Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD29 → Striking Innocence
By lorddathing
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolness | 3 | 62 | ||
| Audio | 435 | 2.91 | ||
| Graphics | 544 | 2.91 | ||
| Humor | 569 | 2.05 | ||
| Innovation | 585 | 2.56 | ||
| Fun | 598 | 2.50 | ||
| Overall | 612 | 2.76 | ||
| Mood | 633 | 2.52 | ||
| Theme | 729 | 1.93 |
To me it is quite unclear what things do in the game. There is a lot of juicyness (screenshake, attack sprites etc) but I do not understand what they do and how they affect my score. At some point (around 35k points) I cannot seem to gain more points at all.
The graphics remind me of Edmund McMillen, which is a good thing.
Nice job, but try to communicate to the player what the interactions mean.
I love the art in this one. It took me a while to realize that I didn't have health, but instead when the enemies are over top of me then my score reduces. Is there ever a reason not to hold your mouse button down? Seems like you could just over the mouse over the enemies for the same effect.
It took me a while to figure out that getting damaged meant losing points -- I thought that I just wasn't getting damaged. Pretty hectic!
Great Game! 5* :)
Interesting concept. I can't tell what the laser beams were supposed to do. They didn't seem to hurt me nor the monsters. They just shook the screen and made a lot of noise.
Hmmm... angelk's comments confuse me, I thought I wasn't earning any points until I started holding the mouse down?! :D
There were a few other confusing things: pressing the pause button to start the game took me quite a while to figure out, it wasn't really clear to me whether the shift button was useful as it didn't really seem to help push your score up in terms of targeting enemies, and I never felt that the punishment for getting hit by enemies was harsh enough to warrant using the teleport.
Art and sound both really, really nice though. The electronic guitar arpeggios were giving me some lo-fi daft punk vibes :)
Yo, this game is really cool :D! I think the mechanics that you have here are pretty innovative. I enjoyed the way you have this split attention thing going on between navigating yourself and attacking enemies. And I really like how you can sacrifice points to slow down time and teleport.
That said, I do definitely agree that the game is a little hard to understand. Part of is that the word "score" is usually used in a different context. Usually, scores just measure how well you're doing, and it's something I ignore because I just want to beat the game and I don't really care for leaderboards anyways. It took me a while to realize that in this game, the score is actually directly influenced by everything and also controls your progress. I think, in a lot of ways, simply having a bar and maybe a number on the side would appeal to a lot of players' intuitions a bit better.
Also, I initially really enjoyed the screen shake you put on the monsters' deaths. However, later on the monsters die so fast, and the lasers also shake your screen, that it gets a little unbearable. It's a little too* much screen shake for my tastes, and even though it does add an extra level of challenge, it also makes me feel dizzy :[
I have to say, the art is quite amazing though, and initially the feeling is really really satisfying to kill monsters. I love all of your mechanics, and the game is definitely fun :]! Nice job!
Sorry, but I just did not get the point of this game.
I really liked the art and sound, the lasers with screen shake are really cool. But it was too easy, it seemed like I could play it forever if I wanted to.
The gameplay is innovative, but to me it seems it doesn't fit the theme very well. Or maybe I miss something?
As others have stated, some things are very unclear. Rather than harp and reiterate those, I'd like to offer a couple of possible "fixes"
Firstly, it would likely be more clear what "score" is if you chose a different word. 'Energy', 'Progress', even just 'Points' might've been better. Basically, just make it clear that it means more than what traditional "score" does in arcade-style games.
Secondly, the score should probably shake or turn red when it's draining, like when you take damage or when you're slowing down time. Small visual cues like that go a long way.
And, actually, the more I think about it, it should probably be a meter and not a number anyway. Have a bar that fills up as you destroy enemies, and it drains when you use abilities or take 'damage.' I think that makes a lot more sense. When the bar fills up all the way, you progress to the next stage.
Also, I kind of wish the enemies had a slightly better visual cue that they're being damaged. Maybe a color change, or flashing or something.
Other than that, a few bugs I noticed: In the last level I got placed into solid blocks and couldn't move. Not sure if that's intentional. Also, the text in the bottom right was cut off on the bottom, so I couldn't read the whole thing, which is somewhat disappointing.
Ok, enough with that stuff, onto the rest! As others have said, the music was pretty good. I like the subtle changes in the level music as you progress--I would've liked to see more of that. The ending piano piece was good as well, sat and listened to the whole thing. I'm not sure if this was intentional as an effect or not, but the music sounded like it had that crappy flash audio compression of yester-year. While it brought back fond nostalgia of playing flash games on newgrounds back in the day, the music actually sounds cool and I'd like to hear it in hi-fidelity. To each their own, of course.
I like that there's no real death in this game, or not from failing to play correctly anyway. The only death is the inevitable doom you face as an android heading head-first into destruction. I like the self-exploring/identity themes being explored here. You should try to do more with that in the story telling. Other than the criticisms above, I dig the score system. You have to micro-manage a resource that you're trying to use to progress to the next stage, but you also use that same resource to protect your character. It becomes a battle of multi-tasking: killing enemies, keeping track of your character, managing your resource.
Overall, solid entry. I think some more pre-release user testing by people who hadn't played the game before would've helped you guys realize some of these things. One can never stress the importance enough of getting people not directly involved in the game to test early and often :) Of course, such things are not always easy to do in the time constraints of Ludum Dare. Nonetheless, well done guys.
Oh, sorry, I didn't mention anything about theme. I loved it! I think you guys managed to do a non-underground/non-underwater interpretation and have it really work. It only becomes clear if you pay attention to the character sprite and the story that's trying to be told. Good job.
nice game
Interesting entry, It's fairly addictive and fun to play once you figure it out. However initially it was very unclear as to what was going on also I feel like this game didn't fit with the theme.