out of audio - good choices add impact to the gameplay. While the mechanics may be simple, they're effective, making for smooth and enjoyable gameplay. Overall, it's a solid entry that impressively utilizes the timeframe given. Great job!
May 3 02:05:38	8m 45s	Invocation: Valdis	♥ 0	Pretty straightforward ride, keeping it simple from start to finish. Kudos for your first jam; hopefully more to come! Though, gotta say, the difficulty ramps up real quick. Feels like you're diving into the deep end right off the bat. Visually, it's simple but gets the job done nicely. Overall, good hustle! Good on you for opting out of categories you didn't create (e.g. audio)
May 3 02:16:04	10m 26s	FERRYMAN	♥ 0	Seems like there were some hiccups with the embedded HTML5. Not sure if it was just a glitch on my end, but the audio didn't seem to kick in for me. Art was a real standout, especially digging the idle animation and others. Text boxes wer sticking around longer than expected, which threw me off a bit. Overall, solid effort!
May 3 02:22:59	6m 55s	He Who Sleeps	♥ 1	The art style was refreshingly simple, and the palette choice really hit the spot. Props on the ambient sound design; it really set the mood just right. Plus, there was this cool sense of scale that added depth to the experience - loved the camera shift on the first climb out of the cave. I appreciated how the mechanics were gradually introduced with more sheep, keeping things interesting. And let's not forget about that sound design—had me chuckling more than a few times... loved the sheep sound. Overall, a pretty enjoyable ride.
May 3 02:32:39	9m 40s	Death kingdom	♥ 0	The parallax effect was a nice touch, adding some depth to the visuals. But hey, where'd the audio go? Seemed like it was missing in action. Definitely caught some Kingdom game vibes in there (in the name too), which is cool for a jam. Liked the day/night cycle. I noticed some AI acting a bit wonky at times. But hey, bumps in the road happen. Overall, solid entry!
May 3 02:50:30	17m 51s	Phasmophile	♥ 1	Super immersive! Props for pulling off the 3D aspect within the jam's timeframe; that's no small feat. Clever spin on Phasmophobia with the title and gameplay.
May 3 03:26:19	35m 49s	Infernal Ascension	♥ 1	The physics in this one felt spot-on. Music was seriously solid stuff for a compo entry. Loved how simple shapes were used to build such an immersive atmosphere. You did a lot with a relatively small asset list, great work for compo. Plus, the animations and art? Top-notch, especially how they interacted with the physics. Dual control scheme was really well implemented. Everything felt really juicy and tight all round. Overall, a real standout! Really, really good entry.
May 3 03:47:10	20m 51s	Heartless Forever	♥ 1	Wow, this was tight man! Really satisfying loop - loved the progression through biomes and the different 'soul powers' that came with it. Art was awesome, as was music - loved it. Not sure if it was rendering issues or what, but were the undead enemies meant to be coming out of matte black squares...? Also - loved the atmospheric start with the vignette. Really nice touch to set the mood.