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henk

Feedback comments for LD57

Timestamp	Since previous	Game		henk's comment
Apr 7 20:35:30		SATURATION	♥ 1	This took me a few tries to beat; the gameplay is kind of puzzly in the sense that once you figure out what works and what doesn't you can complete the game fairly quickly (though with slightly raised cortisol levels :P). The controls felt a bit unintuitive to me, especially given that they change between when you're inside and outside the sub. I would have appreciated some on-screen help. Final note: the submarine reminded me strongly of [Archimedes](https://watchmen.fandom.com/wiki/Archimedes).
Apr 7 21:09:34	34m 04s	Coals of the Eternal Cycle	♥ 1	The visuals are pretty impressive, and I like how the reduced visibility at the top and bottom of the stairs plays into the story. I think the game was a bit too easy: the puzzles could be solved in seconds and it wasn't hard to guess what you need to do to get all three endings, so the majority of the gameplay for me was just slowly walking and clicking through the dialogue. Otherwise, good entry!
Apr 8 20:31:15	23h 21m	Treasures	♥ 1	I flew up into the air and nearly drowned while caught on the upper side of the boat, but managed to save it in time. It's very fun in the qwop sort of way where the little dude flails around in circles while you mash buttons, confidently screaming "I GOT THIS," and fail horribly.
Apr 8 21:13:53	42m 38s	This Blasted Mine	♥ 1	I beat all the levels. Good puzzles! Two thoughts: - I'd like it if the 4 dynamites were different colors or something so I can tell them apart without hovering - The background music seemed to cut out part way through while I was playing. This could just be because I was running under wine, though.
Apr 8 23:07:40	1h 53m	Deep Delve	♥ 1	This felt painfully difficult to me, but based on praise from the other commenters maybe I was just super unlucky? Even on "normal" difficulty baddies wouldn't drop enough loot for me to afford shop upgrades before the difficulty scaling got beyond what my little sword could handle. I eventually gave up and switched to "easy," but it still took what felt like an excruciatingly long time before I could afford a ranged weapon (which you need after a while as enemies can spawn in places where it's impossible to get close enough to hit them without taking damage). That said, I liked the visuals, especially the choice of color palette, and once I _did_ get a ranged weapon the combat became much more interesting.
Apr 8 23:33:21	25m 41s	Minesweeper 3D	♥ 1	The cover image and overall look and feel reminded me strongly of [roll away](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kula_World). I miss the ability to clear all cells around a number, and I think the "auto-clear zero" might be a bit bugged (a few cells wouldn't auto-clear despite neighboring a zero cell). Other than that, it's a solid game of minesweeper.
Apr 9 20:50:22	21h 17m	Descent to sunrise	♥ 1	Very charming! I liked the little instrumental interludes. The "rainy" areas were also a very pleasant surprise that helped break up the level a bit. The double-jump felt a bit off to me. Maybe I'm just not used to having that combined with jump "cancellation" when releasing the spacebar. To maximize jump height I needed to press, hold, then do a quick release and re-press, which I'm not used to.
Apr 9 21:26:11	35m 49s	DEPTH OF FIELD	♥ 1	Besides being a clever idea, this was also well executed: I loved the design of the level, and felt proud whenever I managed to get a good picture.
Apr 9 21:44:31	18m 20s	Sub-mersed	♥ 1	The audio was a bit unpleasant, and it wasn't totally clear to me what the goal was. The grey fish appear to be enemies, but if I avoid them and let them go off the left-hand side of the screen they never come back. I've seen worse from people with more than a month's experience. Keep it up!
Apr 9 22:03:01	18m 30s	Feast Thine Eyes On Flowers	♥ 0	Mine eyes hath feasted on flowers. Not sure what the goal was, but I enjoyed myself (found the gem, too!).
Apr 10 20:59:45	22h 56m	Depthshifter	♥ 1	Player movement felt really painful, which made the final level especially brutal. For many of the puzzles I couldn't tell whether I'd found the solution or exploited a bug. That said, a Fez-style perspective-shifting mechanic seems like it'd be hard to implement under the time constraint, so well done!
Apr 12 09:18:24	36h 18m	Wizardry Catacombs	♥ 1	This was pretty great, I like the music and all the juice. It'd be nice if there were something motivating me to stay on each level for longer, since from what I can tell the best strategy is to make a beeline for the exit. I notice the source code for this game is not downloadable without paying for it. The compo rules require that you provide source code, and I'm not sure charging for it is in the spirit of those rules.
