prodigalson 2017-08-01 20:13
Tutorials feel like they get in the way of "fun" but once they are done and the game begins, it is enjoyable. I like the lego-like graphics and stealth is one my favorite genres.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD39 → Shut Everything Down
By skosnowich
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 167 | 3.75 | 26 | |
| Fun | 298 | 3.33 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 483 | 2.95 | 25 | |
| Theme | 713 | 2.95 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 356 | 3.69 | 25 | |
| Audio | 352 | 3.13 | 24 | |
| Humor | 443 | 2.33 | 14 | |
| Mood | 281 | 3.47 | 23 |
Tutorials feel like they get in the way of "fun" but once they are done and the game begins, it is enjoyable. I like the lego-like graphics and stealth is one my favorite genres.
Funny game, didn't expect the challenge. Some levels where really tricky. It was really fun to play.
Really fun to play, graphics look really nice :)
First of all, thank you for the Mac version, that's pretty rare. Awesome game though. The art is nice and clean, though a bit simple. The mechanics are pretty clear and tight. I like that you kind of have to get seen in order to stop the movement of the robots in order to do what you need to do. Interesting dynamic. The sound is nice as well. Overall a pretty solid entry. Good work!
I'm glad you had time to do a tutorial, but some times the pop-up text get in the way, i really like the aesthetics and the back ground music, but the sound effects no so much!, Level 3 WAS HARD! Hahahahaha, almost make me close the game, i'm glad i did not, the last scenes were hilarious... Good Job!
For me it's the opposite, I like the sound effects but not the music! I guess you can't please everyone :)
I gave you a good score for Innovation; the gameplay isn't super innovative for the stealth genre, but using robots as enemies is a great way to justify those existing mechanics: the enemies keep walking back and forth in a fixed pattern because the robots are simply executing a for loop, and we can see their vision cones because they're using lasers or something in order to see things!
I'd recommend some kind of transition when you display the text messages, it's really jarring.
I liked the difficulty later in the game, but not so much the tutorial bit. Maybe give more room for experimentation instead of a text-based tutorial?
I'm not a fan of the mouse-based movement, how about WASD to move the robot and arrows to move the camera, or vice versa? Or just center the camera around a point a few cells ahead of the robot.
Nice game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJb17RPmbsA
Interesting game! Good music. Good graphics. Scroll with mouse... i think it will be better with it.
Great entry! Tutorial was nice to have, and you have a good set of puzzle mechanics.
I'll join in in saying that the tutorial was too in-your-face. I also died a lot because of misclicks.
Other than that, nice game with fun mechanics and a pretty good level of polish!
More of a stealth puzzle than a stealth game this, as there really is only one way to *solve* each level. Due to this it is annoying having to replay the beginning of a level when failing right at the end, but it ain't that bad.
The graphics and audio are ok. The ending is predictable, yet somewhat inconsistent. Why shutdown a coal powered robot after switching back to coal power? Eh, coal powered robots are a bit of a stretch to begin with.
The main menu image also looks as if Coalie is giving the evil rampant robot a back rub or doing *something else* altogether.
Ok job.
Surprisingly well put backstory, I really felt for our hero! The gameplay was good and challenging in the puzzle field, although I sometimes felt like I could brute-forse my way to the robots without all the tactical stealthy stuff.
Oh, and loved the graphics!
Great gameplay and pretty polished, the audio is also on point! Good job
An interesting puzzle/stealth game!
The graphics, music, and sound effects worked well together, and the game felt very polished! The game felt a bit claustrophobic, due to the small window compared to the size of the levels. A possible improvement could be to be able to maximize the window, and see the whole level at once.
The popup in the last mission was a bit unexpected, since it interfered with a timed puzzle. I thought that the rest of the tutorials worked well.
Your game fit the theme very well, both on the concept and the ending. As the game was quite unforgiving of mistakes, the levels had a good length, not too short, but also not so long as to be frustrating if you lose.
I also liked the variety of the puzzles. Even though the rules were simple, there was still something new to learn in each level!
Nice work!
>I saved my masters, >by disabling my brethren! >Slowing... down... Why... me?!
Nice! My favorite part of this game was the design: the tutorial levels did a great job at ramping up the player, and the levels were a great mix of puzzle-solving and timing challenges. I do wish there was a little more, but what you have is already quite good, and I'd prefer a few really solid levels over a lot of mediocre/repetitive levels any day. The narrative/backstory was also solid.
I did encounter a few polish issues: - Sometimes, clicking a square would not do anything, and I'd have to click on it twice to actually get the robot to move. Not only was this annoying, but in a fairly strict timing-based game this killed me quite a few times, which was really frustrating. Unfortunately, I can't seem to reproduce this issue, but I'm on Mac if it matters (I dunno if you encountered this). This is by far the most annoying thing I ran into, because it made the game feel a little unresponsive: the rest of this list is mostly minor issues. - Right now, if you click somewhere and decide you want to move in the opposite direction instead, the robot can only change directions when it's aligned with a square. It would feel more responsive if the robot immediately changed directions instead of potentially waiting a half second. - I died a few times on the second level, and whenever I did die, the tutorial text would appear saying "Good job!", which was a little unfortunate. I'd suggest only showing it once, or having a question mark that you can click on to see it again. - The WASD camera controls felt unnecessary. I kept forgetting to use them because I expected the camera to follow me by default. One possible suggestion: you could have an automatic camera following the player when the player is moving, and have WASD manually move the camera if the player is still and wants to scout ahead. This might also feel kind of weird, though; it's possible that the most user-friendly option is to remove WASD entirely and have a pure automatic camera (I doubt players will be hindered by this, since you generally only care about what's near you at any given moment). - In the last level, I missed the pop-up because I was spamming right click to get next to the moving robot. Agreed with @somnium that it was not the best place to put a pop-up. - Dying feels strange because you immediately get taken to the beginning of the level. Some sound effect and/or short animation when dying would have felt more natural.
Also, I personally really appreciated the tutorial text, since it's nice to know exactly how the mechanics work, and you did a good job of explaining things. I can see why some players can find it a little too wordy or unnecessary, though.
Overall, I really enjoyed going through the levels, which were all well-designed. The controls didn't feel as polished as I would've wished, but that didn't prevent this game from being a lot of fun overall. Great job!
Very cool game, I love this "magica voxel" graphics, the audio fits well the idea of the game, and everything is seems to be very polished, the concept is very good, overall it is a great job !