Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Exhaust of Earth
By lipsch
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 436 | 2.91 | 38 | |
| Fun | 345 | 2.97 | 38 | |
| Innovation | 352 | 2.91 | 38 | |
| Theme | 169 | 3.66 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 249 | 3.33 | 38 | |
| Audio | 333 | 2.57 | 37 | |
| Humor | 384 | 2.06 | 34 | |
| Mood | 435 | 2.61 | 38 |
Enjoyable :) One thing I would say is that the game continues to play while the tutorial text is up. I lost the first time while I was reading it. It may be a good idea to start it once you click ok on the last tutorial box.
I screwed myself over by placing mines all over the planet to start with :P I should have placed more guns
Thanks for the feedback (: Normaly it should start after closing the tutorial..
Same thing above happened with me, but after reading it once i just quickly clicked through on subsequent attempts. I made a good effort to try and find a sustainable strategy but failed. The best i got was 6500.
Really like the shrinking sphere of water effect. The different units made sense though i never bothered with the mines. Satellites seemed the most effective thing to go for, or spam the rocket launchers.
One thing that would have helped a lot it some kind of feedback on the range of the weapons.
@radmccool Yeah, the range visualisation was in my to-do list. But other things were more important ^^. And you probably couldn't find s good strategy because the game is not well balanced. Thanks for the Feedback (:
I'd agree with the others, the balance was a little off and I found it difficult to do much of anything. I enjoyed the detail of the water receding as the aliens took it away.
Cool idea and a nice game. I really like the look of the planet and the idea of this kind of tower defense game. However, it was hard to get an overview of the game though, making it quite impossible to have any thought through strategy - perhaps balance can fix this? Some bugs I found was that the game started after the first tutorial message, but not really a problem as you could just restart after reading the tutorial. Another bug, at least in the web version was that the mine-button didnt work. Not really a problem as I could use the hot keys. Anyways, good effort!
@mango-malarkey Yeah, there are some "polish" issues.. I didnt wrote in the Tutorial that you can zoom with the scroll wheel.. maybe that makes the overview a bit better Thanks for the comment (:
Nice concept! I loved how the planet looked, and the visual effect of water being reduced as the aliens took it. It was very hard, I couldn't quiet master it in the time I spent playing it.
Well done for making this in the compo time limit!
cool cool cool tower defense on a sphere is a gooooooood ideaaaaaaaaaa
congrats on the compo!
Pretty cool game. I was caught off-guard by the aliens attacking when I was still reading the instructions, but I just restarted, so not much of a problem. As others have said I found it very hard to keep up with the game. The aliens just kept coming from everywhere and I couldn't do enough to repel them. I like the visuals and the idea is good. It obviously just needs a bit of balancing and a better way to see where aliens are coming from. I found that the perspective made it hard to get an overview of the entire planet. You might also want to look into the Canvas Scaler component of the Unity Canvas, since you pretty much have to use full screen to make the game playable.
Overall I like it though. Good job.
This was really cool - I liked the concept of a tower defence in a sphere a lot. It was difficult but with repeated tries I quickly got the hang of it - perhaps a slowing ramping up of the numbers of UFOs would help?
The graphics were good and while I bumped into a couple of bugs (quitting to the main menu and starting again didn't put my starting $ back up to $1000) it was overall impressive for a compo entry.
I really like the idea of doing tower defense on a planet! The way the water drains away was a really nice touch too, really added to the sense of impending doom.
The balancing is a little bit off though. The UFO's keep coming all the time, and there's not much I can do because the land turrets fire slowly and the satellites are pretty much a pipedream after the starter money is spent given the slow rate of acquiring money. And I couldn't select the mines, so I never got to use them. Might've been a different tale if I could.
The tutorial could need some work too, because first of all the game shouldn't play in the background while I'm going through the tutorial, and secondly I shouldn't need to see it at the start of every single game.
Outside of that though, it's a really good idea and I enjoyed it. With some balancing, it could be a pretty neat little addictive game.
