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Feedback comments for LD59
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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | python-b5's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 21 01:52:03 | Turning Signal | ♥ 1 | I like the spritework, and the story at the start is nice! I was a bit confused on the controls - E didn't appear to do anything, while Space seemed to just turn the robot, rather than "marking the direction as incorrect". Perhaps I just misunderstood the instructions. There also appears to be a bug with level progression, where after a few levels completing them no longer automatically advances to the next one. I had to manually select the last few levels through the menu. | |
| Apr 21 02:09:09 | 17m 06s | Signal Quest | ♥ 2 | I enjoyed this one! Short but sweet. I liked the variety of different minigames (though I'll admit I never quite figured out how the radar one worked), and it got pretty frantic by the end. The audio balance was unfortunately quite poor, at least on my machine; the voice announcing the minigames was barely audible, while the voice saying the phone numbers was extremely loud. Otherwise, though, I had a good time with this! |
| Apr 21 02:23:40 | 14m 31s | Islandia | ♥ 1 | I love the graphical style of this! The dither shader is neat. I was unfortunately unable to make any progress in the game, though... there were a couple interactable objects on the island, but I couldn't figure out a way to accomplish anything with them. Perhaps I'm just missing something? |
| Apr 21 02:45:01 | 21m 21s | Wi-Fix It | ♥ 6 | Really enjoyed this! The art and music are great, and I liked the variety of mechanics as the game progressed. I do think the controls could be tightened up a bit, though... because the corners of the player's hitbox are curved, they slide off the edges of platforms right now, which can make precise sections more challenging. I would've also appreciated an option to play with arrow keys / Z / X (of which only the former seemed to work), which I find a lot more comfortable than WASD/Space/Shift, but that's of course up to preference. Nice work on this! |
| Apr 21 03:33:47 | 48m 46s | traceroute | ♥ 0 | This was a lot of fun, and I love the aesthetic! I do think it was perhaps a little too easy, though - the bounce limits were almost always at least twice as large (often more than that, even) than I needed. Some of the later sections involved some more precise aiming, though, which I enjoyed. Nice work. |
| Apr 21 03:39:46 | 5m 59s | Laser Beat | ♥ 2 | This was great! Really clever mechanic; while I've played laser-reflection games like this before, the rhythm matching was an interesting spin on it. I only wish there were more levels... I think there's a lot of opportunity for interesting mechanics here. |
| Apr 21 12:12:08 | 8h 32m | Below the Light | ♥ 6 | Really enjoyed this! I don't see point-and-click games in jams too often, so I was happy to see one. I wasn't quite able to figure out the typewriter, but I had a good time with what I did play; I'll probably come back to this later to finish it off. |
| Apr 21 15:56:33 | 3h 44m | While You Were Here | ♥ 2 | This was great! The puzzles were designed well, and seemed to progress logically. I do wish there were a couple more, though, as the game ended just as it really started getting interesting. Still, I enjoyed what I played! The tranquil visuals add a lot to the experience, too. I'll echo others here on the platforms' hitboxes being somewhat unintuitive. Often I would fall through the edge of a platform to my death while trying to make a tricky jump or maneuver boxes around, and since this game is focused on the puzzles, not the platforming, having most of my deaths be because of the latter was frustrating. Probably, the platforms' hitboxes should extend all the way to the edge of their sprites. The spikes' hitboxes, on the other hand, are maybe a little too _big_; they could do with being shrunk a bit, I think, which would reduce friction on levels 2 and 3. |
| Apr 21 16:23:44 | 27m 11s | Parasignal | ♥ 2 | What a neat concept! I love the interaction between the real and game worlds, though I do wish it went a bit further than just changing the channel. Perhaps an expanded version of this could have a small room to move the player around in, or more interactable objects in the game to build puzzles around. The visuals are also great, and create a nice atmosphere - almost cozy, but not quite. A few small issues: - The sensitivity for turning the UHF knob is far too low, considering how frequently and how far you have to move it. It's possible this was exacerbated by me playing on trackpad, though. - It would be nice to be able to zoom in on the papers to read them more clearly. I notice one of the screenshots on your page does show a closer view of one of the papers, though, so maybe I'm just missing something? - The game often crashes for me when turning the television off, usually when the screen is displaying static (though that could be a false correlation, I didn't test it extensively). This is on the Windows build; not sure if it's an issue on any other platforms. - Less of an issue, and more of a suggestion: the static before the monster first starts moving is a nice touch, and added some tension, but that tension disappeared once I realized time didn't seem to be progressing while I was on the wrong channel. If the knob's sensitivity were turned up, that could be an interesting mechanic to make the monsters slightly more challenging to avoid. |
