cpcrabs 2017-12-04 04:18
Fun little game. I enjoyed the mini-plot and the tutorial was well done. I really liked the boss battle too. The lack of audio was a little strange but I realise it was probably due to time constraints. Anyway, good game.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Hot & Cold
By swen
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 154 | 3.70 | 24 | |
| Fun | 161 | 3.63 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 243 | 3.36 | 24 | |
| Theme | 371 | 3.38 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 224 | 3.59 | 24 | |
| Humor | 95 | 3.54 | 23 | |
| Mood | 294 | 3.15 | 24 |
Fun little game. I enjoyed the mini-plot and the tutorial was well done. I really liked the boss battle too. The lack of audio was a little strange but I realise it was probably due to time constraints. Anyway, good game.
"Reginald" has defeated the great "Via Telephone"!
The fireball was satisfying to use. The cutscenes were cool. I wasn't sure what to do on the final boss, though. I dodged fireballs and the cold for a while, before I just climbed up the right and walked to the end.
I'll tell the true, I was trying to play the web based games first, because it's easier. But I liked the graphics a lot so I downloaded it. OMG, this is awesome. It's so sad that doesn't have any sound. The mechanics, the graphics, everything else was great. Short, obviously, but great. The final battle, for a moment I thought I had to kill his HP, but fool of me. You nailed the theme, and did the most original game mechanic I have seen so far. I really hope you continue this game because I want to play it.
@cpcrabs Thanks for your feedback! I feel like I focused a bit too much on polishing in the beginning. The boss battle was put in 2 hours before the deadline, which probably wasn't a good idea. But I felt the intro had no meaning if you didn't face the evil villain.
And it is a shame I didn't have time left for the audio. I agree that it would have added a lot!
@wooowooo Hahaha, I should make a small outro with "${PlayerName} has defeated the feared ${VillainName}".
@evan-polekoff Uh-oh, is that wall climbing bug still in there? Yea, I shouldn't have rushed the boss fight 2 hours before the deadline :p. Maybe I will polish it later and add some more feedback on the boss fight. He takes damage if the temperature drops below/ above his threshold, which has a slightly smaller threshold than yours. You can handle 'extreme temperatures' a bit better than the boss. With this, you'll be able to hurt him. Thanks for giving it a try! :)
@xacur Glad you gave it a go! I normally stay away from graphics since I am not that good at it. But for this game jam, I decided to overcome my fear of bad graphics and just work on an 8x8 canvas. Decreasing my sprite size lowered the load on my graphics which allowed me to make somewhat cool sprites!
As for the sound, yes it is a shame I wasn't able to add any... Maybe I'll get to that later. While I am at it I might as well make the game a bit longer. The game now, by itself seems more like a prologue.
Thanks for your feedback and comment! Your comment really made my day.
@xacur The itch.io project settings were set to 'downloadable' ;c. Changed it to 'web' now.
@swen cool, I think more people will play it know. I beat it again.
Watched this game on MrOdrez stream and just had to play it as well. Awesome mechanic and would love to see this one extended into a full game! Really cool!
Foremost, great first-time entry, keep at it!
Surprisingly smooth controls (although you should've used CCD for the character to remove jitter). Nice little touches on animation, nice use of screenshake. The concept is good, but I think it's too challenging (for a designer, not gameplay wise). Plot adds a nice simple narrative touch to everything. Doing 8x8 art was a good move, there is a nice unity in your sprites.
The whole game feels like a tutorial, each level there is some new thing, but I haven't used the previous thing long enough and... well you get the point.
No sound or music, I know time constraint and stuff, I failed to deliver sound myself many times, but that's no excuse, sound adds a lot to a game (much more than it feels like when you're making it!), missing out on that is not a good tradeoff at all!
The color palette, I know you're probably not an artist, but here is the tip, find some picture that you really like and use the eyedropper tool on it to get yourself some nice balanced colors, then just use them to draw everything.
Low tonal contrast, open your graphics editor, open hue/saturation filter, drag saturation to 0 (make image black and white), you will find that your background is just as dark as your foreground, and the grass is brighter than your characters, you want have tonal layers in your graphics (unless intended otherwise), that makes them clear sharp and punchy!
Every ludum dare game has a lot of flaws, that's just the way it is, don't take anything personally, learn to focus on the essential and you'll get a great game. You have every skill needed, practice them, learn to manage them and I hope to see you at LD41!
@xk-the-name Thanks for your feedback and tips, I totally agree on these things. I wanted to have a unique mechanic, but I think that only threw me in the wrong direction. Because of the main mechanic, it was indeed, really hard to come up with levels. The code and art were there but the levels making use of these things wasn't. I should have totally stretched the game and put in more levels.
About the "don’t take anything personally" I think you should be able to accept any kind of feedback. Feedback helps me a lot.
I think a better planning, some more art practice and a smaller concept would help me a lot next time. It was my goal to send in a game for Ludum Dare 40, which I did, although I was aware of these issues.
Anyway, it was great fun :)
Nice one. The villain fight is a bit strange, I didn't even know who won. I like the pixel art, some basic sound for shooting fireballs would really help a lot. Due to the gaps in the ground and the green graphics it reminded me of Super Mario, but what jump and run does not ;)
That was a neat idea! I liked the way it started, with the little back story/tutorial. Too bad it was so short. It ends when it should be really starting! Please consider spending some more time on the concept, it got potential!
Very nice for your first submission! I enjoyed this. Cool concept of balancing your spells or else if affects your environment. I defeated my nemesis Greg! I encourage you to keep it up! This has potential.
Nice game, but seems a bit short, or more like it is just the tutorial, maybe adding some puzzle levels and such would make it lot cooler (pun intended). But overall it was nice and fun to play
My main complaint is that there isn't any time to explore the mechanics. Its a cool idea to balance hot and cold, but the game is so short that the mechanics aren't expanded upon. I like the simple pixel art, it was very effective, though I am a little bothered by the want because its not on the grid when it moves around.
Hey, nice one! I was sold at the cutscene/intro! Naming the characters made them even more endearing, and nice touch with the random names (my first random villain name was Hungrix, and I couldn't bring myself to change it)! Sound would have been really sweet, but what I really like is how you decided "the more you have" could be either too MUCH or too LITTLE! That was clever. Great work!