Its a really cool idea and I like the view/graphics a lot, but I'm not feeling any sort of... build-up curve? Its just starts with a couple UFOs then, suddenly, the sky is full of 'em. After a couple runs I figured I should just cluster my defenses in one area to earn money rather than actually defending and that feels a little weird. I dunno. Its a different style of TD and would take a bunch of playtesting and experimenting to nail a learning curve down.
Congrats on completing your first LD! You also did it with quite a cool entry! Very impressive.
I liked the look of the planet and the diminishing water effect. Not bad for a first Ludum Dare! Making the pace of the game slower could be a good and easy step to balance the game, now it felt very fast and that also hurt the mood of the game.
@mars & @zelos & @femir Yeah, if i just had more time for balacing. I found a big issue in development where a water stealing coroutine got started every frame, instead of once they start stealing. So after fixing it it was obviously too easy. And to fix that I made it too hard.. as it looks..
And the UFOs should start while you are reading the tutorial, but a function call is in the Start instead of in another function. Saw that too late..
Thank you all for the Feedback. It is highly appreciated (:
@zelos It is really unplayable if it is not in fullscreen mode. I will take that advice with the Canvas Scaler. Thank you (:
Congratulations on completing your first Ludum Dare game! The idea was interesting and the tower defense mechanics worked for the most part but it seems the missile weapons didn't target the closest UFOs first. And as previously started the game should start after the tutorial but I could just start over after I had read the tutorial.
The game was somewhat too hard but it is usually hard to balance the game. Not sure if there is any better strategies or if just placing missiles all over the place is the best way to go but that also gives the game some replay value. Good job!
The main problem with this is the high difficulty, but I see you are aware of it. Congratulations for your first game, it has some good intentions.
Congratulations on finishing the game! Now, few items I'd like to point out:
- the game difficulty is very high, I was not able to survive more than short time (although yes, I had the exact same problem with my game few Ludum Dares back)
- music, I haven't noticed any. In my opinion that ruins the mood (or maybe this is the problem with volume), but it is music what builds up atmosphere and lacking it makes game somewhat more empty overall
- tutorial, while it is there, the game already runs making it somewhat problematic to follow and still be able to participate in the game
I liked the idea of planet defense and stealing water with actually decreasing water level looked nice. I had some fun and that counts.
Keep up the good work!
I Played this on Livestream a bit ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwY1-PtcDqs
This was really cool, but I could not get very far. Satellites are way too weak, I don't know if they're even worth building at all. The spawn rate might be too high, especially from the start, you might want to make it a shallower ramp up.
Hey @occultone Thanks for playing my game and recording it. To see a video where my game is played help much to understand how the player plays it. Maybe think out loud, so the developer sees excectly what you're thinking.
Then to the Game. The scrolling is normaly faster. I just noticed it was lagging for you. I don't know if your Pc is so bad :p or if it is just the web version that lags that hard.. For me it worked fluid.
Yeah, I've seen a platform where you can compare scroes with other players. Definitly gonna use this for my next Game.
@zgragselus I found a great website for creating music after the jam (: Gonna use it next Time I just have a Piano but could not record it. Be prepared for a nice soundtrack on the next game :p
@lipsch : It's not my system. i7 4ghz, 32 GB Ram, NVidia 1080 GTX. I'd accept that it might be WebGL but I'd still recommend checking the profiler.
I noticed that aliens start invasion while you are reading the instructions text and it felt unfair. Aside from that the game is simple and interestingly fun! I would love to play this game again later if you improve it. Thank you for the game!
Good but difficult, my team member had a lot more patience than me while playing it. We love it but we have a feeling you got too used to the mechanics and were tailoring the game to your gameplay, so by the time it was about to be released you were pro at it and didn't notice how hard it would be for others. We would love to see something like this getting a post-jam version.
I really enjoy it :) I tried... but no more water:( The game was fun . The first time that I played the UFO took the water when I was reading (DAMN UFO! *They took our jobs*) . + Fun game + Like the idea - Very hard - The towers are to expensive
Cool concept, nice implementation of a tower defense. As others have stated, the difficulty curve might be a bit high, although it isn't insurmountable. Nice job!
Alright i think im going to do a post-jam!
