Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD24 → Artificial Selection
By talslain
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audio | 449 | 2.18 | ||
| Innovation | 570 | 2.38 | ||
| Mood | 602 | 2.15 | ||
| Humor | 611 | 1.25 | ||
| Theme | 655 | 2.00 | ||
| Coolness | 667 | 44 | ||
| Overall | 730 | 2.05 | ||
| Fun | 734 | 1.68 | ||
| Graphics | 740 | 1.64 |
It took me a while to figure out the doors are doors, and in general what things were in the boat room - kinda frustrating! Also, without visual feedback, I wasn't sure my attack was working until the guy died.
The mini-map is a nice touch - helped me to find the first door (:p!), but also what directions I should be heading in.
Interesting game, but I feel it's let down by interface issues.
Thank you for your comments, I did like the mini-map myself, one of the last things I implemented but I thought it was missing something until I put that in.
As for the attack I did think this myself, but didn't know what to do without making it look cheesy. I added a sound when your attack works but it mustn't have been enough.
But as I say thank you for your feedback.
I found it difficult to locate items in the game to collect. I think some visual elements, such as tabs labeling the shortcuts for inventory, health, boat, and crafting would have helped. Think like boxes or squares that break apart when you search them littered around would have been helpful too in guiding the player into searching for things. I felt quite lost just going from screen to screen avoiding enemies. I like the premise, format, and sound, but it just needs some more visual detail in the world for the character to interact with.
I did consider the tabs but then didn't do it, I'm not sure why now, I think it was to do with the sizing and the amount of tabs, but I'm unsure.
As for boxes etc. that break apart this was an idea I had as well, to have rubble etc. from the explosions, however I realized that I was slowly running out of time and kind of panicked, as well as this, I'm not good at graphics (as you can probably see) and therefore didn't want it to look bad (or worse than it does).
Also, thank you for your comments, I do plan to take this game farther and therefore I will be implementing these features, if i can work out a way to to do it that is.
Your linux version is not working out for me.
I get this: "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: com/Engine : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0"
and this: "Could not find the main class: com.Engine. Program will exit."
So no rating yet :-)
My feedback is similar to some of the other comments. Interesting premise and plenty of potential but the issues lie with audio/visual feedback and the interface. I wasn't sure initially what the objects were and so plenty of trial and error was required. It's a very ambitious game concept, congrats on getting as far as you have with it in just 48hrs.
This is an extremely ambitious design for an LD title, and I feel like you pulled it off pretty well - the main mechanics are there, the stats work, crafting works. The only problems I have are with the goods collection being a bit vague and the audio gets very repetitive. Good work though dude!
the dot moves SOOOOo slow. takes an hour just to move from the boat to the woods. :O Didn't get much further than that. :)
I know visuals and audio aren't my strong points, mainly because I've never focused on them as much as i probably should. Visually I've never been very 'arty' and therefore have always had difficulties with graphics. As for audio I only learned how to do that about a week before the competition so was expecting low marks there.
The mechanics have always been my strong point and the bit I find most exciting. I usually spend a lot of time making new games before I finish old one because I think of new mechanics (:
As for commanderstitch's comment, I never found that the player moves slowly, I found that it felt smooth and by increasing it, it felt too quick. That's why it moves the speed it does.
Thank you for your comments I make sure I always take comments on board and therefore I will be focusing on audio and visual a lot more over the next four months.
I want to play more and I think you didn't mean for the player to move soooo slow but it is hard to do more when moving that slowly, I will see if I can figure out what is cause that since you included the source.
Okay, thank you, please let me know what you think, I just retried it moving faster but I feel that it moves too quick when it is sped up by one pixel per tick
I love the music! really sets the mood!
Thank you, personally I loved the menu, just loved the eerie-ness of it the moment I did it
This is really ambitious, but like other people are saying, it's pretty hard to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. Maybe a tutorial level or something would clear up any confusion. Great job for 48 hours!
That is a good idea that I've never thought of. I am planning on working on this game further and I will try this and see how it looks, thank you
Yeah man. Speed it up some, get some good tiles on there, and this game would be AWESOME. Love the crafting.
Thank you, I've been thinking about the speed problem that many people are mentioning, I was thinking of making it so that the more you carry the slower you walk, so therefore when you carry less weight, you would be moving quicker, Other than that thank you for your comments.
I like the idea, and the enemies seem very well balanced, but the UI and complicated controls, which are listed at the bottom of the screen (the average player won't read), can create a headache trying to figure out how to play. I read the controls, but still found myself getting attacked while scrolling down to figure out how to do something.
Thank you for your comments, I'm glad that you liked the balancing, I was really worried about this as I have always had trouble when it comes to balancing and I am happy that you liked it. As for the controls I am trying to make a tutorial level for the game that will hopefully solve this problem. As well as this I have figured out a way to create tabs that I am happy with the look of them.
As well as this my main focus for the next four months is to advance my visual graphics and also the visual storytelling, if you will.
Thank you for your comments
Oh man, what did you do here? I was so excited about this game! I love the style and wanted to build the ship but this is just unplayable.
The main problem I think is clipping is bad. You and even the monsters can go out of the screen. Waypoints - or what to call them - are working or not or glitching like crazy. Sometimes you get into the wall and sometimes you stand next to it. Once I have stucked in the wall and only got out aomehow when I pressed directions wildly.
Sometimes you can get resources and sometimes you can't get anything.
Nothing shows you that the inventory is full and nothing shows is the item can be crafted or not - because you don't have the resources needed.
Controls are counter intuitive and some of them are not mentioned anywhere - like E or anything about the mouse. I mean by counter intuitive is you need to let go of the arrow keys to do anything in the right box and the other keys are layed out all over the keyboard.
Mouse clicking is not working always and when it does it isn't do it's thing on the item you clicked but on the item previously selected.
Why are you need to smash SPACE at the begining to get rid of the text?
So yeah... make a game out of this seriously! I want to play it so badly!
Interesting to see such an ambitious scope.
Couldn't quite figure out how to use the crafting menu. Also, the intro seemed kind of slow and unresponsive. Maybe it'd be better as just one screen?