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NBumgardner

Feedback comments for LD55

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		NBumgardner's comment
Apr 16 18:04:44		Demon Break	♥ 1	Great job making a polished game! I thought a bridge would lead to the castle at first, and I kept clicking and dragging to try and move the screen faster. I also like how the land across the water gives the illusion of a river to feel like a larger world.
Apr 16 18:11:12	6m 28s	Summon Deeds Done Dirt Cheap	♥ 3	Witty and with good music for the settings. I have not made a 3D game before and appreciate the heart and tempo of the story.
Apr 17 02:53:11	8h 41m	Veles Book	♥ 1	I really enjoyed playing this on stream! The environment's assets, shading, and music mesh very well together. It might not fit the mood as much, but I could imagine a collectible with a ding sound as you collect them would fit the sense of exploration and secrecy, while paying off exploring at the risk of it feeling more like a chore than optional to explore every nook and cranny. The UI for the ability cooldowns did a great job too. The carvings on the stones might be my favorite part, how did you all make them look realistic?
Apr 17 02:59:09	5m 58s	A Grave Mistake	♥ 2	Thanks for bringing this to today's stream. Great job on the atmosphere of digging particle effects, standing slightly into the blocks, and the tonal shift of music after the intro. The volume increase caught me off guard but I was able to turn it down some and it was smooth sailing. I also don't understand the purpose of the T-shapes built into the background on if they serve a purpose. I really like the memory aspect too, its a good skill to train so I've been looking for it in games recently. Have you ever played the board game Gobblet? It reminds me a bit of that with the playful feel and uncovering treasure, or in this case, digging up graves.
Apr 17 03:07:22	8m 13s	Make New Friends	♥ 1	The atmosphere is out of this world. It took me about 4 tries to understand what the timing wanted, but the gameplay loop is so short that failure was a good teacher, while the happy shapes cheered me on. I do wonder what the edge behavior is if the score goes too high, but it seems unlikely in the space of a game jam and I like the arcade feel of the UI. Thanks for explaining the leaderboard on stream, the irony of those at the top looking for friends most often is pretty witty.
Apr 17 03:23:17	15m 55s	Luminaries	♥ 1	I like the character/crystal lighting, click controls, and the way the eyes follow the mouse while near. It makes for a cute approach to a clicker game without requiring as much clicking as most games in the genre, which is good. Given more time I would maybe experiment with crackling noises to make the minions sound more firey without becoming to loud? Additionally, adding a message on reaching the 2nd or 3rd safe room that you can use A or D to navigate between rooms as well could be helpful to tell users when it is most useful. I got halfway up the progression tree on stream, so I think the progression makes this game a good teaching tool for compounding interests, while being cute and low stakes. Also great job on the music and flute, it gives a medieval knights of the round table at dinner feel, festive.
Apr 17 22:59:26	19h 36m	Tremblewood	♥ 3	Staying back while thinking about summoning positions is one of my favorite parts of this theme. It felt relaxing and fun to play, partially because I did not need to micro the monsters after summoning them and they were smart enough to have their targets be the units that hit back most of the time. I also like the minions having generous amounts of health so the player does not have to be too precise with them. The starting menu graphic felt a little jarring to me with 3D behind 2D, and the music gets repetitive if I wait on the start screen, but I'm not sure how I would change it, especially because it communicates the controls well and is representative of the 2D over 3D to come. Zooming in on the characters and the skeleton crowd is a fun touch. The shadows and unused gold resource nodes are a nice touch to make the game feel retro and immersive. How was it like programming the triggers and logic for units?
Apr 17 23:17:52	18m 26s	Shenanigans at Schmendy's	♥ 1	One of the top 2 funniest games I've played all jam! The ease of controls was good, I think running a little faster while not sweeping or actively attacking could add a little more strategy. The concept of the game is great, original, and well executed. I especially liked the wizards' lisp in the voice acting, it added a touch of pomp to their characters making me look forward to evicting them.
