FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD28 → Last Minute Christmas Chopping

Last Minute Christmas Chopping

By notch

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Humor953.44
Graphics1203.83
Overall1583.50
Mood1863.31
Fun1973.35
Innovation3843.06
Audio4322.65
Theme4942.87
Coolness1795

Comments

gravityscore 2013-12-15 18:15

Fun and well themed for this time of year! Had great fun playing it.

arthurmaker 2013-12-15 18:16

Awesome game fun whould rate 1000/1000p

thedeadlybutter 2013-12-15 18:18

Great game, definitely going to check out Dart as I've been looking into doing web games & JS isn't cutting it for me.

ashen 2013-12-15 18:24

What a fun game, excellent presentation! For some reason my arrow keys didn't show instructions the first time I played so I didn't know what I was doing. Next time they did, and got the idea.

Really like the lighting effects, getting darker as you go and the torch lighting at the end. Nice and smooth too, Chrome only at 9% on my desktop PC. Straightforward use of the actual theme, but the snowy Christmas theme is really great.

psychopsam 2013-12-15 18:53

Truly amazing. Like an Atari game mixed with Space Harrier. Awesome work. Well done.

2013-12-15 18:57

Looks the part but gameplay-wise isn't great. You need a great deal of luck with the random generation to get anywhere above 700 points before the minute is up. The tentacles? Goop? stuff seems a little out of place as well and I'm not quite sure what benefit collecting it does. However it is fun to play a bit and it's very impressive that it's done in Dart and HTML5.

notch 2013-12-15 19:29

The tentacles are because of Cthulhu, of course. To use the goop, and to get closer to being able to beat the game, hold the jump button and tap the chop button.

captainnakou 2013-12-15 20:40

The game and the graphics are really cool.
But I think the concept is not that original.
But you're still the best programmer I've ever seen in my entire life.

flyinpig5 2013-12-15 21:22

I think it looks great, but it's basically spamming S while using arrow keys

endesga 2013-12-15 22:13

Hahahaha, very cool!
I played it alteast 10 times, and only won a couple, it's pretty time consuming.

The art is fantastic, you always do a good job on art :)

"This is Player. Santa used up Player's time. But Player is cool with that"

hahahaha, nice, nice.
-ENDESGA

jimmypaulin 2013-12-15 22:32

Compelling. The controls felt very tight and nicely tuned with a real pop to them. Very readable graphics and the sound adds a sense of gravitas to proceedings. Jolly and complete, thanks!

donutttt 2013-12-15 22:55

Always nice to see a Christmas game :) the controls are easy and the game is fun... and very addictive.

dbro 2013-12-15 23:00

Very well done (but of course)

alvarop 2013-12-16 00:57

So hard.I made child sad :'(

ppelle 2013-12-16 01:18

Great!

archaeometrician 2013-12-16 02:18

Really nice game ! Congrats !

oxysoft 2013-12-16 03:05

Very nice game, also impressive considering you made this in ~24 hours

mrblade 2013-12-16 03:18

I played the early version of this game that you posted on Twitter, I think that this game is really fun, although I am having terrible performance issues? I am sure it's my end, but I am only getting like 3FPS at best. The older version that you put up on Twitter played fine though. Nice work. (I did not rate this game as I feel the performance on my machine is not an accurate representation of this game.)

archaeometrician 2013-12-16 03:40

Cool ! I love the theme, It was really nice to watch you coding the game. Awesome work :)

voidqk 2013-12-16 03:48

fun game! I couldn't beat it, though... perhaps a strategy I am missing :-).

has a nice finished quality to it -- I love the subtle animations on the title screen... even just having the snow fall adds a nice mood.

Please rate mine, if you have the time.

billythecodingkid 2013-12-16 03:55

Grats notch that was a pretty awesome aside from the fact that I suck at collecting wood :)

xblinkedx 2013-12-16 03:58

Saw some of your stream while I was making my game, nice job, the final product turned out pretty good. My biggest complaint would be that the game isn't all that 'fun' as it's pretty much just key spamming, but I really like the actual look of the game.

