laaph 2017-04-25 23:10
This is a lovely game and well polished for 48 hours! I am quite impressed!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Cosmic Cleaner
By thecritterscove and burgee
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 151 | 3.79 | 106 | |
| Fun | 93 | 3.82 | 105 | |
| Innovation | 265 | 3.36 | 104 | |
| Theme | 316 | 3.55 | 104 | |
| Graphics | 266 | 3.82 | 106 | |
| Audio | 139 | 3.66 | 103 | |
| Humor | 155 | 3.34 | 103 | |
| Mood | 319 | 3.34 | 101 |
This is a lovely game and well polished for 48 hours! I am quite impressed!
This game is basically mini golf and I love it! It took me a while to get the hang of it and even then it was difficult to aim my shots. That said this is the type of game where that level of difficulty is appreciated and helps the game instead of hurting it. The physics were SUPER interesting with each planet's gravity effecting your shot and it was cool to see a shot weave between planets. Overall a really solid game!
Nice game man! :D
It's one of the better games I've seen! ^_^ It is very well polished, it's unique, and has great music. The only problem I have with it is that the sound effects aren't quite what I'd call fitting. :P
This game feels really polished, feels like it is almost ready to be put in the App store! I really like the progression and how you teach players mechanics slowly (I think it still needs to be a little more explicit though, it took me a few tries to understand how the trajectory/gravitational pulls worked). To be a bit extra nitpicky, I think the game's pacing could be helped a little bit by spicing up the start/end of a level more (maybe a time dilation at the start or when a player barely misses the blackhole). I really like the cute planets and robots though. (I love the bait and switch with the multiplayer button too!) Overall, very solid entry!
WoW! This game is super polished and very well done in the short time of the LD. The art style gave me the AWWW's and the OWWWHH's ! the planets just look so cool and adorable :D hahaha The gravity around planets changing the trajectory of the asteroid seems like a really complicated mechanic and I really loved it, gave the game a lot more complexity and reason to think about how the astroid will behave after u hit it when it passes by the planets. very fun to play and so many levels too, I was really impressed by that and by the game overall. Controls are very smooth and simple, the gameplay is very straightforward, the sounds and background music fit the game really well and are soothing. I enjoyed everything about this game! Very well done, good job guys!
I think one thing which made me smile the most was the other planets freaking out when you killed one of the planets ahhahaha. Awesome!
I loved the expressions of the little planets when the ball gets close to them. Their faces are priceless!
The level layouts are interesting, and make unique puzzles each time. I feel like it was hard to figure out cause/effect in some cases though, and I feel like a little preview line for the first Nx10 pixels of my shot would have been appreciated. Otherwise, strong entry!
This is a really fun game. Even when you hit the planets (lose), it's somehow really satisfying, heh. I like how the faces of the planets show fear. A couple suggestions: I would've liked to been able to just click the asteroid into place instead of having to drag it, and I would've liked to been able to see the bat thing during that click, so I could see it's angle of rotation. I love this one, though! Very fun!
Like said above, the level of polish is pretty impressive for a ludum dare game! And it's the kind of game that you can pass hours on, trying to master it. Far funnier than regular golf, good game :p
Fantastic. The tutorials within the levels are awesome. The planet graphics, the cuteness factor, the explosion/crash are all awesome. Learning curve was smooth (I liked the red x so you know where you last shot from). Great animation when you hit the black hole. Gravity felt really good (love how the ball would loop back in from off screen and connect against a planet). Levels felt varied enough that I wanted to continue on. My highest rated game so far.
Also, great appreciate the feedback you provided on my game Sling Sling:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/sling-ship-search-for-a-small-world
We actually had a fairly similar concept, but you've managed to pull it off very well!
I loved watching the planets scream! Very solid entry: great sound, great feel, great look, and great fun!
really nice game you made here. i especially love the planet animations, they really add character and enhance your take on the theme. I enjoyed playing even though I dont think I intentionally beat most of the levels. it was hard to guage how the shot would go and there was a bit of a delay between shots that through me off a bit. I only say that to offer constructive feedback cus other than that the rest of the game is quite charming :D
What a fun game! Really nice idea, nicely polished too for only 48 hours! Took me ages to figure out how to hit even remotely accurately, but once I got it I could swing for days! Intergalactic baseball, what's not to love?