Apr 17 23:46:28	28m 36s	Summon World	♥ 1	Good variety of disasters to choose from. The music fits the tinkering aspect of trying out the tools. The game and music felt repetitive after a while. Part of that may have been I thought the crystal limit was 5 after upgrades based on the outdated starting tooltip, so building more may have helped me. They didn't mine all of mine out though, and even overlapped them with buildings which sounds like it may not be intended? But it is in the player's favor which is good. Having the cheat button for free points turns it into a stress-relieving destruction game. For the normal game, I like how the early game peacefulness has the ominous purple glows from the pillars foretelling the coming disasters. Nice work.
Apr 18 00:00:09	13m 41s	LAST MINUTE AWAKENING	♥ 4	Great job introducing the dance moves and story at the end, it is charming. The running section was too difficult for me though, maybe with a 3rd or 4th jump or the ability to move forward or backward or having health would help make the game more forgiving. Also I can listen to the game while its out of focus without having to be good at it, nice tunes. The bass drum is probably there to help with the timing? The drumroll finish made me smile too.
Apr 20 15:19:17	63h 19m	Veiled Ocean: Echoes of Nautical Grief	♥ 0	Cute concept! On the first playthrough I won without casting spells, then tried casting them and was amazed at how much stronger the attacks become! It looked like I might have some shielding while spell casting, so that could be neat to try adding to reduce the pressure of casting while fighting. Or maybe the player is just intended to take some damage to change weapons. The pew-pew sounds are satisfying, and I liked the story segments to tie the game's theme together.
Apr 20 15:43:07	23m 50s	A Following Wind	♥ 1	A sea game with depth. From a new player perspective, I think the most complicated parts are: - Trying to correct boats while close to the temple. - It makes the side-effects of old wind is more obvious. - As-is, it seems to message to the player that they should have taken care of direction issues earlier. - Player feedback when starting a wind. - Having a starting whoosh sound effect that is different for a failed click versus a successful swipe could help confirm the player executed an action. - Adding a visual, slightly-opaque arc to the front edge of the wind gust could make it more obvious, and the current wind could be a trailing effect for flavor. If you work on the game longer post-jam, I think you could randomize the island and rock positions some as long as they don't overlap with the same type. The pixel art and realistic music compliment each other well, I'm not used to that mixture but you did well with jaunty strings and satisfying crunches when a ship wrecks. Great job with the color contrast too, I can still identify everything uniquely through a black-and-white filter.
Apr 22 03:00:25	35h 17m	Necrotyper	♥ 4	Good use of modular design for an upgrade system.
Apr 28 18:35:45	159h 35m	Slime Manager 2025	♥ 0	The art style and waver of orbs looks calming. I could not figure out how to play since my Nintendo Switch controller or a keyboard and mouse did not do anything for me. The thumbnail art for the game is intriguing and fits the theme really well. Maybe the goal is to spread influence to capture the enemy base while gaining power from the 6 unclaimed nodes? screenshot_2024-04-28_slime-manager-2025-screen.png
Apr 28 19:06:22	30m 37s	Deckmancer	♥ 1	Easy to learn with randomness for spice. Given more time, I think adding a sound effect when hovering over the cards in your hand would be helpful for player feedback. I would also recommend removing the 'X' quit card from the web build of the game if its not hard to do with your engine. For the game balance, I made it to level 4 without seeing tower cards, then on my second playthrough I got them early and they allowed me to reach new enemy types at level 6 or 7. I think more visibility or control over the deck building aspect could make the gameplay more strategic. With the current balance, massing towers in the center, playing the cheapest unit to cycle my deck, and placing a troop next to me for emergencies seemed like the optimal strategy. Maybe making a kind of card that always summons near you instead of where the card is placed would be good for a quick bodyguard ability. Great job with the bouncy graphics and consistent art style.
