argo15 2013-04-29 18:00
Neat idea, quite challenging to actually spell any words.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD26 → WORDHUNTER
By lu3mm3l
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolness | 1 | 100 | ||
| Innovation | 205 | 3.60 | ||
| Audio | 428 | 2.92 | ||
| Graphics | 459 | 3.17 | ||
| Theme | 664 | 3.43 | ||
| Fun | 711 | 2.81 | ||
| Humor | 756 | 1.96 | ||
| Overall | 758 | 2.98 | ||
| Mood | 852 | 2.59 |
Neat idea, quite challenging to actually spell any words.
Great fun! I'd never thought I'd see a shoot-em-up/scrabble crossover! I enjoyed the multitasking challenge, and having the option to just give up and shoot sh*t =D
Interesting idea. It was quite difficult to make actual words because at some point there would be just too many of them to cherry pick the right letters :D
I like the style, and it feels good to play. Actually spelling a word is quite the task.
The graphics were very nice and soft on the eyes. It was very hard to focus on spelling words due to letters spawning very close by and coming in fairly fast. I was made pretty much impossible to survive or spell once the green letters came in; I had to focus all my fire on them and even then some spawned so close as to kill me. Interesting idea!
Good concept, well implemented. Could do with some better feedback when you submit a correct word. A bit too hard as well.
Took me a while to get a word.
I dig the style, could have used a different color for the player entity to separate it more from the letter entities though.
I think this is a really cool idea but I found it way to difficult to spell out words with such fast paced game-play and constantly moving targets.
The game felt good to play in general though, the controls felt good and the movement felt solid. I really like the simple look of the graphics too. The particles where a nice touch.
To summarize, this was a cool game with a nice idea but by the end I was just playing it like any other shooter and not even thinking about the spelling mechanic.
Good job!
Nice concept, smooth game, classic and solid gameplay with surprisingly satisfying sounds and fitting graphics, but yeah, it's really difficult to actually spell words.
I think one of the major problem is that every letter comes in with equal probability (ot at least that's what I think), so you may come up with 8 consonants (obviously W, X, Z...). That, and the unfortunate missing shots fucking up your word (for which I have no obvious solution).
Neat idea and nicely presented. Sometimes I felt like the letters spawned right on top of me, and the hit boxes seemed a little too large. Some of the words didn't seem to get accepted (like tibia, TOTALLY a word).
As others have said it is quite difficult to spell any words.
Tried to play under OSX 10.8, it didn't work :(
"Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: de/gerritg/wordhunter/Starter : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0"
No idea what this is. Not scoring of course!
Really like the idea. It would make a fun multiplayer game :) Very nice minimalistic graphics.
Cool idea, pleasant graphics and well implemented. As other people have said difficult to make a word, but a really solid entry!
Thanks for the feedback so far! I'll look into the posted issues and publish a fixed version. Maybe next week. I have some word for a couple of things:
- Words: Getting a word IS really hard. The idea was, that words are mixed up and spawned. I didn't finish that function so everything is random. Which makes it really hard to get a word sometime. It's like playing scrabble and everything you have is ZYYXZSQQO.
- Words Part II: I used a list of the 1000 most common used words and I'm not satisfied with that solution as there are missing a LOT of good & often used words. Maybe I should have used the top 10.000 ;)
- OSX error: No clue. Sound's like a mismatch of a lib. I'll look into that.
- Multiplayer: Sure. But first: Bug fixing, more enemies, joypad support.
Congrats on your 1st LD entry.
I really really like the concept.
I definitely think your dictionary is way too small. It missed a lot of the words I threw at it. I'd recommend checking out http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/ or http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/Long_List if you're looking for word lists in the future, those both seem to be useful resources.
All that aside, though, this was a lot of fun, and very creative!
There were some issues with the gameplay mechanics, the fire rate is too high and the bullet speed is rather low. Also there were rarely enough vowels. It is a neat idea that requires more work to shine as a game.
The movement would sometimes get locked and it would move on its own. I swear I spelled some words and it didn't give me any extra points.
It's a really interesting game idea and the graphics and audio were pretty nice. Kinda hard to get letters that can spell out a plausible word though. (Bear in mind I was playing the Windows initial compo version of the game)
What an incredibly simple yet effective idea! Crossover shoot-em-up with a word spelling game? Wow. So simple, so awesome.
As other have said, it was generally pretty difficult to actually string real words together but that just made it all the more satisfying when it happened!
Would love to see this get more developed! :D
Can't run the web version (class error). Missed some vowels but it's a nice idea! Cheers!
Oh! As an addition to the previous comment. It would be nice if the frequencies of the letters matched the language more. You can easily find such data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency#Relative_frequencies_of_letters_in_the_English_language
I think it would make the game a lot more fun to play!
I like the idea. I wasn't sure how to "complete" a word. Perhaps if there was a specific word the player was asked to spell and a time limit to spell it?
Wow, amazingly polished, but too hard :P
It looked really nice, but a bit frustrating at first. Maybe a bit hard. But I like the idea and implementation! Good job!
sh launch.sh
Unable to access jarfile
Cool concept, but it's hard to actually get words.
Very good game, quite challenging.
@kddekadenz
The generic JAR >should< also work on *nix systems (java -wordhunter.jar). The dotSH was made with jarsplice - seems like the only thing that works out of the box are the jars itself.
@angelk
Completing a word is as easy as pressing the right mouse button. But in some cases it still won't register a word since it only knows 10k.
@Cake&Code
After changing the spawn cache in the post-LD version it's easier to get a word. But for the full version (if I ever get to that) I'll include a lot more words. That's for sure :) Thanks for the links!
I really liked the concept of the game, but I think it would've benefited from shifting the focus to either spelling words or shooting everything. It was far too challenging to spell words when there was 20+ chars on the screen, and they literally spawn 30~ pixels away from you at times, which makes you end up just dying.
I liked the simple graphics & audio though, everything goes well with the theme. ^_^
Good job! ~
Nice graphics and sounds, I like shooting as well, good game :)
Very unique take on a genre mash-up and I think it resulted in a fun game. Good job with the aesthetics too -- stays true to the theme.