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ditam

Feedback comments for LD57

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		ditam's comment
Apr 15 22:23:21		Stealing the Captain's Family Jewels	♥ 2	Those stupid ghosts were spawn-camping me. In ghost culture, this is considered a d**k move. Very nice game with lots of polish. Extra points for the intro!
Apr 15 22:31:19	7m 58s	Drilling in the Deep	♥ 1	A very polished and atmospheric game. Very impressive for a 1-person compo entry, hats off! It feels a _bit too much_ like Dome Keeper / Dome Romantik which leaves a sour taste (but hey, that's what the Innovation score is for), but it's a great game nonetheless.
Apr 15 22:39:12	7m 53s	HellDigger – A Cozy Idle Game	♥ 1	I liked the way the theme was incorporated. Like some other commenters pointed out, it's kind of refreshing to see an idler game that's broken up into levels, that really helps with the monotony of the genre. So a cool idea! Some basic sounds would do this a huge service, I kept thinking that something's broken on my end - because a game that looks this polished visually _has to_ have sounds! Heh.
Apr 15 22:52:33	13m 21s	Depth Cores	♥ 1	Hm, audio did not seem to work for me - did you mean to opt out of that category? I had fun otherwise, I liked the 2.5D aesthetic. Fighting was a bit annoying because once the red thingies are touching you, it seems like your bullets pass through them. That's a very intriguing screenshot under "something new" - are you working on post-jam updates?
Apr 17 13:24:56	38h 32m	The Signal	♥ 1	Oh I wanted this to keep going! On the other hand, hats off for picking a jam-appropriate scope, and polishing it. Very nice atmosphere. I hope you're expanding on this in a post-jam version!
Apr 17 13:44:42	19m 46s	Fish's Tresure	♥ 0	A winner is me! >3 This is actually a lovely little game that is a bit hidden due to the "programmer art", heh. But I completed it, and had lots of fun with it. Great variety of fish, a reasonable upgrade system (wait there's a harpoon?) that you actually need to beat the game, and a proper ending, what else can you ask for? Well done!
Apr 17 15:00:16	1h 15m	Belials Bellybutton	♥ 1	Very atmospheric! The diver animation and the harpoon mechanic are both very nicely polished. I wished the enemies were less static - and then I got swordfished, serves me right... The skippable tutorial is a great touch too.
Apr 17 15:47:16	47m 00s	Flatline	♥ 2	A clever puzzler, but I found it quite frustrating to play in practice. Maybe because I was playing the web build, but one out of every ~10 touches was only registered with a big enough delay to mess up the whole level - as the mechanic is very unforgiving. And then towards the edges of the blocks you bounce off at an angle - which frankly just seems unnecessary and mean... It took me 77 attempts to pass level 2 (tempted to make a joke about actual cardiac arrests here). The following 3-4 levels were considerably easier, but once I saw moving pieces, I just had to tap out. Nice option to have the autocomplete though, it allowed me to complete the story. The male voice actor knocked it out of the park with his performance. Even if I didn't have too much _fun_, I have to respect the artistic vision here: the theme of heartbeats resonates throughout the game mechanic of precision timing, charging and bounces, echoed by the colours and the shapes of the levels themselves - clearly this is very well crafted, and one of the most complete entries I've encountered so far this jam. Bravo!
Apr 17 15:57:49	10m 33s	Souls Rider 1D	♥ 0	Very clever concept. I agree with some commenters that a mini-map could be very useful, but maybe that would make it lose its mind-bending charm. I liked the clean visuals, and the overall polish.
Apr 17 16:15:52	18m 03s	Shroomberg	♥ 2	Age of War! Very cool mechanic. Control was a bit clunky (probably a mix of the unintuitive cursor hitbox, the slow animations, and the large cell size for placing mushrooms), but it was an awe-inspiring sight to watch the mushroom towers battle it out. Probably noone should have a range larger than the viewport, it makes it hard to follow the action.
Apr 17 16:55:28	39m 36s	Deep Point	♥ 1	Cute entry, and the gameplay is very smooth. I wasn't sure if the planet turning white after the crash is a visual effect (the planet exploding?) or just a bug with the textures :) Either way, the game looks great overall.
Apr 17 17:40:43	45m 15s	Carpathian Goodbye	♥ 1	A beautiful game, and it's just a lot of fun to play, everything works very smoothly. Really liked the procedural maps (and names) too! I wasn't sure if there's an end goal though - I stopped around level 5 with most of the upgrades bought.