Very well done! The gameplay is very interesting and well executed. It was a bit hard to predict how the asteroid would fly, but that is also part of the game right? I also loved the crying planets, I don't know why :thinking:
The only downside was that it took a bit too long to restart a level when you shot out of bounds. The camera movement was a bit too slow for my taste.
Good job!!
Many games like this have been done, but the absolute polish and charm of this really helps it stand alone as an option to play rather than just another one to forget. Really great work!
|+ Adorably reactive planets, I just don't want to ever crash the asteroid into them. |+ Feels thoroughly polished with considerate additions like seeing where you last launched the asteroid from/holding space to make the transition faster after a fault.
|- Would have appreciated a line to also show where I last released the power of my swing from.
? This is an early favorite. If it had altered the formula some more it could have made a larger name for itself among physics 'trial and error' puzzle/action games, but as a Ludum Dare entry this was a really fun and engaging game to play that I completely enjoyed even if I might not revisit it, congratulations on a job well done :)!
This was great and very addictive! I think levels could probably pan faster automatically (without holding space) when you die.
A polished, simple and really nice game. Well done!
I really love this game! Very nice art and music and quite challenging game play. Especially the gravity makes it very interesting.
It took me some time at the start until I figured out that you can adjust the angle by the x position on the pad.
Great and polished game. I had a lot of fun with this. Gravity mechanics seem to be a big thing, but this is definitely one of the more engaging examples!
I love the art style and the cute planets. There's a good amount of content and a well explored core mechanic. :thumbsup:
Cool game, but I had a bit problems with aiming at the beginning. I was always shooting to hard.
A really fun space-golf game with the life of millions at stake :)
It's great to have games with a lot of levels and game mechanics slowly introduced to the player, good work on that. It really makes this game a challenge that has to be taken step by step.
The sound and music are very nice as well.
Overall this is a very relaxing game with a good level of challenge and a lot of content!
(You can see me playing this game for the first time on the vod https://youtu.be/ov_ysaa5zlQ?t=23m5s )
Very fun, but took a while to get the hang of. It probably would be more intuitive if the y position of the asteroid determined whether it moved up/down instead of x-position.
Everything in this game was SO CUTE. The faces on the planets, the little robot, it was all great. I loved when I saw the little planet singing/whistling. So much fun to just look at, and made it extra sad when I messed up and blasted one of them . Great game!
I thought this was really impressive, to get something this polished in the time available! Little details like the planets screaming and whistling add a lot. Music and art are nice, and the gameplay is really enjoyable.
Getting a good shot is satisfying, but if I would improve one thing, it’s that it sometimes felt too much like luck. Some ideas:
- Either allow camera panning or show the whole map at once - Be able to see roughly where you’re going to shoot, as you hold down the space button - Automatically reset the asteroid to where the red cross is after a shot - Show the previous shooting strength, while you hold down the space button
But I also think with more time I would learn how the bat behaves for different angles/strength. Good work!
I had so much fun destroying those annoying little planets, thank you! What, you mean that wasn't the point? Well crap, check this off as another game I'm bad at! All joking aside though, I found this to be quite a fun little game. The concept is pretty straight forward to understand, but that doesn't make it easy to do! Good job.
hey space mini golf. Not so much a fan of physics based games, so only made it through the first 14 or so levels. Graphics are really cute, the worried planets was a nice touch. All visuals and sound fit together nicely for a solid package. Couple of minor things - I felt like when i got it on first try I should get some kind of achievement or something. A faster turnaround time to try again when i miss would really help to keep the interest going. (only saw the space thing afterwards). Nicely done
Awesome graphics, decent humor in the introduction as well. Very nicely executed physics game, I like it.
Really fun! The 3rd level is super hard XD
Cute art style and general feel to this game is pretty 'innocent'. I like how planets have different facial expressions and depending on their size pull objects toward them. This kind of game is not my cup of tea but i actually enjoyed playing this, game feels pretty polished.
Wow... I'm impressed of how this was made in 48 hrs! Excellent work, your game is very polished and overall it's a really fun experience!
Congrats!
@camilo @kcreanor @laaph to be fair, we did the 72 hour event, but thank you for the compliments!
Wow. Really nice work. This is a super-smart, fun game.
I love the quirky, old-school style of everything having a facial expression (and the looks of horror before a planet impact).
Like you said with my game, no complains. Everything is so good. Nice idea, nice effects, nice graphics, nice music... Really, good job!
