myisaak 2016-08-29 17:38
Great job! The game is pretty neat for a first jam! It took me a while to understand what the chemicals were, if only I listened in chemistry class... but anyways the idea is unique, which is good.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD36 → The Fireworker's Apprentice
By pressxtoskip
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Great job! The game is pretty neat for a first jam! It took me a while to understand what the chemicals were, if only I listened in chemistry class... but anyways the idea is unique, which is good.
Pretty neat; managed to get the first firework to go off. Had to google saltpeter for the acronym. On my screen the game running is a lot darker than the screenshot for the entry, which combined with the angle makes it really hard to read the chemical names on the crate.
Really neat idea. Educational to boot!
Couple of gripes with the gameplay: controls were super awkward, and some of the chemicals felt really hard to get to. Think I tried (and failed) to get Barium like 4 times. Also felt really punishing when you picked up a wrong chemical because you had to take it all the way to the canon to be able to pick something else up. If there was some way to drop the chemicals, I didn't find it.
That aside, I think you did a really good job with the concept, and I can see a lot of potential with a game like this, where you mix up different chemicals to create different firework displays. Great work for a first Jam!
Thanks everyone. Really useful to have feedback. I agree that dropping the chemicals would be a good feature, and I think we need to work on the layout and player controller - it feels a bit like walking through glue sometimes (particularly when you're turning). Would be good to know what you're holding too - most of them are white powders!
Fun, I feel like it could really use some sound, weird to be lighting off fireworks without sfx. I would also recommend changing the movement controls to normal directions rather than tank controls.
Overall thought it was fun and a neat idea, definitely had to research elements again.
It's kinda difficult, it isn't as responsive as it should for this kind of timing I think.
I aimed so many times from different angels at the boxes and it would always take the one I'm (probably) more physically closer to rather the one I'm actually pointing my plate towards. It's annoying and kinda ruins the whole game.
But it's cute nonetheless.
The controls were a bit difficult to master, but I really like the concept of this game. Audio would make the game even better - especially when the fireworks go off..
Reminds me of my chemistry classes :)
Something like this could be used as a learning game
Nice chemistry! And much more realistic take on fireworks mixing than we did. The controls a bit hard in two ways. Both the camera's perspective made it difficult to see what the fellow was actually selecting and then to navigate from the perspective of the character added confusion. I think these two could have relatively easily been solved with having the character simply follow the mouse cursor position around or making the character go by global directions of the keys. In both cases letting the character rotate itself towards its goal automatically. The selection could have been helped by having the boxes show that they were selected somehow (lamp, animation, particle effect or such). I liked playing around with it though, not really complaining. It was a fun experience. Just could have run a little smoother so that the challenge was more of the mixing than the controls.
This games make me remember so many things in my chemistry class. Nice game btw, but the control is kinda confusing for me. But I think that is the main point in this game, to focus and used to with the control.
I remember all the element to make the color, but I think some people have difficulty in there, where some is simple, like Mg for magnesium but other is quite confusing , like Cu for copper. But thank to the color of the powder, I think people will know if they're pick the wrong ingridients.
Also the hitbox to pick the ingridients is kinda unclear. I don't know how close I should be to pick the item and sometimes when I facing the sulphur box in front of saltpeter box, it will pick saltpeter.
But after all, this is really a good game :)
(sorry for my bad english >.<)