2017-12-02 19:44
Hey, really cool game. Really hard too but still a good game :) I think you should be able to shoot upward, it is really difficult to just get on the platforms imo.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Dense Revolve
By fiakaiera
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 405 | 3.25 | 137 | |
| Fun | 459 | 3.01 | 138 | |
| Innovation | 399 | 3.00 | 138 | |
| Theme | 309 | 3.50 | 138 | |
| Graphics | 150 | 3.81 | 138 | |
| Audio | 343 | 2.88 | 135 | |
| Mood | 331 | 3.07 | 129 |
Hey, really cool game. Really hard too but still a good game :) I think you should be able to shoot upward, it is really difficult to just get on the platforms imo.
appears to be missing download links
appears to be missing download links.
Game appears to be missing the download links.
Man this is super cool. You did some nice polishing on the graphics. I felt pretty useless with a full clip, it seems like if you reload while on the upper platform you won't be able to avoid being hit. The only way to win is to drop down, reload, fire a few shots to lighten up and THEN climb up and shoot the boss. I like this interpretation, nice work.
The game looks very nice, and the sound design is pretty good. Though, the scaling for the slowdown with your ammo seems to be way off to me. It feels like if you have any more than one bullet you can barely move, and if you have one or zero then the controls are too slippery. It feels kind of silly when 5 of your shots basically have to be wasted to comfortably make it up to the boss. The animations are also very cool, I like the aesthetic of this game (and those splash screens are also pretty dope :D)
The slowdown seemed very all or nothing to me, since when you reload you basically can't do anything and when you unload a few bullets you suddenly move too fast to avoid bullets and end up running into everything and off the platforms. The only comfortable amount I was able to manage was 2 bullets I think, but I don't think you want players turtling to get the right number of bullets before doing anything. That is something easily fixed, but just requires tuning which nobody had time for really. Great game aside from that, could use some music but not much harm done since all the sound effects were good.
Whew. This took me around 8 minutes, but I beat it.
The polish, delivery, and concept are solid. It's too bad you had to stop the game, that's shame, it seemed interesting. I enjoyed the difficulty of it.
The movement felt a bit too slippery sometimes as making the jumps unto the platform seemed too difficult, but i could just be misinterpreting the bullet mechanic.
HTML5 worked fine on chrome.
Overall, good work!
and A+ on your page description - it's the most readable detailed I've seen yet.
It is very good designed how do you do the graphics on the beginning of a header?
It got pretty good graphic polish but it is pretty useless to have more than 1 bullet in clip. I think the problem would be solved with a double jump or the ability to aim up. I'd wish there were some Music but all in all the entry is pretty good.
Thanks for the feedback so far!
* @connorses, @theloneplant, @funnboi, @mark-kennedy - I know how it feels exactly being useless on having 4 or more bullets. I wish I could fix if it were interpreted as a bug, really. I actually missed on using a function that would fix all of those issues and would make game progress bit more faster as well. Whoops. * @nexusbreaker, @Anonymous - That actually passed through my mind while I was repeatedly playtesting the game. Would make the boss fight too easy in this case. So I left it out purposefully. It's actually more of a regret cause I forget I could just do a tanky boss than a 4-hit one. * @mark-kennedy - Thanks! I did try to make my entry really readable this time so I don't want to make other suffer with the wall of text. * @nexusbreaker - I think you mistook the screenshot for the header graphics. Anyway, it's a picture. They say you should put screenshots on the top. How I made it though? It's actually the in-game font I created for the game.
Thanks for reply @fiakaiera I mean the icon on the left of the
header
@nexusbreaker Ah. They're **:emoji_codes:**. :ok_hand: Ludum Dare supports them. [You can find a list here.](https://emoji.codes/)
Thanks ^^ @fiakaiera
Hey thanks for the feedback on my game! I liked your game as well, it's challenging enough to be interesting, and short and simple once you "get it". I like that you have to keep the theme in mind to win. I would suggest tweaking the movement control a bit to be smoother (to emphasize the feeling when you're "free" as opposed to being dragged down by bullets), but otherwise a smooth, solid game!
Works fine on Chrome on Linux. Nice entry - good take on the topic, and I like the graphical style. One annoying request: use XC instead of ZX for the buttons - Z is nowhere near X on a QWERTZ keyboard.
* @zarkonnen - Noted! I'll actually do that right away. Don't want to take that accessibility for others away and it doesn't change the gameplay a bit. I have a few friends with the QWERTZ layout so I can relate.
* @gastricsparrow - I'm still kinda hesitant on updating the movement but it seems that it's starting to look like a problem for a lot, so I think I will be tweaking it then along with the accessibility issue there.
Nice game, the key is not convenient enough. Dead many times still not killed boss, haha
@maskinmask: I'm not sure if you tested this before [I announced a patch](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/dense-revolve/$65988). I would set it to somewhere I'm comfortable, (like S and D) but people are used to platformers having X and C as their default keys. If you haven't gotten the patch, then I suggest refreshing/re-downloading.
I would also add key config but I think that's against the rules.
Nice game! Took me some time to figure out mechanics of bullets, there's a lot of parameters involved. Once this was clear, i found there's a lot to play with this mechanic. For example I enjoyed platforming with one bullet left the most satisfying.
It was pretty good once I got a hang of the controls, but I still don't understand why you would want to slow the player to a crawl upon reloading, and making the jump height limited as well - theme and all that but it doesn't feel like fun if you have to expend your bullets to be able to jump up the platform. The boss' one hit kills feel a little cheap, if not a tad lol-inducing.