Wow guys! Well done! Brilliant gameplay... and the graphics is so cute! Special thanks to @burgee for fighting his initial resistance and trying out my game Spermicorn. :D One of the best games I played so far.
Great job, I really wonder how did you do this in only 48 hours. I am suprised. I like the game
@Epicsoft we actually did the 72 hour jam, but really once we got the physics in place and feeling good, it was just a matter of plugging in art, designing (and ugh testing) levels for complete-ability and then polishing it up! Thanks for the review!
Very nice! I am amazed that you were able to put together so many thoughtful gravity puzzles in such a short time. One thing that could use improvement is the scroll time back to the start when restarting. It seems to be too slow most of the time, but it seems to change speed? Anyway, I had fun with this one. Very nice!
@tony-godfrey just hold spacebar to speed it up! Thanks for the review =)
Aiming was a bit unintuitive, but once I got the hang of it, it was pretty fun. Very nice graphics and polish btw.
An adorable game. At first i enjoy the mechanich but thats planets... oh, thats lovely planets!
Excellent - I sucked at baseball so don't worry!
Many of the levels prove to be quite difficult, but fun.
Cool concept, well executed, had a lot of fun throwing asteroids around. Nice job!
Awesome game! The planet faces are super cute. I felt bad every time I killed one. If you develop this further, consider golf style scoring and persisting the dead planets to make each level automaticly scale in difficulty. Way to go!
Rating this game is difficult because this game is so well polished and my expectations from a Ludum Dare games is normally so low.
@laaph that's a pretty awesome compliment! Neither of us had ever done LD before so we had no idea what level of polish was expected. So we just decided to forego sleep and do everything we could!
There are things I'm unhappy with in it (lack of more detailed and intuitive in game instructions) but we're very proud of our creation!
Fun game! Loved it! Really original idea, went well with the theme, simple, and it was a lot of fun! As the levels got bigger the camera pan got annoying, but I realized you could skip it after a while. Might have been nice to know that earlier. But yeah, great fun!
Edit: I also LOVE the planet face animations. So good!
Nice entry! Love the nervous look on the planets :D. Good amount of content too, I played around half the levels and had a lot of fun.
Very nice physics on that one. I really like the leveldesign and the gameplay. The planet animation is great! Well done!
Surprisingly difficult! Well polished and somewhat fun game, great work!
Very few complaints to be had; the gameplay, graphics and audio come together nicely.
_(Shameless promotion)_ If you'd like, please have a look at my game as well!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/invasion
The planet faces are just perfect! Their desperation face when the asteroid comes closer! -> :cry: Really nice concept and execution ^-^ I finished your game but at some levels it is kinda random. Well, I guess that always happens in physics simulations, haha :laughing:
But I think the multiplayer pun is sort of misleading if you don't click it. **'-'**
That was great! Love the planet expressions. Really liked that you added the last position that you placed the asteroid in. Great work, it was a lot of fun!
Hey, this was fantastic. Cute planetary mini golf FTW !!! My only problem was trying to visualise the gravity of every planet. Maybe some kind of fading impulse that comes from each planet could help players understand the gravity of the situation (pun intended). Again, fantastic job, this will go really well I believe.
Nice game... fun to play! I liked the audio and visuals. Good job!
Very solid, kind of hard to conceptualize in my mind, but still managed to make it past a few levels.
Pretty good little game, nice graphics and very cute! Did find it a bit frustrating as there were a lot of variables to control and manage with the placing of the asteroid and strength of your hit, I would mostly just randomly try over and over until I got the black hole. At least when you hit a planet it's kind of fun and satisfying haha! Not a bad effort overall, nice work!
I enjoyed the music a lot! Aiming was very difficult to grasp and made it frustrating to play the game. It became a seemingly random guessing game after a certain point. I think the wait time between missing the target and being able to shoot again is too long (even with holding space bar to speed up the panning). I'd rather be able to pan the level myself (with the mouse perhaps?) so I can try to plan a path instead of only getting a glimpse of the level as it auto-pans.
Really fun and simple game. It was easy to learn but still provided enough of a challenge. The audio worked with the game well and so did the graphics. Best of luck!
Nice game! The difficulty of the levels raises slowly and that's good :D, a really solid mechanic with positioning the asteroid, there is a multiple of ways how you can finish levels and I like it :) overall great entry!