Apr 12 10:10:18	51m 54s	blablabla deep finite ocean II	♥ 1	The music was very fun. The game felt a little RNG-driven in that I'd struggle through a few attempts at a level only to luck out and get some incredibly overpowered combination of power ups that let me charge straight through. I also agree with others that some sound effects would have been helpful, especially something for taking damage as I'd frequently die without realizing I had hit anything at all.
Apr 12 10:36:04	25m 46s	Tiny Tinker	♥ 1	I love the visuals! Player movement felt very solid as well. The lack of checkpoints angered me at first, but given how short the game is it actually makes sense (and makes the traps funnier).
Apr 12 10:58:26	22m 22s	See the Light	♥ 1	I think there should be a background graphic to help get a sense of vertical motion. When I tap the up arrow, sometimes my fish would appear to move upwards much further than I expected, as if I had held down the button, but I couldn't tell if that was a bug in the controls or if the camera was moving in a way I couldn't see. It's also not very difficult to make it all the way to the top even if you ignore the larger fish when grabbing the smaller ones, making the game not very challenging. Perhaps that was the intent, though.
Apr 12 12:44:05	1h 45m	Cave of Gorbs	♥ 1	This feels a bit familiar, haha. Not sure if my game from last year was the inspiration for this but if so I think your take on it is much better than mine was :D. I also get a strong "Lemmings" vibe not just from the character but also from the various environments and music, which is great. These were the steps I used to run on Linux, in case this helps someone: - Install ASP.NET core runtime version 8 from microsoft's website - Copy `<game dir>/x64/libfmod.so` up one level to `<game dir>/libfmod.so` and rename it to `libfmod.dll` - Run using `dotnet "Cave of Gorbs.dll"`
Apr 12 14:21:31	1h 37m	Drop	♥ 1	I can't beat this. The camera is hypersensitive to mouse movement, frequently oscillates forwards and back to dodge obstacles, and for some reason can't be tilted upwards (effectively blinding me whenever I need to go up). Meanwhile, rather than giving me time to line up the camera so I can jump to a place I otherwise wouldn't be able to see, there's a thing shooting at me :(. I don't own a controller so maybe I would have been less frustrated had I used one. Other than that, I liked the audio and visuals. The music especially strikes me as much more complex than what you find in most compo games. @lucasito the windows version runs fine for me on Linux using Wine.
Apr 12 14:43:06	21m 35s	Face Your Fears	♥ 1	I also didn't realize what to do once I was at the bottom with the buckets and had to look at the comments. I like the take on vertical movement, sort of a Dwarf Fortress-style "slicing". The game felt super short, though! I would have loved to see more content/puzzles/whatever, but maybe that's just because I cheated myself out of figuring out the main puzzle :P.
Apr 12 16:01:09	1h 18m	Igbi Goes Deep	♥ 0	I am shocked that it's possible to have _that_ diverse and interesting of a soundtrack while still having time to work on the game itself: well done. The game itself was very ambitious, but quite buggy for me, unfortunately. Here are just the issues I noticed: - the "you don't have anything selected to sell" prompt doesn't change when I select an item to sell, only when I walk away from the booth and back - All of the UI on the right of the screen is totally cut off in the web build - I can take fall damage from very short drops, but often it will only make the noise, not actually deal any damage - The player sticks to the walls when colliding with them, which makes some of the jumps more tricky than they ought to be - In the mushroom area I got stuck inside one of the large mushrooms and had to restart - Many of the onscreen text prompts overlap one another, making them impossible to read - I can't exit the surface of the water without swimming down and acquiring upwards momentum first - Some items become non-interactive after dropping them on the ground in certain areas - Items sometimes collide with the player and sometimes don't. I don't know exactly what causes that but it could be they're moving in the Z axis slightly? Other non-bug issues: - The font is very difficult to read - Some of the "sprites" are actually cubes with textures on all 6 sides, which looks weird with transparency - Having the whole game reset when I die is incredibly frustrating, especially in light of the fact that some of the ways to die are very surprising - Having to walk all the way back to the "seller" booth to get money for items is very tedious, especially given that the first part of the game is spent just doing that and I have to re-do it all over again after every death. Once I got to the mushroom area, I didn't know what to do. I checked the guide and it says there's supposed to be a "double-jump" mushroom, but I wasn't able to find it. There are mushroom items, but pressing R while standing in front of them consumed them and did nothing.
