yusef 2017-04-23 23:35
Nice and simple game mechanics, Really hard to predict them bouncey guys though.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → littleBLASTplanet
By gamepopper
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 238 | 3.40 | 57 | |
| Fun | 180 | 3.40 | 57 | |
| Innovation | 393 | 2.76 | 57 | |
| Theme | 59 | 4.00 | 57 | |
| Graphics | 227 | 3.40 | 57 | |
| Audio | 2 | |||
| Humor | 314 | 2.34 | 46 | |
| Mood | 329 | 2.94 | 52 |
Nice and simple game mechanics, Really hard to predict them bouncey guys though.
This game looks great man! I'll try it out in a couple of hours when I make myself some time :D
I like the graphics, only using 2 colors really makes the enemies stand out as well. My only suggestion is to either give the player warning when an enemy is about to drop on their head or only spawn them a certain distance from the player. It was frustrating getting far only to be smashed by a 'thwomp' that randomly dropped on my head. Great game!
I like the graphics, and idea. The music seemed unfitting, and I believe would have been better left out. I think the enemy spawning might be a bit too random, sometimes I'd only get one enemy type, or a wave of enemies at once. Also, pressing up and down made the page scroll, I don't know if there was anyway you could have prevented that, but it was annoying. All that aside, the game was fun to play.
Pretty cool game. Hard to prevent enemies landings on your head, a warning would have been great.
I love this game man! How the steam comes where the spikes will come out, the core mechanic, the graphics!
Rated!
I like it! It might be cool if the bullets were attracted to the planet so that they fall back down to it. I also found the millisecond part of the counter a bit distracting and unnecessary.
The little pixel graphics are great and the game plays well. I like the variety of enemies and obstacles. As well as the self-destructing planets.
The bullets not being attracted to the planet is kind of a pain, since you have to be right next to the enemies on the ground to hit them. Also, it is pretty hard to predict where the ground enemies will fall.
That was so cute! Fun game, get's hectic fast! Only suggestion i'd make is to implement something to give warning when a block was going to fall, often was killed by a block just slamming down on me with no chance to avoid. Great job!
A bit too hard for me but it might be a lot of fun for a lot of other more skilled players. Thank you for the game!
Yeap, I agree the blocks fall too fast and are just unfair (rather than challenging). Also, I found jumping to be way too dangerous, so just never did it - just spammed the shoot button and stayed as still as possible... maybe in the next levels you needed to jump (or release the shoot button) - but I couldn't figure out how to get off the planet. I went to the escape zone and pressed all the keys I could, but couldn't trigger anything. What's the trick?
But all of those points are minor, balancing things. I played this game for ages (it took me a long time to survive 30 seconds - I think the initial difficulty needs some tweaking ;). It's got potential to be really fun.
Also, I kind of liked the "follow" camera more than the static - the bullets look really cool as you move around. Anyhoo, great job!
Nice concept, great job.
It's fun enough and fits the theme, but for me it is a bit hard - I loose in several seconds :( Probably I just need to sleep more to restore reaction speed ) Graphics is good for such fast gameplay - it is very clear what happens on screen.
So at first I was totally against the straight shots on a radial planet. They definitely make fighting the ground enemies very hard. But for anything in the air, it turned out to be really interesting. I'm wondering if the game would be better without the ground enemies at all. Just some thoughts, but minor ones. I like the music very much. The death was also great--music stopping and spinning of into space was actually quite satisfying. I would be very interested to see more with the missiles, almost like missile command mario galaxy. Hmmm.
Plain and simple: awesome. Love that style.
Fits the graphic really well. I'm suprised by the music generator - I actually thought about using it too but had no time in the end.
Theoretically gameplay would be fine. I'd like to especially mention controlling the character feels really polished! But put in praxis there are some thinks that could be improved on easily and allow for much more fun. I don't know if it's a web version thing but it kinda feels like the hitboxes are too big. I always feels like I'm running into the aliens before I should've (I get that I'm not actually supposed to run into the aliens - just one thing I quickly realized). Another thing is that the window size for me is too small. Again this could be a problem with the web version - I don't know. It gets really really annoying when those bouncy enemies come and you can't really see where they are jumping. Also while talking about those bouncy fuckers: one of the jumped right in my face after spawn... Not nice!
