furiouswitch 2017-04-28 15:05
I loved it Erk. Very simple and very beautiful. Congrats :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → My world
By erkberg
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 82 | 3.83 | 38 | |
| Fun | 218 | 3.27 | 38 | |
| Innovation | 139 | 3.50 | 38 | |
| Theme | 22 | 4.25 | 37 | |
| Graphics | 162 | 3.72 | 38 | |
| Audio | 62 | 3.71 | 37 | |
| Humor | 260 | 2.55 | 31 | |
| Mood | 22 | 4.13 | 38 |
I loved it Erk. Very simple and very beautiful. Congrats :)
Wow. This is amazing. It'll score highly in mood, and fun too. It's interesting to see a game that doesn't use collision for taking damage. This is so fun. Well done!
I really liked the polish this game had with the audio and graphics. The small bit of story and comments depending whether you killed them or not was a nice touch. Very well done!
This is wonderful. I enjoyed the mechanics, and I appreciate the narrative you were able to creative in such a short amount of time, in creation and execution. Well done!
Wow this game is deep. Is there a way to have another ending ? Love the sea, nice graphics here
Very nice style, everything fits together really well. Art, music and story complement each other perfectly! Gameplay is good, but the controls are too "floaty" to be precise enough. It felt like I died too much because of the controls than of lack of skill.
Well done!
The initial story is great, but I kept on dying in the game. I like the graphics style, the sounds fits the gameplay.
Nice little game with a cute ending (MILD SPOILER: Though it might have been to have a little bit of redemption, but maybe I'll just a sappy guy).
The story drives me to keep playing as the challenge increases. Kudos for that!
Nice game with a great mood but too hard for me :p
Amazing sweet game with a deep meaning a beautiful story. We were all like: ok how do I kill them!... You are getting the highest vote I've given so far. I hope to see more of this and more games like this in general.
Great game. I like how you know, that the player will die and the story is good. The music is very good too.
Violence is not the answer.
At first I considered giving up because the controls were really tough. The dash almost always slung me into the water. Then I realized there was some story to the game and I stuck with it. Good decision, because I found the game to be very likeable.
The graphics and music create a really nice atmosphere that works well with the story you are telling.
Let me go into a bit more detail about the mechanics. Purely gameplay-wise I think the game could use a bit more tweaking. The dash's acceleration was really strong which resulted in immediate death if you don't hit the opponent. Maybe reducing it a bit may work better.
About the water threshold, I think I would have preferred if you don't die right away once you touch the water. Allowing the player to enter shallow water and struggle their way back to land would probably alleviate a bit of the frustration caused by dashing just a little too far.
Conceptually, I found it a bit ironic that the best course of action was actually avoiding the enemies until they run into the water instead of attacking them, which sort of breaks the moral of the game. Also since they are quite aggressive from the get-go, the final message falls flat a bit. I think the game would have benefited greatly from a bit more consistence with the theme here, e.g. by making the enemies passive at first and appeal to the players gaming reflexes to attack, then moving on to a more aggressive stance.
All in all it was a game with more depth than anticipated. I really appreciate that you took the effort to tell a little story here. Great job!
A nice narrative game!
You used both graphics and music to good effect, shaping a great mood for the story to unfold in.
In my first playthrough I reacted to the invasion in accordance with the character's perspective, not even considering whether it could be misguided. That the dash-action is prominently featured in the instructions, also primes this first reaction I think. I was then happily surprised when it turned out that combat was merely one way through the game, and not even the most satisfying one.
The mechanics were a bit frustrating - the "floating" controls combined with the deadly sea was a lethal combination. But in a sense, I guess that just reinforces the message of the game.
This was a very enjoyable game to play!
>Kill the intruders! >Violence is not the answer... >An important choice.
Thank you all for your feedback! It's really heartwarming to read all these beautiful comments :)
I was aware that the controls are quite floaty, but it seems to be even worse than I thought. I did not put enough care into the gameplay itself because I wanted to focus more on narrative and mood. Thats a lesson to be learned: Even if focusing on something else, never neglect the gameplay mechanics.