Apr 18 15:33:12	21h 52m	How the Moon Got Its Colors	♥ 0	A beautiful entry! Just as I was about to give up on it ever ending, the moon appeared out of nowhere! I finished it in 5:55 with all colors at 100% - but I'm not sure what actually triggered the ending. Is it something you have to find on the map? Or a certain number of tears you have to collect? It could use some quick balancing: I got all 3 upgrades in the first ~20 seconds, then I spent 5 minutes just chasing tears. The sucking whirlwind is clearly overpowered, once you get that, there's not much point to using any other skill. Is the cooldown supposed to be just a couple of seconds? I think that could easily be increased 5 or 10-fold.
Apr 18 15:38:13	5m 01s	The Deep Dive into Another World is over?	♥ 1	I liked the vibes of this. No explanation, no intro, just a mysterious platform where you dive deep. What for? Not sure, but the beats are on - let's get blasting!
Apr 18 15:53:50	15m 37s	BeastBound	♥ 3	Wow this is quite hard to get started - timber and leaves seem rare enough to begin with, but I also need XP to craft? Those wild monkeys are no joke when all you have is rocks.
Apr 18 16:21:47	27m 57s	Spear Bird	♥ 3	Just wonderful. I played the jam version, and it was already so polished! Absolutely loving the monochrome aesthetic and the silly concept. One of my favourites this jam, I had lots of fun with it. +1 vote for fullscreen mode.
Apr 18 17:28:42	1h 06m	Morally GrayStone Corp	♥ 4	It's a nice interactive story. Standout writing and a very polished art style too. Well done! The background soundtrack goes unreasonably hard sometimes :) But I guess that fits the absurdity of the real-life inspired story.
Apr 18 18:03:17	34m 35s	Into the Depths	♥ 1	Does one person have to name hundreds of towns a day? I wonder. On the meta-level, I really dig the concept of taking a simple accessory and mechanic (drawing cards from a standard deck in this case), and weaving an experience around it with the power of words and some illustrations. And boy, does this rulebook shine with polish! I did feel there was a bit of a mismatch between the art style of certain illustrations though. How much of the art was curated, and how much of it is original? You mention in the description that you had the chance to lean into graphics a lot more, but at the same time you've opted out of the graphics ratings, so I'm just curious. I didn't find the time to actually play through this, but I read the rulebook with great interest. I was a bit confused by the stages of the throne: are you supposed to keep going back to chapters 3 and 4 until you've gathered enough money, or (if you failed the minimum requirement once) just keep doing dailies without the joker until you can go to chapter 6? I liked how the mood turned darker as the game went on, fitting the theme both literally and figuratively. Also how the gameplay mechanics kept evolving as part of the story. A very unique entry, well done!
Apr 18 18:16:53	13m 36s	Fifty Floors of Flavor	♥ 1	Baby you already said no to chocolate cake! I only asked again as a joke and now it's a yes?! Very fun entry, I enjoyed falling through many levels. I like to imagine that the fish cake was a hilarious misunderstanding between the modeler and the game designer, hehe. Good job!
Apr 18 18:23:18	6m 25s	Deep Space Delivery Office	♥ 1	Nice one, I'm really digging the retro vibes of this. I do kind of wish the planets were circular though hehe. The tutorial didn't seem to help too much, but once you figure things out it plays very smoothly!
Apr 18 18:32:45	9m 27s	Life&Depth	♥ 1	Very nicely polished, excellent visuals and audio. I wish there was a bit more to do - I'd love to see a more challenging post-jam version with the same music and graphics. I feel like this could go in many directions from here: the music felt a bit darker and atmospheric, while the sound effects and game mechanics made it feel a bit more arcade-y. The monochrome aesthetic could certainly work for a more serious game, but the "frame" made everything look a bit retro and silly, as if you were not present in the scene, just looking at some retro handheld device... I don't mean any of this as a critique - somehow this all works very well together as is!
Apr 18 20:54:44	2h 21m	A Few Easy Questions	♥ 1	The lack of a retry button was irksome, because the good writing made me come back for more and more attempts. I _think_ I got what I could in the end (he did go off record about what he found), but I only got 45 story points for it, whatever that means. So who knows! (Maybe a complete victory would involve him going on record with the whole thing? Now that I've "groundhog dayed" the answer out of him, I'm less motivated to try for this ending.) Either way, it was an enjoyable detective game of sorts. I kinda wish the answers to the basic (dead-end) questions changed based on the rest of the conversation - it seemed like there's really only 1 question that you can make progress with. On the other hand, this at least allowed me to dig deeper into that topic, and see where that takes me... Good literal and figurative take on the theme too, well done!