But even though that sounded quite negative - just trying to leave some constructive criticism - the game really comes together nice. The controls and graphics feel polished and music and sound effects fit. I still think it's an awesome game :)
Fun little game. Both the pixel art and 8bit tunes evoke a retro sense of nostalgia. I feel like this could make a great arcade game. I also agree with @ryguydavis, pleasantly surprised by the straight line shooting mechanic! I think the enemies felt a little unfair though (the one that jumps on your head and the one that pops up from the ground). Also, would love to see some progression indications (more weapons, statistics...etc).
I like the general theme of the game, and the controls feel fine. It's hard to tell, however, how the enemies affect the planet, and more importantly, how much health the planet has left. This is made especially infuriating with the bouncing screws that moves far too quickly to aim at properly, and an aiming control system that doesn't allow for precision.
I did discover that holding down the shoot button makes the game much more easier. At the same time, though, it sort of falls into the other extreme: too easy. It looked like I would kill airborne enemies before they're even spawned. I'm not really sure that was intended, and the fact that there doesn't seem to be a middle ground between these two difficulty dampers the experience.
A really interesting entry, I like the two different options for the camera movement. It was fun trying to line up shots, and trying to protect the planet from the various attackers. It seemed a little unfair when some blocks would just drop on you without any time to react, but overall it was a cool game. Nice work!
I really like this one. I love the idea of having a character that shoots straight on a small, circular planet. It's a very clever use of theme that creates a lot of interesting gameplay interactions. The game is pretty simple, but it doesn't need to be complex. It's just a fun little concept that gets a lot out of a little. In fact, my main critique is that it should be even simpler. For instance, I think that the ability to shoot upwards is entirely superfluous; you can hit things above you by shooting horizontally at an angle. Most players will default to shooting upwards to hit things above them, but doing so ignores the whole point of having a circular level. I say you should remove the ability to shoot up to force players out of their comfort zone. Also, jumping is kind of superfluous as well; I only ever used it to get into the exit. Maybe it becomes more useful later on, but it's kind of unnecessary up to the point that I got to. Really, I think you could simplify the controls to three buttons: left, right, and shoot. That gives you plenty of depth with no superfluous elements. My only other criticism of the game is how unforgiving it is, dying in just one hit to either yourself or the planet. I wouldn't mind having the ability to take a few more hits, but it's easy enough to jump right back in regardless. As for the art style and sound, both are minimalist and fit the game's tone nicely. I think that this is a really stand out entry. Great job!
Nice fast-paced shooter. Frustrating to be doing well and then have an enemy land on my head though. Overall a good game.
I really liked this interpretation of the theme combined with very basic arcade gameplay. What I didn't like was that the collision system often was not really fair to me. I died a lot without having touched an enemy. Overall, nice game!
Cool game! Though I have to agree with others that the blocks fall too fast, making them unavoidable which can be frustrating, especially when you're heading to the escape zone and one decides to land on you.
hey nice little game! first of all the music is wonderful! it was very enjoyable and made me feel a bit nostalgic for many of the NES and SNES games that i love so much. i like the art style as well. the game mechanics were simple, but worked very well. always shooting tangential to the circle was interesting as you could should shoot both grounded enemies as well as enemies descending from the skies. i was aware that you can also shoot straight up, but the tangential shot seemed to work best for me. the gravity worked great as well, which has been in issue for other LD games using a tiny planet with gravity. with the escape, i could definitely see you expanding this game. you could travel to other planets with different parameters. nice job overall, i had fun!
I thought the simple graphics worked well in this game. It's enjoyable--I ended up playing several rounds and felt like I was making some progress.
I noticed the lag, but it didn't really get in the way. Unfortunately, I can't play the Windows version.
Great little game, really like the minimalistic art style. Camera could be more zoomed out also because the enemy falling to fast. But for this short time you did a fantastic work. Congrats for your entry.
