FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD38 → A Cage of Love

A Cage of Love

By quetzakol

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3453.1430
Fun4642.5730
Innovation2583.1730
Theme104.3731
Graphics2763.2431
Audio2333.0329
Humor3362.2625
Mood1313.5330

Comments

sgadrat 2017-04-26 20:54

Nice little story. The world disapearing remembered me the feeling of "To the moon"

gozz 2017-04-28 18:30

This is a cool idea, the world disappearing is quite cool. I would maybe have add some textures to the path and grass it seem a bit too flat I think but globaly it like it. Also maybe it miss some sound. But I know you only had 48 hours so I can't say anything ;) This is kinda poetic :) Nice work :)

quetzakol 2017-04-28 20:00

Thanks ! :) I definitely wanted to have better graphics for the path and grass and I had planned sounds to improve the atmosphere but I indeed lacked time :/

simonhutchinson 2017-05-03 03:08

Interesting. I need to try shooting heart bullets sometime. I really like the hand-drawn style, as it's something that really intimidates me.

bunnery 2017-05-03 10:23

I was attracted to play this by the name and the very cool art style! Looks great - I did get stuck in a bit of a loop trying to shoot the dangerous entities - didn't always seem to work. Maybe I ran out of heart bullets? Got a lot of potential though - great work for such a short time!

diegoctorguet 2017-05-03 13:22

I like that you tried to put some narrative in this short time of development. But you have to be more careful with some points like being able to die because you can't move until you read all dialogues. Anyway, nice work.

r8berto 2017-05-03 15:32

I think I grasped the metaphor, it has some meaning to me too. Nice job, it's a lot of content for 48h.

blinry 2017-05-03 17:30

Hmm, can't progress to the phone booth, I'm always eaten by shadowy creatures and can't defend myself. Is there more to the game?

Love the heart-shooting! <3 <3 <3

quetzakol 2017-05-03 17:46

Well the heart-shooting should allow you to destroy the shadows, it didn't work ? Maybe it is because you were too close to the fence and the hearts collided with it ? :/ But yes the phone booth is basically day 1/5 :)

blinry 2017-05-03 18:08

Thanks for the fast reply! I now played through it. The problem was that there was text displayed when the black things arrived, so I had to speed-tap it away before I could shoot.

Movement was painfully low, so I found the "I ran back home" quite ironic! :P The story is mildly interesting, and the graphics are beautifully drawn! Nice that you offered a choice at the end! Wasn't too easy for me, I could relate to the situation! Thanks for making this game!

quetzakol 2017-05-03 18:22

Thanks for taking the time to retry it ! Yes the player should not be blocked when there are enemies, I should have fixed that :/

kevtukk 2017-05-04 13:15

I like the handdrawn art and the few soundeffects that are in the game. And I also like the narrative approach you took with the game. But I think the player-character moves a bit to slow for my taste and some of the graphics are maybe a bit to simple. Still: This is a really interesting game. Good job! :smiley:

mandarad 2017-05-06 20:39

Player movement was could have been faster, but I liked the designs of the characters, very cute! It was a neat take on the theme, too. Nice entry, good job!

willowblade 2017-05-07 10:56

Really cute and quite unique!

It was fun to play and progress through the story. Also the game became more difficult towards the end, mostly due to the slow movement, but it was never unfair.

Sometimes the artstyle clashed though, the house and characters are detailed and have a certain style wich the environments lacked.

Overall a cool and quirky idea, I like it!

ryte2byte 2017-05-07 17:42

I'm not sure why you hate the player so much in a game about the perils of love. Maybe that's the point. Hmmm...

Anyway, day 1 has a problem with the to message pop-up locking controls while baddies are spawned in a complete circle around the player. Day 2's big sticky wicket was the timing on that friggin' black collider. Also, all the game's colliders in general have some issues (like point-blank shots not working). The trigger on the tree also feels wrong (you have to go above and behind it a little). Things were alright on day 3, but the movement (hard-stop collisions on the environment and not being able to move on diagonals) drove me crazy and made the whole map a chore to navigate.