Also, the sounds didn't work on Firefox for some reason, had to switch to Chrome to hear them.

croze 2013-12-16 04:11

I made chlid so happy, and it only took me exactly 60 seconds :) Pretty good game, I like the 2d-3d art style, really repetitive though

drooobe 2013-12-16 04:18

Overall, I enjoyed it. I found it to be a little repetitive, but still quite fun. Good job :D

mcgraw 2013-12-16 04:21

Hey Notch! Great work this weekend! Thanks so much for streaming your effort! :)

daanvanyperen 2013-12-16 04:22

Pretty hard game!

superpokeunicorn 2013-12-16 04:22

Game was grate (as always). Interesting concept too. Only problem is it is way to hard.

bogden 2013-12-16 04:36

Fun, but the controls hurt my hands!

gatechgrad 2013-12-16 04:44

So this is what Santa is doing the other 364 days of the year. :D

dcolgan 2013-12-16 05:09

Seems you must mash pretty hard to win. Impressive technical scores though.

jugglerrob 2013-12-16 05:40

Nice idea but the gameplay seems a bit repetitive.

thein 2013-12-16 05:46

It's pretty difficult to keep up with the sun, but the game is really good in every other respect. The graphics are very impressive!

caranha 2013-12-16 05:48

Hey Notch!
+ The 3D runner looked quite awesome.
+ Liked the instructions in the beginning.
+ Loved the Night effects. Reminded me of Enduro!

- No sound? awww :-(
- This game gave me carpal tunnel syndrome :-P Maybe holding S you can continuously attack?

Thanks for the game!

kayz 2013-12-16 07:18

Thanks Notch. I've been doing games in Dart for a little bit more than a year and I felt quite lonely with a maximum of only one or two other people creating games in Dart. Thanks to your stream and this game it'll probably be different at the next Ludum Dare.

Also thanks for your stream. Seeing that you still kept coding when I wanted to sleep made me stay up and keep coding too. Thanks to that I was able to finally finish a game in this LD.

Last but not least, this game encourages me to take a dive into WebGL :).

2013-12-16 08:01

Fun game, but my wrist hurts from failing to much.

kettlecorn 2013-12-16 08:40

I like the visual style and atmosphere. The snow particles are a nice touch.

The gameplay itself is a bit monotonous, but perhaps with refinement it could be enjoyable. I feel like the density of objects makes it tough to see ahead and to plan, which makes the game feel a bit frustrating at times, but of course we can't always have what is ideal given 48 hours!

primaerfunktion 2013-12-16 08:41

It's really nice but also repetitive to mash those buttons all the time. But I had fun for a few plays.

d-e-x 2013-12-16 09:23

Game looks great as usual, however nice it looks and how smoothly it goes, there's very little replay value on there. There's no achievement feedback except for how many points you got and if you made the goal (which is incredibly hard, actually too hard). It quickly becomes boring although random placement, a really effortless addition to make this the *fun* game it could've been would be progressing onto new "levels", small variations in landscape, maybe some basic NPCs as hinders, upgrades or such, just something that tells you your effort is worth it! (Some new stimuli goes a long way!) You had loads of time to spare, so I don't see why you wouldn't try to make the game less minimalist, objectively speaking. On the other hand though, you made this game in a lot less than 48 hours, so it's still a tremendous achievement, but like I said, some very minimal additions could've made it that much more enjoyable because it's a fun concept. :)

So to sum up:

+ Graphics (incl. fx)
+ Humor (dry)
+ Overall feels and looks somewhat high-end.
+ Creative

- Overboard difficult to win.
- Painful controls
- Buggy collision resolution and world ticks.
- No rewards, variation or some sort of dynamic.
- Can't restart the run if I know I won't win.
- No replay value

supremefist 2013-12-16 09:40

Nice one, notch! Good game, but really difficult :)

thijsku 2013-12-16 09:45

Nice game

crockid5 2013-12-16 09:45

Nice :)

gupta_shvm 2013-12-16 10:21

This is really good! The lighting and snow effects are awesome. Controls feel good as well!

mortl8324 2013-12-16 10:47

Funny game. Not a lot of content, but very polished for what it is.

mrvanderpants 2013-12-16 10:49

Great game! But I do miss some sounds and music.

capnramses 2013-12-16 11:01

webgl - nice choice! well done on getting a game in 3d within 2 days!

juxiliary 2013-12-16 11:11

Nice game. I think games like this are funnest without a fixed time. I prefer having one life or an extendable time limit. That way your high score depends more on skill rather than on how the trees generated.