| Apr 21 17:03:56 | 40m 12s | Dragonia Siege | ♥ 1 | This is a fun conceit for a game! I spent my first playthrough just going in all the houses and seeing what everyone had to say, expecting the game proper to start after I left the town, then was surprised by the game ending after I took the stairs. It was fun to go through the map again and try to find all the secrets I'd missed the first time around. The art and music are great too, and feel authentic to the NES. I was only able to get four jewels; while I assume there's a fifth, given the page says there are six endings, I couldn't find it for the life of me. I enjoyed what I did manage to finish, though! |
| Apr 21 17:17:01 | 13m 05s | Radio Galaxy | ♥ 1 | I love the aesthetic of this; it's very soothing! I did find the puzzles sometimes came down to trial and error, though, where shifting the satellites slightly to the side was the difference between failure and success. None of it was too difficult, though, and I had a good time overall. |
| Apr 22 16:24:52 | 23h 07m | FOREIGN FREQUENCY | ♥ 2 | This was really interesting! I loved the storytelling as the messages progressed, and the virtual desktop interface added a nice sense of immersion. I do wish the ciphers were more complicated than just numbers in alphabetical order, though... there's a lot of opportunity for interesting puzzles here that I feel the game didn't really explore. This was still a good time, though. Side note: The shop is a fun idea, but I really regretted purchasing the cat cursor early on (I wasn't sure what it was before purchasing it), and the loud meow click sound took me out of the game somewhat. I would've appreciated an option to turn it off. |
| Apr 22 17:35:49 | 1h 10m | Robo Phone Home | ♥ 2 | I love the main mechanic in this! Having to lead your shots more the further the robot got from the bottom left corner was neat. The art and music was also lovely. The little aliens roaming around were a nice touch. I will admit, though, that the rotating reflectors in the last couple levels really frustrated me; particularly the one in level 6, which I found impossible to accurately aim with. I ended up just spamming as many signals as I could and hoping one would just happen to hit the robot at the time I needed. |
| Apr 22 17:54:40 | 18m 51s | Pulse-8 | ♥ 1 | This was great! I like the optional challenge to go for a perfect score on each level, which I elected to do - though, perhaps because of that, I found the difficulty plateaued about halfway through the game and never really got noticeably harder afterward. It also meant that the decreases to 20/10 fragments didn't affect my gameplay, except for the one level where a mirror was used twice (which I really wish was explored more; that was a neat idea!). Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this :) |
| Apr 22 18:35:23 | 40m 43s | SAVE OUR SOULS | ♥ 2 | This was really neat! The cabin has a great atmosphere, and I liked the twist at the end. I did find it to be a little slow-paced, though it got a bit more interesting in the latter half. It also felt a bit limiting how I had no choice in how to respond; I messed up giving Hook the coordinates for the lake, for instance, and the game didn't even seem to notice, implying he made it to the lake just fine anyway. |
| Apr 22 23:59:45 | 5h 24m | Signal Spoofer | ♥ 1 | There are some neat mechanics here, but the game really needed some more levels - it ended just as all the mechanics had been introduced! I was a bit confused by the surveillance cameras, as being caught by one didn't seem to do anything? Perhaps the hitbox is just really generous. I noticed an oddity after I died near the end by accidentally redirecting the turret toward myself. I respawned at the start of the game, but all my progress was preserved, including the redirection that had killed me, so all I had to do was walk to the end. Not sure if that's a bug or not, though. |
| Apr 23 00:09:06 | 9m 21s | Star Traveller | ♥ 1 | This was great! The story is short, but also doesn't feel rushed. The sketchy art style is neat, too. The ending was quite interesting, though I was a bit confused since I was pretty sure I had selected "turn back", which the game didn't appear to respond to. Perhaps I just misread something, though. |
