Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Feedback comment stats → monika

monika

Feedback comments for LD55

← LD51

monika's games and stats for all events →

TimestampSince previousGamemonika's comment
Apr 16 06:54:12 A Wizard's Spring Hike ♥ 1 I love Sokobans and this is a beautiful and innovative addition to the genre. Congratulations on such a strong first-ever jam entry! The summoning mechanic to switch characters reminds me of early Keke levels in Baba is You. One thing I would love to see added is a level counter up by the level name. I know there are 19 levels, but what level am I on? (I'm on the garden maze level and plan to come back to it after I've slept off the LDjam brain.) Perhaps you can post a text list in the description since it's too late to add it to the game? Great work!
Apr 16 22:47:38 15h 53m The Acolyte's Handbook ♥ 2 Scored 4280 This is cute. I could see it being a fun memory game with more polish and pressure. The art is nice and it mostly feels good to play. The chanting is very satisfying. Notes: 1. Text is very dark and low contrast. It was hard to see things. 2. I would have liked to be able to turn the pages with the keyboard. Don't know if I missed it or if it isn't there.
Apr 17 00:36:10 1h 48m NecroBit ♥ 3 Absolutely beautiful 1-bit art! Game plays smoothly, looks good, feels responsive, and has nice little details like seeing a much later chest behind a wall when you walk by it early on. Only feedback - if you are watching the corner arrows when you are summoning, there is no visual difference between correctly finishing a summon and messing up the last step of a summon, and you have to look or listen elsewhere for confirmation. Holding on the last arrow or doing a little visual flourish up in the corner might be more reassuring. Good work!
Apr 17 02:00:46 1h 24m CHAZM ♥ 2 My favorite art of the jam so far, a lot of strong personality in the sprites! Game generally plays well though I wish it were possible to angle the shot, not just choose where it's coming from. One game-breaking but probably rare bug - Shatter Bogey can potentially get stuck in infinite bounce patterns, so might want to add a timer to him. infinitebounce.PNG He's been at this for like 20 minutes now. Great work!
Apr 17 04:45:33 2h 44m WALLS THAT TALK ♥ 2 The 4:3 aspect ratio chefskiss.jpg I stopped before the end because I was getting a bit of motion sickness (which I get from a lot of very normal 3D games, so I don't think it's a problem with your game) so I'm wondering if you have any videos or streams that you know beat it so I can see where it goes. Thanks!
Apr 17 20:23:40 15h 38m Call Of The Kraken for Playdate ♥ 2 Another PlayDate game! Can I add you to my list of uncommon hardware games to make it easier for people to find you? (edit: Not sure when you'll see this so I'll add you and if you wish to be removed, let me know.) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/i-am-a-wizard-and-my-shoulder-hurts/uncommon-hardware-unusual-setup-games-list Also I know this isn't Pulp so you can't use the Pulp webplayer, but you might want to include instructions on getting the emulator from the PlayDate Website so people without a PlayDate can try it. ------------------ Looks great on device. 1 bit is hard to work with but things are mostly clear and all look good. IMG_20240417_133525416.jpg One question I had about the art - when I hit ships, they seem to change sprites, but not to damaged versions of the same ships, but to smaller different ships. Were these intended to be the same ship? Was this just a time crunch problem? Not entirely clear how much I am supposed to crank. Cranking constantly wasn't ergonomic so I tried cranking just under ships. The whirlpool graphic seems to speed up when I crank. Is it possible to crank it up and then chase ships without cranking?
Apr 17 21:49:13 1h 25m Tiny Summons ♥ 1 Fantastic! Is it possible to add the user names who have joined each team directly to the game screen? (And remove them when they leave the stream?) I found it hard to keep track of how many people were on which side. I'm also starting up a list of games with weird setups that I'll post to the main feed every few days. The comment system gets mad if I post the link in comments so I won't, but do you mind if I add you to it?
Apr 18 00:03:40 2h 14m C.R.T. - Companion Recall Technology ♥ 4 Love the graphics and the color palette! I found the controls a bit finicky (and my platforming skills are a bit rusty), so thank you very much for including the video walkthrough so I could see what needed to be done and watch the parts after I gave up :) I thought for a bit the web version didn't work because it says "press any key" and several keys weren't doing anything. Space worked. Might want to mention that (or fix it)?