The game has two possible endings indeed, as some of you have noticed. It's basically not complete without the second ending, so I added a hint on the game page.
@cerno-b: Great idea not letting the player die immediately when touching the water. I wish I had come up with that idea during the jam :) And the "enemies" are not really aggressive from the beginning, they only become enraged once one of them has died. Before that, they are actually quite friendly and cuddly :)
Damn, I should have verified that before writing my comment. Props to you for getting that perfectly right then!
I almost cried at the end of the violent ending, and naturally assumed that was it. But then I decided to call you out on your bullshit, thinking, "Oh look at this wise guy advocating non-violence, I bet they didn't even give you a real alternative!" Then I was like, "Oh shit... they actually don't attack you first!" And when the dialog started changing, I fell in love with the game. 5/5, awesome experience!
Side note, I found the third ending too! Or as I like to call it, "The real first ending." It happened when I went the violent path seeing if you also implemented forgiveness (if the guys forgive you for killing one of them if you stop killing them for some time). Which didn't turn out to be the case, sadly. But if it was, I would become your biggest fan. Anyways... so I pretty much replayed the violent playthough again. But this time, when I killed the boss, I also fell into the water after her. So I triggered the winning dialog and all, but it was slowly sinking (aka scaling down) and the game respawned me but no one else spawned since the boss already died. So this time it really was just me... all alone on my island... oh gawd what have I done!!!! :cry:
@batmanasb: Thank you so much! I had actually planned to make the sister give the player a choice whether she wants to keep killing or surrender and be more or less forgiven (it would probably have ended in some kind of awkward tolerance with the player being outside society and avoided by the others), but those jams with their time constraints, right? :)
I usually don't like narrative games, neither do I like games with a moralizing message.
However, this one is greatly done. The music and the graphics fits perfectly the sad mood, which is reinforced by the dialogs (small improvement: when the sister comes, at first it's not clear who's talking)
I felt stupid to have attacked others first (but hey, it's how most games work!), and I think having game mechanics where the friendliness of game objects depends on what you did before is a really cool idea, that wasn't explored enough in video games.
The ending almost brought me to tears, from all the LD38 games I played, this is by far the one that brought me the most emotional experience (the second best being The Inner Lock, by @EveningWayward).
4/5 (I'm removing one star because unfortunately there's nearly zero replay value).
Loved the music, really set the tone for the game. The controls felt a bit sluggish. Also loved the multiple endings. First playthough I didn't even think about not pushing them into the water. Violence is not the answer. Great entry!
WOW, amazing game (didn't expect that). : D
Nice story in such a small game. Would hav e loved a bit more variation in the enemies. The mood is quite right, now I have to make an appointment with my sister because I haven't seen her for a while! Well done!
I thought this was a fantastic entry, I played through twice to get both endings and enjoyed both. I was so impressed by this approach, with the story changing based on how you react.
I found the first playthrough was the most affecting though - I was guilty of just killing the intruders, because videogames, so the ending did surprise me and make me think about that decision. With everything going on here in the UK and over in America I found it quite a powerful message actually.
The gameplay was secondary, so don't need to focus on it too much, but I agree with others that it was too floaty and a bit unforgiving with the water boundaries. The atmosphere was nice though, the rain effects and music worked together really well. Overall top marks from me!
Excellent!
A Sumo mechanic?! I loved it! Great job! It was incredibly difficult, though, so I'm surprised others had beaten it. Amazing job!!
Good ambient and idea. Great job!
I liked what you tried to achieve here. The concept was slightly similar to the one I'd used for a [past Ludum Dare](http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=15664), although I couldn't properly convey the point.
Gameplay-wise I guess I'll be echoing others. Sometimes it was hard to control the avatar, inertia was strong and there was no way to stop the character.
I managed to get the "classical videogame" ending on my first playthrough. Halfway across my playthrough I reached a point where I realised that there could have been another way, but by then it was too late. Also, I may be mistaken but I got the impression that falling into the water didn't reset your progress, did it? The story kept going on.
Nice job with the mood, too!
Great game! I really liked the ambient. I kinda disliked the car like movement system but I think that is part of the design
Neat graphics, fun 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=pcx-zIJDIVM