Heres my to-do List If any of you thinks thers something missing - tell me instantaneous!
- [X] Music (Background music -> add sound settings in the menu) [3 Hours, Made two Versions] - [X] Enemy should spawn after completing the Tutorial [1 Minute] - [X] Rework the Tutorial [5 Minutes] - [X] BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE [2 Hours, I think it's okay now.. Balancing is not very fun.. ._.] - [X] Be able to see scores of other people (Probably gonna use Dreamlo) [30 Minutes] - [X] Fix the towers so they attack the closest enemy..) [Did not seem to have any issues] - [X] Range visualisation for the towers [30 Minutes]
I dont know if i should mention everyone here. But here are some, which i think would be very interested in the post-jam @awesome , @fanatrick , @mrerdalural , @zgragselus , @mars
This was very cool! Liked the idea, quite a new spin on a TD, and the graphics were very suitable! However, I think it might make sense to tune down the amount of the UFOs in the start - that might give the player a smoother start and help her/him get used to the different weapons. I think others have already stated any clear improvement points left. Overall, a great effort.
Pretty cool game! Only gripes I had was that the difficulty at the start was a bit too high and that you couldnt really anticipate where the aliens would land so the only tactic was to spam defenisive stuff everywhere.
Nice idea! I see you've compiled some of the feedback.
Overall I ran into a lot of the same problems. Some other things:
- Sometimes it felt like my missiles weren't attacking even if there was a UFO right next to them. If I could know which one they were targeting (closest one makes sense) and if I could see that there's a cooldown state. - Particles are nice but overall end up confusing there the actual weapon/hitbox for the bullets or lasers are. I would try making a clear bullet or laser game object first, and then have the particles augment that/make it even more clear. Right now the particles end up feeling fuzzy. The explosions for the mines work well though. - UFOs parking side ways on the side of continents feels a bit weird - Really liked how the water would start draining from the earth! You could probably expand on that if you're doing a post compo and have the earth in different states of degradation just by using different colors and so.
Very nice concept, that Sphere Defense. Sadly, the balance is off, which made it a bit less enjoyable than it would. But yeah, balancing a compo game is hard - I can't say that mine is well balanced, also. :)
The sound effects are ok, the graphics a bit nice, with a clean look. I don't know if it fits so nicely to the theme, though, but it's still ok.
Try to do some waves to your game, that would build up the difficulty, at the same time giving the player some time intervals to rest a bit and rebuild.
The killing of enemies being the only resource puts a challenge on your balancing: if the player makes a bad choice early on, thus giving the enemies an advantage (which means less kills) then the player enters a spiral of doom, because less kills means less money to build defenses, which means less kills, and so on and so on. This makes the possibility of winning even with a bad start e lot less likely, which may frustrate the player. So maybe putting other source of income may be a good idea.
Came here since you put adverts on my game xD
It's a nice little tower (planet?) defense game. Graphics are nice, the rocket effects are pretty cool. Balance is off, but it's an LD game, it's hard to balance in such as short amount of time
It probably wasn't ideal to start the game while you are still reading the tutorial text tho!
@blaster391. Yeah, i fixed all those issues in my Post-Jam Version. Take a look! (:
@lipsch - Just played it! Seems a lot better, the difficulty still ramps up very quickly, but at least you're not stuck in a menu while it happens, so it's easier to build defense it time, very nice!
@blaster391 I just saw your Score. Not as good as mine but very close :p Thanks for the feedback!
Fun. I had trouble getting any kind of momentum going but it's a good idea. Maybe we could get water back when the UFOs are shot down?
@howardcs You already get the water back when you shoot them.
I noticed a few bugs... The game should pause while the tutorial is up, I basically lost the first round straight away because I was reading the tutorial. I also couldn't click on the mines? Overall, the game was pretty fun.
I definitely had fun. I felt like the options weren't very balanced and I ended up getting my highest score by just building satellites. =P The updating water on the planet was a nice touch. =)
The game was a bit laggy on my side and started before the tutorial's end like said by others.
But the concept is great, a tower defense on a planet is a really smart idea and the realization is also pretty good ! :thumbsup: Really impressive for a compo entry !