Hey, @burgee, I don't know how to reply in this site, so I am putting it here. Thanks for playing my game. Since you were interested in the controls, I'll tell you this:
1. The player controller is a **finite state machine**; 2. The states are: + Idle + Walk + Air + Damage + Death + Gravity (the moon handling state) 3. What makes the controllers feel good is probably a tolerance of 1/12 seconds (actually 5 frames) after leaving the soil to jump without spending the double jump. 4. The physics is built-in with Game Maker (and the mother source of all bugs).
This was super duper hard. I loved the art and music, and the gameplay felt unique and challenging. The planets were **adorable** and the obstacles were well thought out and fit with the game. I was surprised at how you incorporated the story, as well. Super creative.
My big issue with this entry, however, is the difficulty. It's not that it's too hard, it's the *way* that it's hard. I got pretty frustrated somewhere around level 12 or so, and that kept building. There are, I think, some things that would fix this. @t-mv already said what I was thinking, but for me, the big ones are:
* A way to view the whole level. * Reset the asteroid to it's last position.
I think that with these two points, this game would be significantly less frustrating.
Even with the aforementioned frustration, however, this was a very solid entry. Lots of fun to be had between bouts of shouting. Nice work!
@morrilet
We'd love to be able to add those features! After the event we're going to continue developing this idea and adding a button to view the full level is top of the list (I have it coded into my working version, but I won't be uploading it for the sake of the competition)
Thank you for the honest feedback and thank you for playing!
Wow this game is extremely polished and I found the catapult very cute. Maybe it would have been better if we would be able to rotate the catapult on our will because once it reaches the final position there is no going back. But that adds some difficulty so it's probably okay. The music was also very well done. And a special mention should be made of the ui, for a jam game it was top notch. Great job guys!
Amazing job with the little details, planets' expression, particles and all. The music sets up a great mood too, but the game play is very trial-and-error sort and can get frustrating at times since you don't see where exactly your hit will throw the asteroid. The levels can be finished in multiple ways however, so that's all good.
My favorite part, hands down- the planet faces. For some reason, there was a disconnect for me- where I place the asteroid, where I hit it- something that I didn't experience with AB Space. I don't know what exactly, I'm longing for a more tactile and tension building setup before I fire- probably just conditioning. All in all, very straight-forward and nice polish!
I love the faces on the planets. This was a very well designed and well thought out game with the planet faces being the icing on the cake. It took me several (read many) tries to get past level 7, but the difficulty seems to scale well. The game contains perhaps some of the best humor that I've seen in the LD38 games yet. (At least in my opinion.) The one thing I might change would be that the movement of the asteroid forward or back to change the up or down seems to ramp up quite quickly. A small change makes a very big difference. Very well done.
@james-dunlap It's the one thing I'd modify too in hindsight!
Thank you for the feedback! Your game is on my to-play list but it may not be tonight =)
I Played this on Livestream Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_6NTcovuI0
I spent a HUGE amount of time in-stream with the Dev playing this game. One of the best I played this jam and going on my big list of "The Best Of LD38" whenever I get around to doing that. Really solid all around, and I look forward to seeing the game grow and polish.
Pretty solid game, kind of on the hard side for me but by no means did that stop the addiction :)
The concept is really unique, and the backstory equally so lol. Gameplay imo could be more polished though. Some sort of an indicator for batting strength would be helpful alongside the last position marker (which I loved). Planets seemed kind of bland and repetitive, and levels simply got harder instead of adding variety. Some sorts of other celestial bodies as obstacles other than the norm spaceship would've been refreshing. Also, it is sometimes posible to get the ball to glitch out in various ways (though there is a retry button so it doesn't ultimately matter):
http://prntscr.com/f3vwx1
Audio fit the gameplay well enough, and was pretty good if it didn't start to almost annoy me from repitition lol (I won't judge that though, I understand it is hard to create auditory variety).
Overall really nice game with solid gameplay mechanics, just wish it was expanded on more.
Great game! The planets faces animations are awesome! The only critique I can make is about the slide animation every time I repeat a level, maybe you can add a skip button to go directly to the right position.
@nickZangus There is! The spacebar does just that!
I played the game! :D And I enjoyed it. I got pretty far. around LEvel 15 or so.
It was fairly easy to understand overall. :D If there's anything- I think he red X was a bit misleading. I thought I was supposed to put the rock on the red X until I read the description that the Red X meant that was the last location where the rock was. :D
I liked the audio as well. Pretty neat and clean. Definitely the first game I've seen where you use an entire planet as a base ball! :o xD xD
Fun game. The concept is simple enough to understand and making possible differentss ways to complete the level.