Others have said it's pretty hard, but I found it rather easy, won first time. I guess that not everyone picked up on how to use goop (hold a and tap s).

granut100 2013-12-16 11:32

Good game! I really like the style of it. Reminds me a lot of Temple Run.

cwkx 2013-12-16 11:44

I liked that you tried an interesting perspective and an ambitious genre, so gave 5's in innovation, humor and mood (Christmas!). The weakest parts were the audio and theme (3's) but overall it was good and fun (4's) :) While the time spent on the effects is very cute, I think additional gameplay mechanics should have been introduced instead to make it more fun, such as up-down for speed, upgrades, or better score/point rewards. It'd be nice to have some background ambient sound/music, even if just blowing/whistling in a mike to represent cold wind. Great for entering :)

tacospice 2013-12-16 11:52

Really detailed (graphics, menu mostly). Looks great.
Nice audio.

Needs preventDefault on keydown to prevent type-to-search in Firefox!

Overall a pretty sweet game.

neonian 2013-12-16 12:54

So funnny and so much fun :D !

zorfmorf 2013-12-16 13:21

Good game, good polish!

rahazan 2013-12-16 14:23

No sound it seems (firefox).

luck-of-the-day-games 2013-12-16 14:33

Fun game, but in the help menu you should explain what the goop does, still don't quiet understand what it does, either way good job

bentog 2013-12-16 14:45

Excellent game! Would be even better with music.

x-or 2013-12-16 15:46

Down with the tentacles!!!

alvarop 2013-12-16 16:39

Good game. Although it's just spamming a button!

niksudan 2013-12-16 17:06

The game looked great, but in terms of gameplay I didn't think that it was the best. At times I was hitting A and S randomly, which made me progress further than I was before, when I was trying to play properly. Some music would have made it a lot more engaging too!

zhugolaf 2013-12-16 17:42

fun

ovenchips 2013-12-16 17:45

A nicely polished game. Hard to gauge depth and I would have lurved to hear a Christmassy jingle in the background. Otherwise, a merry old time was had playing this baby. :)

andrewkennedy 2013-12-16 18:01

Pretty solid game, but it would have been nice to have some strategy other than spamming the attack button the whole way.

marccspro 2013-12-16 18:39

Very funny game !

maxgun 2013-12-16 18:55

Short, simple, efficient. I liked it :)

lincore 2013-12-16 19:03

Wow... the implementation was probably easier than I think but that looks very impressive and polished. Can't beat it though, I'm a bad Santa :~)

loxo 2013-12-16 19:25

I like the awesome graphics and the great atmosphere. Due to your interpretation of the theme the game is really short, multiple levels or stages would have been nice. Maybe santa has to chop wood around the world. But the only thing really missing for a christmas game is a christmas song.

ziomorti 2013-12-16 20:14

Cool and really polished game. I think the theme was kind of.. "forced in" but I loved the humor so I forgive you...

recursor 2013-12-16 20:16

Gathering the wood and killing the tentacles is pretty fun. I wish there was more to do, but I like the feel of the controls as well as the art in the game.

thedeadlybutter 2013-12-16 20:17

Hands got tired trying to beat this, great game!

coblynau 2013-12-16 20:24

Well rounded game; music would have made audio perfect. Good fun, could imagine it in an arcade.

somepx 2013-12-16 20:28

This is incredible given time costraints - really top notch! (no pun intended) ;)

broxxar 2013-12-16 20:59

Considering your recent tweets about how many sprites you can render and still pull 60 fps, I'm disappointed that my screen was not filled with more sprites!

