Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Feedback comment stats → smilewood
Feedback comments for LD57
smilewood's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | smilewood's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 7 16:52:59 | WAG-ME: Pump-and-dump Sim | ♥ 1 | Cool little idle clicker game. I found it a little unclear how to make money, but as a game just chugging along behind things that I just needed to check in on once and a while it does well. Watching a graph go up is always fun. Nicely done! | |
| Apr 7 17:31:34 | 38m 35s | Clock In | ♥ 1 | Nicely done, I feel you with the challenge of adding story to a game in a game jam timeframe. I thought that your game did a fun job of telling the dystopian world story you were going for, I liked the way that it progressed. |
| Apr 7 19:18:32 | 1h 46m | Selective Drilling | ♥ 1 | Cool game, there is always something fun about a game involving drilling. Controlling how far I would go with each drill took a while to get the hang of, the way that it pushes the character forward is a little strange. Maybe if the highlights also showed tiles beyond the first layer it would have been more clear? I found the combat part of the game a bit tricky, sometimes it felt like the drill dash would push me forward just enough that I would take damage but not hit the enemies. I did like the way the map generation worked, the different caverns of enemies worked well for your game and the theme. Overall well done! |
| Apr 8 02:01:57 | 6h 43m | The Depths of Magic | ♥ 1 | Generally a fun gameplay concept, although it did not manage to hook me into playing over and over again I could see a refinement of this getting there. The loop of picking upgrades from three choices then going forward with those upgrades is tried and true, and I think that you had enough variety of upgrades to keep it interesting. Some of the upgrades seemed wildly more potent than others (the first one I saw was +3 shots; the next round I was offered a little more range, which was hardly noticeable) which left some choices being more predetermined then others. It could have been interesting to have upgrades that locked me into a path, something like splash damage vs multiple projectiles. The character art is fun, I like all the animations that the creatures do when coming after you. I did find some of the death animations hard to differentiate from their attacks, but as they were then dead that did not affect gameplay. I did notice that dying enemies still absorbed shots; especially in the first few floors it was a bit painful to fire a spread of four shots that all went into a single enemy that a single one would have killed. I could certainly feel the enemy scaling in health as I got deeper into the tower, although I couldn’t tell if the number of enemies was also meant to scale. I definitely saw some waves on the later floors with a single flying enemy. Overall a great game jam entry, well done! |
| Apr 8 02:43:06 | 41m 09s | Project Planetfall: The Exodus Directive | ♥ 3 | I love what you are going for with this game, it is a massive project with a lot of moving parts for attempting in a game jam. The “manage a vessel that you are in” genre is one that is a lot of fun, and you have gotten an impressive prototype of one in this project. On the whole several of the interactions felt a little bit clunky. Clicking on items once in the storage UI then again to pick it up springs to mind, same with what seemed like extra storage shelves at the front of the ship (I couldn’t tell what those were for). Really a lot of the game would have been improved with some sort of instructions; the drills, my favorite minigame, took a while to figure out because I kept trying to steer them while extended, just having text like “Aim then extend” on screen when using them would have helped a lot. I would have liked a progress bar for… well a lot of things, notably the foundry cooking up things and the fuel/coolant remaining. Seeing the numbers for the latter two doesn’t mean much to me. On the whole there are just a lot of numbers all over the screen that I basically don’t look at most of the time, refining them to be graphical indicators would go a long way. The art style in your game is great! I love the character who just looks like this dangerous expedition into the depths is another day at work. The ship itself is well designed (if a little empty, was something meant to be in the back room?) and all of the systems are readable as what they are. The sound effects and music are a good touch. Overall I think this game has a lot of potential, and with a little more polish on the presentation of several of the systems would be a game I could play a bunch. Well done! |
| Apr 9 00:40:51 | 21h 57m | Party Crasher | ♥ 2 | Love the artwork and the overall style of the game really works. I had trouble figuring out if I was meant to interact with the enemies or just try and get past them as fast as I could, there did not seem to be any feedback when I stood next to them and hit space other then my health going down. I think this is a solid base for a cool story experience with some polish though, great job! |
| Apr 9 00:59:24 | 18m 33s | Descent | ♥ 2 | Solid game, I quite like the duality of the amount of time it takes to platform being the time that you have to survive, and the powerups picked up acting as checkpoints in the shooter was a nice touch. Your graphics worked great, sound effects made everything feel solid, and the boss had a bunch of attack patterns. Really the only thing that did not work great for me was that space did not also work to jump, the first platforming level took me way to long as I tried to get my brain to use space to hover but not to jump and the up key to jump but not hover. Aside from that minor mental remapping this was pretty much perfect, great job! |
