FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD29 → Upstream

Upstream

By viza

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness1100
Fun1043.70
Overall2033.58
Innovation2723.48
Theme3243.53
Graphics5723.15
Mood5882.95
Humor6462.31
Audio9781.75

Comments

gresponapps 2014-04-28 05:21

Awesome. I loved it! Simple and fun.

endesga 2014-04-28 06:00

awesome game :D I loved it

plugz 2014-04-28 07:09

Simple and fun.

fuzzywuzzie 2014-04-28 07:09

This is an ADORABLE puzzler! With unique puzzles and mechanics and everything. You need to make this into a mobile game STAT. I would definitely pay a buck or two for it!

gikdew 2014-04-28 07:09

Quite fun! I ended up like playing 5 minutes!

rylgh 2014-04-28 07:12

really nicely themed, nice mechanic, and the art is just so pleasant

honcho 2014-04-28 07:47

Very simple. Enjoyed the redo feature.

eldog 2014-04-28 07:52

This got dastardly difficult after the first few happy levels :). Very fun puzzler.

monsterkillu 2014-04-28 07:56

Excellent puzzle game. Really loved the levels. How do you come up with such levels in such short time. Amazing.

colorvade 2014-04-28 08:05

Clever. The core elements make for some interesting puzzles. Good job.

darkflamejam 2014-04-28 09:54

Great fun!

draknek 2014-04-28 10:59

Nice concept!

Levels not quite as compact as I generally like in my puzzle games (too much pushing things all the way across the whole level) but that works to make it feel more like a sea than an artificial puzzle.

Sound isn't working? It's in the source-code version but not the actual game.

aldian 2014-04-28 15:03

Little hard to read for. Otherwise Its simple but addictive. Well done!

cr2crstudios 2014-04-28 15:04

Really well done!

notnasiul 2014-04-28 15:07

I would have paid for watching you designing those levels. Great game!

thomz12 2014-04-28 15:08

Simple & fun, liked it. the undo feature is very helpful!

pietro-ferrantelli 2014-04-28 15:09

Amazing PuzzleScript game ! Great job !

techblogogy 2014-04-28 15:48

Great game!

elforama 2014-04-28 16:07

I enjoyed this puzzle game, and it has nice simple graphics.

papygaragos 2014-04-28 16:14

I like that game. The graphics a simple but enjoyable. Sounds would be a nice addition

viza 2014-04-28 16:15

Thanks for the nice comments (BTW I play and rate everyones online game who comments here!)

A couple of you asked about the level design process of the game: it is simple *and* hard at the same time :)

I just start with a basic concept - what I want the level to be about? Maybe to showcase/teach a gameplay mechanic (for example the use of bubbles) or just "let's do a wide and shallow level, because I don't have one yet" :)

Then I think about what would be the best way to show that concept. In what situation the player *have* to use bubbles? What challenges a wide and shallow level could offer?

Then I create a basic level around that idea, and tweak, tweak, tweak until it plays good...
Can I take away one more bubble? Won't be too annoying for the player to move so much around? Is it challenging enough or should I throw in a couple more obstacles?

And that's the hard part. :) It took the better part of the six hours of dev time here... like I don't know four hours to design that ten levels... :)

icereci 2014-04-28 17:49

is the web link dead?

viza 2014-04-28 17:59

Nope, it's working for me - is anybody else having problem with the link?

mrexcessive 2014-04-28 18:45

Fun to play... Thank you for reminding me of puzzlescript!

lars-faust 2014-04-28 19:06

Fantastic game.
I was stunned by how many levels you managed to put together in the short time. And they all are fantastic, require solid planning to finish. Also love the Undo-mechanic, saves a ton of trouble and works perfectly with the kind of turn based timeline of the game.

Really really good puzzler, that has superb level design for a LD-game.

jacob-peltola 2014-04-28 20:36

nice game!

stoo 2014-04-28 20:52

Simple looking but interesting idea, some of the levels are really challenging and have a lot of "a-ha" moments when you figure out the solution.

whiterabbitgames 2014-04-28 20:53

Great job man

daanvanyperen 2014-04-28 21:57

Simple and solid mechanic leading to fun game play. well done!

pawegio 2014-04-28 21:58

simple and fun, missing sound.

terraco 2014-04-28 22:15

Not bad

tijmentio 2014-04-28 22:19

For something made in like 6 hours this is quite the outstanding work :O Wonder what you could've done in the full timeframe :)

lamphj 2014-04-28 22:33

neat puzzle game with good tutorial and difficult puzzles in the later levels. Very cool!

friken 2014-04-28 23:15

Fun puzzler, good job.

darkmeatgames 2014-04-28 23:15

Wow, awesome! A really innovative take on Sokoban, but I really liked it! If this were polished up a bit, it would make a really great little puzzle game. Would even work on mobile!

towelking 2014-04-28 23:35

Great puzzles and I love the simple graphics

kepamun 2014-04-28 23:36

An impressive number of levels for a jam.
I liked it, well done!

ninjacharlie 2014-04-29 00:41

Pretty cool! I love simple puzzle games :)

beavlgames 2014-04-29 17:23

Really clever entry! Love puzzlescript games (we'me made a few). This has some really strong mechanics. Congrats!

keymaster 2014-04-29 18:34

Had me playing for quite a long. The mechanics were simple yet the problems were quite deep. Nice one!

binary_girl 2014-04-29 21:12

great little puzzler ..nice gfx too :)

hexagore 2014-04-29 22:56

Really appreciate that the levels were actually difficult fairly quickly. Actual puzzles! Cool

csanyk 2014-04-30 04:22

Wow, such puzzle. I am impressed that this was done in just 6 hours! Very challenging turn based tile puzzler, and the ultra lo-fi pixels are sweet.

soupwithbits 2014-04-30 16:19

Simple, difficult, awesome, addicted!

local-minimum 2014-04-30 20:27

Nice puzzle script, got a couple of levels into the game, but got a bit bummed when I had played a on the second of the small screen-shots and only had the last bubble to transport to get the second chest onboard. There had been no explaining of how bubbles pass through the red-white things. So either have player fail by bubble passing through red-white early on the first level it is used or clearly show how all objects interact.