Apr 12 17:48:32	1h 47m	WAG-ME: Pump-and-dump Sim	♥ 1	one_dollar.png I like the line plot. It seems like an obvious thing to have in an idle clicker, but I can't think of another one which does it (maybe universal paperclips did?). As a player, I'd expect the "beg VC" button to grant some amount of money based on the current price of the coin. Based on the source code it looks like it's supposed to grant an amount based on the number of times you've clicked it. Neither are true, though: it always grants around $2. Because of that, there's really no point in ever clicking the button (or the "coin miner" button, unless more coins is the goal, in which case it's all the _other_ buttons that are useless). All funds therefore come from Grandma, which makes gameplay somewhat boring. Perhaps that's part of the joke? Also: the UI layout appears to shift left and right as the price changes, I assume because the left area is getting content-sized to the width of the price, which uses a proportional font.
Apr 12 18:51:38	1h 03m	Abgrund	♥ 1	This is excellent! I played all the way to the end. I love the the background music muffling when I'm underwater. There were only a couple small problems I noticed: - Interacting with a ladder while underwater can get you stuck in a wall, although you can unstuck yourself by mounting and unmounting the ladder - Some of the conveyors in one of the upper areas don't move the player. One of them doesn't do the conveyor animation, either. - I think the map shouldn't show trinkets you've already found. I didn't get burned by this, but I could imagine walking past one accidentally and having it show as reached on the map, preventing me from realizing I hadn't gotten it.
Apr 12 19:27:06	35m 28s	Wishing Evil	♥ 1	I love the art! I could imagine something like this being used to train people how to use a mouse :P. I managed to score 86! > I won’t update the submission ‘cause it would be unfair... You might already know this, but in case you didn't: the rules explicitly allow you to fix game-breaking bugs after the deadline as long as you document the fix. > Certain Bug Fixes are allowed. You can’t add new features, but if something broke > or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the > deadline. You are asked to highlight the changes you make in your submission > (a short change log). You probably wont get a 2nd chance with some players, > but at least it wont be a problem for future players.
Apr 13 19:24:47	23h 57m	Below the Machine	♥ 1	I had to give up after getting too frustrated. Even after several tries, my success on each run largely seemed at the mercy of the random enemy/item placement and randomized shooting directions of the turrets. The slow back-swing feels similar to the whip from spelunky, but spelunky's whip is waaaay faster than that, allows you to turn around between the back and front swing, and has no gap between the back and front swing during which you can't deal any damage. Additionally, in spelunky the enemies are less frequent and have more predictable behaviors, the viewport is much larger, and the game has multiple ranged weapons. All of these features together allow the player to plan paths through the level without taking any damage, despite the whip's limitations. By contrast, in this game I see no way to reach the bottom without taking _some_ damage, barring some stroke of luck.
Apr 13 20:27:18	1h 02m	That Underground Level	♥ 1	I loved it! In the darksouls section the boss fight reminded me strongly of the Olmec boss fight from spelunky. One bug I noticed: When I jumped into the hole after the dragon, the dragon briefly re-appeared before the transition to the next section.
Apr 13 21:17:40	50m 22s	Delver Delve	♥ 0	I think the level design here is really good. I started out thinking getting all 21 would be impossible but it's actually not that difficult at all if you're careful and quick on the "restart" key. I'd prefer it if that first long jump were a _little_ bit shorter, though. I couldn't make it reliably, which meant if I made a mistake in a later level I was punished by being made to re-try that one jump over and over again.
Apr 13 23:04:56	1h 47m	Buried Under Profits	♥ 1	high_16.png The best I managed, haha. 25 definitely seems reachable, even if very difficult. It took me a bit to realize the laser fish are similar to Minecraft's "guardians" in that you can survive them if you interrupt the line of sight (although I think for the latter it cancels immediately rather than waiting until the moment of firing). The real bastards are the anglerfish, since they take 8 bullets apiece and appear to be immune to the mines. Two exploits I noticed (I didn't cheat to get the 16, though!): 1. If I go upwards at the start instead of downwards, the oxygen doesn't start depleting and I can still shoot bubbles and crystals 2. There doesn't appear to be a world border, so I can go outside and under the world and start picking off fish from underneath
Apr 15 20:53:57	45h 49m	DeepSteep	♥ 1	This is super fun. Success is a little bit too luck-based for my liking (sometimes you just get a gigantic horizontal stretch of nothing with nowhere to drop-shortcut to), but other than that this is one of the most entertaining compo games I've played so far. I had trouble extracting the linux build: my computer doesn't have a program which can extract .rar files (or at least not this particular .rar file). A .zip or .gz would have been more convenient.
