Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD14 → Heart

Heart

By agj

Percentile
CategoryRankScoreCountLD14Ever
Theme224.003877.383.7
Innovation333.533671.474.2
Overall503.283958.346.4
Fun1131.86376.61.8
Audio83.863792.387.3
Polish134.003889.189.5
Graphics184.003785.880.0
Humor991.73155.74.1
Timelapse54.00833.359.3
Technical503.063355.959.7
Journal872.131621.819.1
Food2

Ratings received

OverallAudioFunInnovationPolishThemeGraphicsHumorJournalTechnicalFoodTimelapse
351454
3323333123
55555
352354534
23134431121
343434
45344344
353355414
453533413
44124552
342444434
344445224
3513425235
43145544
34133441333
34234442
1112434232
531345531515
3315344122
1422142215
4544555334
45243543
4325433
3155
4434454244
251435422
43244543
342453333
535344325
331145312
331433211
33345553
43344354
3515354
231233221
34145444
43424253
341355413
442445434

Comments

muku

Very moody, like most people I loved the style, effective music. I feel I would have been even more impressed with it if I hadn't already played Defect, but since you credited that influence there's no problem with that. Also, the rotation was a nice twist. The text cards did stay up for too long (and might in fact have worked better as pop-ups, thus not interrupting the flow of the game).
On my first (and so far only) playthrough I felt that I didn't grasp the "story" fully, but that's probably my fault.

drpetter

Well... I don't like autonomous games. You managed to create an effective depressed/desperate mood though.

dani128

Jason Rohrer called, and he wants his schtick back. ;)

For that matter, Rohrer's stuff, esp. Gravitation, is closer to what I'd call a "game". Heart does fit the formal definition of "game", but in such a loose way that I have trouble considering it one. As it is, your blog entry seems to suggest "it is a game because I intended it to be one", which really doesn't sit well with modern notions of art. Further, the very fact that there is a simple way to make it more gamey without sacrificing the artistic value (I'm sure you can guess what that is) kind of underscores the un-gameyness of the work.

Still, this is an excellent work, and I'm confident that people who try to use it as an excuse to submit flash movies for LD will be summarily scorned.

nilsf

Very stylish, I loved the music, the use of color, blurring and effects (though some guys turned upside down with seemed more like a glitch).
However I wouldn't really call it a game.

destroysound

Yeah, I agree that the text boxes pushed this over the line. Might have been better if the story was all conveyed visually.

foureyes

Very neat, and quite stylish. I really like what you did with the camera. The whole experience reminds me of passage, but darker.

It seems that tigs people tend to do more "art-games" than the usual LD48 crowd. It makes for an interesting experience, but I suspect that your fun rating is going to suffer. :-)

sparky

Great, not much of replay value though ;)

doches

Loved the style, except for the text screens. Somehow those just jarred me out of an otherwise visually perfect experience.

lokijki

Wow, awesome and creepy.

sethr

Unique and interesting take on the theme.

Game? I'd classify this as a flash movie that requires you to hold down a key...

I feel depressed now...

grimfang4

I won!

ondrew

Not much of a game, but extremely nice presentation.

radix

Super-themey. I think the only issue with the text boxes is that they stay up twice as long as they need to. One-sentence cards can be read at a glance--and if they go too fast for some, well, that just leaves you with a semi-subliminal effect which people would think is arty and special.

superflat

I already wrote a fairly ridiculous review on your original post, but I'll re-iterate here: you affected me with this work, but I'm not sure how much I liked the experience. I'm not sure you wanted me to.

It was incredibly powerful, and I understood what you where trying to achieve (I think) but I always have trouble with works without a single glimmer of hope. That said, perhaps it is in there somewhere, hidden away, or then again maybe it was consciously extracted and bottled up in your other entry!

Despite this, I think it's incredible just as a portrait of despair, looking right into the maw of the pit... You did portray these kind of emotions with an incredible synergy of light and sound, and I suppose I'm glad to have had that experience.

It's hard to review an 'game' like this. But congratulations on having the balls to produce it.

hroon

I like how you don't explicitly state what the advancing wall of darkness represents - it rather generates a feeling of fatality and a sense of regret.

Everything from sound to visuals works beautifully together here.

entar

Not really what I was expecting. Kind of odd, and as others have expressed, depressing. Good style though.

morre

Conceptually interesting and a daring take on the competition. While I like a good story as much as anybody, this just about crosses the line to short film for me. I certainly wouldn't say there's any gameplay to speak of.

Great graphical style though. The music is nice and moody, and the game is impressively polished.

simon

Loved it! Great job on the music.

hybridmind

Enjoyed the polish and style of this piece. Definitely agree with the other comments that the text screens were too long and kept pulling me out of the experience.

Not sure how much there is to this that I may have missed either control wise or message wise but that is ok.

The rotation and the approaching wall were subtle and nice and the music fit it well.

Oh yeah and I think if you add leaderboards to this you've got a real winner on your hands. ;)

dessgeega

i like that the advancing wall in this game is psychological: that it's an advancing wall of despair. that the player has the ability to look back but never to retreat is very effective. i think the text could stand to repeat itself less, though it was smart to use those text cards to mask the protagonist's transformations.

jsb

I'm haunted.
Your game challenges the definition of a game as it draws its effect from the user interaction. Although the actual interaction is minimal, I wouldn't have been far as affected if I had just passively watched a video sequence.

hamburger

Beautiful visuals and a great tone. I love seeing those giant gray sprites parallaxing over each other. I'm pretty curious to see how you coded some of those visuals up, since, though I work in Flash, I don't have a lot of experience coding visual effects.... Are you going to share the source at some point? :)