Apr 18 00:39:15 35m 35s Death Beckons ♥ 2 I like the idea of the story, but there are some problems with the platforming. The window to climb a tree limb is very small so you basically have to mash the jump button and hope it catches. The tree to get on top of the first hill (before the witche's house) was frustrating because the first time I tried to land on the hill, I fell through, so I thought the whole thing wasn't solid. Turns out it was, but the visual hill is a lot bigger than the collision box or something. It's also frustrating that you can't get out of the king's room even if you haven't talked to anyone, knowing you will have to do the platforming again. There's a door that doesn't open in the battle field. Am I supposed to talk to someone? Is it bugged? I eventually ran out of places I could go besides climbing up the big trees more, and I have no idea if anything is up there and my hand was starting to hurt, so I gave up. Do you have a walkthrough, or a video of you completing the game? Thanks!
Apr 18 01:19:38 40m 23s Salmoning ♥ 5 Fun! Played enough to get a new hat before I started feeling a bit motion sick (a known me problem) and now I'm *listening* to the sardines game on Ategondev's stream. Might try again in top view in a bit. I don't know if the lack of back face culling was an intentional choice or not, but I don't hate it. Feels right for the game. Love the sprites, love the collectables, love the music. Good work!
Apr 18 06:45:27 5h 25m SUMMONERS WAR ♥ 1 Nice! One thing I would suggest if the controls to spawn things are FGH, it would be easier to play if the controls to pick tools were RTY instead of up and down to cycle through them.
Apr 19 21:02:22 38h 16m Return to the Kingdom of Calories ♥ 2 Really fun! I liked the way the mechanics available grew over time and were tutorialized between levels, with one exception - the "click to hold" mechanic maybe should have gone before the first level to make it feel more fair and more like the player had control over the outcome? I think a bunch of people might fall off after the first level assuming they had to beat it without knowing enough about how it was going to go. Good work!
Apr 20 02:00:12 4h 57m Summonundrum ♥ 1 Fun and engaging, fast enough that it kept me on my toes without feeling unfair. Hitting esc to back out of a selection was a bit unintuitive even though I knew about it, so might I suggest mapping <- / a to cancel if you are already on the leftmost row of enemies? Also 🤘 to the font.
Apr 20 02:57:56 57m 44s Sorcerers Folly ♥ 4 Fun arcade-y experience! Kind of wish it displayed your highest level and score so I could post them, but I got through maybe six of them? Hit box on the portal seemed a little big and it would be frustrating when demons slingshot around the portal and across the screen wrap to escape the portal, but other than that, it generally felt fair. I like the music and the character designs a lot too.
Apr 20 03:19:31 21m 35s Dumb Rock ♥ 2 Amazing art and music, and I love the characterizations of the musicians. I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing wrong in the recording session, especially with the bits that are three keys and a single green timer. Zero points from those buttons, and no feedback on what the issue is. (Just realizing maybe I need to press them together? I don't know. Coming up with ideas to try after I've closed it. Maybe I'll try again.) So that part maybe needs a little more explanation, including having the guy explain it if you mess it up instead of just telling you to play better. But even with my difficulties in the recording section, I can tell there's something really special here, and I would love to see a post-jam version. It's already very polished and close to perfect. Good work! ------ Edit: The thought I had while writing the review about hitting all three buttons was correct, if anyone else didn't get that the first time either.
Apr 20 21:18:14 17h 58m Ars Goetia ♥ 4 Love the graphics, and the music was both funny and fitting. It takes a lot of luck at the start to get a good build going, but after a few attempts, I was able to beat the game. I'd be curious to see the rules for how things stack, because the attack speed powerups didn't appear to keep improving my attack speed.
Apr 21 02:40:39 5h 22m Readybuns ♥ 1 Absolutely love it as the start of a game, and would love to see where you would go with more levels. The honk sound is very satisfying, and the graphics are perfect. Congrats on keeping your streak up :)
Apr 21 18:35:56 15h 55m Doomsday Care ♥ 1 Love it! The pixel art is fantastic. Lost one run because my real cat was demanding attention, and my second run had different starters but a same middle evolution - do you have the full evolution tree somewhere? monster.PNG
Apr 21 21:52:11 3h 16m Purrfect Portal ♥ 2 I was having some problems with the UI that might be a bug but I'm not sure. After I got the field hospital and gardens up, when everything was very crowded, I noticed the witches were not heading to the games, and I had tried dragging them there earlier and that didn't work. I wanted to try to drag them to the piers that were under the games but the games were in the way, so I zoomed in and out a few times and then the games relocated to south of the piers instead of blocking them, and then suddenly I could drag to the witches to the games. Was I supposed to be able to drag witches to the games the entire time? Is there more past the field hospital / garden unlock? Is there something that tells you when the game ends? Thanks! And good work on the game. The graphics are super cute.
