pascalman 2017-04-26 12:03
It's really funny. Pretty design and good idea. I like it! And that situation is "AAAARRRGHH!" :) Capture.PNG
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Tooth decay
By ithildin
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 222 | 3.42 | 37 | |
| Fun | 190 | 3.36 | 38 | |
| Innovation | 434 | 2.61 | 38 | |
| Theme | 378 | 3.08 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 277 | 3.22 | 37 | |
| Humor | 150 | 3.05 | 38 | |
| Mood | 337 | 2.91 | 36 |
It's really funny. Pretty design and good idea. I like it! And that situation is "AAAARRRGHH!" :) Capture.PNG
Nice graphics! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation [video series](https://youtu.be/1N8pCHp9YZg), if you’d like to take a look :)
@pascalman Thanks! Sorry you experienced THAT moment, it is probably my main source of rage while playtesting the game, followed by "drop dead 5 blocks before reaching the end" :expressionless:
@jupiter-hadley Thank you, I've just checked it! :)
From the video I noticed a couple of things I need to improve in terms of input feedback and visuals, so it was quite helpful to watch.
I really like the idea of the game... drilling through the tooth while trying to keep up the sugar amount. I felt so bad for the guy though whenever I cleared a lot of blocks in one go! :D
It took me a little while until I noticed I could drill to the left and right as well. That made it a little easier to get to candies on the sides :grin:
I really like the challenge in this game.
Funny game idea. It took me a while to realize that I am the bad guy. The graphics are nice and the controls are on point. Is there a correlation between how many times I drill and my need for sugar?
Overall a nice game :thumbsup:
Nice game! I like the cute graphics. Gameplay is entertaining, but I felt like I ran out of sugar too fast. Some music would've been the sugar on the tooth. :) Possible improvements would be some more obstacles like enemies that work against you. Good job overall!
Very addictive game, and also infuriating! I spent far too long trying to reach the end but didn't quite manage it, if only the sweets gave a little bit more sugar ;)
Great idea. Very addictive. Points would have been a welcome addition. Nice job!
I thought the character's comment was pretty funny ;D. I think it needed a little more balancing. It kept me wanting to make it to the bottom though.
Nice art! Well done and polished game, congratulations on finishing it in 48 hours!
Nice, simple mechanics. Did get a little repetitive at times, but nice job!
Satisfying gameplay! My only complaint would be the speed at which your sugar goes down, it seemed to be going to down at a much faster rate than I was finding candies.
Cute game, wasn't clear what used up my sugar, it would disappear without warning. Maybe have an alert when it's getting low. There wasn't really much strategy for being able to get to sugar other than luck it seemed.
Cute and fun game, simple and rewarding. Played it a good few times so it has good replayability trying to beat your own score. Nice art style, only criticism would be the sugar goes down too quickly, would be nice to play for a bit longer! Good entry for a compo, well done! :smiley:
Nice art and the controls are working good. I had fun playing it.
Well polished game with nice graphics.
It reminds me a lot one of my old ludum dare entry : http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=24933
I reached distance 605.
It seems to me that the best tactic is to drill all the time toward the bottom then towards sugar because drilling doesn't consume any sugar (right?). Therefore there is no real reason to be tactical and target a particular color ?
Thank you all for your feedback! I hope to address most of the points you've all raised about the difficulty and the lack of strategy on the post-compo version. If you're curious you can check [my current Trello board](https://trello.com/b/NMux2RcF/ld38-tooth-decay)
@alisoncox Yeah, I had in mind to add some sort of payback for the aching guy, so that on higher difficulty levels, if you dug too greedily or too fast you'll raise a "pain bar" which results in a quake with tiles falling down to crush you. I still have that on the to-do list.
@for-science At the moment there's not such a connection. On the currently in progress post-compo version I've implemented additional stamina costs for drilling certain tiles, but I need to balance that a lot with the current logic and other planned features. All the changes I've done so far actually make the game harder unless I tweak the sugar drop frequency and depletion rates, so I expect to tackle all that soon.
@erkberg Enemies weren't on the feature list, but I wanted to add some more difficult or even unbreakable tiles :)
@2kah @KCreanor @benbennett Yeah, I know. I was running out of time to implement levels or other features, so to enhance replayability I made both the spawn distance between sugar drops and the depletion rate too tight, to make it more challenging and make the main goal to try to reach the end (spoiler: 1 millimeter :D). At the moment the game can be beaten, but it relies a lot on the RNG :sweat_smile:
@theslate I am actually considering to add points in addition to the depth, but I need to finish off the loop of drilling / acquiring resources and determine the scoring rules.
@impbox Yup, I need to make a pass on UX and visual feedback, that's one of my main headaches at the moment. The current displays for depth and remaining sugar were intended for development, waiting to be replaced with a better counter, but I ran out of time. And I'm afraid I have to say the same about the extra layer of game mechanics to the core one (crumbling disconnected tiles is one of my highest priorities, that would definitely make you more aware of where you're drilling).
@jojocanard It is quite similar, indeed. I got my main source of inspiration for gameplay from Mr Driller, did you know about it as well?
On the compo version I generally try to keep to the centre to minimise interruptions to move sideways to get sugar and keep drilling down.
For the future post-compo version, though, I've added variable costs and drill rates for drilling, and that together with a layer of resource management and another layer of player progression and gameplay upgrades should help with replayability and add a bit of strategy to the core mechanic so we don't just keep digging down and praying for the RNG to be generous when we're generating the level.
