FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD26 → SDFJKL

SDFJKL

By dining-philosopher

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Innovation184.03
Coolness1100
Fun493.62
Overall893.64
Humor1582.66
Audio1653.28
Theme1843.52
Mood2872.87
Graphics4522.51

Comments

super-hamster 2013-04-30 05:00

Interesting concept, but I found that the controls were a bit too complicated(maybe that's because I can understand it and that's just me). But very interesting concept. :D

quasiperfect 2013-04-30 05:15

All in all, this is possibly my favourite game of the jam so far. The gameplay and graphics are simple, but it's really fun and challenging to play through the level. I can't remember a game like this, especially with the silly backstory playing out behind the game.

rwos 2013-04-30 18:32

Wow, this is cool - the most surprising thing is how well the control scheme works! Fantastic work, great fun to play!

thomastc 2013-04-30 20:30

Whew, this is hard! Especially when I get my arms reversed, it gets pretty tricky to control. The music does a great job of soothing my frustration though. And the name is brilliant... any reference to QWOP is totally appropriate :D

grouflon 2013-04-30 20:40

Definitely chalenging but fair enought when we get the control patterns right. Graphics are a bit poor but suit well in the theme. interesting entry, according to me ;)

hnjslater 2013-04-30 20:46

*REALLY* good, really fun game. LOADs of thumbs up

scriptorum 2013-04-30 20:50

Really fun and challenging. It really tummy-patting/belly-rubbing skills to control both hooks simultaneously. Nicely done.

kashi 2013-04-30 21:52

I'm loving it!

acro 2013-04-30 22:05

Interesting and challenging game. The graphics are basic but the gameplay is good. Well done.

cryovat 2013-04-30 22:46

I'm sure this game cost me years of my life. The second-to-last level level had me screaming at my monitor for over fifteen minutes.

This is a solid game, the mechanic works well and the graphics are suprisingly effective. But the difficulty.... D:

mipi 2013-05-01 11:16

It was fun for me. The learning curve was at first great, but I think that the level where the goal is on the center with J shaped red stuff around( your main screenshot has this level), then there was too much difficulty for me. I couldn't complete that level despite serious efforts, but I was very close to do it once.

gre 2013-05-01 13:09

The game is really good,
fun to play, nice music,
Good innovation on the gameplay,
The controls need some exercice but are quite good once mastered.

krasse 2013-05-01 16:51

I enjoyed this!
The game idea is very good but it was a bit difficult to control and the difficulty level was a bit steep :)
Very good!

angerus 2013-05-01 18:18

Very nice concept and the control, even if they are not "natural", are well though considering your idea! I love the music and ambiance !Great little game

elbowroom 2013-05-01 20:58

I really like the unique gameplay mechanic. I normally don't say this and I wish to say you get full points from me on innovation. I will play this game again (a rare thing when it comes to compo games)

maumagau 2013-05-02 21:35

Found the red spiral level too difficult to complete after several attempts, but a great challenge and delightful mechanic.

waynetron 2013-05-03 09:40

Perhaps you wanted the controls to be awkward and hard. But if you didn't, I think mouse control would make this a lot easier. Nice mechanic though!

diningphilosopher 2013-05-03 09:49

Thanks for the comments everyone, glad many of you like it. After a lot of debugging ourselves, we got so used to the controls that it was hard to assess their true difficulty. We considered using the mouse, but I was using a new language and framework, and had my doubts whether I could make it work in time. Either way I think I like the keyboard controls better.

_rilem 2013-05-03 10:45

Really fun mechanic. I would imagine it working well with an xbox controller, 2 sticks and 2 triggers. :)

elbowroom 2013-05-04 16:53

You guys scored 5 on just about everything. Very impressive. I played it several times and love the gameplay mechanic, challenging level design and excellent choice of sound effects and music. Thanks for making a great and enjoyable game. My favorite part was the last levels, they were nearly 8-bit Nes hard. Very good show.

davedobson 2013-05-04 20:32

This is very cool. I had a lot of trouble controlling the guy, but I think that's the point (I did an attraction-based physics model for mine too). I like how the tasks you had to accomplish grew in complexity and used different parts of the physics without adding harder controls or new types of objects. The story was fun, and the background music and sound effects were really neat. Great game.

cybearg 2013-05-05 03:52

Absolutely brilliant gameplay! I loved the concept and it was executed well, with good uses of it in the levels. Very well done! Music was great, too!