Well done, a stellar little game.

bradleysmith 2013-12-16 21:01

Really smooth controls and a lot of fun to play, quirky idea too. :)

mckoss 2013-12-16 21:07

Watching Notch create this on twitch.tv was the best part.

teamkwakwa 2013-12-16 21:09

I had expectations and Notch delivers!

lordjosephdeburg 2013-12-16 21:26

Difficulty is a bit high but this is a good game notch. Well done!

minibutmany 2013-12-16 21:29

Overall very well put together, the graphics were very nice, but I didn't find that I could play it more than a few rounds without getting bored.

joekinglake 2013-12-16 21:32

Great entry, would love to hear some frantic music behind this. The graphics are fantastic too!

smirnov48 2013-12-16 21:55

Very good small game from a great master. Thank you for interesting live coding.

korwegian 2013-12-16 23:10

Poor, poor Child... No presents for you.

madmaw 2013-12-16 23:24

I prefer TypeScript (which I used for my entry), but it's good to see a big name using a JS transpiler.

udellgames 2013-12-16 23:26

Simple but fun, and the graphics are great for the time limit. Nice stuff, but it got a little repetitive after a while.

capitals 2013-12-16 23:33

Only notch would make a game with trees.

tinymoonstudios 2013-12-17 01:07

Nice graphics and an interesting mechanic. Good going.

sprawl 2013-12-17 01:35

Great presentation and art. Fun gameplay and very interesting.

dmitrix 2013-12-17 03:04

Awesome

heroesgravedev 2013-12-17 04:03

Great game.

bloatedhippo 2013-12-17 04:31

Love it!

kunonooni 2013-12-17 05:07

It was a neat game. I really liked the concept but I wish you'd have had more time to put in sound.

rosa89n20 2013-12-17 05:25

My god! That's such fun game! and Hard!!! I can beat ridiculous fishing, but this one... man...

bluemanshoe 2013-12-17 05:35

Overall, very good. Game play a bit repetitive though.

nikincz 2013-12-17 09:20

Nice experience - not just beacuase you are Notch :)

linuus 2013-12-17 09:32

Solid game, get's a bit repetetive

lo-x 2013-12-17 10:28

Well, the theme reminds me a bit of 10sec one. It was hard to everyone to came up with very original ideas. The game lacks a bit of fun and music. I like pixel art graphisms. It serves tour game well.

sience 2013-12-17 11:38

Nice idea with the daylimit and i like that you choose dart to implement it. I think LudumDare is always good to learn new things.

finefin 2013-12-17 12:12

a nice little game with nice mechanics. but I didn't expect anything else from THE indie game hero!

atomicvikings 2013-12-17 12:15

I like the pixel style. :-) Funny and small game. :-)

bach 2013-12-17 12:47

I enjoyed this :)

jaspreetdhanjan 2013-12-17 15:14

Fun game!

ghandhi 2013-12-17 16:15

I liked it but it wasn't enough :c

sunshiranui 2013-12-17 16:28

Good game, but it's a bit too difficult.

jalgames 2013-12-17 16:57

Nice game, but I didn't like the controls too much. Arrow up would be much more intuitive for jumping. But anyway, this game is very good.

pusheax 2013-12-17 17:48

I made a child sad several times, then looked at screenshot where he was happy. It was enough for me.

roseninja 2013-12-17 18:04

a fun christmas game awesome

emmelineprufrock 2013-12-17 19:43

Very pleasant, too difficult for me.

brotherst 2013-12-17 20:50

Awesomely themed, great visuals, and a real challenge. Child says thumbs up!

oskardevelopment 2013-12-17 21:42

A fun game that shows your technical expertise with pixels. Good luck and Merry Christmas!

felix20 2013-12-17 22:01

Very nice game, good use of the theme. Very nice difficulty as well, and fun to play, though I'm still not sure what exactly the goop does.
Also nice title.
Good luck and keep at it!

sko 2013-12-17 22:14

It's a game! Sorry to say, but I wonder how much the lack of music brings down my general score. No music gives a low audio rating, of course, but it also decreases the mood a bit, since the graphics and especially the lovely effect of nightfall approaching were really quite pretty, and in the end it also brings down the fun - a catchy track could have done so much for a game like this.

Along with graphics, on the other hand, I gave you a high score on the humour – you had me at the game's title.

I must say, you really should've made the up arrow key be the jump button instead. My brain didn't work properly when it came to jumping and chopping with the same hand, for some reason.