| Apr 23 00:29:47 | 20m 41s | Signal Path | ♥ 2 | This is a neat mechanic! The Morse code-like controls were interesting, but became tedious after a while; I might recommend swapping the turn and move forward actions, since moving is much more common than turning and right now it requires a longer input. I was able to finish the game, though the last couple levels took me a bit longer since I found the yellow tiles somewhat unintuitive. |
| Apr 24 04:07:45 | 27h 37m | Patch Panel | ♥ 1 | I unfortunately wasn't able to finish this (once I got to the harder levels, I had trouble visualizing what was going on with the signals and got stuck), but I really enjoyed what I played! The music is lovely, the wires are satisfying to move around, and the game does a good job introducing its mechanics without throwing you in the deep end right away. It's possible the wires are maybe a little _too_ dynamic right now, though; after placing the first end of a wire, I usually had to wait a couple seconds for the wire to slow its swinging enough to let me grab the other end, which was a bit frustrating once the levels started to involve more wires. |
| Apr 25 01:32:57 | 21h 25m | SpaceRider | ♥ 2 | This is really interesting, though I wasn't able to make it through the whole map. Because changing frequency and amplitude doesn't have an immediate effect, I found it difficult to control them properly as quickly as the game seemed to expect me to. Perhaps it would be made slightly easier if the HUD weren't so small (it's possible that's because of my high-DPI display, though)? Otherwise, I had a good time playing this! The graphics and music gave it a unique vibe, too. |
| Apr 25 16:10:09 | 14h 37m | Effigy of the Sky Lords | ♥ 1 | This was really cool! The dialogue was charming, and I loved how people moved around and said new things as the story progressed - it made the world feel a lot more alive. I was able to find almost all the endings (four out of five), except what I assume is the "bad" one. I found the "very bad" ending, but can't figure out what I could do differently to produce a different outcome. I agree with others that music would add a lot, but given this is a jam game I can forgive the lack of it. Most of this might be the fault of the engine, but I did find the movement somewhat awkward. Slopes are slow to traverse, and sliding down them when standing still feels a bit odd. The camera motions also required a lot of micro-adjustment on the more precise sections, like the hills. Those are just minor concerns, though. |
| Apr 26 01:35:13 | 9h 25m | Last One Alive Leave The Light On | ♥ 1 | This is a really neat concept for a game! I ended up with a 5x5 grid, which I managed to solve mostly through process of elimination (if no signals are heard from a cell, it and its neighbors are out of the running). In the end, I wound up with three cells where the signals could be - though, because multiple signals could be in the same cell, there were several possible solutions that I had no way of disambiguating between. I guessed that all three cells each had one signal, and happened to be right, since the door opened. I would say that's a design flaw, but it's kind of endemic to these types of Minesweeper-like games, and I can't think of a way to fix it off the top of my head. On the presentation: really, I thought it was quite nice! The graphics were simple, but gave the game a foreboding atmosphere that fit well. The audio was similarly atmospheric, though the frequent ambient noises confused me at first, as I mistook them for signals coming from the radio. Perhaps they shouldn't both be high-pitched tones. |
| Apr 26 20:46:24 | 19h 11m | Canopy | ♥ 1 | The atmosphere in this is great! The levels have a nice sense of scale and look fantastic (though some sections maybe felt more empty than others). I do think the gameplay has a bit of missed opportunity, though; the grappling mechanic is fun, but I was never at any risk of failure. The discrete levels connected by teleport pads also hurt immersion somewhat. Overall, though, I really enjoyed my time with this! |
| Apr 27 01:10:52 | 4h 24m | Aurora 4: Prelude | ♥ 2 | First off, this game looks really nice! The title screen alone is incredible, and the 3D buildings on the sides of the road are an impressive feat using GameMaker. The game feels good to play, too; shooting down enemies is satisfying, and I liked how the speed the player moved along the street changed as the game progressed (it didn't affect gameplay, but it certainly gave the game an exhilarating feel). I think the progression and lives system, though, is flawed. The hitboxes in this game aren't especially forgiving, and so dying in one hit became frustrating quickly. The player is nominally given three lives, but that didn't appear to actually mean anything, as dying always sent me back to the very beginning no matter how far in I got - and hence a game over was no different to any other death, besides a longer time to wait until the next attempt (on that note, the death animation is probably a little too long... it would be fine if you didn't die in one hit, but since you do the long animation feels a bit extraneous). The game also didn't appear to keep any kind of score, so while the level was clearly not procedurally generated, I had no way of knowing whether I was close to the end or not (assuming there is an end). Overall, though, I had a good time with this! The presentation is on point, the game felt polished and solidly made, and it was fun to play. Nice work :) |