Music fits very well with the gameplay. Art is lovely and making planet expresssions is a great detail (They are scared if the asteroid is closer! xD)
Good job!
I really enjoy experimenting with how the physics influence the ball, but it's a little unintuitive. I expect the ball to go a certain way, and it doesn't. 90% of the time in the first few levels I either hit it off the screen or straight into a planet.
A fun physics-based puzzle game! Here’s the quick rundown of my thoughts:
PROS - Really fun puzzle game that makes you think - Very cute graphics
CONS - not much I can really bring up, really
For full criticism and breakdown of ranking, as well as candid reactions to gameplay, do check out the video~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KYNCrQM5Pg
I liked the idea, but I felt that I was mostly advancing by luck, instead of actually being able to plan out my play.
I get (and liked!) that you can only influence the initial state. However, there are so many variables afterward that it becomes really hard to adjust after missing on the first try. Every small adjustment changes the result dramatically.
Not to mention, there are 3 variables that must be considered when hitting the asteroid: its vertical position (seems only to be relevant when there are nearby planets), its horizontal position (as you explain on the game page) and the strength... Perhaps, if there were only 1 variable (e.g., the strength) that controlled everything, it would be easier.
Or, perhaps, if the planet's gravitational influence was milder, it would be easier to control the destination. That way, it would be less about the perfect placement and more about learning to control the game...
Or, maybe, I simply suck at this game. XD
Graphics were really cute, though! And, again, I liked the idea! I only wasn't able to play it well (i.e., I couldn't "learn the game").
Very fun and relaxing take on such a normal concept, well done! It took a while to get used to it but when I got into the flow it was great.
- Graphics and Sound is good - Also gameplay is good - One thing is When should you shoot ??? I was not able to figure out (I think the level designed physics should be something that player should be able to judge when to shoot I mean some sort of angle
Well done on the game! I enjoyed playing it :) The are is well done and the music makes it really relaxing to play. Really liked the planet animations! It took a bit of time to get used to the physics-based mechanics but once you get the hang of it, it works well. I do like the x's from the previous attempt. It is a really nice touch!
Really nice game! Audio is also good. Great job!
what i can say ? just amazing creation, the idea is perfect , sound graphics all the game was amazing and play all the levels keep the hard work up.
guys please help me with rate my game thanks...
Does it make me a bad person that I find it very amusing when I whack my asteroid straight into the first planet...and then, it almost feels like wherever I put the asteroid I seem to hit the same planet! :grinning:
This is an excellent and well polished game. The only criticism I have is that the first level seems harder than the second - if you were to swap them over then I think it would be beneficial because the player will have tasted success easily and they will want more! Of course - it's easy saying that now - it's very different when you've spent 48/72 hours on something!
Tremendous work!
The most Polished game i saw till now in LD. Great Job. Really good game play and music ( except some music effects). Just Loved the game. Please do try my game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/sunken-mystery
Very difficult 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=nf9jH1KZdXw
Loved it! I'll be pretty much repeating what others have put but
Great fun mechanic. Took me a little while to figure angles but thankfully you added that helpful little X on the batting area which helped a lot to fine tune hits.
Awesome visuals, the fact that the little planets look like their crapping themselves made me chuckle. Kinda makes you feel bad when you accidentally launch an asteroid into their cute little sad faces.
Very polished, and feels like a solid little game. Well done!
I had kind of a similar idea but there's no way I could get a gravity effect that smooth 😅. It's awesome though 👍
I love this, it was a well executed concept and I enjoyed everything about it. My only problem is I wish it was quicker at restarting rather than panning across. Great work!
If you wouldn’t mind having a quick go of my entry and letting me know what you think I would be super grateful. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/space-pow-collins
A nice looking game I could play for hours, well done :)
Really had fun with this game :) probably the only flaw would be want to see more mechanics variation
Hey There: The Audio from this game got a video I uploaded Copyright Struck. Looks like the Music was Power of Love Claimed by: The Orchard Music.
@occultone Nope, the audio was original, that's really weird.
A bit of research lead me to this: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/aVZ_dp7Ikt4
and this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYXbK4OKxq0
Thanks for the heads up, looks like you're the victim of their little scam.