eatsleepindie 2014-08-25 07:21
Absolutely beautiful game. I am a big fan of puzzle games like this that encourage exploration. Art is amazing and I really enjoy the beanstalk mechanic.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD30 → John and the Arbitrary Gem Hunt
By stevesalmond
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 14 | 4.19 | ||
| Theme | 14 | 4.28 | ||
| Mood | 20 | 4.13 | ||
| Coolness | 1 | 100 | ||
| Graphics | 33 | 4.30 | ||
| Audio | 34 | 3.92 | ||
| Innovation | 38 | 4.12 | ||
| Humor | 143 | 3.20 | ||
| Fun | 172 | 3.56 |
Absolutely beautiful game. I am a big fan of puzzle games like this that encourage exploration. Art is amazing and I really enjoy the beanstalk mechanic.
This is brilliant! Hahaha.
I love the narration. I love the music, really catchy. Top notch.
I love the gravity. Works so well, especially on the beanstalks, where you can just circle around them.
Really well crafted, extremely moody and calm. Great entry.
Omg, beautifull game!
Waoh, you have to be an amazing 3D artist to have done something like this. Beautiful game, shut up and take my money.
Wow...just...wow! Fantastic game.
Mood, graphics, this game is my favorite so far.
Awesome! The movement when you are on a beanstalk is a bit jittery but the visuals are super charming. Great work! :)
Short but easily one of the most complete and unique Ludum Dare experiences I've ever had. 10/10; would love to see this expanded into something not so "arbitrary." XD
Seriously, this is a beautiful game, and I think it easily sells on its aesthetics and atmosphere more than its tongue-in-cheek narration.
Great game,awesome graphic, fun idea! I catch myself playing in this a little bit to long for today :]
About movement, I felt a little ice skating during walking, which make walking on beanstalk difficult.
nice voice acting and wittiness. Loved the "between worlds" beanstalk mechanic. So fun
Incredible game. THe mood, art, sound, creativity, is fantastic. It's amazing to look up and see a gem on a planet and go for it. If this game doesn't place top 10 then people are broken :) My only tweak suggestion is that I'd likely make the beanstalk leaves with no collision so you could pass through them :) Loved the narration too. TOP MARKS.
Wow, thanks George! You're totally right about the beanstalk leaves, I wish I had made them noclip now... :)
Awesome, great physics and really good use of the theme!
Lovely visuals. Very polished and very fun planting bean stalks from planet to planet. Great job!
Absolutely bloody brilliant!
The game is beautiful, very good design and storytelling is great
I really enjoyed this game. The beanstalks are really cool and I loved how gravity worked around them. The graphics were also nicely done. Overall, you have created an excellent experience in 48 hours. Thank you!
3D!
Nice going in just 48 hours.
The title is so good.
This game is absolutely amazing! I love it! :D
The only thing I missed was an Invert Y mouse setting. :)
This game is well done in so many ways. I love the mood and everything. A nice little masterpiece I must say! :)
Sorry about the lack of Invert Y, I'm one of those annoying people that assumes there's only one correct way to use a mouse for fps. My bad! I'll figure out how to do that with Unity's input manager next time around.
Beautiful. I was genuinely amazed when I first walked among a beanstalk to another planet. One of the best I've played in this LD :)
Amazing execution and nice idea, love it :) Really incredible job!
Excellent mechanic. You have something unique here.
Thanks guys, it makes me really happy to hear you had fun playing it!
really impressive
Looks great, had a hard time with the controls though.
Nicely done :)
This game remembered me about Ratchet and Clank in some strange way, btw really good game.
Wow! Best thing I've played yet! Pretty graphics, great mood, some good audio and a really interesting mechanic!
The physics are VERY wonky, but it all makes sense one you start climbing those beanstalks! I love how you can look up into the sky to jump higher! ^^
Unfortunatly I got stuck in a beanstalk after I got 4 diamonds, but I can excuse that, given that the game is made in 48h, VERY impressive!
Brilliant, very impressive for 48 hours
Really nice!