| Apr 27 01:38:24 | 27m 32s | Signal Loop | ♥ 0 | Really neat concept, and some of the later levels had me stumped for a while! The set of mechanics was nicely varied, and importantly well _explored_, something that I feel many jam games fail to do. No mechanics here were tutorialized then immediately thrown away, which I appreciated. Even on many of the harder levels, though, I found I often didn't need to fully engage with - or even understand - the mechanics to solve them. Often levels had a fairly clear path I could follow, just hitting buttons on the way, with only a small alteration (looping around a bend an extra time, or briefly moving off the main path) to work around the enemies' cycles. Additionally, several levels' solutions used exactly 30 commands, so if I found a reasonable solution that used that many then I could be reasonably confident that was a valid solution (indeed, for me it always was in those situations); though, that stopped happening in the late game. It might also be nice if the robot moved a little faster, since at its current speed it takes quite a while to get through all 30 commands, making experimentation on the harder levels more time-consuming. Overall, though, this is a really solid set of mechanics for a puzzle game, and it's impressively designed for 72 hours. I'd be interested in trying an expanded version of this, should you ever choose to make one. |
| Apr 27 17:30:14 | 15h 51m | Insecure WiFi | ♥ 0 | This is a great first entry! I like how, because the enemies' signals only appear when you get close to them, you have no option but to put yourself at risk to disable them. The graphics and music were simple, but worked pretty well. Some sound effects would be nice, though, to provide some feedback for receiving signals / disabling enemies / getting killed. I do think the game was perhaps a little too easy, though... the fuel/speed mechanic is a good idea, but in practice I never had any reason not to be at 100% speed. Any lower than that was a death sentence while circling enemies, and I had more than enough fuel to complete all the levels without worrying about running out (indeed, I never dipped below 25% in my whole playthrough!). The later levels, as a result, weren't any more _difficult_ than the earlier ones; they just took longer. Making the fuel consumption less generous could force players to make tough decisions - like, maybe you would have to try to herd multiple enemies together to knock them out in quick succession, since otherwise circling each of them individually to disable them would use too much fuel. insecure-wifi-complete.png |
| Apr 27 21:13:56 | 3h 43m | Sheep Trials | ♥ 1 | Really interesting mechanic! I like how it turns into a kind of order-of-operations puzzle. I was unfortunately only able to get a few levels in, after which point they started taking a lot longer; though, for most of the levels I completed, all but one sheep made it to the pen due to me just pressing W a few times at the start, and the remaining time was spent chasing down that remaining sheep. A reset option of some kind (perhaps in the pause menu, or by pressing R) would be nice, since sometimes starting over could be less time-consuming than trying to get a lone remaining sheep out of the corner of the screen. |
| Apr 28 02:47:14 | 5h 33m | Sky Lanes | ♥ 0 | This was a lot of fun! The art/music are very cohesive, and give the game a neat atmosphere. The lane mechanic was interesting, though I don't feel it was explored as well as it could've been; there was only one gate you needed to avoid to progress, and it was at the very end of the game. There also didn't appear to be much of a consequence to hitting other cars; there's no time limit, and hitting a car was effectively the same as braking (which I sometimes needed to do anyway if I was moving too fast to make a lane change before the next gate). I also saw at least one instance of a gate triggering when I didn't visibly pass through it (maybe some of the visuals are offset from their corresponding hitboxes?). Regardless, I really enjoyed myself with this. Great work. |
| Apr 28 07:00:41 | 4h 13m | Caws & Effect | ♥ 0 | This is a great start, I think, but could use a bit of polishing up on the design front. The base mechanic works pretty well, though the numbers for the egg's physics are maybe a little too high - you can fly across the map in a second, which trivialized many of the levels. The player being able to move also felt somewhat ancillary, since you can activate all machines from anywhere in the level. The only time I had to move was when my default spawn point was in the way of where the egg needed to go. Perhaps the beam could be blocked by the level's terrain, forcing you to navigate the map quickly to target different machines? Overall, though, I had a good time with this! There's a lot of potential for interesting mechanics here. The pixel art was also quite charming. |
