cdwaddell 2014-12-09 04:10
Good try, the art is beautiful, I would play this game!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD31 → Save the Giant
By drkrunk
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolness | 1 | 100 | ||
| Graphics | 32 | 4.51 | ||
| Mood | 252 | 3.40 | ||
| Audio | 518 | 2.65 | ||
| Innovation | 622 | 2.85 | ||
| Overall | 708 | 2.99 | ||
| Humor | 764 | 2.00 | ||
| Fun | 856 | 2.54 | ||
| Theme | 1002 | 2.11 |
Good try, the art is beautiful, I would play this game!
Seems very buggy to me. The character kept getting stuck. So I didnt continue after 5 tries to get past the 2 first columns
Looks great. The character kept getting stuck on things though.
Really beautiful and impressive graphics !
The gameplay however... Is very buggy, frustrating and unpleasant. I really wanted to go to the end of the game but I gave up after a collision bug that make me fall to the ground for the twentieth time at least. I did notice a bit late that the dagger could be used to destroy the green fireflies nest too.
The game looks promising and reminds the old and wonderful "Shadow of the colossus" . Sometimes the player gets stuck, but well done (:
Stunning graphics! This artstyle reminds me of FEZ, well done!
Gorgeous art and mood! I think you know the controls are nigh-unplayable, but it's still very evocative and the animations are pretty polished. Worth working on. I'd love to see more of the giant than their thighs!
A bit buggy, but beyond gorgeous, I always loved this kind of art-style. Hope to see a Post-Jam version soon!
Amazing presentation! This really could be an awesome game! My biggest issue was the inability to move while jumping. This made it difficult to do the platforming parts. I'm not sure if this was an intentional design choice or just something left in, but it certainly ups the difficulty!
Great graphics!
Great graphics but side-way controls don't always work.
Graphics are superb! I feel the character movement is way too clunky and it makes the game play too frustrating, get stuck often too. Other than that, solid effort.
Graphics are really beautiful and the animation on the roll is one of the smoothest I've seen. Shame it doesn't actually work, would've loved to play this a bit further.
Really like the graphics. It'll be nice if you keep working in this game. Really loved the style.
Looks very cool, but I was stuck too often :/ I tried many times, and always stuck, like others said i suppose. Nice graphics, need music !
Graphics and atmosphere are really good! The controls were a bit finicky. You can't jump in a direction from standing still, this made me miss platforms constantly when I got higher up. And sometimes my character would get stuck when the wind? was blowing me off the ledges. With more polish this could be something great for sure, great concept! Well done!
Sheer beauty! Details like the glow dusts in the dark and rays of the sun and moon are just wonderful. The feeling that I am playing a work of art was just enough to motivate me to try again every time my character gets glitched on the corner of the platforms.
It was about half an hour and the 7th restart before I was able to finish all the tumors without getting stuck. Would've loved it if there was a conclusion instead of the black message screen. A simple picture like the player sitting on the giant's head for example would've been perfect.
Regarding the controls, the reason it feels unresponsive is because there is no mid-air control. When the player presses jump before the arrow key, the arrow key will not get registered and can be very frustrating. A little nudge toward the direction of the player input would be enough to make the control feel smoother, even if the player falls off anyway.
The game could benefit from being less punishing as it'll make it easier to enjoy the art. Like ability to hang on to the edge of platforms when you're about to fall would help reduce the difficulty greatly..
Sorry for the long comment.. The concept is wonderful and the art is brilliant so it would be a shame if there was no post-compo.
(The giant walking is unnecessary in my opinion, unless you want this to be an action game. Simple swinging of the arm and the chest breathing makes a more quiet and friendly giant. Ok I'll stop talking now.)
@theholychicken Thanks for taking the time to write your comment. "The giant walking is unnecessary": we completely agree with you in this case, but we pumped so much time in this idea in the project that we ended up short on time (We had him in programmatic walking motion at one point.) We did have stuff like hanging, where the player would have been able to jump off and stab on the side of other platforms, but the way it worked was situational, and like the dodge roll, didn't have any real use. The hanging mechanic caused problems with climbing when the character was too close to something he could climb, and so it was unfortunately cut from the game. The giant in the end was designed much smaller than we first anticipated, making the platforming much more of a pain. I'll make a post mortem to go over stuff in greater detail as to why this game got so broken.
I love the tone that's set with the graphic style. Doesn't really fit the theme imo but whatever. I think you guys should keep working on it :) nice entry!