Apr 28 19:38:28	32m 06s	Arcane Dungeon	♥ 2	Great concept of summoning monsters to collect more parts, and a spatial system that ties in with the summoning theme. There are a lot of different directions this game could go after the jam, pun intended. Someone else already mentioned adding tooltips for understanding the game better, yet for me I think continuing on the map system has a lot of possibilities, even without knowing what each element does. - Allow rotating at what angle an ingredient points toward before pressing the '+' stone. - Add shortcuts for the arrows that cost mana symbols. - Allow finding or buying better arrows that cost mana, to add to the player's toolbox of choices. - Remember a history in case the player wants to re-cast when they have enough ingredients to exactly copy a previous summoning. - Allow the player to keep 1 monster from the previous battle, like having a familiar. - It would add more persistence between battles, because after making a cool monster it was disappointing to lose all of the hard work, and have no minion barrier between myself and potentially damaging enemies. - That could just be my skill issue though, I think the game gives enough tools to succeed with enough drive to explore and optimize spells. - Allow scrolling around the map to see if I missed anything. Having the map question marks revealed was fun, it made me want to explore and rewarded moving far to the right side of the screen. - A mode where the map's resources are randomly placed could be a fun challenge. Some of the above suggestions may undermine some players' enjoyment of learning a spell that works every time though, so its mostly post-game-jam ideas. Do you all have any plans on making the Unity code open source?
Apr 28 20:06:32	28m 04s	Twilight Siege	♥ 0	After about 15 minutes I think I figured out how the game is supposed to be played, and it is pretty fun. I think villages get more powerful the larger your base because they heal all buildings equally, so 3 villages created a swarm of repairers to top everything off. The main puzzle seems to be knowing what order to build in, that a sawmill is worth most when placed closest to home, and roads can tank damage the cheapest. Besides adding building descriptions in-game, being able to pan the camera while paused would be nice too, otherwise I cannot build sawmills in the bottom-left corner to be safer. That's a pretty minor concern though, because if I am placing a sawmill that far away I either messed up, or I have lived past the first 2 turns and victory is already certain. Having multiple level options could be nice too, this game jam entry feels like a boss fight when coming in as a new player and maybe staring the game without summoning buildings to just start taking damage without a way to attack as the hero. Maybe some starting roads to soak damage would be a way to make the start easier, and give the player time to realize they are in danger. But with how strong villages can heal, that might be too much of a boost. The 3D art is adorable, it made me want to zoom in to see the units closer.
Apr 28 20:20:01	13m 29s	Druid's revenge	♥ 1	Cute use of art assets. Given more time, an option to jump to a specific level or at least retry the current level would help a lot for the puzzle genre. Similar with how audio would bring the characters to life. I like how the enemy AI logic was predictable so I can make risky plays where the computer could win by ignoring my summon, but chose not to. In a longer game I think a smarter AI would be nice to provide more of a challenge.
Apr 28 20:37:56	17m 55s	Gacha Summoning	♥ 1	Clicking around the menus was interesting, and the wave-blue-ish background is fancy. The text was also easy to read thanks to the panels, even without outlining the font. I attempted level 1 a few times unsuccessfully, which makes me wonder what level 2 would be like. Given more time, adding audio would be nice to help communicate the phases of gameplay and know the severity of losing a run. At first I thought I would get to retry and rebuild my party after a loss, and was confused when my 4-star cards were missing. Fusing everything does take some time for each new run, but maybe I am missing out on the strategy on choosing what to fuse. A web build would also be helpful to get more eyes on the game. I liked the variety of card abilities, how did you come up with them?
Apr 28 20:50:23	12m 27s	Eyesore	♥ 0	I like the vibrant art and the concept of being a trainee with only 1 summoning spell, it fits a game jam format of having a focused purpose. I was not able to hear anything, so in the future if a game is silent you may want to opt out of the Audio category. You might also try a web build and publish on itch.io for free next time. I don't see any C# files in your source code, so the process of making a web build should be relatively easy and can get a lot more eyes on your charming game! Congratulations on finishing, I look forward to seeing more of your games in the future.
May 2 19:11:24	94h 21m	Waves of Chess	♥ 2	I played this after reading the post-mortem explaining how to play, which made it very easy to pick up. The star(s) made more sense after I obtained and clicked it to see what it did. Excellent job.