| Apr 28 07:24:55 | 24m 14s | Cableman [a rhythm game] | ♥ 3 | This was really fun! There was a surprisingly large amount of content here, and it was all well-designed. I felt it pretty fully explored its mechanics, which I don't always see in jam games. I also loved the rhythm switch-up on the future levels. I was worried at first when the initial few levels could all be completed by just moving right, but I shouldn't have doubted the game, since the later levels (especially the bonus ones) got quite interesting. I played on the default difficulty, which felt about right to me - maybe I'll give it a try on hard when I have time. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad amount of deaths (some of were caused by just spamming the arrow keys to reset quickly after a mistake), but here are my stats: cableman-complete.png |
| Apr 30 01:34:34 | 42h 09m | SILENTIUM | ♥ 4 | This is a really impressive project for a single weekend! The environment is huge, but doesn't feel sparse. I would've perhaps appreciated some more opportunity for exploration; the game as-is is quite linear. Maybe the towers could be approached in any order, rather than being placed one after the other? I did like the collectable tapes, though, which encouraged me to look inside the buildings along the path. I agree that the "hold LMB" action is a little awkward. The game was inconsistent about whether actions used both hold and tap (for open/take/etc and close/replace/etc) respectively or just used tap for both. The latter actions felt much nicer to me, since really there's little point in making the player hold LMB then tapping wouldn't do anything in that context anyway. |
| May 1 00:14:47 | 22h 40m | Trouble in Telegraph Town | ♥ 1 | This was really neat! I'd initially assumed the first day was all there was of the game, then was pleasantly surprised when a story revealed itself. The last day was particularly interesting, though I feel the game could've done more with the idea than it did. Maybe that's something for post-jam, who knows. I was a bit confused about the checklists, as the game didn't appear to provide any feedback on whether my answers were right or wrong. Either it doesn't check, or I happened to get them all right, because I made it to the end of the game just fine. My main criticism is that the game drags a little; there are probably too many signals each day (most of which aren't relevant to the checklists), and the animations are quite slow. Perhaps signals could be confirmed with a separate button of some kind, instead of a fixed delay? That would speed things up quite a bit. |
| May 3 07:00:32 | 54h 45m | Bag of Beholding | ♥ 1 | This is really aesthetically pleasing, and the conceit is quite interesting, but unfortunately the game just feels a bit too opaque right now. I gave it a few attempts, and was only able to get to the fifth level. Because the game doesn't communicate stats like health/influence/etc (and even some items don't have descriptions), I ended up just having to randomly take actions most of the time, since I didn't have the information I needed to make informed decisions. I can tell there's potential for interesting gameplay here, but the game just doesn't make it clear to me how to engage with it. I'd be interested in seeing a post-jam version with some of the kinks ironed out, though! |
| May 8 00:39:27 | 113h 38m | GigaHurtz | ♥ 1 | Had a good time with this! It started off simple, but ramped up quickly enough that I didn't lose interest (though the last couple levels were more reflex-based and less puzzle-focused, while I was admittedly hoping for the opposite). The pixel art was charming, and the music was nice; though, the music stopped playing entirely around the third level and never started up again, leaving me in silence until the end of the game. The game also sorely needs sound effects, though lacking them is perfectly understandable for a jam game. Gameplay-wise, I think the game's biggest weakness is its controls. Horizontal momentum is extremely slow, and the speed cap is overly high, which resulted in me flying into spikes frequently when trying to move through levels quickly. This became an issue in the last couple levels - especially level 5, which had a decently precise jump at the end (if I gained too much speed, I would jump too high and hit the spikes above me, but if I was moving too _slowly_, I wouldn't make it over the first gap). A puzzle-platformer like this, I think, should optimally have controls that get out of the way as much as possible, so the puzzles can stay at the forefront. In terms of level design: the difficulty ramp is reasonable, but the game doesn't introduce its mechanics very