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Feedback comments for LD58
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | ArmchairArmada's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 12 04:00:44 | Please don't touch my collection | ♥ 0 | Thanks for entering your game on our live stream! Some thoughts: I had some fun with this! The presentation is great, and the interface is simple enough to understand. I like how the game takes advantage of the point-and-click adventure format to let the player experiment and slowly find clues bread-crumbing to the final solution. I also like the physicality of each bottle opener. Having them fall off the shelf was a clever way to indicate when each bottle opener's "in-game purpose" was completed, and no longer needed by the player. For criticisms, I *did* find some of the clues obtuse. The puzzles were fine, in my opinion: they were as simple as clicking bottle openers in the right order. But how the clues to indicate which bottle opener to tap first was a little harder to discern. Furthermore, I ended up having some clues come in out-of-order, making the puzzle harder to solve. As a puzzle game designer, myself, I understand how difficult it is to balance player experimentation with nudging the player to the right direction. Personally, I think I would have approached the problem by streamlining what clues/tools were provide. The less clues the player has to work with at any one time on screen, the easier it will be to nudge the player in the right direction. On the other hand, there is a charm to players just doing whatever and being entertained with random noises each bottle opener makes. So I'm not sure where I'd draw the line on balancing that. Certainly something worth play-testing. Also, nitpick, but don't forget to randomize the sound effects -- or at least its pitch -- each time they're played. It can get pretty repetitive to listen to the click noise. Edit: forgot to mention the game reminds me a lot of Vectorpark's games. And I mean that as a compliment! | |
| Oct 12 04:15:17 | 14m 33s | Fume: The PC Gaming Simulator | ♥ 1 | Thanks for submitting your game to our livestream! This was a really clever take on the theme, and I really loved the writing behind it. The game's UI and objectives were mostly intuitive as well. I did feel like this game wasn't really for my taste. For one, working with non-renewable resource was not exactly my cup of tea, and I felt the game price fluctuations were too random for me. Even if the sales weren't random (which, it appears not to be,) the changes were swingy enough that I felt discouraged to memorize the best timing to grab each game. For my part, I found the swift-crazy-sale mode to be the most entertaining part of the game, given it required me to time my mouse-clicks. Somewhat aside, but I was annoyed that each sales phase ending would kick me out into the game listing page, again: it's a UI change that wasn't directed by my action. Still, the game does deliver on its humorous presentation, and it did tickle my funny bone. |
| Oct 12 04:54:02 | 38m 45s | Crumbs | ♥ 2 | ...I hate you. But seriously, great take on the theme. I did like how this game really delivers in the outrageously counter-intuitive ways websites attempts to collect your browser's cookies. I mentioned it on the stream that while I did find the game fun, the pop-ups escalates much faster than I would have liked. It would have been nice if the ramp-up time for the absurd amount of of pop-ups was stretched just a bit longer to help the player notice some subtle changes, like the color swapping between the accept and reject buttons. I also only barely noticed the cookie animation in the background, which while nice, did mean I couldn't pay attention to how much time I had to respond to each pop-up prompts. It would have been nice if the button themselves indicated their lifetime. Still, I did like the frantic nature of the game, as well as how it tricks the player in nasty ways. Great job! |
| Oct 12 06:10:00 | 1h 15m | SheepSeek | ♥ 1 | Thanks for submitting your game to our stream! I personally found the grappling hook and movement mechanic more engaging than the shooting mechanic. Because of that, I ended up being more interested in exploring the stages more than engaging with the enemies. I wonder if there's a need to drastically change the game's design so that it only focuses on traversal, where one needs to collect X number of sheeps before completing the level; or to focus on the combat, and the grappling hook only works for combat purposes. I do think the lack of auditory and visual feedback on hitting the enemies makes it less satisfying to shoot at them. Futhermore, since the sheeps fire so slowly, I felt the combat was somewhat more difficult than was intended. I personally liked that I had to move around and collect more sheeps, and thought it quite enhanced the combat moments where I felt vulnerable and needed to strafe around a bit. That said, knowing most levels didn't require me to engage with the enemies, I wasn't incentivized to explore the combat strategies any further. This is a game with great potential: the mechanics individually are quite compelling. In its current implementation, as well as its current *combination*, I do think more time and polish could have helped. |
