dgspitzer 2017-05-01 18:12
That's a really cool idea actually! Super fun to play (and move around organs lol). Be healthy is really difficult...
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Membrum
By rongo-matane and IdinaKloppstock
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 422 | 3.31 | 34 | |
| Fun | 398 | 3.12 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 11 | 4.25 | 34 | |
| Theme | 377 | 3.45 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 569 | 2.90 | 33 | |
| Audio | 422 | 2.69 | 31 | |
| Humor | 105 | 3.58 | 33 | |
| Mood | 497 | 3.03 | 30 |
That's a really cool idea actually! Super fun to play (and move around organs lol). Be healthy is really difficult...
A realy cool idea, and I get the spin on the theme - managing body as if it was a small world in itself.
Unfortunately UI is really confusing at the moment - when starting, it's unclear which gauge represents what, and how to expand the body - or even what's actually clickable. An expanded howto would be welcome, and the interactive elements should really communicate the affordance to a player more. Indicators, effects and pointers would really help with that.
Mechanic is comprehensible, but complex, and that's a good thing. And I like how surrealistic the body looks :)
I'm leaving my rating for you. Cheers!
Fun game, with good mechanics and a lot of humor. I found a little confusing to get how it works, but I could handle it. I found art style a bit creepy but appropiate for this game. You should make a mobile version for this ;).
Thank you all for your feedback, it really helps me both on the game and on my feelings! :D
@takusan @sararycow You are right, the game does a bad job communicating what can be done and how. I'll try to improve this in the future.
@sararycow I do have an android build ready. As you said, its still a confusing - with android even more so, since "hover over a thing to learn about it" is not an option. So i'll have to first find a way for the game to be easier to learn with better feedback, then adapt it for mobile (or even better, do both in one step).
A very unique entry! I had a pretty fun time playing the game, and there were a lot of laugh-out-loud moments for me (getting a baby, getting hit by the car over and over again...etc...I guess I should've developed my brain out better so my character stops making bad decisions). I really enjoyed the game after I learned the mechanics of each organ/shift and expansion. I think it was a little overwhelming to start with six organs at the same time, maybe ramp that up a little slower? Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. Great entry!
Really nice concept and use of the theme if not strangely creepy. Took a while to figure out how to play but once I did it was fun.
@wildmusketeer Thank you very much, that is really what i hoped and aimed for, kind of absurd life stories :D Your suggestion is also very good, i'm planning on making a little tutorial where you start as a fetus and only slowly get your abilities and organs, so you can get to know it all.
Both to you and @failedstarfish - i'm very grateful that you "fight" through the initial confusion. To me, the tolerance for a game is rather low and if i don't know what to do, i'll most likely leave (i have to wonder how many players i lost along the way). So i really appreciate that you still went through and played the game! :)
Amazing concept! I lived until 135 years so I could say I did ok, but in all seriousness I love the idea behind and you implemented it very well which makes it very fun to play especially the first time when you have no idea what you are doing. The graphics and audio are good, I would absolutely love to see this game polished and extended into a full fledged game, overall I'll definitely say this is a 5/5 entry!
This was, interesting... I think in a good way. I played several times but couldn't never get very old. I probably just suck. Sounds was great!
This game is... Discustingly good! The souds effect are perfect for a game made in 48h. Once you get how the game work, it's really fun. I had some problem with the resultion of the game though.
i was completely lost at the beginning, just randomly windows appearing and getting more and more poison, the idea was clever and have some humor on it, nice entry!
Really fun idea. It was kind of confusing and it felt like things were moving too fast at first, but I got the hang of it eventually.
The graphics do their job, but I wouldn't call them outstanding. The same goes for the sounds.
The game concept was really innovative and fun, though, so I think you can be proud of what you have managed to create.
This is really disturbing, but that's good =P
It's hard to understand all the things that are happening, but once you get it, it seems to work well.
Good job!