Apr 21 22:13:15 21m 04s Evil Wizard Tower Tycoon ♥ 1 I'm a bit confused by the UI on the tower panel. The top number appears to be gold needed to build it for the turn, but it would say "4/6" when I had 25 gold, and there didn't appear to be any other way to assign gold to the tower-building process, just put in the right number of build units to build. Was this a bug? Was I reading it wrong?
Apr 22 01:59:03 3h 45m Last Ritual ♥ 2 Very pretty graphics, and the music is fitting. The idea is good too but it's too much clicking. A built-in autoclicker would be a VERY useful accessibility feature here. The summons were a bit too weak and infrequent so I tried the "souls chance" upgrade and it didn't seem to do anything. I then tried the "just get the damage upgrades" path but still became overwhelmed before the second upgrade, and now I need to rest my wrist. Good work on the general aesthetics and core idea, and I hope you do a balance pass.
Apr 22 18:30:59 16h 31m Bone Train - For Ludum Dare 55 ♥ 1 Simple but really polished for what it is! The background music is such a fun little bop. Difficulty feels right and the projectile bones thing is a nice twist on a classic.
Apr 22 23:20:27 4h 49m Ordinary Wizards Doing Ordinary Things ♥ 1 Very fun! The right click left click thing is a little awkward but the most obvious alternative would be constantly re-clicking on your source, I guess, which would be worse. Maybe hotkeys or a modifier key? I don't know. With more time it might be worth testing a few options, but a game jam is a game jam. The balance is a little weird because only the early game is hard, and then you quickly can afford to buy enough wizards to keep a bunch in the middle to deal with the tower and still assign a bunch to each task. From the last image in your game listing, I can see you know about this :) Graphics are great, music and sound is great, and the game is super fun. Good job!
Apr 24 02:18:00 26h 57m The Basis of All Creations ♥ 1 Beautiful game, impeccable mood, and the final summons gave me a chuckle. Some of the tips from the walkthrough were necessary to get me going and I can kind of see things in the notebook that might have been trying to push me that way like "10? 100?" for the ratio thing. I see where it was going even if it wasn't quite there, and I'm glad there was an external hint system. Good work!
Apr 24 02:55:22 37m 22s Emperor's Gems ♥ 2 The little guys are so cute! At this point in the LD scoring phase, my mousing elbow (not shoulder!) hurts a bit, even with my ergonomic vertical mouse, so I might be recommending this for basically every game, but I would have loved some keyboard controls, even if it was just four keys to summon the little guys and still mouse only for upgrades. Maybe a visual timer on the guys too? I know I lost a lot of assistants right before a crystal and often wasn't able to summon a new one until I had just missed it. Apart from that, it felt good to play and felt fair. Beat it my first try and then lost a few when either my cat was distracting me or I was experimenting with weird builds like prioritizing the top row upgrades too much. Do you know what the fastest possible time is, or the best anyone's gotten? (I'm a bit tempted to start throwing numbers in a spreadsheet but I should probably wait until after the scoring period.)
Apr 24 03:28:33 33m 11s Druid Island ♥ 1 Super cute graphics! I had trouble figuring out the controls at first because it feels like it should be keyboard only, so I didn't think to try clicking on things until I went back to the listing and studied the gifs. I think I also might have appreciated a list of unlocked recipes somewhere, but it also didn't matter much as long as I was summoning something that did something. It was fun that way. Good work!
Apr 25 00:37:41 21h 09m City Frustration Beer ♥ 0 Nice! 5/5 on mood for sure. I found the architecture critic last and kind of wish I had found him sooner so I could look out for what he was talking about. I might go back for it. The camera jumping around sometimes was a little annoying and Unreal kept complaining about memory and performance even though the game was running fine. No major complaints, just a nice chill melancholy game that ends in a fun little party. Love it.