Apr 15 21:28:01	34m 04s	The Clockwork Heart	♥ 1	Quite complete for a compo game! The statues made me think something crazy was going to happen when I grabbed the heart, but the game just ended :P I noticed three bugs: 1. Some of the walls have z-fighting issues (pointed out by others) 2. The shelves in one of the rooms had no collision on them, so I could walk straight inside them 3. Somehow by the end I ended up with extra copies of two of the statues. I was in the secret bookshelf hallway when I apparently reached through the wall just behind the bookshelf door to pick them up I didn't notice any issues with the camera, even though I'm also using firefox on linux (and intel integrated graphics). I played via the itch.io link.
Apr 16 20:56:41	23h 28m	TapTapTapTapTapTapTapTap	♥ 1	This feels like the start of a good game, but there doesn't seem to be much to it. The core gameplay feels like a basic test of your reaction time to the point where there isn't much strategy and I don't see my score increasing with each run. I can consistently reach a score of around 30-40 by targeting the pluses, but I can get the same score by just spam clicking randomly and hoping I luck out. I also think some sound, music, and animation would help a lot.
Apr 17 19:32:53	22h 36m	Job: Elevator!	♥ 0	The best score I could get is 27. While the idea is fun, I quickly reached a point where losing seemed inevitable regardless of what I did. This was with or without paying mind to the color of the passenger.
Apr 17 19:55:05	22m 12s	The Haunted Depths	♥ 0	That's quite the download time for a couple images and some text; I think Godot might be a bit overkill here :P
Apr 17 20:28:36	33m 31s	A Few Easy Questions	♥ 1	The presentation really made this one; I feel like my heart rate cranked up a notch when the question count overflowed. I managed to get a final score of 100 on the first try (along with what I think was the "true" ending), although based on the other comments here it's possible I just got really lucky. On the itch.io page in the "main" question menu some of the UI was cut off on the bottom of the screen for me. I also had to zoom out a bunch in browser to even fit the entire game window so my guess is the game was tested on some resolution higher than mine.
Apr 17 21:24:25	55m 49s	The Earth Treasures Show: Season 4	♥ 2	Quite unique! The gameplay felt a bit tedious at times but the graphics, audio, and winch mechanics are all very impressive. I would have appreciated spending more time scavenging than dragging the cube around, but the latter took much longer and the items were very far apart.
Apr 19 17:09:45	43h 45m	Depths Sickness	♥ 2	There were a lot of fun mechanics here. Some issues I ran into while playing: - When I die I lose all of my oxygen cylinders, which is enough of a handicap that I would just give up when that happened and refresh the page to start over - Moving long distances requires a lot of button mashing which is a bit unpleasant on my fingers - When I've lost all my cylinders on death, the shop disallows me from restocking, even if I have the money for it. - At some point the "compass" arrow broke and started pointing in the completely wrong direction, forcing me to restart. - If your oxygen is almost out by the time you hit a cave, the cave won't refill your oxygen - Buying one rope gives you infinite rope. If this is intentional, then it's not clear why I'm allowed to buy multiple ropes in the first place.
Apr 19 17:38:43	28m 58s	Sighetto: Dual Descent	♥ 0	While the visuals were nice, I would have been fine with worse visuals in exchange for better player movement/collision. Additionally, the game seems to have issues resetting after a game over: - The current "realm" that you're in doesn't reset when you restart the game - The final text prompt with the score doesn't display the second time you lose, and "space" doesn't work to restart the game For sounds, check out sfxr or one of the many online clones of it. It only takes a couple of minutes to make some basic bleeps and boops and they can help the game feel a lot more polished.
Apr 19 18:22:11	43m 28s	Deep Dish Pizzagram	♥ 1	That's quite the twist to have the animations play backwards like that :P. It was super fun seeing everybody's creations. One issue I noticed is that the textures seem to load in after the game starts running, which was a bit confusing at first. I would have been happy to wait on a loading screen while the images took their time to download if that meant the game would be ready to go when I started playing.