@Ithildin Actually back then I was trying to do a reverse doodle jump and I didn't know Mr driller. Just a coincidence. Good luck for the tuning of your new ideas ! :wink:
To be honest, I have a hard time comprehending how to progress further into the game. Based on Mr. Driller premise, my original assumption was to hit the largest connection of blocks, but that didn't help me get further significantly. Aiming for candy did, especially when drilling right or left, but there simply wasn't enough to reach very far into the game. Could use help being a little more easier, at least in the beginning.
Overall 5 stars! Super fun and intense! Final result: 650
A lot of fun! You have a great sense of humor man. The theme about Small World inside a "Tooth Decay" is just amazing :rofl:.
Cool game! Mixes perfectly the theme with addicting arcade playability. I hope you keep adding some new hazards and power ups. Congrats!
This is a very interesting take on the whole match the same colored blocks game. One major thing though, the time limit doesn't encourage a sense of strategy, so you're more likely to just spam click to get to the sugar rather than use the adjacent colored blocks mechanic. Maybe it could cost sugar to clear blocks instead to make the game more puzzle-like?
Funny gameplay which fits with the theme - unususal. You did a clean work with the aesthetic. A solid puzzle game. It could be really enjoyable on mobile devide. I don't know if it is possible, developing projects under HaxeFlixel. Well done ++
I think with some polish you'd really have something here! Very fun for a short period of time. Took me a bit to figure out why I was kept killing over though. Pretty solid.
Nice game!! Happy to see someone using haxe too :p Good job
Nice game. A comment in the description about the depth of the goal would have been helpful. Turns out I was able to beat the game by only taking candies that were near me. If they were more than a couple blocks away, it's more efficient to ignore them...
It's a fun mechanic, just needed some way to take advantage of the multi-block thing, and a couple more text messages and it'd be a pretty well polished game.
Ouch! From the description of the game I thought: no, I'm not gonna play this! But then i did. I quickly understood the game mechanics and started drilling. The game is simple and fun! It motivated me to go on playing, one gets very well into "the flow". For me, the avatar you play looked a bit odd to me, more like a pink ghost than an actual bacteria. I also liked the popup image of the kid, giving a hint about what is going on in the "macro" world. The small world theme is well addressed, the unit of microns contributes to this effect. Well done!
Hi!
I gotta say this is one of the most original games i've seen in the jam :). Cute game, as other have said it can get easy if you just drill down and get the candy when it shows up, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I finished it in my 2nd run.
Good job!
Very fun game!
It took me a while to really get into it. Creative entry the mechanics were simple. The graphics and sounds were also nice. I didn't get to the end though. :(
Anyways it was a fun little game that could be used as a time killer for example!
Fun little game! The controls were responsive and supported the frantic nature of what you're trying to do. The graphics worked well, and the theme came through. Nice job!
Pretty fun, although there was a temptation to not pay much attention to the patterns and just drill down as fast as possible to beat the timer. The graphics were pretty unusual and actually pretty nice. The concept gave me slight ptsd from too much time in the dentist chair but thats probably just me. Saw the comments, I think unbreakable tiles would help alot. Solid entry
I loved it. Its addictive and not frustrating at all :D. No really playing it was real fun. Good work :) P.S Thanks for rating my game :)
A fun, fast paced game. It really brought me back to the days when I played [Snowmuncher](http://www.neopets.com/games/game.phtml?game_id=412) on Neopets as a kid. I like the graphics, and I like when the person popping up in the corner when drilling through a large group of coloured blocks to say, "It doesn't hurt at all." I can see the expression really matching this dialogue, and it's quite charming. I was also really impressed by the sound effects because you have sounds for the drilling and since drilling is the core essential of the game, it could become annoying very quickly. You, however, managed to make it so that the drilling sound is not annoying at all. All the other sound effects were very well chosen. Of course, some good music would definitely elevate this.
A couple of issues/suggestions I can think of off the top of my head while playing:
- Instead of having the timer begin once the player starts the game, allow the timer to start when the player starts moving. - The drill detection seems a bit unforgiving for a game of this demeanour. Unlike Snowmuncher, the character can be positioned freely between two blocks, which makes it possible to drill and get "stuck" - ie. not falling on a block they've drilled underneath them, as seen below. Tooth Decay 02 resized.png
What I would suggest is either having "fixed" player movement so that they can only be at one block at a time, or leaving the current movement scheme as it is, but allowing the player to drill through the two blocks at once. As it is, this was probably one of the biggest issues that I got caught up on when playing the game, and I feel that if the player drills blocks directly beneath them, they should be expect that they are going to fall upon doing so. (the challenge should be in strategising, not testing the player's pixel-perfect positioning) - At some points, if I was a little off centre of a block when drilling downwards, but still completely a single block, I still wasn't able to drill it. - Despite this not really being an issue in fullscreen, I think it would be more ideal if playing the game in its original, in-browser size was at least a viable option. That is, I hope you will be able to find a way to allow the arrow keys to be "fixed" inside the game such that when the game is in focus, moving the arrow keys won't also scroll the window. I've played HaxeFlixel games where this is possible, so I think it would be feasible.
I did play through this quite a few times; my highest score is currently 720. I might come back to it though, because I do really like this concept (and you mention on the game page that this is beatable. I wonder at what distance?). I see that you're planning a post compo, and I'm already very excited for that. :slight_smile:
Tooth Decay 01 resized.png