Apr 18 21:47:59	53m 15s	Froggy Towers	♥ 1	The embedded version wouldn't start for me on Chrome, but as the comments suggested, it did work in Firefox. I had quite some fun with it, but I wish there was something to do later on, or some goal to work towards - I've had a score of about 540k, at which point new towers were offered once every blue moon (I think my last two were around 300k and then 500k), and it didn't make sense to keep going. I wish there was some strategic depth to selecting updates, currently the most you can do is hope for a lucky spawn and herd the enemies to tower-dense areas, and just keep kiting / running in circles forever. With some more things to do, and an increasing difficulty level, this could become a very nice tower defense / zombie survivor hybrid.
Apr 18 22:12:27	24m 28s	Steve the Smith	♥ 1	He who smelt it...! This is a neat little entry with a lot going for it, a nice crafting system, multiple scenes with randomly generated treasures - I think if you improved the movement inside the mines, and added an end goal to strive for, it would be rather enjoyable. As it is, as others have pointed out, trying to move and dig around is rather frustrating, I ended up just aiming for resources right below my feet, because climbing to a higher row or digging sideways was such a hassle. The "send back resources" option didn't make much sense to me, why not just bring them along when going back to town?
Apr 18 22:24:27	12m 00s	Swim	♥ 1	That was certainly interesting! A rather surreal experience. I can't help but shake the feeling that you started out with some weird movement or floating bug, and you decided to build a game around the effect :) But regardless, it kind of works! I really enjoyed swimming through the black boxes, and using momentum to make the awkward "leaps of faith" to the other blocks was kind of meditative. It's a shame it's rather short, I would have enjoyed seeing what kind of agility challenges you can come up with given the simple premise. Was there supposed to be audio? I couldn't hear anything. The title made me hope for some more story- or character-driven adventure, and I felt a bit let down by the lack of that, but I think it's a good starting point for building something more complex!
Apr 18 22:29:21	4m 54s	Job: Elevator!	♥ 0	Cool, I always wanted to be an elevator! I enjoyed the quirky concept, though there's not much to do after a couple minutes. It's fun to imagine the confusion of the passengers. Neat visuals, and all in all a very complete game - modest in scope, but delivers on that scope with polish. Well done!
Apr 18 22:44:15	14m 54s	Tout au fond (at the very bottom)	♥ 1	Lovely little game, Pico8 entries are always so magical. I enjoyed beating the (assuredly) evil anglerfish. (Although the victory message was utterly confusing, as it says "I'll" beat the boss, and that I should dive again - but I was happy to see other commenters seeing the same.) Unfortunately just ignoring most enemies and diving deep is a surprisingly effective tactic :) I wish there was diagonal movement, but otherwise it plays super smoothly. The soundtrack is great too.
Apr 19 16:41:36	17h 57m	Moos from the Depth of Space	♥ 0	That's probably the prettiest Pico-8 game I've ever seen. Very cool! Just hard enough to be challenging but still fun. I love the added touch of the minimap, it's very helpful.
Apr 19 16:53:10	11m 34s	SATIATE	♥ 0	Very cool entry! Fun to play, and it has great enemy variety, a consistent visual style, and a full upgrade system and a banger soundtrack to boot, very impressive for a jam game! The hunger timeout was a bit annoyingly fast, but I guess it was a good way to enforce/showcase the roguelike mechanics. Oh, and I just can't not mention that the word is spelled "descend", it says "decent" a few too many times :-p
Apr 19 17:13:52	20m 42s	Into The Deep	♥ 1	Oh, the ice (?) regrowing at the entrance while you're digging was a sneaky touch - I lost a couple of times because I was cutting it too close, and I didn't have time to dig myself back out. These little touches like that, the guitar option, or the colorful spaceship just chilling by the entrance give this game a very cool character, something that sets it aside from many of the other "dig for resources and bring them back to the surface before time runs out" games I've seen this jam. Well done! (The sci-fi + steel guitar music combination reminded me of Hardspace: Shipbreaker and Firefly, there's something about the open frontiers of space and the wild west that just make this vibe work so well...)
Apr 19 17:27:46	13m 54s	Deep Dish Pizzagram	♥ 1	Finally! When the theme was announced, I was afraid we would be flooded with various deep dish pizza simulators with online social features. I am baffled that it took me trying and rating ~45 games before I finally came across this. And the fact that you can add layers with different toppings and make the pizza truly great and truly deep, is, just, well - chef's kiss. Please vote for my pizza. cheers, Chef Ditam (I drew my pizza expecting the play button to go forward rather than backwards...)