Apr 25 16:12:17 15h 34m inner vacant- ♥ 1 Beautiful artsy little game! I found the scroll wheel controls a little too fickle and prone to overshooting, especially with the bandeau dress rockabilly hair enemy, but I got through it. I would have appreciated arrow keys as an accessibility option / alternate control scheme for people with touchpads or things like that. (But it's a jam game, so no worries.) The artwork is generally fairly readable (with the aligning-the-shield part being a little weaker than the rest but still fine) and the artistic direction and resulting mood was very strong. Good work!
Apr 25 19:14:48 3h 02m The Wizard Wizard ♥ 1 Fun idea and I absolutely love the title. It was hard to tell which wizards were mine and which were attacking me until my guys were dead and the ones attacking me could all get to me. Having the wizards spawn directly underneath me was a little weird too because I couldn't tell if my summon worked unless they immediately ran out to attack someone. Is there an ending? I think I got through like 5 waves that all seemed similar.
Apr 25 20:10:16 55m 28s Cold Case: Consecrated: Consequences ♥ 1 I'll come back to try again later, but is there a way to switch back to the face from the cross? I tried a bunch of keys but didn't find anything.
Apr 25 22:04:13 1h 53m Forest of Madness ♥ 1 The card designs are amazing. Love it. The balance seemed a bit off at first, as with your starter deck you are very unlikely to be able to kill anyone or explore, just trade in for advanced exploration, which helps a bit with exploration but makes killing even harder, and then when you can kill people, they just get replaced and you build up bad cards. But then it dawned on me that the strategy is to leave cultists alone until there's no room for more of them, and just keep exploring. The balance seemed correct after that realization. The game was still hard and still had meaningful decisions to make, but it was beatable. Minor UI quibbles: - The tooltip appearing to the right of the card made it appear that it was for the card to the right of it and there was a cursor alignment problem. Maybe above / below the cards would be better based on their position, and with a little triangle like a speech bubble pointing to the card it's about? - Maybe add something to indicate that max health is 80, so people don't waste heals? - There didn't seem to be any downside to collecting all the cards if you planned to collect any of them, and especially since the cards recenter after every click, a "collect all" button would have been a timesaver. There are subtleties to work out around the cards that draw more cards, but I think you can just add those to the hand and people can click again, and if you expand on it and add cards with penalties, people can manually click instead of using the button. - I didn't know reaching a new level heals you and removes the existing exploration cards, and didn't see that in the instructions, and it would have helped. This is honestly one of my favorite entries this LD, and I would love it as a printable card game too. Good work!
Apr 26 01:42:38 3h 38m STUPID LEGS ♥ 1 :O A Fantastic-Contraption-like! That's fantastic. I love it. Your "known issues" is right that being able to iterate on a design instead of starting over each time would be a big improvement, but apart from that, everything is super tight and polished. The animations and art are super charming and everything feels good. I love this kind of physics-based transportation puzzles, and even within those types of games, this one is a standout, especially for how good it looks.
Apr 26 16:33:27 14h 50m LD 55 - The Great "Sum"-moner! ♥ 1 Quite fun for what it is. I enjoyed it. The font for the numbers was a little hard to read, and the light source was in a weird position, so the shadows for the numbers relative to the actual numbers was wildly different based on their positions on the screen. This made it harder to play but in not a meaningful way (like, for example, more difficult math problems would have been). That kind of stuff can be hard to fix in a jam setting, so it's understandable, but would be something to fix if you go back to it.
Apr 26 20:26:20 3h 52m Summons of the Sovereign ♥ 2 Gorgeous art and the game is quite fun. The AI opponent was tough to beat on the smaller maps but on the larger one, the difficulty felt right. (This might be unintuitive for new players - I know I kind of assumed smaller maps would be easy, and the ordering on the menu didn't help.) I also couldn't see which direction I was placing things if they were behind other things unless I pulled them out to rotate and then put them back, which wasn't too bad but a mild annoyance worth fixing if you polish this up more, I think. The fun voice acting was the icing on the cake. Love it.
Apr 27 03:18:37 6h 52m Some Munnings ♥ 2 Beautiful. I hope my 5/5 on the theme can help balance out the people who didn't get it. In a genre dominated by "funny in a gloomy way" games, this is funny in a really really funny way. The gameplay is snappy and satisfying too, and the loose nature of the scoring text makes the weird rulings sting less :D
Apr 27 03:58:55 40m 18s Summon Tycoon ♥ 1 I liked it! It's a good start and good idea for a fuller game, and the idea that the only way to get gold is to charge your own workers their tips is ~important social commentary~ in a cute little way. Do more portals get you more missions? I had just a few workers but wasn't getting enough missions to keep them paying me for food, and then I tried one more portal and it seemed to work but then the next refresh with like five portals was back to not enough. Not sure it was really bad luck or if it doesn't matter.