| Oct 16 07:26:02 | 97h 16m | Slay 'n' Squeeze | ♥ 1 | Sorry for the late comment. Had a busy schedule this week. So I played this game for far too long on-stream. As far as idle-games go, this was very solid! It was definitely fun trying to find the best synergistic combination to farm the slimes and their goo to build a more absurd skill tree. Presentation is fantastic as well, but I do think some things can be toned down a bit. For one, it was easy to get a lot of overlapping sound effects and screenshakes. It would have been nice to see those timed-out a bit (e.g. after playing the first slime-get sound, have a brief gap where no other slime-get sound effects can be played; queue a max of X sound effects between gaps) so it wouldn't disorient the player. Aside from these nitpicks, I don't really have too much complaints. Sure, the startup could be a bit faster, but once the game gets going, it does get going. It would be nice if the context wasn't about farming seemingly innocent slimes, but other than that guilt-trip, it's hard to deny I had a good time. |
| Oct 16 07:36:29 | 10m 27s | Meta Jammer | ♥ 3 | While I confess I couldn't really rate the rest of the categories that highly, I really *love* this take on the theme. I couldn't stream much more of the web-app, but I definitely will be playing around with this more and see how it differs from the usual Ludum Dare game list scrolling, and get back to you on my thoughts. I do really appreciate this different take on Ludum Dare game listing, and hopefully we can see this built-up more so future jammers can explore in the same way as well. |
| Oct 16 20:47:29 | 13h 11m | Fighters Keepers | ♥ 1 | Oh, snap, I forgot to put a comment down here. You've got a good laugh out of me during the stream! What a nice callback to Pokemon while trying something new! I think the graphics in both battle and exploration mode are great, and the music really kicks up the mood. There's a lot of charm in the presentation. I also think most things were pretty self-explanatory, with only a few question marks here and there (will go over them, soon.) Personally, I though the description of the game kind of gave away the surprise factor for some of the items one could acquire. Furthermore, while I'm aware this measure was necessary for obtaining house as an item, I did think the need to tap a button to open a door was somewhat unintuitive. In particular, the prompt to open said door is all the way at the corner of the screen: it would have been nice if the button prompt was placed nearer to the object that would be acquired, so an association would be made to the player. I'm also aware the raider descriptions weren't something that was able to be implemented in time. I would have loved to see a more polished game with in-game hints to give that information. On the other hand, the two hazelnuts and each boss being two-hit wonders does make the battle system really easy to win all four. I was also a bit surprised by the fact that unused items in the previous battle stays with you. I think logistically, it makes sense to do that; but it also means one would be less prepared for the next boss battle. If I was informed of this earlier, I think I would have been a bit less frustrated with it. Although, to be fair, it's an easy problem for the player to work around. You obviously have a very talented team! It sounds like the game had great ambitions, but was cut short by time. Hopefully the next jam will go more smoothly. |
| Oct 19 06:55:00 | 58h 07m | Fartnite | ♥ 1 | Well, your game description said it all: it was quite rage-inducing. OK, that's not fair at all. As seen in our stream, I did slowly get better at the game, and I did eventually figure out how to use the level's shape to my advantage. And it's a really simple and easy game to understand, too: I did think most of my mistakes were mine, and mine alone. The graphics were stylized at just the right amount, and sound was...uh, satisfactory, to say the least. Solid presentation, all-around. It would have been nice to have more than one level -- and in particular, tutorial levels -- to slowly escalate the experience to the player so they can practice and understand the physics in the game. This would make it easier for players to experiment with each character. I'm aware the larger level has a sort of mini-tutorial on practicing jumping, and I did think this was mostly fine: but it would have been nice to have more space to practice the curves, as I think I ended up understanding that the least. Still, I did appreciate the simplicity of the game, and how in combination with the curvy level design, it can snowball into more complex maneuvers. I simply wasn't the kind of person too interested in mastering the game's controls, but I can definitely see someone getting into it. |
| Oct 19 07:21:27 | 26m 27s | Cursed Museum Collection | ♥ 0 | I guess I'm perpetually doomed to get a B- on my grade of artifact studies. Curse you, insomnia. On a serious note, I liked the hand-drawn artworks that really sets the mood of these seemingly random collection of items. Having them all cursed when interacting with them even slightly was a fun way to add branching paths. I also like the writing behind the history for each item as well. It certainly implies a larger world is out there beyond the intractable items...even if the source of said world-building is a little sketchy. I was a little disappointed the game was a bit short. There didn't appear to be a way to "solve" the curse, or mix-and-match them, so I was slightly sad about that. I also felt the teddy bear curse was rather abrupt as well. Other curses had a build up or an elaborate pay-off to what is happening to the player character; but the teddy bear only expresses there disappointment. It would have been nice to see, say, the weight on the player's chest getting heavier and heavier as time passes...or something graphic like that. Anyway, the writing and artworks were definitely the strong points of the game. I think with a little more time, e.g. audio, more dialog, maybe even a few more mix-and-match dialog branches, would improve the game quite drastically. |