well, which given your last comment here you're already aware of. To give some specific feedback regarding that, I think level 2 stands to be improved the most. The level's goal is to introduce the mechanic of using the blue platforms to regain signal after previously losing it, but while everything needed to teach that concept is present, the tutorial is obfuscated by seemingly navigable platforms above the floor, serving as essentially a red herring. You can get _just_ close enough to making it to the goal using those platforms that it led me astray for a couple minutes (until I accidentally lost signal on the ground and learned that I could slide on the floor myself). Replacing those with an obviously impassable obstacle would make the intended solution easier to see. Overall, though, I quite enjoyed this! With some polishing it could be a pretty fun puzzle-platformer, and there's definitely potential to introduce new mechanics into the mix (throwing the satellite, etc). Nice work :) |
| May 8 08:47:33 | 8h 08m | Dot Dash Mash | ♥ 0 | This was great! I didn't quite finish it (the game said there were "a few left" on the level I stopped at), since the levels started to become too difficult to finish within a reasonable timeframe, but I enjoyed what I played. The atmosphere was relaxing and conducive to solving puzzles, which was certainly helped by the music. I will admit that the later levels did start to frustrate me, though. They just got so large, and provided so little information (short patterns for long rows/columns), that solving them took a lot of trial and error. I couldn't make logical deductions at the outset like I could on the earlier levels, instead only being able to see the consequences of my placements after filling out the majority of the board. That made the levels very time-consuming, so I didn't feel I'd enjoy pushing through the rest of them. Regardless, I enjoyed playing this overall! It feels very polished, and the amount of content present is impressive for a jam game. |
| May 8 20:01:55 | 11h 14m | Ziggy Zapper and the Robot Factory | ♥ 1 | This was a lot of fun - maybe my favorite I've played this jam! The puzzles struck what I think is the right balance, being both complex enough to be interesting but not so difficult as to cause frustration. The art and music also added a lot to the experience, especially all the charming robots with eyes. I really appreciated the map showing which rooms still had keys left to collect, which saved me a lot of time toward the end of the game. The game also had a surprisingly solid difficulty curve, which I wasn't expecting given the open structure. I suppose most players will probably find the more hidden rooms last, so it works out most of the time. The majority of puzzles were well-designed, though I'll admit to finding a few less interesting than others (mainly the few that are just hidden in the walls, and thus don't really use the game's mechanics at all). The bottom-right room was also one of my least favorites, since it ended up just taking a lot of menial box shuffling work. The vast majority of the puzzles were great, though! ziggy-zapper-complete.png |
| May 8 20:23:05 | 21m 10s | Misplaced | ♥ 0 | I love the aesthetic of this! The dynamic lighting effects look great, and the music has a nice energy to it. I will admit that the opening section had me expecting something a bit less linear, but I still enjoyed myself with what the game offered. I did notice that dying while holding a crystal doesn't move it back to where it was found, which felt unintended (though it didn't matter much, given all the crystals are placed right next to their respective beacons). The dialogue from the player character is a nice touch, though it disappeared after the beacon note for some reason. It also progressed excessively slow; even the opening, which is relatively short, dragged on, and while the ending was amusing at first it went on longer than it probably needed to. This also revealed a bug/oversight with the beacon note: pressing E next to it initially didn't appear to do anything, since the previous dialogue line hadn't disappeared yet, so I pressed it multiple times thinking I just wasn't in the right position. This caused the quite long note dialogue to be queued up several times in a row, meaning it was just repeating over and over for the rest of the game, which was a bit awkward. |