Apr 27 04:27:20 28m 25s Would you still love me if I was a worm ❤️🪱? ♥ 3 Fun game! I'm a sucker for locations on an overworld map being represented by short little cylinders but the art is absolutely fantastic. Gameplay is snappy and fun, even if the balance is a little off, and the storyline was funny. I think there's something wrong with the volume controls though?
Apr 27 17:18:21 12h 51m LD55-summoner ♥ 1 Too bad this didn't get finished, because the graphics, character design, and sound design are all amazing. I especially love the weird hissing sound when you move. Collision detection on the narrow corridor was a little too unforgiving, but everything else there is a great start and it left me wanting more.
Apr 27 22:33:57 5h 15m Neon Citadel: Guardians of the Stars ♥ 2 Nice! A little hard at first for reasons you probably know, like it's hard to mentally convert the string of symbols into a pattern on the pentagon, and it wasn't immediately obvious how summons would be placed and then where the best place to place them is. After I took some notes so I didn't have to look at the book, and engaged in cheese tactics by placing all of them in one big lump in front of the city with a lot of harmonics so I was always full of crystals, I was able to beat it pretty easily. So I guess the question is how much you want to discourage cheese tactics and note taking, and how. (I know you already have ideas for how to change the spellbook layout so people won't need notes, so you're already on this.) Possible bug I think I saw when I was taking notes - restarting from the menu after you die might not reset everything correctly? (Edit, yeah, I went back to look at something and all my guys from the last run carried over to the new run.) It's a little hard to visually identify the different units and remember what they do, even when they aren't all in a clump. They're too similar, like they are all blue haired blue football jersey guys? So the character design could use some work for playability. They do look good though. It all generally looks good, just a bit hard to read and it could use some polish for cohesiveness. The song is fun and it's all fun to play. Good work!
Apr 28 01:28:32 2h 54m Summoning Detective ♥ 1 Nice and meditative, good work :) One thing that felt a bit like a layout issue more than anything else is that when you're reading it for the first time, the "how to play" section doesn't make much sense until after you read the "scoring" section, because you have no frame of reference for when you might want to pick specific dice or save some for later and why. The way to play this to get a good score is to understand the scoring and what a good result looks like, and then work through how to get it with the instructions. So while it may seem weird in general to put scoring first and then how to play, it would make sense in this instance. Or maybe add a "goal" section with an in-universe explanation of what a good summon looks like above the instructions, and keep the more straightforward scoring section where it is? Overall, solid work. It took a couple reads to click but that's common with pen and paper games and we are all spoiled by tutorialized video games :) (Sorry for the late comment. I started writing it a few days ago and then got distracted and have way too many tabs open.)
May 2 03:49:52 98h 21m Summoney (VR Only) ♥ 1 I recorded some footage that I need to edit (long chunks of not playing the game, like for changing controllers and stuff), and I stupidly forgot to make sure the microphone was recording too. Oops! I'll get that to you when I can so you can at least watch what I was doing. So first off, everything here has a "but it's a jam game so it's understandable". Everything here is quite an accomplishment for a single weekend, and nothing I'm saying is meant a harsh criticism. ### controllers I tried it first with vive controllers and two problems - first, locomotion. Vive controllers have touchpads instead of joysticks, and lightly brushing against them would send me zooming around the room. (More on locomotion later, this is just why I had to switch controllers.) Second, they don't have an "a" button, so I just gave up on them at this point. You're in good company - Phasmophobia had the exact same problems, which is why I also have index controllers. On index controllers, the biggest issue was that the resting position for my hands was an awkward position to hold the book and wand. But the buttons all worked as intended so I stuck with these. (I also don't have a third set of controllers so it was going to be one of these two.) ### locomotion Bunch of issues here. Joystick to continuous motion is really a bad idea. Teleport is a lot easier on the stomach, which is why it's seen as the best practice default motion for VR. I noticed you did a good job making sure I couldn't walk through walls so I wondered