I absolutely agree with theholychicken. Everything about the game is so cool, especially the graphics. I think the soundscape works, and just adding sound effects for the knife, the arrow and hitting stuff would pretty much be enough for me. For me the two things that break character movement are, like most people have said, that there's no mid air control (I think especially that if you're stuck against something and hold the directional button towards that object and jump, you just jump straight up, well above it, and land where you were), and that the player simply moves too fast, which makes the time window you have in order to make the jumps too difficult (for me at least). The the movement speed could also be kept, but the platforms made bigger and the distances between them smaller. Or just keep it like it is, but then it is really hard. Also, I would have liked something that made it clearer what the enemies were, their intentions and what to do with them. Not that they'd need a big sign or anything, but rather things like how they move, or maybe that you could feel more clearly how they change direction to attack you or something, so that there's also something in there that makes you react to them. That being said there are lots of awesome things in the game, like the night and day system, the delay between pressing the fire arrow-button and actually firing arrows, how huge the giant feels, the swinging ropes, the smoothness of the animations and transitions. All of that is really, really well done, and the polish needed to bring the controls up to par is very small I think, it's just unfortunate that that's the part that slipped this time. So you get a well done from me! :)
Pretty interesting. Control's are iffy, not a huge fan of them. Great graphics, good sounds. Pretty good submission. Good job. I did get stuck on the giants 'foot'? Nothing to take off for though.
This is so beautiful. And broken - I still played all the way through because of the beauty. Fix your controls and expand : this is gonna be a helluva game! :D Didn't really follow the LD theme though?
This game looks beautiful! I love the art style! But i couldn't play it, because i get stuck somewhere every time i try to play!
If would like us to build a fully fledged game / post compo join our group. There are details in the description. When we get more than 15 people we'll start on it. We're doing this for everyone who said they would like us to keep going. Thank you all for the awesome comments =].
Way to go for creating a Google group to capture LD interest. Great idea! Beautiful game, would love to see it finished!
Art is beautiful! I love this game!! well done!
Looks VERY good but character stucks a lot. Please rewrite it on something better than HTML5 (it lags on fullscreen)
@nosfer What are your specs? I get full frames on my 2 year old laptop, and I would consider my laptop low end besides the upgraded ram. If your specs are better consider updating you graphics cards drivers, the engine we are using uses webgl so your graphics card's drivers can have an impact on performance.
Laptop Specs:
Processor: AMD E2-1800 duel core 1.7ghz
Ram: 5gb
Radeon HD integrated graphics card
Pew. Beautiful art indeed, and a few nice details, like the moving "rope"/plant reacting to the player, and the level being basically body parts of the boss.
The controls however... they're playing in their own league. Let's just put it that way. :D
So yeah, I've basically got mixed feelings. Concept and art style seem really good, but the unresponsive controls and constantly getting stuck make it difficult to enjoy.
Graphics and atmosphere is really nice ("pixels" could be double in size though, but I think the small size was a conscious decision?). The controls ruin it for me. After 20-30 tries I had only got about waist high on the giant, and then I got stuck climbing a wine on it's forearm.
Beautiful pixel art!
The final fight should be on a walking giant!! :-)
I love the direction the game is going, but unfortunately the buggy/unresponsive controls ruin it.
Very impressive looking, kind of buggy. Solid concept though.
Graphics are great!
I might suggest adding a small timer that starts after you leave a platform and if you press jump within that small time you can still jump even if you're not grounded.
That usually makes the jumping a bit more forgiving, which I found a tad difficult.
Nice animations and the rope-climbing/swinging was totally unexpected in a jam game. Can't wait to see more.
The style was _really_ cool. I had some trouble with the controls though. It felt like the game was played at 2x speed. Also, for a jumping platformer, it helps to be able to steer your jumps a little in the air. I could only get to the middle of the 3 vines.
Shadow of the Colossus in 2d! Great idea, and beautiful art. As everyone else has already said, the controls are very frustrating. Lack of air control is probably the biggest problem.
My only problem is the jump is a little stiff, can't do a standing jump up and move left or right. Not sure if this was by design.
Nice idea, beautiful gfx, unfortunately the controls were a bit buggy, i got stuck several times at the corner of a platform and it was very difficult to control the movement of the player.
But a good idea and gfx, would make a nice game.
This was a good idea. Great art. Sadly, the Action 52-calibre controls made it nigh unplayable.
Looks great but the jumping controls are pretty awful. That and the enemies push you all the way to the ground. Check out Super Meat Boy for some ideas on how to make a well-controlled character.
I like the Shadow of the Colossus feel.
