sparewizard 2015-12-15 07:30
An enjoyable settlement sim. The music and the vines create an atmosphere of foreboding.
Could do with a description of what all of the items do, and perhaps slightly faster pacing.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD34 → Vines of Darkness
By bmacintosh
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolness | 3 | 53 | ||
| Mood | 212 | 3.62 | ||
| Innovation | 290 | 3.44 | ||
| Theme | 319 | 3.89 | ||
| Fun | 487 | 3.19 | ||
| Overall | 508 | 3.33 | ||
| Graphics | 566 | 3.35 | ||
| Humor | 672 | 2.35 |
An enjoyable settlement sim. The music and the vines create an atmosphere of foreboding.
Could do with a description of what all of the items do, and perhaps slightly faster pacing.
Good idea!
I liked the graphics and audio. The immersion was well done. Any reason why audio ratings are off?
Fantastic entry! The idea was a really good one, and there were only a few factors that I felt detracted from the execution. The pacing was awfully slow, and the AI was dumb to downright broken at times, waiting on top of the house with the "returning with resources" icon for at times a full minute. Road placement was similarly confusing, and I was never quite sure what it did.
The music was well put together, and beautifully matched the mood. I felt like an explorer, trying to ensure the survival of his people. However, once I had all 3 resources, I lost interest fairly quickly, being that there was nothing pushing me to continue the quest.
Overall though, nicely done, and an impressive amount of work for 49 hours!
This game absolutely blew me away. It really is amazing for something made in such a short time! What got me most was that I was constantly learning about the mechanics. I didn't notice the help tooltips next to each resource, so I had to figure out what each of them did myself. I really like the subtelty of the mechanics, it reminds me very much of a recent game called Kingdom in that you more give suggestions to your helpers rather than directly controlling them. I learned a bit later in the game that unflagging all the resources would not recall all my helpers who would then help me clear the base of weeds and would instead result in them just waiting in base. Oops. Another great thing about this game is how well it captures this sense of paranoia about the vines creeping in, and the inevitability that you will get surrounded by them. The music and simple but effective graphics really help drive this home. I do have a couple of suggestions, mostly to do with the helpers, as they could be a bit unhelpful at times. It would be great to be able to direct them to clear an area, so like being able to mark an area for them to clear similar to marking resources. As well as that, I think having a lose state is very important in this, it helps to have payoff for all the paranoia. I think the base getting engulfed in vines would be appropriate. And a day/night cycle would help set the mood, and perhaps offer opportunity for variation in gameplay, with vines growing faster at night , making it harder, and letting you explore at daytime. This is almost certainly my favourite game so far, and one of the few i would come back to and play again.
Good game. Takes time though. I liked that the vines kept growing, but it felt like I just using machete all the time - which got a bit much. For 48 hours this is very nicely done though - great work.
Great, its very interesting to find some resourses for out settlers, rly nice!
Nice, immersive game. Great idea!
I really like the setting. If you guys expanded on this and made it a full game, I would buy it. Surviving in a malicious jungle is something we don't see enough of, and there's a lot you could do to expand this. That being said, great job getting your concept down and playable!
Love the music and the atmosphere it creates, a really great game, couldn't play it in Firefox for some reason though, had to use Chrome