Apr 19 19:17:06	54m 55s	Dig Down Dude!	♥ 2	My RAM can't handle a game with such high-end graphics. I made it to the end but attempting to take a screenshot was enough to make my OS kill the process.
Apr 19 20:14:42	57m 36s	Mind the Depth	♥ 1	The art was very pretty! I don't think you learn enough about the story from the little spheres to get very emotionally invested in Daniel Radcliffe's character, but it's a tight time constraint, so good job regardless!
Apr 20 16:21:00	20h 06m	Frames	♥ 1	This is great! There was an issue I noticed in level 5 with the snake and hook where when I fall on the long flat part of the hook image from above, sometimes I'd fall behind it while sometimes I wouldn't. I think it might be velocity-based, but I'm not sure. I had a hard time in general understanding the rules for when the player does and doesn't pass behind an image, so that issue especially confused me.
Apr 20 17:10:34	49m 34s	An Angler's Light	♥ 1	I thought an anglerfish's light was supposed to _attract_ prey :P. Overall the game was quite solid. This is the first time I've seen dead reckoning used as a gameplay mechanic, and it's more fun than I would have expected.
Apr 20 18:53:43	1h 43m	Bag of Bag of Bag of Holding	♥ 1	The puzzle design here is really clever, if a bit cruel, and some of the hover texts made me laugh out loud. I got burned by the soft-lock glitch a couple times but persevered anyway and managed to get a sandwich out of it :P. I think this would have been great with some extra effort put towards polish.
Apr 20 19:25:15	31m 32s	Heads Up	♥ 0	Maybe I'm just weird but I actually loved the player movement in this. It had a sort of derpy octodad/qwop-type thing going which made it hilarious without being too frustrating. I think it would make more sense to allow the player to click "in a direction" rather than requiring the cursor to exactly line up with the hit target. It's difficult to click on a moving target, especially when camera movement, player movement, and mouse movement are all somewhat independent and the target (in the case of the enemies) is moving quickly. Clicking to grab/hit things felt very finicky. I liked the music too! Something about that main melody really jumped out at me for some reason.
Apr 20 19:49:38	24m 23s	931	♥ 1	- The player on-boarding in this was really good. I never felt confused, and everything properly set you up to turn around the way you're supposed to when the time comes - I love the David Szymanski-style user-triggered jumpscare. They're more risky than the traditional "baddie grabs the camera"-style jumpscares but are way worth it in my opinion - Tilting the camera when I rotate felt a little odd. I guess that was just a stylistic choice but it made me a little confused for a bit.
Apr 21 20:21:04	24h 31m	Drop Into Hell	♥ 1	Some of those animations/particle effects are very impressive. Some issues not already mentioned by others: - The second jump in a double-jump adds to the y velocity when I typically expect it to set y velocity to a fixed value - Besides the health not resetting, if I play again after winning, the "floor" is still gone and satan and I battle above a void - While the intro sequence is super cool, it blocks you from starting the game until it finishes, which can be frustrating when restarting after a loss - The edge of the hole is actually an overhang and the player is allowed to go to either edge of the screen, even though the graphics initially convinced be that the outermost walls would be solid - Whenever I reach the bottom there's always one last purple dude I hadn't managed to kill yet. This wouldn't be a problem except that it and its fireballs move relative to the player while satan and the floor do not, making things very visually confusing - Demons can sometimes launch fireballs after dying
Apr 22 21:05:33	24h 44m	Drill Down, Dog!	♥ 1	After a certain point the difficulty stops increasing, which is kind of an anticlimax. I think either the difficulty should ramp up for much longer or there should be a win condition of some sort. That said, hitting the gold bricks in this is so addicting I ended up playing for way too long anyway: drill_down_dog.png
Apr 22 21:31:17	25m 44s	Depth Rhythm	♥ 1	My strategy for this was to duplicate the rock a bunch of times before starting and line up the duplicates at the edges of the holes. At that point it might as well just let me click a hole to drop a rock in it rather than requiring the extra step of carrying it over. Alternatively, you could somehow make the manipulation of the rocks more relevant to the puzzle, say by limiting the number of duplicates or adding physical barriers. I managed to beat it though! It's a great idea and a good length for a compo game.
Apr 22 21:55:35	24m 18s	Deep Point	♥ 1	I love the model-work and overall sense of scale; it made the ending feel super satisfying. I'm not sure if it's possible to get all the rings, but I tried my best and managed to score 214399.