Oh man, you basically combined Knytt with Shadow of the Colossus. You hit on a fine combination of things there in my book. Excellent pixel art here, and great sense of atmosphere in general. It all just makes me wish it were a bit more fun to play. I'd be interested to try a version with more polished controls.
@ArcturusDeluxe and everyone wanting the project to go forward join the google group to push this project forward we are currently at 2/15 people. I'm creating the group for:
- People who want to be involved in making this a good game.
- People to play builds and tech demos for new mechanics.
- Anyone who interested in our concepts and art techniques.
- Everyone who wants to play a better version of this game.
The thing is it might take us a while to make this game and Ludum 31 will be long gone in that short amount of time. This makes it really hard to show the final product to everyone who wanted to see this go further. The google group gives us access to email addresses where you can be reached when new versions are out. It also provides feedback for us when things are broken or just bad ideas. By joining you have no responsibility just access to early versions and test demos. This will be a closed day-one alpha test group basically.
I kept getting stuck, but the art and animation are so good that I would love to return to a fleshed out version of the game.
The art is very nice! But the control is a little difficulty and it may be confuse to naive players. Need a tutorial and audio.
A real eye candy! I got frozen in place mid-air a few times - which visually was worth it ,)
The graphics are great. The gameplay not so much. The player can get stuck, and I think it needs some air movement to make things less frustrating. More audio would be nice.
Man. It's gorgeous. Everything is gorgeous and well animated. The premise is great.
BUT.
The controls are impossible. No mid-air movements means I couldn't even stand next to a platform and jump on it.
The first enemy alone frustrated the crap out of me, I almost ragequit. There's no indication if you're actually doing damage and the blobs keep flinging you down to the ground level UNPREVENTABLY <-- that's the key, it doesn't feel like I have a choice or say in the matter.
Then I jumped a platform and got stuck and the thought of having to go through the first enemy again just terrified me.
There are some fundamental platforming control issues that are far more important than pretty graphics, though they are really pretty. I took a lot of tim in my LD48 just making sure the platforming was natural and feels decent. It wasn't perfect but it wasn't an obstacle.
Good luck on this :)
Great style but very frustrating controls. Also fullscreen lags the game so that it can't be played. (for me at least)
Great graphic and mood! I want to see full version of this game.
Very beautiful game! The controls and mechanics felt very wonky to me, though. Sometimes he wouldnt jump, sometimes he wouldnt move, the balls fling you to the end of the world sometimes and there is no obvious way to stop it, esp when the character doesnt react to space. :p
Not much to contribute that hasn't already been said. This game looks fantastic and I'd love to see the issues ironed out so it's more playable. Hope you take this further!
The game feels very nice, I like the fancy pixel graphics and audio.
I would like to see some sort of more interesting ending, though.
And controls could be better: no horisontal friction in midair is ok, but lack of the moving ability is frustrating.
Also, how it's connected with the theme?
Really nice graphics. I think once the few issues already mentioned here are sorted, you are on to a winner.
Looks really great but the mechanics is very bad, collisions don't work well and controlling the jump is almost impossible. Buutt, the aesthetics is awesome, I really want a post compo version of this!
Too bad collision phsyics & controls make it almost unplayable ;)
I love the idea. Seems like a nice combination of Shadow of the Colossus and Endeavor (a flash game). The only problem I had was that I couldn't jump horizontally when next to a platform. I had to run away and jump from there. I guess that is more realistic considering but a little frustrating.
The art is awesome and it's a really cool idea. Unfortunately I couldn't get very far. The collision is a little funky making jumping hard and it's easy to get stuck but the mood and graphics and animation are awesome!
I don't really think this game benefits from "realistic" controls and jump arcs. It mostly just adds frustration. I fell. A lot. But I guess that's just part of the experience.
Graphics are so great!. Really sad that the physics and controls are so buggy.
The controls are rather frustrating and, at times, buggy, but the graphics are beautiful and I like the concept.
The controls are less than tight, but it looks excellent. Awesome graphics and mood for sure.
Great art. But too buggy to play
Really cool graphics and idea
It's a really great looking entry, with a nice mood. But the character controls are painful.
Beauuuuuuuutiful! I wish I could revive all the giants from "Wander and the Colossus" like that !
I just realise I didn't rate the game yet ! Now its done! I guess you will have plenty of time to fix technical issues later on. Great work!
beautiful graphics, and nice. Anyway there some bugs that make the game hard to control. Waiting for update :)
Oh, too bad that controls are so f...ed up. Really nice FEZ-like graphics though :)
Love a lot that graphics, but the character gets stuck too much...