if you might have done smooth motion to avoid problems there. (In a pinch, I would have preferred the teleport option with an honor system for the walls.) If you still want people to physically move through the space, I would suggest a ski pole option like gorn, where you drag yourself through the world by swinging your arms. Might need to make the world smaller. Wall detection was strong and I couldn't break through them even by pausing the game and moving in my actual room. (Putting my headset on the ground would let it clip through the floor, but I didn't see a use for that even if I wanted to cheat.) But it was also a bit too strong, so I couldn't move close enough to gates to look through them, for example. They would push themselves away from me when I tried, which added to the motion sickness. For that, I would recommend vignetting the field of view or even blacking out the screen. I can think of good examples if you want. (Haven't done VR in a few months because I haven't had the space.) There was something weird with the floor, especially in the suspended bridges section, where if I was looking down at my feet, I couldn't step up onto things. I had to look up to step up. Looking down and trying to step onto things would even push me back a bit like trying to look too closely at the wall. I did end up feeling a bit too motion sick by the button / cheese puzzle, so I'm taking a break there to write this and then I'll watch your vid and see if I should go back for more. ### summoning Tracing was a little weird and wouldn't always register. The wall drawings would usually start upside down, which might have just been a controller thing. The biggest issue was the star - do I need to start in the right spot? Because it's rotationally symmetric except for how lopsided it was, and the lopsidedness of the one in the book didn't seem to match the one on the wall, so I would just keep going around until it registered. The others were easier to tell where they started and stopped. The imp also posed some issues. He'd spawn in walls sometimes and the first few times I got him to spawn on the other side of the gate, he would zoom back across the gate towards me and then not be able to cross back. Not sure if it's intended, but what finally worked was him spawning above the cell and then coming down. ### puzzles No real issues except that I had to quit the cheese one before I could solve it. One thing I want to call out as really cool was hitting the spikes respawned me where I could see the target 👍
May 3 04:45:12 24h 55m Out of Chalk ♥ 2 Great art and **funny**! The first puzzle was in a way the hardest because it didn't quite get across how precise you had to be, but after that, they were all the exact correct level of hardness, I'd say, and the mechanics you introduced as it went on were a great ramp-up. (I got a chat hint from you on the last level too which saved me a bit but I think I would have gotten there. Was thrown off by the position in the notebook, which you obviously expected. But maybe a single in-game hint for each level for people who don't have you to chat with? (But jam game, no worries.))
May 3 05:12:54 27m 42s Invocation: Valdis ♥ 0 I like the art style and the direction you were going with it. It would help a lot to see the runes either after you click them or after the round ends so we could see what we did wrong. Good start and hope to see you in future jams!
May 3 06:19:41 1h 06m Asmodeus Web Summons ♥ 0 The art is so good, the "NO :(" is amazing, and what is there works as intended. It may not be a full complete game but what is here is a very promising start. I'll have to check out your other jam entries when the scoring period is over.
May 3 06:43:32 23m 51s The Checkout ♥ 0 Ah, a fellow find-all-the-endings entry! I absolutely love the art, especially the unfolding of the demon. The most annoying part (quite minor) was that so many different paths would lead to the same ending, but apart from that it was enjoyable and a real treat to look at. Good work!
May 3 06:49:32 6m 00s Stop the Summoning ♥ 1 Nice! I especially liked the last level where what you had to do was so tight that the most obvious first thing to try would kill the thing you wanted to kill and then immediately kill you. I got it eventually and the difficulty was appropriate and fair. The weird frog / body thing design was great too.
May 3 16:29:55 9h 40m Doodle Summoner ♥ 0 The doodles are cute! I couldn't quite figure out combat and would've loved both a better explanation of it in the tutorial and something that explains how the round went after each match to help me figure out if I don't understand something properly. Does position matter? I tried both the same position (e.g. bottom left for bottom left) and the mirrored position (top left for bottom left) but I didn't have enough information to go on to see what made a difference.