Personally, the only downside was the controls. I know that others have lauded them, but I never got the hang of them and grew frustrated by them. Why weren't the controls set to use the WASD + arrow keys? People are familiar with feeling WASD in their left hand and arrow keys in their right from games like The Binding of Isaac. I'd be able to more easily feel the left/right versus shooting buttons. Personally, in the heat of the moment, it was a frantic scramble to find the right button, since it was sun an uncommon place for my fingers to sit on the keyboard.

Still, an excellent game!

diningphilosopher 2013-05-05 09:27

Hey Cybearg, thanks for playing! The reason the controls were set to this (and not wasd/arrows) is that this way, your fingers are placed symmetrically on the keyboard. Also, you keep them in the standardposition for normal typing, which at least for me was quite natural. Hopefully next time we'll have time to add control customization.

covenant 2013-05-05 12:41

Excelent work... it kind of reminds me of QWOP, but much more fun! Great job!
Deviously difficult! :)

mrblade 2013-05-06 15:52

Great game! One of the most fun games I have seen so far! Love the audio! Keep it up! :D

miharbi 2013-05-06 22:01

fun game. control took a little time to get used to.

smilingcat 2013-05-06 22:50

Very unique controls! Took a while to get the hang of it, but it was a lot of fun. Great job!

chowdy 2013-05-06 23:04

Really fun once you get used to the controls. Very challenging, but satisfying. Had a really great time with this one!!

prelucid 2013-05-08 21:34

That was fun. I love the idea!

minionstudios 2013-05-09 20:13

An excellent and challenging game with a slight learning curve! The controls work very well!

ahm99 2013-05-11 02:32

Really cool game. I loved the gameplay. You HAVE to make a post compo. I would like to see a game like this with more realistic graphics, more levels, as in a full game. Great job :)

jonapulse 2013-05-12 18:35

Favorite game so far. Pretty up the graphics and you could sell this. A little more control would be nice-- maybe there's a button to reset both your shooters to some angle, or to rotate them by the same angle.

ethankennerly 2013-05-12 20:30

Swinging from grappled ropes to avoid red blocks and seek the yellow square interested me. The music deepened the interest and feeling of being content. If you continue to develop this, sometimes I thought I was in the yellow box but nothing happened yet.

kill0u 2013-05-13 12:14

Nice gameplay, but so many buttons for a "minimalism" theme? A little too hard for me, I gave up after a while =/ Cool game though.

diningphilosopher 2013-05-13 12:17

@ethankennerly, thanks for playing and your comment! Being in the yellow box is not enough to win the level, you have to 'grab' it with one of your arms.

@Jonapulse, thanks for your comment! You can rotate both arms by the same angle by rotating them at the same time. ;)

zkenshin 2013-05-14 14:49

Really fun entry, loved the movement system. :)

realyuniquename 2013-05-15 08:02

Took some time to get comfortable with controls, but definitely worht it!

turbodindon 2013-05-15 08:19

Not easy to control but very interesting concept!

- SEPHY (@sephyka)

pacifistgames 2013-05-15 12:14

Completed it, though the level before the last one took me probably like 30 or so tries. (The Meteor storm level)
Really interesting mechanic!

Does the game run at 30 fps? I found that it was a bit hard to aim SDFJKL's arms well. Maybe you could increase the frame rate and decrease the distance the arms rotate each frame?

madball 2013-05-15 14:03

Completed the game. Liked the idea and the story, but graphics are just overly minimalistic to be good.
I`d like to see state of both arms separately (Are they extended or not) shown somewhere. When you get inside the wall you hold, you can`t see your arms.

ataxkt 2013-05-15 15:44

Wowww, hard! Really cool idea though.

mathio 2013-05-15 19:56

Hey great entry! Really loved the mechanics, it's like a minimalist space spiderman, or something. The controls take some getting used to but soon become quite manageable as long as you don't confuse yourself by crossing the arms. It took me a few levels to realize that all that was needed was an arm to reach the goal! That made things a lot less daunting and more fun to the point that I actually replayed it, so maybe clarify that aspect a little. Either way solid stuff here guys! :)

xanjos 2013-05-16 19:48

Took a while to get used to the controls but this was a very fun game with a really interesting concept.

bentog 2013-05-16 21:53

Minimalistic QWOP. Awesome!

superdisk 2013-05-18 03:43

It got pretty hard, but this is one of the better entries.

cyberyeti 2013-05-20 07:23

Really innovative and fun to play. the controls are also very intuitive. great work!