Apr 19 17:47:24	19m 38s	Down Golf	♥ 1	Yay, managed to beat this! Unexpectedly much fun. And that's despite the fact that the aiming seems to be all over the place - sometimes the ball goes off in wildly different directions than the swing direction arrow suggests - I guess because it also considers the distance of the player and the ball? I had a very enjoyable moment, when I thought I was soft locked, the ball seemingly forever bouncing vertically on a jump pad, but I managed to bat it out of the air and continue the hole. I don't know if you set it up like that intentionally, but it's a testament to your "engine" regardless. Oh, and I can imagine it's reassuring to know -since you put the dev effort into the animation- that yes, I did hit the tree on the first level :)
Apr 21 20:03:49	50h 16m	The Depths	♥ 1	Short and fun! Great SFX curation, looks very polished, and I didn't come across any bugs either. You might as well increase the mine damage, as it is, you really don't need to use torpedoes, you can just truck through everything - even on the last level you'll be left with 1 hp. As others said, this looks like a good base for a more complex game.
Apr 24 14:20:12	66h 16m	Adventures MZ-015	♥ 1	A cute little title, looks great and plays very smoothly. (I did get the camera locking bug in the web build, but it seemed to go away after a couple of times - appreciated the heads-up.) I was conflicted about the number of resources: on one hand, I always find it annoying whenever a game world has exactly the amount of resources that are needed for my quest, it feels cheesy and immersion-breaking. On the other hand, somehow I also felt disappointed when I realized that I don't need to bother trying to get the crystals from the trickier locations, as there's plenty of low hanging fruit around :) I think this is a good base for a larger game - a bit of story could really tie it together, something about how we crash landed, or what mystery the area holds. Maybe the giant staircase tower thingie could have something interesting at the top, rather than a single crystal.
Apr 24 14:43:31	23m 19s	Find the Abyss	♥ 1	I've found the Abyss! I wasn't sure if the game has an end, and I was just about to give up on it, as I've already mapped trenches of ~3000meters, but then I stumbled across the deepest one. I was a bit confused in the beginning, maybe because the timers are so tiny, but it was smooth sailing (no pun intended) after a couple of minutes. I felt that the depth gradients were a bit too chaotic, and the colours of the waves a bit confusing (in most games you expect darker coloured waters to be deeper), but I still had quite some fun. Great SFX - some chill music could go well with it. A very unique triangulation game, well done!
Apr 25 10:14:07	19h 30m	Cavers Cantina	♥ 0	This entry has a lot of nice things going for it. A neat blend (no pun intended) of cocktails to learn and to discover, custom art, and randomly generated tasks. It feels very polished overall, quite impressive! I especially liked Gargaro's character art, heh. Looking forward to the recipe overview page in the post-jam version, if there's one in the works. I guess that feature would be needed to read about the recipes you've unlocked during the way? A minor typo: the encyclopedia talks of Crystalline, but the ingredient is labelled Crystallite.
Apr 25 10:48:50	34m 43s	Welcome to Veinridge!	♥ 2	Such a cool entry! An impressive amount of content, and yet it ends when it's about to get most interesting. Great world-building. I especially liked the sound effects synced to the text descriptions, it was a great tool for creating an immersive experience. Lots of great writing all around, and the clue and location system is really well set up. While it was a bit confusing, I didn't mind that many newly mentioned characters don't get added to the notebook - I guess it's a reasonable way of keeping the combination of clues and people manageable. I think I ran into some glitches when trying to head into the mine - the mine map was first unresponsive, then it got stuck underneath the city map, and stayed there even when I started talking to the miners again - but eventually it came on top which allowed me to progress. I guess there must be some custom code handling navigation there, because it's sort of in the middle of a conversation - so you also have the "standard" option of finishing the convo (which seems to glitch out the map), or the custom action of navigating on this new map. One of the most unexpectedly fun entries I've tried this jam. Well done!
Apr 25 17:32:00	6h 43m	The spaceship crashed. Find the way for the deep dark	♥ 0	That is one funky walk! There wasn't much to do in this one, but I giggled at the walking animation for a bit. The intro images were really cool, quite atmospheric. I think this slideshow style works really well for jam games - cool that you found the time for artwork.
Apr 25 17:38:09	6m 09s	Subnet	♥ 0	Very cool Tron-like aesthetic. I don't know what I'm doing or why, but it was very easy to get started, and it's quite fun to play. The online leaderboards are always a nice touch. Very polished, bravo!
Apr 25 20:58:12	3h 20m	Fish.Net	♥ 2	Hm, there seems to be a bug where you can't cast a line anymore after you buy the length upgrade? Either way, fun entry with a lot of promise. I think seeing the fish underwater makes for a very satisfying hunt and reel experience that most other fishing games don't have. I'd love to play a more complete post-jam version of this.