Simple but effective, I turned out to be really bad at the game (thanks for gamepad support by the way, that made life easier.) But overall liked the concept and the art style grew on me as I kept on playing. I think the music added to the easier and I am glad you took the time to generate some with Abundant and add it; I feel as though the experience would be bland without it. Thanks.
Good gameplay mechanics, but I just can't for the life of me get over how weird the controls felt. Shooting tangential to the planet is an intended gameplay mechanic, I understand, but making it a bit more lenient over the tiny area of the surface around the curved planet would help gameplay a lot imo. A lot of the time you have to spam shoot while walking around the curve of the planet, like peeking ramp on Dust2 on CS:GO (hope you got the reference) but every time an enemy is there. That made the game a lot more frustrating for me than it could have been. That being said, I'm not sure if I'm one to speak, as judging by the concept of the game I have no idea how to make that more fluid.
Sound was nice, and it seems they were original(?)(judging by the post), so confused as to why you opted out of audio.
Overall a solid and simple game, just wish it was more forgiving
This was a really fun and simple game that I could see myself playing whilst waiting for a bus or similar. The game controlled really easily and smoothly, and was quite fun to control.I also liked the music, it added a nice sort of upbeat tone to the game. I did find frustrating that you had to get right in the face of the red squares in order to shoot them, although I can see why you did it, and there would be times where I would just be killed straight up by a red square falling on my head with no warning, and this did feel unfair. The bombs were also kind of difficult, as if two were coming at the same time on opposite sides, it was a real challenge. So over I did enjoy this game, but holy cow it is hard.
I really like this game but it could include one improvement. Sometimes, when I was just standing and waiting for enemies, one would spawn right on top of me, with little or no time to react. This game is really good but if you could fix that it would be even better.
I liked the variations between the falling missile and spike worlds. I haven't made it past two worlds yet though, it's pretty hard for me. The aiming took a while to get used to as it's always tangent to the circle, but once I got that I was able to get a bunch of enemies from that angle (it was easier than aiming up to hit missles). It also helped that I could hold down to keep shooting. I would get confused though as to what direction the arrow key would go in if I got surrounded and would go the wrong way and die haha. I like how all the worlds continents are generated, though could be nice if the pixel density was the same as the rest of the game. Anyway nice job!
I like the sort of Downwell-esque aesthetic goin' on here! And also similarly to Downwell, I like the simple mechanics that are at play. With a little more polish I can see this being a pretty engaging game to sink some free time into!
One major suggestion I have is to consider having the bullets you shoot curve around the planet in the same trajectory you walk. It feels especially strange when I'm walking in the direction of an enemy and shooting, but my bullets are flying off into outer space, because that just happens to be the direction I'm facing on the circle.
Although your playing field is a circle, intuitively for the player (or at least for me), the 4 directions of shooting are up, down, left, and right. When I shoot left at an enemy on my left, and it doesn't die, it creates a dissonance that can quickly lead to confusion or frustration.
I hope you have plans to work on this more in the future! :)
Thank you everyone for your feedback so far. Just thought I'd give my response to some of the feedback given thus far.
1. Having the bullets curve around the planet instead of straight on: Yeah this one is pretty common. I did think about having it this way, but I felt it would be better to do the latter because it made shooting objects in the sky much easier. With enemies on the ground you can walk up to them and fire them easily, but with air based enemies you either have to jump and shoot or go underneath and aim upwards. I can see that not everyone sees this advantage and prefer a more realistic behaviour so worth taking note.
2. Enemies falling right on top of the player: Another common complaint, and I treated it as a bug in the last remaining hours. I attempted to fix it by having enemies drop on the other side of the planet from the player, yet somehow that didn't work. When I tried to fix it post-jam, enemies were STILL dropping onto the player. It's a bit wierd.
3. The game is hard: Yeah that seems to be a recurring issue in all of the games I make. I tried to make sure that the initial planet had as few enemies as possible, which made it possible too reach the first planet with ease, yet I see streams where the player keeps dying. Problem is I feel if I leave too few enemies, the game will get boring quickly since it's designed where you need to last at least 30 seconds on each planet.