Nice idea! Graphics are well done. The controls are a bit tricky while you're on the bean stalks because you can hit the leaf colliders and so on.
great one
Really well made entry!
Great visuals, great music and great gameplay!
You took the theme quite literally witch is actually pretty cool.
I think you could make a fully fledged puzzle game out of this! Imagine no mans sky visuals paired with your mechanic, each world having a different style
Very impressed!
Well made!
Like the game idea with connections by plants. But now looking tooo wet and unfinished. And kinda boring, I think.
It's hard to see good 3D games in ludum dare. We mostly only see pixel art everywhere.
Congratulations, the game is amazing!
I...I really can't think of a single flaw with this. Truly exceptional.
Stunning. I loved the sound queues for the gems; I thought that was pretty cool. Arbitrary gem hunt is truly arbitrary, though, and the controls felt off (especially on the beanstalks). Everything else was very very VERY well done!
Once or two I had to actually jump from the beanstalk into the void to reach the next planet: best gaming moment of the year. Great job!
Lovely game! It plays smoothly and it is rather intuitive. Graphics and audio complement each other well. And a very imaginative take on the concept too. One of the best I have seen so far.
Really nice game! I felt a bit dizzy at some points but apart from that this is a game with a lot of potential. The voice acting was funny (in a good way). For some reason it remembered me of the movie Charlie and the chocolate factory.
Wow, that was really something! Playing with an open-world concept like this is a lot of fun, and it was pulled off very well (climbing beanstalks is easy, planets' gravity pulls you in from a decent range, etc). And even though there was no real goal/challenge other than "explore", planet-jumping is satisfying enough to be the game's main draw. The silly dialogue was a nice touch too, and made me want to keep playing. My only complaint is that beanstalk leaves acts as walls and can screw up a climb, but it feels as though the stalks have their own gravity so you don't end up falling. Nice work!
Really beautiful game. Love the colours and feel. Using beanstalks to connect the worlds is a lovely device.
I'm quite amazed at what you've done in such a little time.
Your game is atmospheric and very immersive, to navigate between planets with beans is interesting, gives a feeling of liberty and much more, you did it pretty well : the controls and changes in gravity are fluid and intuitive.
This has a feel of the game Mirrormoon yet in completely different set up and atmosphere, but also involves sky observation to get to the gems. The sounds and dreamy feeling is lovely, congratulations!
Thanks glbs :D I only wish I'd had enough time to get some other lifeforms and/or puzzles on the planets.
Also, thanks for putting me on to Mirrormoon - that looks like a really cool game!
Everything about this game is incredible. The narration, the use of theme, visuals, sound... wow. The first time you climb a beanstalk to another planet just feels perfect.
Graphics are awesome. Got some weird camera behaviour, but anyway, it was pretty fun exploration game. Good job. :)
Great atmosphere !
I really love the graphics
Well, you're post was really attracting my attention. The game plays very well. Just running around and running up the stalks is fun.
Graphics look great the music is moody and voice acting good as well.
So all in all great (maybe more of a goal, but for a Ludum Dare good enough, I don't want the game to take hours (like my game :) )).
NIce game, i too find the leaves collision annoying but it's not a big problem. The atmosphere is really good and so is th sound.
Strong visuals and mood! Too bad there is no bigger purpose behind the gem hunt and I didn't even have to explore every planet to finish the game. The speaker audio was a little too quiet but I liked the fable narration :)
Super idea and incredible execution. The art is beautiful and has its own personality. Really loved the magic bean planting mechanic to go to an other planet, really innovative!
Really beautiful mood and visuals, well done! I thought it could've been more fun by having some kind of enemy or obstacle to watch out for, and the climbing and physics felt a bit off. All the same, I'd love to play this some more in a more complete version. Nice one!
Wow, very cool entry. Beautiful!
All that from scratch within 48 hours?