The concept is awesome, but the gameplay isn't good yet. The game progresses too quickly to be playable unless you already really know what you're doing, and having menus pop up in your face literally every few seconds is not fun. It would be nice of the head menu was always present, and the organ controls would probably be better as a combination of click-and-drag to move, and buttons on the edges of the organ's outline to expand. The visual cues for which organs are healthy could use to be a bit less subtle, there should probably be a clear visual difference between clickable and non-clickable status effects, and hotkeys for common operations (like healing the current organ) would be nice. Also, sometimes multiple bits of music play over one another. With a bit of rebalancing and less obnoxious popups, though, I think this game could be excellent. It's an ambitious project for a ludum dare, and the game so far is impressive despite its flaws.
Also, the download on itch.io is marked Windows-only. You might want to change that.
I like the concept, took a while to fully understand the mechanics but at the end I got it. One of the things that I liked the most is the humor, in opposition to the mildly disturbing graphics.
A very interesting game, good job!
Very novel idea! Fun to play too once I understand the mechanism. Just feel like the randomness might be playing too much role. At one game I well controlled the poison in the body but still lose because of too much illness accumulated, which is really hard to control. To take into account so many organs and random events in calculating poison and energy generation must require a good and complex math model. SFX is hilarious.
Very fun game! I loved it! It is kind of balanced, because I lost 4 times before to get to 100 years, moreover, I reached the maximum when I was 96 years old. Maybe when you get old it would be more negative events, the poison whast easy to control.
The graphics are not very good, but I liked how the guy looks, it kind of charismatic :)
We made it to 100 years ! Quite fun game, we played a long time with our strange little body. Nice one, it's rated !
Wow, i'm really impressed how many of you got really old in the game. I absolutely see how it is way too hard to get into and does not offer much hints (and some that are offered are misleading). So its the more impressive that you went through with it! I'll make sure to check out your games too, if i haven't already.
This is pretty interesting, but the UI is a bit of an obstacle. Having to click on organs to see thier health is one way to keep the player active, but I'd have preferred to see the information directly on the body. I couldn't quite figure out the use of moving organs. I quite like the various scenarios taking place and leaving modifiers that required resolutions (or the chocie of not resolving them).
The art sometimes dances on the edge between full-of-character and sloppy, but gets away on the good side most of the time. The UI is fairly plain. The organs look pretty good.
The sine wave synth in the music hit some umpleasant frequencies here and there, but I generally like most of the sound effects.
All in all, a pretty fun entry!
Hi @flaterectomy, thanks for your quality feedback, i appreciate it! My intention is that the health of an organ is visible by its color - red and fleshy for healthy, grey/green/black for unhealthy. I do understand that this feedback is currently not strong enough, or visibly clear enough. Will work on it :)
This was a very creepy game.
I also wasn't able to grow any of my body parts except for my spine, it was like I never had enough energy, but I maxed out at 50!
Don't know if its me
:skull_crossbones:
Nice! I got to over 100 on like my 3rd try, and didn't even realize you were able to grow other body parts besides the organs until I read the comments after the fact. I never grew the spine, I got to 100+ with just the infant's body. lol Really fun and unique!
I liked the idea but I might need better understandings at how things work. The game felt a bit too fast paced for me. I think I would have liked it even more if I could have time to think and play things out strategically. But I enjoyed playing it nonetheless. Great job!
I really liked the visuals of this! The concept is very easy to understand and you managed to implement a very complex mechanic based on it. It was a little bit too fast paced for my taste and felt overwhelming pretty fast because there were so many things going on at once. Overall a very nice game. :smiley:
Really good idea and nice execution. Love the weird graphics! Maybe the start is too hard, things come fast and I don't have time to read all descriptions... But after loosing twice and read all, it was fun. The feeling of growing is cool and the baby part is a good surprise! (the end feels too easy for an old person, but you know that if I understand right what you write at the end screen...)
Awesome, had fun playing it. Felt really unlucky though! Slower tempo, maybe a bit of balancing (beginning is hard, then it gets easier) would help I think. Maybe a change in controls somehow, not sure how, I accidentally grew my organs several times instead of moving them. But again, great idea and a fun game.