May 3 16:43:08 13m 13s I Call Upon the BEES! ♥ 0 Lots of potential here. The bee physics, the way you sink in them and the way they get pushed down when you jump off them, is amazing. The controls were a bit hard to handle at some points. I had hopes for a moment on the "follow-up" level that they could carry me while moving and though I was a bit disappointed that didn't work, the mechanic that was there was probably better and made more sense. Also absolutely love the hair on the beekeeper. aristocrat.PNG
May 3 17:09:01 25m 53s Shadows Of My Foreman Self ♥ 1 Nice! A few of the games felt a bit too finicky (e.g. very small hitboxes on the rocks in the first one, too easy to overshoot in the second one with not enough visual information) or unfair (second one I would lose a few rolling off the table before I started, and it was hard to actually grab the rings and gems on the last one) or undertutorialized (I was tracing the shapes on the gems, not on the guide, at first) but in general they all felt good and polished. On day two, I had a guy assigned to a task but I still ended up having to do the task myself and I don't know what I needed to do differently. The sound design is very good and satisfying. Good job with that. The graphics are also great and it all feels like a moody day working at the moody mine, so good work with all of that.
May 3 20:15:01 3h 06m Dreambound Metal Fan ♥ 1 Lots of fun! Biggest suggestion is toning down the terrain tiles so the units stand out more, but that was fairly minor and didn't really change how I played the game since I didn't need to manually control the units. Both visually and aurally, it reminded me a lot of SimLife, the 1992 Maxis game. Little pixel critters running around on square tiles making both low and high pitched repetitive noises really hit that specific nostalgia trigger. The early game was forgiving enough that I had time to figure out the controls and strategy while playing the game, which was nice. Middle and late game felt slightly too easy but in a fun way where you can just have way too many units going and you can just watch your little dudes run around be little dudes. It's satisfying. Gleeful. I giggled playing it. Good fun, good work!
May 3 21:02:46 47m 45s Triumvirosis ♥ 0 I like the aesthetic but it can be a bit hard to read sometimes. Looks great though, just could use some polish to make things stand out a bit better. I like a slow paced game but this dragged on a bit too much. Like, movements and stuff were slow and moody, but then on top of it, I'd have turns where everyone on the board just went back and forth between two adjacent tiles, making it even slower. I'm not sure exactly how selecting the blue tile works. At first I thought it was picking where the summon would go, but it might have been instructions? I am still not sure. Sideways maps could have been zoomed out so more was visible, and head-on maps could have been sideways, just to make it all a little easier to parse out, again. I like what you were going for but it would have made it easier to play, and the friction didn't seem necessary. It's a good start and aesthetically quite nice. Good work!
May 3 22:01:31 58m 45s Summoning Song ♥ 1 Very important recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DcRaUocL8UJ4jFaf8fOV0GSceNegeyX-/view?usp=sharing I think she actually got Eagle-2 for me. I kind of wish there were a push-to-talk option because there was construction going on outside and it was often hard to get it to register me starting a call. I also would have loved more visual feedback on what I was doing wrong, even just as a user-accessible debug tool. Apart from that, really nice. Love the graphics and the gameplay.
May 3 22:32:47 31m 16s Brew Some Unique & Appetizing Potions! ♥ 1 Nice! Love the "this was a quick sketch" art. Came out really good for what it is. Gameplay is nice too, like a reverse Dr. Mario. I also missed the "you can remove things" thing the first time and it could have been more prominently tutorialized, but otherwise, it was easy to understand. Good work, especially for a compo game!
May 3 22:45:46 12m 59s Summoning Grid ♥ 0 First pass: The idea is great and I love the graphics. I'm a bit confused though because I solved the puzzle correctly, hit "summon", was told there were no mistakes, and then it takes me back to the puzzle and doesn't let me do anything while two guys (in level 2) move across the screen? Are the X marks mandatory? (They usually aren't in other nonograms so I left them out because the starter puzzles were easy enough.) Second pass: Went back to try after typing the first paragraph and see that I missed that the score page is also a store page. Is there a way to get back to it after you close it? If not, it's possible to get soft locked pretty easily like I did the first time, but I'm not seeing a way to open it after closing it. But yeah, really enjoying this. Fun take on nonograms and fantastic art. Good work!
May 3 23:10:14 24m 28s Fashion Demon ♥ 1 Love the art, especially the out-of-time end screen! The platforming could use a little work (I kept getting stuck on the sides of ledges, for example) but it's a really good start. Platformers can be hard to tweak during a jam and I've seen a lot worse :)
May 3 23:23:28 13m 14s DESUMMONER ♥ 0 Nice! Had some problems even with the walkthrough because some of the hit detection was weird (took a long time to figure out how to look in the bathtub, and trying to light the candles kept registering as looking somewhere else) and parts of the map didn't seem to hook up correctly (left from the computer didn't work?) but I got through it. Nice art, fun little puzzle, a good start!