| Oct 22 22:10:08 | 86h 48m | The Grand Aquarium | ♥ 1 | This was an interesting experiment at collecting and maintaining growing fishes in a limited tank size. The fail state being the fish growing too large for a tank did help with the risk-reward elements of the game. I did figure out how to play the game pretty quickly as well: I felt informed enough to make careful decisions on whether to expand the tank, risk adding more fish to a tank, etc. I think a factor I found annoying was the camera animations. For example, if I catch a fish, I have to wait for a short bit before I'm forced to add it to a specific tank. This action blocks me from, say, catching more fish or selling them. Also pausing for each fish to grow did grate on me as well, for the same reason that it blocks me from doing anything else. If the waiting time on these elements were reduced or even eliminated, I think the experience would have been better for me. It was also strange that I had to widen the game window to see the entire fishing grid. By default, only a small sliver is shown on the screen, which makes the fishing minigame sort of longer waiting game than I think was intended. I also found dragging a fish-tank to sell at the center of the screen to be rather unintuitive. Maybe a button would have helped? I do think the core gameplay loop is fine; fun, even. The risk of fish out-growing their tank is a good call, in my opinion. While the prices of each fish isn't readily available, I think I found the optimal strategy to be to sell more and larger fishes as much as possible. Having that be the core strategy does add excitement to the game. I think if actions were more streamlined a bit, I would have had more fun with the game. As it is, now, I'm annoyed with the many pauses the game insists on. Edit: I also ran into a bug where I caught a fish, then the game was unable to place it into a fish tank. This lead to a softlock where I couldn't fish for any new fish. |
| Oct 22 23:12:25 | 1h 02m | Curio | ♥ 2 | I really like the pixel art and music in the game. I also like the idea behind each item having a backstory, and how that needs to be taken into account when slotting said items to the cabinet. Personally, though, I found the text display slow, and really, really long. While I found the wide variety of personalities interesting, given how much they spoke, I started getting tired of their speech patterns very quickly. I especially found the widower's purple prose and fisherman's weird beliefs grating. It would have been nice to see these backstories summarized a bit further, even if it sacrifices the shopkeeper's personality (which I'd argue the priest conversation does a good job of enlightening, anyways.) I appreciate that the game provides a last-minute "slot your items here, now!" screen. It would have been nice if in said screen, hovering over each cabinet slot still gave the description of the item to be placed. I somehow managed to get the right answers the second time playing, so the slot descriptions were sufficient enough. I did kind of wish I could have skipped the dialogs faster, so I could get to the cabinet slotting part sooner. |
| Oct 22 23:37:07 | 24m 42s | Acorny Business | ♥ 1 | It was nice playing this annoying-and-drunk-woodpecker simulator. I felt each of those acorny honks pass through my very soul. In all seriousness, I probably had more fun with this game than I should have, fighting the *Flappy Bird* controls. I think most commenters have already addressed the difficulties with controls, so I'll try to summarize: I personally found it highly sensitive, and would have liked it if the woodpecker stayed level (rather than fall,) and a different set of controls allow one to change elevation. Though, I think a huge part of the reason why I felt like I was fighting the controls had to do with the fact that each acorns are really small, as are the tree branches to land on. Since it was really hard to land onto a tree branch, it was hard to collect acorns; and since the branches would get in the way when rotating the camera to collect acorns, it further worsens the collecting experience. An alternative way of improving the game could be to make the acorns a **LOT** larger, and simply allowing the woodpecker to collect them by colliding into them. This would streamline the collection-process, and solve both the controls and, to a lesser extent, the camera issue. The game was basic and simple, but in a way, that added to the charm of the game. I just liked how minimal the game was, as it really helped the chill mood it evoked. Nice job. |
| Oct 22 23:55:58 | 18m 51s | LOSS | ♥ 0 | I wish I could read the dialogs in the game. The graphics looked nice, and at least world navigation seemed simple enough (granted, standard RPG Maker stuff.) It was a bit confusing as to why character sprites in the overworld kept changing, or the fact that the party member portrait has an old burly man in it. I....probably am missing a lot of context. |
| Oct 23 01:01:55 | 1h 05m | Big Fish | ♥ 1 | This is quite a gorgeous game that does a really good job of simulating an arcade game. The sound effects and music all adds to the mood to the game that makes one feel like they're really there. Unfortunately, just like an arcade game, it's also rather unfair. Despite how I've timed my space bar presses, I've been unable to collect any items that appears within the first two rows: Screenshot 2025-10-22 175101.png The fact that the fishing pole doesn't stay still, as if it has no drag or friction, adds some frustration. I often felt like I was fighting the game, than blaming my lack of skills, when trying to catch anything. With a more refined controls, I think I would have liked the game more. The presentation in particular really sells the arcade experience. But I often ended up more frustrated to continue. |
