FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD30 → I.A.N

I.A.N

By dramentiaras

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness275
Innovation3943.37
Theme5813.22
Humor9281.53
Fun9782.53
Graphics9792.40
Audio10061.20
Mood10222.30
Overall10842.56

Comments

ljdp 2014-08-25 10:28

I had no idea how to play this.

ysty 2014-08-25 15:08

Nice. I think the click box around the nodes could have been a little bigger, but otherwise it was very good.

jawm 2014-08-25 15:09

Interesting idea once I knew what it was. More explanation would be nice

cptnwaffles 2014-08-25 15:16

Your game needs much better instructions. Despite spending 5 minutes with it, I never got past the first two nodes.

techblogogy 2014-08-25 15:19

I was very confusing playing this.

billtowin 2014-08-25 15:21

Cool idea. Simple but effective art style and game mechanic.

sai_aya 2014-08-25 15:38

It took me quite a while to understand how it works, and how to avoid colliding with the nodes.
After 30 min of playing this game, I managed to score 860, with 5 nodes... It's quite hard, actually.

The idea is interesting, but it would require a tutorial or something to explain the rules.

burgerdare 2014-08-25 15:45

the swinging physics feel pretty great. Seems like this may have been inspired slightly by floating point?

dramentiaras 2014-08-25 16:12

Sorry for the unclear instructions, I'm not very good at explaining things, anyone got any tips on how to describe the gameplay?
@burgerdare No, but I realised they were similar during development. I took no inspiration from floating point, since I haven't played it myself.

jaj 2014-08-26 13:12

Nice! Some sound would really enhance this. I thought the blue orbs were circeling around the green ones at first. My brain was very confused for a while.

fallingbear 2014-08-26 14:37

The whole time I thought that the blue ball is rotation around the green one :D confusing :D

cheshyr 2014-08-26 14:39

Interesting idea. difficult to get the hang of at first.

dunin 2014-08-26 14:47

Hard to understand but hard to explain too (and hard to play, 4 nodes is my best).
I try: If a blue node had an orbital, try to collide it with the green circle then you have to release the blue node to click on an other with the same number of the orbital collected...
(Yeah, very hard to explain...)

queader 2014-08-26 15:28

I'm a bit confused...Can anyone explain what to do? Really want to play this.

snooze82 2014-08-26 18:41

I didnt get it :/

dramentiaras 2014-08-26 19:45

If those who do not understand could give some more feedback, it would be great. What do you not understand? The controls? How to play? Explain to me, I get very frustrated when I want to explain so badly but don't know how.

datacr4sh 2014-08-27 02:27

i didn't understand why things were moving on the screen, what i had to do, why things were numbered or why they were swinging around a point when i clicked them

mrexcessive 2014-08-28 19:54

Hi there. Interesting idea. Pretty difficult to play, I think partly maybe because camera would benefit from being far enough back to see complete orbit at current tether around adjacent worlds not just tethered one. Shame no sound. Good job!

zeppelincaptain 2014-08-31 19:50

It's too hard to click the nodes, and it's counter-intuitive that W makes the tether shorter, and S makes it longer, it ought to be the reverse.

And I see some people complaining about instrucions. I've found that the cause of that is usually not actually the instructions, but unclear visual communicaion from the game. Suggestions that could improve that: feedback when you press something, a highlighting of new things to catch, more zoomed out camera (gives a better overview), making the matching packages and nodes the same color. And also an easier beginning, since if people think the beginning is too hard, they'll often complain about the instructions. Just some suggestions that I've found often works. It's awesome that you try to make an original gameplay idea, it's much better than a lot of the uninspired games around.

shadowstryker 2014-08-31 19:50

Instructions weren't very clear, so it took me maybe a minute to understand what to do. After I figured that out though, it was pretty fun despite it getting difficult quickly.

aneeslol 2014-08-31 19:55

The controls/instructions were pretty clear to me, and I liked the fluid gameplay. However, it seemed like if you mistimed your switch between nodes then you would just crash straight into the node with no hope of recovering, which felt a bit unfair.

dramentiaras 2014-08-31 19:55

@ZeppelinCaptain thank you for the most constructive feedback yet! I really apreciate it and I will remember this if I decide to make a post-compo version.

moi93101 2014-08-31 19:57

I don't know how it's work, if you can show how it works ...

klianc09 2014-09-05 18:12

Really fun once you get the hang of it. My best was 6 nodes.

I totally agree with ZeppelinCaptain.
I think one of the main problems for new players is, that you don't have any visual indication as to in which direction you are moving. Adding a background (could just be a grid of lines or anything) and maybe even a trail to the player would help immensly.

I would also suggest starting with 3 nodes, as with two nodes you don't have any way to recover from a collision-course with a node.

Also making the clicks snap to the nearest node (or just increasing their hitbox for clicking) would make it more a game of timing and reflexes instead of a game of mouse-aiming skills.

Having said all that, don't think I don't like it. It's just when you see a great game and there are those things that keep it from being an super awesome game, then those things tend to be extra annoying.

jupiter_hadley 2014-09-14 21:23

Interesting game though I couldnt get a dang package! I included it in part 25 of my Ludum Dare 30 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) http://youtu.be/mlEPiXm0ehY