gafblizzard 2013-04-29 04:36
The full screen red is kind of harsh on the eyes. A softer color might have been nicer. Interesting idea. :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD26 → Blue and Yellow
By evoker
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolness | 1 | 100 | ||
| Theme | 713 | 3.38 | ||
| Innovation | 773 | 2.85 | ||
| Audio | 911 | 2.07 | ||
| Humor | 949 | 1.69 | ||
| Fun | 1015 | 2.45 | ||
| Mood | 1045 | 2.35 | ||
| Overall | 1167 | 2.51 | ||
| Graphics | 1290 | 1.90 |
The full screen red is kind of harsh on the eyes. A softer color might have been nicer. Interesting idea. :)
Thanks for the feedback! I'll experiment with other color schemes for the next version. :)
Fun, but sometimes blocks would spawn on top of me when I stopped moving. Other than that, it was a great little game.
The player can't initiate movement but still moves when the room is white. This means choosing between super-small movements that are completed before the white screen returns, or movement without death is a matter of chance. From the player's perspective, choosing between two undesirable options, with limited reward, is not an interesting choice to make.
@sparksgently
The player still moves when the room is white due to the deceleration setting I think. I'll try to tweak the movement for the next version. I appreciate the feedback. :)
@bobo72a
I make the red blocks check if they are overlapping with the player and choosing a different position if they are. I think the spawning death is due to the player not coming to a complete stop when the room turns white and lack of proper feedback to show the last position of the player at the moment of death. I'll definitely have to fix that. Thanks for pointing it out. :)
From the comment's I'm assuming the continued movement of the player was not intentional? I kind of liked having that choice actually, especially when I started to get impatient and realised I would just end up dying. Patience is key :)
Was still fun to play though :)
Really cool concept. I think it could be expanded in some way to something less 'minimalistic'. Though the blinking is definitely hard to look at. Even if it was a just a crossfade I think it would be better.
love the simplicity !
Very simple and funny.
Perhaps an other color than the red ...
it takes a little time to understand the movement
@ThirteenWB
Thank you! :) I toyed around with different movement variables to get a good feel. I didn't mind the "ice skating" movement that I ended up going with since I felt the game was a bit too easy as it was.
I'm glad to get some outside feedback though since so far I've been the only playtester! Thanks a lot for playing. :)
@TheFudster
Thanks for the kind words. :) After getting feedback about the harshness of the screen colors, implementing a crossfade did come to mind.
I guess it comes down to balancing the difficulty for the player. I want the game to be challenging, even if an element of that is an amount of discomfort while playing. That was my thinking behind my choice of going with stark colors. But in future versions of the game I'll definitely rethink my choices. Thanks again for the feedback. :)
@Nakato
Thanks for playing! After all the feedback on the red color I'm starting to feel glad I didn't go with the name "Red Alert" for the game (I almost did). :)
Very suspenseful! Where will the red blocks be?! Reminded me of Doctor Who's Weeping Angels.
I like the fact that you keep moving when the lights come back on, it forces you choose between safety and speed.
@anjack
Glad you enjoyed it! I was hoping players would feel that kind of tension during the game. In the future I think I should add a countdown timer to more create a feeling of urgency to give them a more explicit reason to consider speed.
Thanks for your feedback. I'm going to have to look up Weeping Angels. :)
Nice little game, it can get hypnotic :) Fits the theme very well too!
I'm horrible at this game, but cool idea! It seems lots of people are toying with the "invisible" theme with this LD, even though the theme is minimalism... interesting!
@Zener
I'm happy you liked it! Thanks for playing. :)
@BipolarMike
I know right! I guess many participants took to heart one aesthetic definition of minimalism as "stripped down to the most essential parts".
Myself, I wanted represent in the most minimal way a particular mechanic that I enjoy in stealth and horror games--that of uncertainty and rushing towards the goal when a clear path presents itself.
I decided the rename the game "Blue and Yellow".
Neat concept. I kept imagining the red dots as ghosts that only move when the lights are off. Kinda creepy. It might be nice to have the player stop when the color changes, to avoid sliding into red blocks while not being able to move.
@metalcan
Thanks. That's exactly the feeling I was trying to evoke. :) Still deciding what to do about the sliding. I certainly don't want the player to die through no fault of their own.
I found the controls and red blocks a bit unforgiving. The controls because sometimes my momentum would kill me (though this may have been intentional), and the red blocks because sometimes they'd appear on top of me. Other than that, I enjoyed it! :)
@zatyka
I may tweak the controls for the next version. As for the red blocks, I placed a check to ensure they don't spawn on top of the player. To test it I left the game running for an hour by itself. Sure enough, the player did not die. :)
Nice original idea! Would be cool if the difficulty increased with each level, or you had to collect more blue blobs before exiting.
Pretty interesting concept. There's a serious issue, though - player still moves when room turns white, so you can unintentionally run into an enemy.
Great use of simplicity, and the concept is pretty fun. Like others have mentioned, I also felt that some elements were on the harsher side. A softer palette (http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/search?query=horror) would have added more mood and been easier on the eyes. The enemies were a bit too random for me; I lost any sense of strategy/control since I didn't feel that I could avoid them besides luck. Maybe an interesting spin to this game would be monsters attacking you in the dark, but you see where they're going to in the light (arrows/faces/slight movement)?
But regardless, nice job and a big congrats on your (first?) completed game. :D
That is pretty hard. Still, the concept is very interesting. And I agree with the others, the red screen burns into my retina...
Thanks for playing guys!
@berkano
That is an excellent idea. Perhaps every few levels the number of blue blocks to rescue can increase.
@Ezzam
The sliding bit is on purpose to give the player the choice to either take a risk or play safe. Admittedly this is flawed since there isn't an explicit reason to rush through the level as it is. I may add a timer in the post-LD version.
@AaronYip
Hey thanks for rating my game! I thought your game was excellent. Only critique is that is doesn't follow the theme but otherwise it was quite a visceral experience.
Trust me, there is a way to play "safe" but at the expense of speed. The enemies are completely random, true, but at no point do they spawn on the player directly. The only time control is taken away from the player is during the slide but that is also based on the player's speed prior to the control lock.
I appreciate your suggestions though and will keep them in mind when developing the post-LD version.
@fullmontis
It's supposed to be hard! :) And I suspect the visual discomfort isn't the red screen but actually the white. This is especially true if you're playing in the dark since red is supposed to preserve your night vision. It's the white screen that throws the player's vision off. Again, this is all intentional and part of the game's design. But I will be experimenting with different color schemes to see how they affect the gameplay. Thanks so much for playing and giving me your feedback.
A clever concept, but why stop the player from moving when the "lights" go on?
I enjoyed this. Nice way to create a mood despite the minimalist graphics, and the gameplay itself reminds me of some (good!) shareware games from the 90s.
@Ryusui
Thanks! It's to force a certain kind of mood. Still experimenting with it though.
@Christina
Thank you :)