A game, I suppose. Music, and at least to my sloppy brain, better controls, would've boosted the score, definitely. Perhaps you could do what I did about the music this time around, if you want to work on your own but can't make music, which was to let Wolfram Alpha generate some for me: http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/

gamepopper 2013-12-17 22:23

Liked the 3D graphics used, and I found the obviously simplified grammar amusing. However in my opinion, using time as a way to connect the theme a weak concept.

mechatodzilla 2013-12-18 00:23

Nice entry! I had fun with it.

2013-12-18 01:02

How do you play it?

korwegian 2013-12-18 01:20

It took me a while to realize how essential goop was to winning the game, but I finally beat it with 53 seconds!

leparlon 2013-12-18 02:24

Sh*t I keep making child sad.
Amazing how well is runs though.. only dart and html5, nice work.
5 for graphics, mood and audio.

irock 2013-12-18 05:26

I don't like the graphics much at all; the color choices are very unappealing. I don't find the gameplay to be fun either. I like Christmas though.

colorvade 2013-12-18 05:35

I find the gameplay and aesthetics really underwhelming. It's a complete package that functions well, but there's not much to think about in-game, and as mentioned above, the colors are either overly saturated or not at all, with no hue-shift in the shading.

I hope this doesn't come off as 'hating' simply because you're Notch, I have a ton of respect for your work.

lythom 2013-12-18 07:28

D-e-X already gave you a good feedback so I won't repeat what was told. Just a note about sounds : they end to be really annoying. I'm not sure how to fix it, but maybe a more quiet sound for the jump and a stronger visual feedback would allow the same comprenhension without the annoyment.
Good overall, I liked it. Thanks for the game !

yosh 2013-12-18 08:33

Really cool little game! (And bravo for being a Dart pioneer).

Loved the art of the game. Are the purple trees a reference to Day of the Tentacle?

What could be improved:
- more entity types
- stupid AND/OR catchy music

Also, in a totally different topic, I Love you Notch <3

dsoft20 2013-12-18 09:27

Nice game but a bit difficult.

daredevildave 2013-12-18 09:54

OK, it's nice. First couple of play throughs I was thinking this is impossible. I'll never get that much wood. Then I read the instructions :-D

So a nice little added depth by adding the goop.

I like it. Also good classic Notch art-style.

ekilibr 2013-12-18 16:12

Very well played. That's an addictive game. I played several times, and I will again !

2013-12-18 19:48

Not the best product made by you, but still awesome.. :D

fullmontis 2013-12-18 22:36

Amazing amount of polish for such a short development time. Game feels very smooth and is fun to play.

erkberg 2013-12-19 00:20

Pretty fun and flawless game, but I really suck at it. ;)

georgebroussard 2013-12-19 02:26

Notch make game. I like game, I rate game. Now Notch play and rate my game :)

This was a lot of fun and has neat mechanics. I've yet to make the damned child happy, but I'm trying...900 so far.

georgebroussard 2013-12-19 02:31

Ok, child is happy. Christmas is saved. Whew.... :)

simianlogic 2013-12-19 03:03

Love the look and the sound effects... seems super hard, though. I don't get the purple trees--is that a secondary goal?

gokuhd 2013-12-19 03:32

Very nice concept and polished. I like the graphics and sounds and as well, the gameplay is good although I think it's hard. How did you decide where to put every object? is it generated ramdonly?.

acheronstudio 2013-12-19 07:50

It's so hard! Can't get enough wood!!

madflame991 2013-12-19 13:57

Truly funny and entertaining! Really liked your English.

brogrammers 2013-12-19 14:19

it doesn't work on firefox

mize_vs_mildmojo 2013-12-19 17:52

Great polish here. Looks and feels great, though it's punishingly difficult to win (I didn't).

There's a game-breaking bug when playing in my default browser, though. You're not preventing key events from bubbling, so they trigger typeahead find for me in Firefox. The first time I hit 'a', it brings up the search box, taking focus away from the game. To fix, just call .stopPropagation() and .preventDefault() on the key events you want to consume. It's an easy thing to overlook. =)

No sound in Firefox on OS X. Looks like the game doesn't even try to load the WAV files?