| May 8 20:51:53 | 28m 48s | Gecko's Odyssey | ♥ 3 | This game is gorgeous! It's really unique-looking, and has a style unlike anything I usually see in game jams. The music fits well, too. Really incredible work by the team. Unfortunately, I was not able to finish the game. The mechanic itself is interesting, and I was enjoying myself initially, but the game was just too unforgiving for me to power through it. The main issue is that there's no way to recover from mistakes. Fall down to the bottom of the map? You have to restart the game, because you can't make it back up without the UFO. Accidentally drop a necessary box or the UFO? _Technically_ you could keep going, but you may as well restart the game anyway, since you've essentially lost all your progress. It doesn't help that the UFO is very easy to accidentally drop when maneuvering it through tricky terrain. I think I got a good portion of the way up the map on my last attempt, but after missing a jump and falling most of the way back down the start I just didn't have the motivation to do it all again. On the bright side, though, the core of the gameplay is solid, and with some tweaks to make it more fair I think this could be a pretty enjoyable game. The changes that would make the most difference, I think, are: - Add checkpoints. This is the biggest one. The game right now effectively plays like Getting Over It, which maybe some people might like (and could absolutely be kept as a bonus/hard mode), but the immense consequences for mistakes are quite demotivating. - Being able to lose signal to the UFO is frustrating. It's not a poor mechanic on its own, but combined with the high penalty for failure it makes the game more precise than it probably needs to me. It would help, though, if there were some kind of indicator for how close you are to losing signal. If checkpoints were added, and they were close enough together, you could probably get away without changing this, though. Still, I did enjoy my time with the game on my first couple attempts. There's definitely a solid game here, it just needs to be polished up enough to be more approachable. |
| May 8 23:06:04 | 2h 14m | The Lighthouse | ♥ 0 | This was really neat! It's rare to see point-and-click adventures in game jams - especially ones done well - and so it's always a treat to come across one. I will admit that I was hoping for a more puzzle-focused game, but the story was engaging enough that I didn't care all that much. The art is fantastic, and I appreciated the voice acting (though, the audio balance on it could probably stand to be cleaned up; some lines are much quieter than others). The game was also very polished, and did a good job _feeling_ like an old SCUMM game from the 90s. One criticism I have, though, is that the game isn't always consistent in its tone. The main storyline itself builds up suspense nicely, and I felt some tension near the end, but the ancillary voice lines for objects around the room don't change throughout the course of the game, so interacting with objects during the back half feels a bit dissonant. (As a side note, it was also pretty funny hearing the main character proclaim he needed to "run for [his] life" before casually strolling over to the staircase. That's understandable for a jam game, though, since running assets would take extra work.) Lastly, while the game seemed pretty stable overall, I did encounter a couple small bugs: - The "Who are you?" question during the encounter with the intruder didn't disappear after being asked, unlike the other questions. I thought it might be intentional at first - as in, maybe I could only exhaust a certain number of turns before being attacked, or something to that effect - but since the dialogue for the question was always the same, and nothing changed no matter how many times I asked it, I figure it's probably just a bug. - One dialogue line didn't play its corresponding voice clip, and had some extra characters at the start that maybe looked like a broken control code. I'm not familiar with AGS, though, so I'm not sure what exactly might've gone wrong here. lighthouse-dialogue-bug.png |
| May 8 23:39:55 | 33m 51s | Alpine | ♥ 1 | Really enjoyed this! It was very nicely polished, and the controls felt pretty good for a jam game (though the wall jump was admittedly a little awkward in places). I enjoyed the extra collectibles, too, though it did feel a little odd how a few of them were just on the ground along the main path. The levels were generally designed fairly well, though the room with the metal doors was a bit awkward (probably they don't need to repeatedly open and close when powered - it just forces you to wait a couple seconds every now and then). |
| May 8 23:51:30 | 11m 35s | The Last Beacon | ♥ 1 | Whoa, this is really atmospheric! I'd be content to just play a walking simulator with this aesthetic, but the conceit of this game is pretty neat too. I was somewhat confused making my way through the level initially, since it seemed _too_ simple - more complex than a walking simulator, but without the challenge needed to be a proper platformer - so the twist that I had to make it back up through the cave holding the orb wasn't entirely surprising, but it was still fun seeing the map from a new perspective. I was grateful that the ball didn't roll much upon landing, or I probably wouldn't have been able to finish the game. As it is, it's maybe a little _too_ easy? Because of how the level is structured, the most difficult parts are near the bottom, so the game ends on a bit of an anticlimax. Still, I really enjoyed myself with this! |
