Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Crystal Curse
By icylava
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 69 | 3.88 | 20 | |
| Fun | 53 | 3.94 | 20 | |
| Innovation | 486 | 2.86 | 20 | |
| Theme | 428 | 3.25 | 20 | |
| Graphics | 166 | 3.76 | 21 | |
| Audio | 20 | 4.08 | 20 | |
| Humor | 1 | |||
| Mood | 91 | 3.64 | 19 |
Oh my god I'm hyped. The first screen looked boring, but the game plays so well and the minimalist aesthetics works! The only thing that annoyed me was that you slide on the ground so much. Also I don't see the theme. But this was a really good platformer. Reminds me of the parts in _Super Meat Boy_ where you have to evade rockets.
I love the music, and the first few levels are very fun! Lots of "game feel", very nice job!
@blubberquark, thanks for playing! > I don't see the theme
Well, the idea is that the more crystals you collect, the tougher the enemies get. But now that I think about it... that's kind of how every level based game is... *damn it*... I mean, I did come up with the idea maybe 10 minutes after seeing the theme, heh :D
> The only thing that annoyed me was that you slide on the ground so much
What do you mean by that? You accelerate and decelerate pretty fast, is that the problem? Does the movement look like the gif I just uploaded? If not, maybe there's a bug...
Anyway, thanks :D
@josefnpat, thank you for the nice words! Waaait a second...
> the **first few levels** are very fun
I see what you did there... just joking, of course :D
But to be fair, I really should have spent more time polishing the levels. Thanks again!
This is radical! Love love love this kind of platformer. Very tough. Graphics are simple but crisp, and have a lot of neat little touches. I also really dug the low-pass that comes up under the text cards -- did you do that through programming or manually? I was wondering if love could do that. Really great game, one of the best I've played this LD! Good job :)
Ok yeah, not so slippy-slidey this time. More like hard to gauge jumps because everything is so empty and you can jump so far. In the later levels I often had to tank shots in a calculated way to advance.
One thing I would like is a "smarter" camera that looks where you need to go, because I was too busy jumping to look up or down.
But the small dust clouds when you land and the way your rectangle leans back while running: Subtle, but great.
@fluidvolt
> I also really dug the low-pass that comes up under the text cards – did you do that through programming or manually?
Manually, I have 2 versions of the track - one normal, one lowpassed. Love2D can't do that, but it will be able to do that and other effects (and custom processing iirc) in the next major version (0.11.0), so keep an eye out for that.
And thanks!
The music works well with the theme and the minimalist style looks great. I like the fast paced gameplay however I feel jumping is hard because you move so fast and don't jump that high. Overall a great game!
This game definitely got me raging a bit. At parts you didn't provide any cover so there was no refuge from the rockets and that was a bit terrifying. The platforming was very well done, the controls were well done, the movement was done well as well.
I think your usage of the theme felt like it was really just an excuse for your game to have a difficulty progression, which it should've had anyways. The text in between levels was good, but when you don't give the player any choice besides to collect the crystals it really just amounts to a difficulty progression.
The other complaint I have is with the player movement. Overall it was really good, but I had one complaint. Maybe it is just me being bad at platformers (I am), but I felt like the jump should've been made more powerful or you should've allowed the player to let go of the jump key after awhile. it felt like I had to hold it down forever to get maximum jump velocity and made me miss my jumps pretty often.
The audio was well done, the dying effects were a great touch and the music fit perfectly. Did you speed up the music at all as the game progresses? If so great touch, if not, do it next time!
Anyways, good game! Great LD entry.
@zipp, I see, thanks for playing!
*whoopsie double publish because long comments take forever to publish
@wetdesertrock, wow, suddenly a wall of feedback, haha :D
> I think your usage of the theme felt like it was really just an excuse for your game to have a difficulty progression, which it should’ve had anyways. The text in between levels was good, but when you don’t give the player any choice besides to collect the crystals it really just amounts to a difficulty progression.
I just didn't want for the theme to interfere with the fun of the game. This specific theme makes that kinda hard to do. I saw some other entries limit you the more you have of something and that just doesn't seem like fun to me. But yeah, you're right, it sounded better in my head during the jam than it does now.
I guess the idea is that these are the same type of enemies, just stronger, whereas in some other games you would see stronger _versions_ of those enemies that are distinct (and sometimes you see stronger and weaker versions on the same level). Eh, I give up :P
> The other complaint I have is with the player movement. Overall it was really good, but I had one complaint. Maybe it is just me being bad at platformers (I am), but I felt like the jump should’ve been made more powerful or you should’ve allowed the player to let go of the jump key after awhile. it felt like I had to hold it down forever to get maximum jump velocity and made me miss my jumps pretty often.
Yeah, I always seem to have trouble with implementing variable jump height. You have to hold down the jump key until the peak of your jump to reach max height.
> Did you speed up the music at all as the game progresses? If so great touch, if not, do it next time!
No, I didn't. Maybe not a bad idea, but the framework I'm using would only allow to change the speed with the pitch, and the quality would probably suffer. I could maybe do different versions of the track... but I already have 2 versions that make up most of the game's size, and I would need 2 versions of each speed version and...
Yeah, I'm not sure about that... but I'm actually slowly working on a post compo version, I don't know if I'll have the motivation to finish it at any reasonable time (or ever), but if I do, I'll see if I can do something like that.
Thank you so much for this feedback, I really appreciate it!
@IcyLava, yeah, I sometimes write walls of text.
One response:
> I’m using would only allow to change the speed with the pitch
This is pretty common, I think if you ramp it up slowly and very slightly people wouldn't even notice unless they restarted the entire game. People typically don't have perfect pitch and gradual changes aren't really detectable.
The game looked very simple at first, but it turned out to be very enjoyable. The platforming in general feels very nice, and I really liked the levels you designed. The music was also quite hypey. The only complaints I have are that for a maximum jump you have to hold space for a very long time, which feels a bit strange, and that the rockets can feel a bit unfair at times (there doesn't seem to really be away to avoid them), though I guess I'm guilty of something like that as well...
Really solid platformer! The controls and feel is on point and the level design is really neat (the transparent blocks especially are used in some clever ways throughout). One super minor thing that caused me to lose a lot to an early level was the amount of jump you get when bouncing on the small enemies felt too small. I kept thinking I could use it to bounce to the next platform, and then just.. fell instead. Might've made it feel more fluid to jump across on the enemies.
This game is a lot of fun, good job! It's challenging and can be a bit frustrating at times because the movement controls are very sensitive but the almost instant respawn times keep you engaged. The minimalistic art style looks great and the music's catchy. I like it!
In the name of [insert favorite deity], that was awesome. Pretty difficult, especially because the character does not react immediately to my input changes. But it got me a real good adrenaline rush. I like how in most levels you can avoid the rockets firing, but that does not make the stage easier, so you have to decide between just going for it and trying to avoid the rockets and rerouting left/right to leave the view range, but risking to miss that additional jump.
Awesome game, the music is amazing and amount of graphic effects in such simple game is great. Reminds me of super meatboy!
Starts off slow but becomes a really awesome platformer. The art is minimalistic but functional and the gameplay is front and center, proving yet again that graphics don't mean everything.
Honestly one of the most well rounded game I've played so far. The gameplay and controls were butter smooth, the simplistic, but expressive art style fit well, and the sounds and music were awesome. Overall, a great example of a platformer.