I happened to double-step a few times, but I guess that's up to puzzle-script and not so much you can do about.

Fun experience. Might have tried it all way through if not for that mishap.

zedutchgandalf 2014-05-01 12:27

Simple, yet really fun! Just awesome! :D
It get's pretty hard early on, but I like that :)
Great job on gradually adding more mechanics level per level!
Also, is it just by accident or did you deliberately hide a lot of penile designs in the levels? (e.g. the lower right corner of the second small screenshot, and some other levels featured things like this :P)

detocroix 2014-05-01 13:35

The moodiest little chest snorkeling swimming diving game I've seen thus far. Thumbs up!

cavf88 2014-05-01 14:04

Simple puzzler, loved the graphics. Fun.

recursor 2014-05-01 17:45

Nicely done puzzle-script game. It was quite fun and enjoyable.

viza 2014-05-01 19:44

zedutchgandalf: I never noticed... o_O And now I cannot unsee. :D
"a lot of" is a slight exaggeration though - maybe one more besides the one in the screenshot. :)

zedutchgandalf 2014-05-01 21:51

@Viza: it probably is :) but I only started noticing about halfway through the game, and then there were two right after each other which made me think I probably missed some :P

armanky 2014-05-02 19:17

You made my friends think I'm an idiot. Congratulations!

viza 2014-05-03 06:46

@Armanky: Wha...? :D
Can you elaborate on that? :)

thorig 2014-05-03 12:44

A really clever game. I really like the mechanics. Good job!

petey123567 2014-05-03 20:01

I think I abused 'undo' way too much :P Great game!

oddly-shaped-pixels 2014-05-04 14:53

Nice little puzzle. Only problem for me (dont know if its a bug) with the bubbles: they randomly lift the chest. If I push one on a chest and immediately move away, it has no effect. Sometimes, event if I wait a bit, the chest doesnt move either...

pinkmonkeyhead 2014-05-04 17:22

Really nice mechanics!
Penis everywhere, cannot unsee

soy_yuma 2014-05-04 21:32

I love puzzles! This one is pretty good! Maybe you want to check Draknek's entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=741

viza 2014-05-05 23:41

I played that and liked it.
I think I played all puzzlescript games on LD29 - at least all which turns up for a search for "puzzlescript" :)

scgrn 2014-05-07 04:27

Nice little puzzler!

nanolotl 2014-05-17 12:15

Really well designed puzzles. All of the mechanics were really interesting.

dustoutgames 2014-05-17 12:48

That was a ton of fun! Solid puzzler with good level layouts. I found the bubbles to be a little bit glitchy occasionally when trying to push them around, but nothing game breaking. Well done!

phocker 2014-05-17 18:04

really nice game here - simple and effective - great job

wertle 2014-05-18 18:11

Great use of theme in the puzzle mechanics! I think the puzzles are very solid and the look is really cute. I think there are a few small things you can do to just tune up the overall flow and pacing of introduction. Here are some suggestions:
- When i was first introduced to the bubbles, it took me a moment to realize I could push them from any direction. I'd assumed they worked like the chests
- the buoy level was pretty tricky! That might be a good one to break down into 2: a very simple puzzle to introduce the concept, then go to the more advanced one (also, i only used one buoy in that puzzle, was the other one a red herring?)
- The level right after that one is great in how it is both simple but advanced, but since there was no buoy involved, it might make for better pacing to do it just before the buoy level instead of after, since it's good to do a couple buoys in a row
I didn't get to finish because I had a time constraint, but I want to come back and finish! Nice work!

bendmorris 2014-05-18 19:31

Great puzzle! Nice level design. I was stuck for quite a while on a couple of them. Oh, and thanks for the "undo" feature :)

viza 2014-05-18 21:53

Yoohoo! One hundred rating! :)
(That puts "Upstream" in the top 3.5% of the most rated games in this LD according to itch.io - I never thought that it could achieve this.)
Thank you for everybody taking time to try my little game, and for the kind comments! :)

viza 2014-05-18 22:00

@Wertle
- Bubbles - Yeah, I wanted to keep the texts short (almost nobody reads them anyway :) ), but that definitely something I should make more clear - maybe even with a full level dedicated to introduce the concept.
- Bouys - I got more comments on them people find them generally confusing at first. They are actually not *that* complex things :) so the error is on my side - I should introduce them more thoroughly as you suggest.
- Level pacing: I know what level you talking about, I feel that it is somewhat out of place now, the thinking was behind the placement, that I wanted to break up the big levels with something smaller, but hopefully still advanced. But you are right again - it was not that successful :)

elefantopia 2014-05-18 23:01

cute puzzler, not my bag of tea.

viza 2014-05-19 11:25

@elefantopia: Yeah, that happens. :)
I kinda hated the Sokoban-type games for a long type - since PuzzleScript that changed for the better, and I even actually enjoyed making Upstream. :)

degtyarev 2014-05-19 20:37

cool, love that minimalism.