-mildmojo

m-gryko85 2013-12-19 18:13

Simple but fun. I liked the graphics and the sound.

nyytroh 2013-12-19 19:43

oh gawd! I can't smash keyboard faster

psychomonster 2013-12-19 21:08

Hey Notch. Cool game. Saw the stream... but I suck at your game... Like webGL... hmhhmhm okay I try to beat your game again ^^

glovecat 2013-12-20 17:19

Good entry. A fun game with simple controls. Poor children :(

techblogogy 2013-12-20 18:37

Hey Notch! Your game is very nice. Can you tell me where have you leaned Dart and WebGL? Thanks in advance

sfdnetwork 2013-12-20 23:07

Simple. But Very Fun Indeed. Well Done Sir.

samoojamies 2013-12-21 11:58

Nice webgl graphics! And I really enjoyed the twitch stream.

gre 2013-12-21 13:52

This is tough!
Nice game.

tobbez 2013-12-22 16:42

I like the game, the trick to winning is to know exactly what you need to do to kill the tentacles and to use the gloop when you have it. Very well polished game.

customphase 2013-12-22 17:21

Im sorry, but i dont find it any good. Its an ok game, dont get me wrong, but nothing too interesting.

potomak 2013-12-23 01:28

Super fun game, great job!

stonemonkeystudios 2013-12-23 02:01

Quite funny, but very difficult to win. I could just be terrible at it though. Solid entry! :)

mystfire 2013-12-23 12:55

I really liked the game, but it's also incredibely hard :(

kibertoad 2013-12-23 15:03

in the beginning it looks really fun, but actual gameplay is too erratic without much variety. and yes, I'd make a terrible Santa.

harsayhd 2013-12-24 00:13

It's a very fun to play game but poorly connected with theme :<

super-hamster 2013-12-24 18:18

A very interesting game but a bit complicated.

tnerb 2013-12-24 19:19

The goop seems a little OP
but I really like the artwork!

ViliX 2013-12-28 22:25

This is one of the best entries! You might be the winner of this LD :)

gfm 2013-12-29 14:17

This a well done game, I can't say otherwise. I liked (your usual) "pixel-art in a 3D world" style. :)

But I didn't find the game fun at all... :(
I felt the game was only about mashing the 's' button... and that's it. I didn't feel compelled to keep playing it only for a higher score...

commanderstitch 2013-12-29 20:43

Nice entry in the sense that i was surprised by what this game turned out to be. The mechanic with the goop was very important to discover. :D I loved the menu's and the personality of the messages.

pinkmonkeyhead 2013-12-30 03:18

Good mechanics, but very repetitive

michail 2013-12-30 14:07

The gameplay is a bit repetitive, and gathering all the needed wood in just one minute seems nearly impossible. On the other hand, the graphics and the falling snow make a nice mood together.

stmatn 2014-01-02 16:36

Really challenging game. The graphics look great!
Treepunching ftw! :D

theholychicken 2014-01-03 06:08

tentacles make santa lose wood D:

shellfishgames 2014-01-04 18:14

Very nice graphics.

job_ 2014-01-05 14:09

Fun! I still didn't manage to get enough wood, the poor child.
Nice graphics thought.

ludipe 2014-01-05 14:27

Almost completed it last time! Anyways, great game, extremly polished and I like that it's christmas-related.

lorniebear 2014-01-05 15:27

Great fun, really enjoyed it. To improve, I would add better sound, but I'm sure you are busy making updates for minecraft!

(I reeealy like minecraft, such a huge fan!)

lorniebear 2014-01-05 15:43

After playing your previous, I have to admire what an excellent programmer you are! The games get better every time!

jfroco 2014-01-06 02:40

Incredible graphics and art style. Congrats. The mechanics is too simple for me but it seems to be very addictive. Great entry.

juaxix 2014-01-06 13:32

I like the procedural stuff

jezzamon 2014-01-06 21:30

I decided to play your game, even though your game already has 370 because hey, you're notch!

Anyways I thought it was really fun! It was well lengthed as a jam game too. I always like the sound effects in your games :)

xhunterko 2014-01-07 01:02

The controls were a bit off for me for some reason. And it moved too quickly for me. But maybe I'm just slow? Could have made do with some sound effects. But maybe that's just me. Neat idea.

michcioperz 2014-01-11 20:18

0% coolness, it says? meh.