4. Why can't I vote on audio: I thought about it, but because the music is procedurally generated, and not exactly what I was intending the music to be, I didn't feel it's worth being rated on it.
Well done! It's cute and hard and looks good - nearly perfect.
I recommend adding a bit of particle effects when killing enemies, to make it even more fun.
This is really cool, I like it a lot. I have to say, with the camera mode on follow the trajectory of your bullets while walking seemed to make _no_ sense, but once I switched the camera mode to stationary (which I understand is the default anyway), it was a lot easier to predict what was going on :-p
I feel like the only thing this game really needs is to make the progression through the level more obvious to the player; some combination of enemies getting tougher or more frequent towards the end of the level, a song that is the exact length of the level, something that makes it _feel_ like you're progressing. Obviously those are hard targets to hit in a game jam, especially when you're in the Compo, but for a post-jam expansion I'd try to increase that sense of progression within the level. Even a countdown timer would help (and not just a count-up timer).
For difficulty concerns, earlier levels could just be _shorter_, to combat the possibility of being bored early on.
For the curving bullets, I'd actually suggest having two guns would add some neat strategy to the game. One would act as the current gun acts, the other would be affected by gravity. You'd have both options available, but maybe there's a split second animation frame to switch weapons, or just the fire rate is for either weapon, combined, so you can't just spam them both simultaneously at all times. Something like that.
Really cool entry, it's simple but it's imediate fun. I liked the graphics with the minimalist color scheme, the music was cool as well.
kinda feels like a spectrum game, nice job ^^
Awesome graphics! This remember downwell game.
Fun game! Best I managed to get was 57 seconds.
Don't really have much criticism, everything worked really well and the game was overall fun. Covered a good scope for a Ludum Dare entry, not too complex an idea executed brilliantly. Only thing I could complain about is the size of the screen, since all the enemies fell from the sky, it would have been nice to have a bit more warning of this.
Fun and challenging game!
Lovely game, feels very good to play, the graphics style is very clear, my only complaint being differently sized pixels ;)
As said before maybe the screen being a bit bigger would be better, but may take away a bit of the difficulty.
This reminded me of classic space invaders in a way. Defending a planet from aliens that want to crash down to destroy things and touch your stuff. I could almost see this as an endless survival game. Where you unlock different planets and enemies to fight against as you survive for certain lengths of time.
That said my only big hangup on this game was that some of the enemies would just hurtle out of space and smash you in the head. No chance to react or to avoid the enemy. Perhaps if they were just a smidge slower that would help.
Otherwise not bad. Simple but it fits the jam theme in a very direct a literal way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shr5iGdQs3M
it's a nice, challenging game, I like the retro style. Although it's much too dificult for me and I loose in seconds (longest run was 11 seconds maybe?). I think the most awkward thing is getting used to the controls (it's never straighforward up, left or right)
Nice graphics, challenging game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSWOUTubUBM
Cool game, I did a little video with my thoughts. https://youtu.be/2E_VB598v2c
Nice game :)
I enjoyed playing this entry. Simple and efficient gameplay. Good music. Loved it. And it s done with haxe!! :)
Interesting gameplay, simple, yet addictive.
I had a bit problems with key-mapping (it didn't suit me - but that is often personal preference, so it is somewhat hard to satisfy everyone).
Congratulations on making the game and keep up the good work.
Nice game here! I like the colour palette (I think others have mentioned Downwell, which was the first thing that came to my mind too when I saw the graphics, even if the game itself is not really similar in terms of gameplay), controls are tight and the mechanics are engaging. I've reached to the escape pod, but have the annoying habit of getting killed right before arriving there.
As for possible improvements, I had a bit of trouble determining when or why the planet would explode (I wasn't sure if the square guys could hurt it, or they were just chasing me), and in some cases enemies would spawn right next to the player, resulting in an insta-kill. Perhaps adding some anticipation could be useful, in case altering the spawn logic is difficult.
The automatically generated music sounded nice, too (at least, more fitting than other generators).
And kudos for using Haxeflixel! Great job! :smiley: