Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD14 → ethergrind
By destroysound
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 29 | 3.52 | 23 | |
| Fun | 45 | 3.26 | 23 | |
| Theme | 106 | 2.35 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 113 | 2.17 | 23 | |
| Audio | 5 | 4.04 | 23 | |
| Polish | 12 | 4.05 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 16 | 4.04 | 23 | |
| Humor | 63 | 2.57 | 7 | |
| Timelapse | 2 | 4.25 | 12 | |
| Food | 8 | 3.67 | 12 | |
| Journal | 24 | 3.85 | 13 | |
| Technical | 32 | 3.26 | 19 |
This is tough for me to rate because the game looks really great, you have some cool effects going on, and you have some great sounds. But the game is frustratingly difficult with some odd choices (attacked while choosing powerups?), so it actually wasn't very fun for me.
Still, it's a pretty amazing piece of work so I have to rate it well. Props for getting music done too.
Oh crap, I'm an idiot. I didn't realize that those red things were powerups, so I completed the game with the normal peashooter. It was hard!
Nice Amiga aesthetic. :)
For the people who say that this game has nothing to do with the theme: get to the last level first!
I dont see where the theme fits...
But that aside, very polished, fun to play though somewhat difficult (not a criticism).
An allround-well-made-game.
Congrats :)
Wow, It's totally amazing that in 48 hours you made something that we probably would have all blown $35 on for our NES in the early 90's.
Like the real gradius, bit too hard for me.. nice old school intro
Too difficult for me... I love the retro look and feel though. Not extremely original or theme related either.
Sorry for voting for the wrong entry at first :P. The game was nice, and it was more challenging than I thought from a first look. The power-ups were the coolest thing of the game I think, and the audio was great. One bad thing I guess would be that the powerups were just lying around in crowds, which I thought a little odd.
Cool explosions and really fun to play, but extremely difficult.
nice game. impressive efforts here! feels almost complete...
here some remarks after playing the first 2 levels:
* solid oldschool feel! nice enemy sprites.
* lowres background graphics would have fit better.
* higher contrast between background and level/enemies. all's a bit too dark.
* easier levels! just good, one doesn't have to restart from first level all the time...
* controls on title screen?
* collision detection is not forgiving at all...
* a wall behind the boss or infinite scrolling once the player arrives there? first i just missed that it was a boss.
* powerups should have a "friendlier" color. i thought they are mines or something first.
* saver checkpoints? wakeing up under a moving wall of doom was cruel.
* transparent powerup hud?
* powerup activation via enter key was not all too practical. ctrl, shift?
Great first impression with the title screen and scroller. Music is pretty good too. Gameplay was a bit shocking at first - it's mainly the very very short distance you can see ahead making everything borderline gambling. Normally I don't like scrolling that's locked dead-on to the player sprite, but in this case it could have helped to let you see enemies coming at you from both directions. I managed to beat the first level on my third try. Got to the boss once on the second level, then I gave up :)
Interesting two-way version of a side scrolling shooter. I definitely wanted more lookahead - in Defender and its ilk (was it Aquatron on the Apple II? That game was AWESOME), it does basically the opposite of what you've done. It puts you at the back of the screen, so there's always most of the screen in front of the direction you're looking. Would be very nice!
Total theme failure here, but a lot of good polish. Everybody loves a sine scroller and a... whatchamacallit... 3D box made of sprites. I remember there was a term for that kind of '3D'. Vector balls? Don't ask me.
Level 2 has invisible obstacles/bullets. Move to the area where there are 2 turrets and 3 powerups. Pick up the powerups, destroy the right turret, then fly left to the boundary between the grinders (to escape the right grinder). I keep getting killed there despite being nowhere near either grinder and the bullets from Turret 1 being blocked by the right grinder.
Sorry, but I did not enjoy this very much, despite having a fair amount of fondness for the Gradius series. The player ship's hitbox feels pretty enormous, so squeezing into and out of tight spaces is problematic, as is avoiding enemy fire. The invisible obstacles only made matters worse. Also, it is not clear whether the particles from explosions are actually bullets or just decoration.
The game is very polished, though, with nice graphics and sound.
The scrolling is weird. Also, the explosion particles are way too bright obscuring too much.
Other than that a solid game, just not very wallish (despite having moving walls).
Wow...really polished entry...great music and art work.
Hm, I have a hard time enjoying myself while playing this, everything seems designed to frustrate: the player ship which is almost glued to the right screen border, the just so slightly too sensitive collision detection, the obscure powerup system which requires me to press enter to activate a powerup (a fact that I didn't find documented either in the readme or the game itself, so I had to actually go dig in the source to find it out)...
If it helps, the game is quite solidly done otherwise; graphics are just fine, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the movement controls, sound does what it's supposed to. Didn't enjoy the music, but I guess that's a matter of taste. It's just that the game seems to constantly tell me to go f$$$ right off; which might have been intentional, what do I know.
Tough, but fun. It's cool that you can turn around, which is uncommon for this type of game.
I've lost all my chops at playing this kind of game but I gave it my best. I didn't realize the powerups were 'good' for awhile as they looked quite spikey. :) Once I saw you could pick them up that helped a bunch.
I never managed to beat the first level boss and I must have died and restarted like 30 times. I got to the boss the last time I played and flew past him and kept on flying. I'm flying still even as I write this. :)
Liked the music and the graphics a lot. Found it a little weird to be able to instantly turn 180 and shoot backwards as I was expecting more the style where your ship just backs up.
I like your old school treatment with sine-scroller and shout outs. Hehe. Nice job for 48hrs!