| Apr 9 01:08:47 | 9m 23s | The Trench | ♥ 1 | This is a great, quick, deep dive (sorry) into just how deep parts of the ocean go. I really liked the sonar ping effect, it was very effective for keeping enough of a view on the edges that following them was possible but also selling just how dark it gets down there. I think this game is a great example of how to bite off just the right amount of game for a jam and execute it well. Great job! |
| Apr 9 01:13:43 | 4m 56s | BucketWell | ♥ 1 | Clean and simple. While I had a lot of trouble getting the up and down to be helpful for me I really liked the control scheme you came up with, it is fairly unique and really works with your game. The music and other sounds match the theme you have and all the art is well done. Overall a great jam entry! |
| Apr 9 02:16:57 | 1h 03m | A Game About Digging an Asteroid | ♥ 2 | This game was a lot of fun, great job getting good a voxel game working in a game jam timeframe. The gameplay loop was entertaining, with enough time pressure from the mounting taxes that it felt like there were stakes. I never felt like I ran out of battery, but the other two upgrades both felt meangingful, and the tradeoff between upgrading now or saving for the countdown was good. I also thought your game was the perfect length for the jam, it gave me enough of a taste for the gameplay without feeling grindy. Great job overall! |
| Apr 9 02:28:09 | 11m 12s | Neuronic Netronics | ♥ 2 | This is a really cool game, I think that especially the was the sounds and graphics interact really sell what you are going for. Moving the connections around and sliding the sliders was cool. I did have a lot of trouble figuring out how to get connections to form, and the overall goal of the puzzles I did solve was still a mystery, I ended up messing with things until it worked. I think that with just a little explanation on what the individual pieces did it would have been a lot more approachable. Aside from that though this is a very impressive piece of work, well done! |
| Apr 9 02:34:17 | 6m 08s | Sonar | ♥ 1 | I have always liked games with a explore by using sonar or echolocation mechanics, and this is no exception. While simple due to your time limit it is well put together, and the main mechanic is done well. As someone who has also crammed a game into just a couple hours of a jam in the past I am very impressed, you even got some simple music into it. Fantastic work! |
| Apr 9 02:49:38 | 15m 21s | Where I belong | ♥ 4 | Loved the comic cutscenes and the overall story of the game! Getting the poor fish back into the depths where it belongs was a great mission for a game. controlling the fish felt fine but some of the interactions felt a little iffy, a couple of the jellyfish seemed to have very large hitboxes and I saw several sharks swim through walls or just disappear. It is shocking how full of trash our oceans are! I thought the music worked well with the mood of your game. Overall a fun experience, well done! |
| Apr 9 02:55:56 | 6m 18s | Jellylight | ♥ 2 | Clean and simple, an overall well executed game. The controls really felt like I would imagine a jellyfish would, pulses of movement and a lot of drifting. Having to doge the creatures made it an interesting descent, although I did wish that my glow faded slower in the light circle that the other jellys cast, it would have given spaces to catch my breath. Your graphics were a lot of fun, and the bubbles in the background lent a lot to the sense of depth. Overall a great game jam entry, well done! |
| Apr 9 03:11:10 | 15m 14s | The Depths | ♥ 1 | This is an awesome concept for a game! Your simple and readable design made it a lot of fun to wander around the map, and the use of the four sides of a cube for the world is awesome. I really enjoyed figuring out how the lasers worked on the second map (although an indication of which way the redirection circles were facing would have been nice, I didn't realize my interaction with them did anything for a while). Sound effects were simple and effective. I can only share your regret that there was only one level, I wanted more. Fantastic job! |
| Apr 9 03:31:35 | 20m 25s | Cosmo- Bounce | ♥ 0 | Not really sure what the goal of this one is, but it sure does a thing when I pull the lever. The sounds and graphics are cool, but I would have liked a little more to work towards. I unlocked a gallery? then it was right back to the same. Nicely done anyway, your game seems to work well. |
| Apr 11 04:25:39 | 48h 54m | INFERNAL DESCENT | ♥ 1 | Very cool game, great scenes that provided a perfect atmosphere. Your sound design went a long way towards providing the vibes and was well done. I liked the introduction of the couple of puzzle mechanics then the "gauntlet" of having to use them. I did find that moving the power orb was a little tricky, it seemed to be clipping into my character and making movement hard unless I moved backwards, but since there were only a couple of puzzles with one that minor bug did not detract form the game. On the whole a fun and impressive game jam entry, great job! I never did trust that Stan guy :) |
| Apr 13 01:05:11 | 44h 39m | Steve the Smith | ♥ 1 | I love the vision that your game shows. The art is great and the overall mechanic makes a lot of sense for this theme. As several others have mentioned I found the controls to be very hard to work with. Having three different buttons for the different mining directions felt unintuitive to me, and more frustratingly the movement felt like it was fighting me the whole time. Sticking to the walls when moving into them is a cool mechanic that I have not seen in a mining game before and it is one that I think has a lot of potential for allowing mining even if you missed some ore (and I did appreciate the ability to mine up, a lot of this style of game don't allow that). I found that it did make it difficult to accurately get anywhere however, I kept trying to jump into gaps and ended up sticking just above or below them. Perhaps, as others have mentioned, a wall-jump could have helped, or even more simply changing the walls to only stick when moving down? This is a great game jam game with a lot of potential, great job! |