I chose the girl in the end. Would have liked to see the other ending as well, but I don't want to play through again. The story is merely okay, mostly due to the writing quality. Character, building, and prop sprites are fantastic and I liked the low drone the shadows make when nearby.

tweedle 2017-05-07 18:24

a unique take on the theme, well done. loved the heart shooting :smile: the black clouds got me every time and I wanted a dash movement - otherwise, nice work!

smiling-cat-entertainment 2017-05-07 18:56

I think what some people are experiencing with the phone booth is that some of the event triggers are positioned so that the player doesn't necessarily hit them. For instance, it is possible to go past the fence without triggering the "As I approached the phone box" dialog. This causes enemies to spawn right on top of the player when the next event is triggered.

The art style was really good. As far as the story, I thought the partner seemed really passive - literally did not move a pixel the entire game while the world collapsed in around them. It made the last choice pretty easy for me. Maybe that was the point, but the partner would have been more likable as a character and the loving relationship more believable with some teamwork in the gameplay, or maybe switching points-of-view from one partner to the other. Love takes two sides working together.

Nice work overall.

rixud 2017-05-07 19:12

nice graphics, the movement wasnt smooth, i dont like the diagonals on Day 4 (i think) because you need to walk up and side to pass them, on day 1, i dont know why the controls lock when the messages appear if they spawn a bunch of monster around me!..

shiitman 2017-05-08 15:07

Nice graphics, but being killed in front of phone box is really annoying

zeriver 2017-05-08 15:40

Intriguing game, i was actually invested in the story and that pushed me through the game. Movement and fighting is clunky but that's not the main focus of the game. Decent writing and good job on graphics, simple but neat. Also could you tell what happens in both ending? I picked one and would like to see alternative ending but playing thgrough again takes too long. In overall pretty solid entry, it's nice to see games that try something different compared to most LD games.

davidthelazar 2017-05-08 16:14

Neat game. There were some collision issues where the player would get stuck on scenery or shots would be blocked when it seemed they shouldn't.

I liked the shrinking world and how it took a place we'd explored and made it new and more challenging each time. I think that would be a neat concept to expand on.

quetzakol 2017-05-08 17:34

Thanks everyone for playing my game ! :)

@zeriver : Here are the two endings (I don't have time to do screenshots now so I'll just describe them)

--> If you choose to stay : you are alone with the girl and the house is completely surrounded by the void. Dialogues : "I didn't leave. As the rest of the world disappeared, we stayed home. But together. Forever."

--> If you choose to leave : you are alone in the boat, still navigating. Dialogues : "I left. Soon, I would find where the world had disappeared. I might be far from her. But when I come back, our love will be stronger than ever."

So nothing really surprising actually I think :P

nedmakesgames 2017-05-09 22:45

Great game! Very charming art. I liked the way the art and sound came together to make the enemies very otherworldly. The split ending was a nice touch. Great job!

gaiusjulius 2017-05-15 13:06

I enjoyed the game. A bit of music and more sound effects would have been nice. The "void" shapes coming towards me didn't pose any problem, making the game extremely easy (but you weren't going for challenging anyway...)

The story is nice. I chose to stay with my partner :)

feltip 2017-05-15 19:48

Really unique, dig the hand drawn style. Great job, good entry :)

axoona 2017-05-15 21:30

It's a really nice story, nicely told. You managed to create a very poetic mood!

I think it would have been better to show the instructions about love spikes at the beginning to avoid the risk of that unfair death in front of the telephone booth (but I guess it's not done on purpose)

stuntddude 2017-05-15 23:40

Some issues:

- There are some issues with movement, like not being able to move diagonally and getting stuck on objects because the hitboxes aren't where you'd expect them to be. - I'm not sure if this is intentional, but you can shoot the enemies that move down the screen repeatedly as they fly by, and the ones you shot will stay dead the next time that group flies by. That allows you to cheese some of the timing-based sections by just killing all the fly-by enemies. - You can get to the tree without trapping yourself, in which case the monologue about being trapped doesn't make much sense.

The strongest point of this game imho is the use of simple narrative to deliver a complex message. Despite the fairly short buildup, the ultimate decision has a lot of weight behind it. It's tough to make a genuinely reflective game without being hammy or pretentious, let alone in just 48 hours. But this game does just that. It really *means* something, and I think that's worth a lot.

sparrow 2017-05-17 20:42

I enjoyed the story and I liked the aesthetic. The controls felt a bit stiff but overal an awesome job!

m-1 2017-05-17 23:27

Nice and simple storytelling. There are some bugs others have mentioned, but I have not encountered anything critical. I like the idea of having the same level layout with obstacles appearing in each level.