What a nasty but cool game you made. I enjoyed it a lot! The graphics are very unique and unsettling, and the idea is brilliant and fresh.
There are some issues that could have improved the flow of the game. I would probably still be playing if it weren't for these constant pop-up messages that I had to click away, thus losing focus of what I was just looking at. The other thing (which may have been deliberate) was that I would have preferred to see the life bar of all my organs all the time. The color coding wasn't very clear, as in some cases black meant near death, while for others brown was already close to organ failure.
I think I would have been motivated to stick to it til the end if it weren't for these flaws, as I liked the idea a lot and it spoke to my inner optimizer to find a stable solution to my character's ailments.
Overall a great game that I would probably pick up again if you made a post-LD version.
Hey, thanks for all your feedback!
@cerno-b i feel you, it was kind of painful to watch the few play testers i could find getting distrubed by the popups constantly. I feel like this is the major design flaw of the game and i'm not sure about a solution. The other big issue is the inverse difficulty: it starts difficult, fast and overwhelming, getting easier over time. Anyway, i'm working on a proper version with a tutorial to begin with. I'll make sure to address the pop up issue properly! :)
Well, you already have something in place for the popups: You show icons of the current ailments. Now if you get rid of the popups, you will have the problem that the player will not notice new ailments popping up. Maybe you can try different additional cues, like visual (a big new icon popping up somewhere and scaling down to the final size and location, or auditive, by assigning each ailment a unique sound effect, maybe recorded voice. I think there are a number of ways to communicate these things without breaking game flow.
On the inverse difficulty, I don't think this necessarily has to be a bad thing. In your game particularly, I would love to have a challenge in the beginning and at one point realize that I'm in the clear with smooth sailing ahead, if the remaining game does not drag out too long. If you don't like that idea, an option would be to chop the game into age intervals (childhood, adolescence, midlife, old age), each with new and tougher problems coming up, like organs being less effective, psychological problems, a shrinking body, and so on.
Anyway, I'd love to see what you can come up with. Please drop me a line when you have a new iteration, I'd like to give it another go.
@cerno-b hey, thanks again! Regarding the icons, i think you proposed the dest way to go for it. I thought about something similar and was hesitant because this would take away the text "x happened because of z". I'd like the player to know why some event occurred, ideally without being too on the nose. I think this could work if the illness prompts the text on being clicked or hovered.
On the difficulty: I hadn't considered this might be something interesting. I can see the "i played well in the first years, no i've got some relaxing times" being kind of rewarding. The staging you mentioned is exactly what i'll go for and what i'd liked to have in the first place. In example, as you get older, your body decays faster. The visuals and and (ideally) the music should also change for each stage. Currently, being old already has some severe events that can take place (heart attack, stroke), but it isn't balanced to the rest (energy, poison reduction).
I'll make sure to ping you when i've come up with something more refinded. Thank you so much, that's really motivating :)
Awesome, looking forward to it!
This was unique. The gameplay difficulty needs a lot of tuning, but that's expected. I think though you should have focused on a very essential part of this game more - the UI. It was pretty confusing for a long time. Some more random elements like unexpected accidents or something would be appreciated too! Great stuff otherwise!
Hi @diptoman, thank you for your feeback! Can you elaborate on the accident? I don't understand what you mean, because random elements are a big part of the game i.e. unexpected accidents.
Hey, edited the older comment. I meant like more incidents, because I kept getting Car accident, Got beat up, and Food poisoning endless number of times hahah. I know it's time constrained, just for when you expand. :)
@diptoman thanks for the clarification! Did you notice that you can improve your body parts? I know this is not clearly communicated by the game, but the intention is that you upgrade your body to deal with those events. For example, if you get stronger arms, you'll not be beaten up anymore, if you get a better nose you won't eat bad food all the time and if you have good eyes+ears you will notice the incoming cars. In the original entry there are only 9 events.
But quite many players didn't notice they could do this, i guess around 25%. Will be better when the tutorial is part of the game :D