Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → The Clearing
By masterkrepta
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 536 | 2.20 | 26 | |
| Fun | 539 | 1.66 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 528 | 2.04 | 26 | |
| Theme | 531 | 2.16 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 392 | 2.87 | 26 | |
| Audio | 371 | 2.26 | 25 | |
| Humor | 377 | 2.09 | 24 | |
| Mood | 504 | 2.29 | 26 |
Huh, Interesting. Doesn't really fit with the theme, but that isn't a big deal. The theme is just a suggestion, not a rule. Graphics are strange, but bearable. I'm not really a fan of this low-poly aesthetic too many devs use, it is often done wrong. But for a compo game, i understand you had to cut corners. The game isn't the best, but not broken so props for that. Overall a pretty ok game.
Its a start, but it definitely needs some love. I suggest to focus on improving some basics. These are my main suggestions:
- The camera movement is really not ok this way, half of the time you cant even see your character and the turn around movement makes it hard to walk. Try to first get the basic movement to be smooth before continuing - Secondly: Focus on making it FUN! Having to walk home everytime with a broken camera to see monkeys and wait for them to go is not particularly fun. Try starting from an existing game concept and work from there.
I wish you the best of luck in your next endeavour
Interesting project with a good aesthetic. However it seems to me that it does not really fit with the theme. Of course, it could be improved with more time, but it is enough. Bravo ++
Unity itself follows "Easy to learn, hard to master" principle. It is hard to make a complete 3D game with all the assets and animaitons in 24 hours. But I agree that game developer should aim on the FUN part first. Survival game genre is very competitive and always gives a challenge to make something new, unique and interesting for a gameplay process.
Some issues I found: - Fire effect spins with a character itself - Sometimes monkeys stuck near the hut even if the character is nearby. - Minimap is fliped by 90 or 270, so it is hard to navigate using it.
Maybe some sort of craftable "Scarecrow" (with a timer) would help here or an ability to throw rocks :smiley:
I like the low poly aesthetic. But the game is difficult to control. It was sluggish (on a good gaming-PC) and also the AD keys to turn isn't as intuitive as just turning in the direction you are controlling. As an alternative, perhaps "click to move" would have been better.
So, you bit off a bit more than you could chew in 48hrs, eh? Yeah, we've all been there :wink: Hey, at least you got the sound done! A lot of folks don't get that far.
Aside from the obvious rushed nature of it all, I really didn't like the way the player controlled. It felt more appropriate to vehicle of some kind than a person. It also really feels like I'm doomed regardless. I need to go to the river to get food, but as soon as I'm not at home to chase monkeys, they're gonna take the little food I have.
Solid work. I'll start with what I believe could be improved:
- The control is very strange. I think just having the different keys correspond to player movement relative to the camera (i.e W is up, A is left, D is down, and so on) would have been better. Someone else suggested click-to-move, and I agree that could have worked too. - Character movement feels sluggish. This could be tied to the controls as well, so I think improving that would make the sluggish movement better. - The monkeys didn't consistently run away when I reached the huts.
The things I liked a lot: - I actually liked the sounds a lot. The monkey noise got a little grating, but I think that was intentional, since they're supposed to alert the player to their presence. I really like audio cues in games, so this was well done. - I'm impressed that you made so much 3-d art so quickly. 3-d art is very difficult to pull off, and I think the low-poly art style worked really well.
Keep it up!
This was a good concept! In my eyes the biggest issue is that monkeys seem to be able to eat fish faster than I can get them from the river. Maybe make fishing faster or stealing slower? Theres also the control/map issues others have mentioned, but the fish thing is way more game breaking. You should consider polishing it a bit more and putting a post jam version somewhere. If you want to see a playthrough of it I have one here: https://youtu.be/QJ8SXiHTvUs
This is pretty ambitious for the compo, I think. The premise is pretty sound, and I like how it fits the theme, but there's plenty of small frustrations that others have mentioned that keep me from really being able to get into this.
I really like the low-poly graphics!, the two main problems for me: Controls, maybe just move in the direction you are pressing work better for this game, and; GameJolt cropping your window, i cant see the bottom part of your game (idk if you can solve this tweaking the resolution in unity or in GameJolt)
Wow this seems like a very ambitious project for a compo entry. 3D assets, survival mechanics, monkey AI, sounds and all that jazz. That's a lot of work for a weekend. It did not seem well balanced, as once I got enough food I had no trouble survival and things got boring quick. Either make survival harder or add a second objective.
There are some small annoyances with the game. - The map was weirdly aligned, or maybe the camera was not pointing north. I would have expected to move north on the map when walking up. - With the chopping animation sometimes the axe and the person were out of sync.
The controls were a bit awkward. I liked the graphics though :)
I like the graphic style. I think the gameplay idea is good and it works pretty well. The controls are weird though. Using W to move to the north, S to the south and so on, would've been better. The minimap looks good.
Firstly, congrats on getting a game finished for the compo. I had issues with the camera (things were often obscured by trees in the foreground) and I wasn't able to leave the camp without the monkeys immediately showing up and stealing everything. (Also, that noise, my eeeeaaaaars!)
Nice to see that tank controls aren't dead though. :P
Keep making games. ^^
-Skruffye
The game has some good intentions and ideas, but it just don't get them flow at all. Some people have said them before so I will not repeat them. Keep working on making games and each try will be better :)
Need some improvements overall but a very cool idea for a compo.
Congrats on finishing this for the compo! The basic idea is fun and the graphics are nice. However, here's some aspects that need improvement in my opinion:
-The controls felt rather clunky.
-The camera placement is not always optimal (the player becomes invisible a lot of times, maybe trees etc. in line of sight should be transparent so the character doesn't go missing.
-The environment is not very appealing and rather monotonous.
-The monkeys had problems with pathfinding once they noticed me walking back in the camp. They ran into me and each other and it took a while for them to get out of camp again. -Gathering wood just didn't work a lot of times. I hit the trees with my axe but nothing happened.