Wow, just wow. O.o"
How am I supposed to compete with that? D:
(for some reason I particularly like the audio, but bean mechanics are pretty neat, too, and the planets are very climatic as well; also, looking at the world from perspective of beanstalk planted on it turned out to be quite effective when searching for shiny things)
Amazing game, I can't believe the value of these games and how cool they are considering they were made in 48 hours! This is one of those games that inspires me to join Ludum Dare.
Thanks Linus! You should totally give LD a try, it's a really cool feeling when the 48 or 72 hours wraps up and you have some crazy creation sitting there in front of you. Let me know if you do decide to have a go at the next one... :D
This is one of the best games of LD30. Just amazing.
I love the bean idea as a twist on the classic tale but I feel lost on the planet. It would be nice to have arrow which points you to your objective as walking without purpose is not fun.
I really liked graphic. It was one of that few moments while looking at submission I got "Oh! so pretty" feeling.
@Linus123xbb Sorry, I should have realized that of course you must be a LD participant already. Just played and rated your game - nice sprite work with the main dude! :)
Nice game, well-rounded for 48 hours! I liked the mix of narration and the character talking to himself. The way gravity worked was fun to play with, and I found myself trying to outrun each beanstalk's growth so I could tumble down to the next planet, landing perfectly on a gem or bean. Nice touch putting faces on some planets too, I didn't notice until starting a second playthrough.
Also, a small (but kinda fun) bug: acceleration for movement is applied relative to camera's direction, so looking down and holding backwards can cause you to float directly up. The same goes for looking up and holding forwards. Perhaps this could be fixed by projecting camera-relative directions onto the plane of the polygon the player is currently "attached" to, then re-normalizing them? You could do this with OrthoNormalize(planeNormal,camForward,camRight), I think.
Oh yeah, good call! I did notice the bug on my last playthrough, but was too frazzled to do much about it at the time and decided it was a feature.. ;) I'll see if I can fix it up using your suggested technique in the post-compo version. Cheers!
Interesting idea, I was very confused about what I had to do though X).
Wowowo, very very poetic and immersive game. I'm in love with it. I found the 5 gems. The playability is great, such an amazing gravity!
Really, really beautiful. Sound, music, art, everything was awesomely done.
Fascinating game, great atmosphere. Controls were a bit wonky at times, but since there is no time limit, it's okay to float around through space. Narration was nice, although it seemed a bit quiet compared to the other soundeffects/music.
I ended up getting stuck between four bean stalks, because I had so many beans.
Very beautiful game! I loved the style and polish that went into it already. The environment rocks and the music accompanies it well. My character didn't seem to walk straight sometimes and walking on the beanstalks was a bit tricky, but great work otherwise!
Thanks very much guys! Appreciate the feedback about the controls - I've tried to tweak them a bit in my post-compo version, but not sure how successful that was. Sorry for any nausea induced... :)
PS: klianc09, thanks for pointing out the narration volume - was wondering if it was too quiet. Think I made it that way because I was a bit embarrassed using my own voice.. ;)
The experience is very rewarding. Loved the mood of te game.
My favourite game so far! Great job!
Nice, but feels a bit too empty
ahahaha the ending though, gave me a chuckle well done :D the 3d art is veryy good and the game does fit the title great entry
Hi there. Lovely game. Really enjoyed running around - managed to complete with about 9 beans spare. Nice generous mechanics (no plummeting of edge of beanstalk to infinite void...) Really like the shape edge and other shaders. Great job!
Wow, very polished, loved the art and how you could just easily float between the planet, bean stalk and then the next planet. Great work!
Thanks guys! @ncannasse - I wish I had managed to fill the world up with more cool stuff for you.. ;) Was planning for more of a puzzle game, where you get something from one planet, take it to another planet and unlock something, and so on. Maybe a giant or two to run away from! Currently trying to get enough motivation to implement all that in a post-compo version. Cheers!
This was great. Voice acting too, phwoar
Really cool implementation and innovative idea! I think maybe it will be better to have a compass or map to indicate the location of the gems. Well done!
Rated 5 stars on everything, so I guess that says a lot.