@randomphantom I kind of do agree with you there since it's was just and idea I had from the start, I didn't really consider what gameplay it is afterwards. Other than that, it gives you some tactical knowledge. The gameplay was supposed to be that the bullets you have would be more powerful the lower the gauge has and the higher the bullet counts was but never implemented.
The boss giving you cheap kills was actually side-effect of the damage system. It does cheap kill you if you get hit by touching either the boss or getting hit to the spikes, which you can escape from with wall climbing or facing the other direction.
Well designed. Overall nice game! Nice audio and graphics style! :smile:
Nice game and post! Once I figured it out I got it in under a minute :)
Loved the aesthetic and am interested how the non-boss levels would play out with 6 bullets (I cheesed it with only 1 each time I went to hit)
Reeallly hard. Took me a long time to figure out that I couldn't jump high enough until I fired some bullets.
Love the visual style!
hard to figure out...but great game overall. good job.
The graphics are good, the controls are nice too. The basic idea is great, but the implementation of the theme with the mechanics I didn't like it at all. It makes the game less fun that it could be. You need to empty your gum to jump to the top and be able to shot, and when you recharge you are super slow and can't jump, but you still need to evade the enemy's bullet. When one hits you it makes you step back and fall, that's one of the most frustrating things in a video game. But apart of all that, I think without the theme it would have been an awesome, fun and very polished game. I played it in Chrome, it works well.
Neat little game! Super short but hard to the boot. The difficulty was quite punishing, there wasn't much room for errors. I found the best strategy to be ignore 90% of the level, wall jump up from the middle area, quickly blitzkrieg down two mobs, reload and then desperately try to finish the rest with one clip.
I lost so many promising rounds due to my muscle memory saying that R is reload. Not really the game's fault, more mine. Finally managed to beat it when I concentrated real hard to keep my fingers on the X/C keys only and stopped doing so many quick restarts if something went wrong.
Simple but solid art style. Worked very well! Nice particle effects too. The sound effects got kinda annoying pretty fast. And there was so few of them that it made it even worse.
Actually, now as I was writing this I decided to take a look at the description which I pretty much just glanced over at the start. So at first I had no idea that it was the bullets that were slowing me down etc and you didn't start with a full clip. Tried again knowing that and it was a lot easier. Using pretty much the same strategy as earlier... I got up, shot down two enemies, went down to reload, shot away few rounds off the clip and tada, I was back at the starting maneuverability. The rest was easy pickings.
All in all, good job!
What a difference a button makes ... due to my tiredness I somehow missed that 'C' was reload at first. Suddenly it became playable! :slight_smile:
It's challenging; I wonder if this can be improved if you remove everything except the core challenge: What would happen if you removed the spiky platforms on the side and the dropoffs directly below them. (So that the only deaths possible would be the big sawblade and the starts.)
The art and details (eyes bobbing up/down when jumping, etc.) are quite nice. Seems that minimalism is a powerful tool, given that you'd had only very limited time.
The font can make it hard to get that you'd need to press _R_, not _A_ to reset.
(P.S. I could play it just fine in Chrome... maybe I switched those options around another time?)
Soooo, what they say about Ludum Dare and platformers is true :P
It looks good, it feels good. The simple monochromatic style is great. The movement feels solid, the attacks too.
But the mechanic... It took some figuring out, but once you do, I feel that it's really flawed. I've seen a bunch of people use the "more of X = slower movement" trope in this jam, and I think that not every game can be Dark Souls. It's too easy to slide into a bad outcome where the optimal play is to just dump excess and run in - in a system where the excess means something, it works, but when the excess doesn't really mean anything, it just encourages you to reload, shoot blanks into the air, and jump up and unload one shot. Duck down, rinse, repeat.
There's no incentive to not play like that, which just means the best play is also the most boring one. There's a lack of risk/reward.
Oh and the movement is a bit slidey, it's impossible to turn around a bit on the edge of a platform without falling down. And turning around is important here because that's your shooting direction.
Other than that, everything is super solid, the only thing I couldn't find was player health or boss health.
A really good game! Could've been cool if you could shoot upwards. But still a good game!
Visual art is very good!
Wow. Excellent use of theme. I thought the game is totally unplayable and then I realized, that the movement depends on how many bullets I have :) Good job.
Man You should write the thing with the bullets somewhere in the game, it is a great Idea but you need to communicate it to the player. With that said, I like the idea and the art style alot. The controls feel a little stiff, but did get the job done. Overall I enjoyed the game, althought I thought it was hard.
Really hard! Took a little while to figure out that having more bullets makes you slower, but its a nice use of the theme. Not sure what the portal is about though.
Cool game. I like that bullet mechanics btw, this is a 5 on innovation and theme for sure =D. GJ
Cool game. Love the art style. It was very hard and I wish I could've had the ability to shoot upward.
Really cool dash-scarf-revolver-cat!
I didn't understand the reload rule before I read comment of @connorses. I have thought I slow down because reloading takes energy, and feel confused how can I beat the boss without energy to jump:joy:
Wish i could play the whole thing... It looks so good. I understand that you did not have the time to complete it. But really smooth and looks polished just the boss level.
I had a little trouble with the arrow keys (I'm too used to the WASD+mouse) once I got over that I loved the game. A pity you couldn't add some music to add to the mood. Amazing you managed to do this in 15h. Congrats!
Nice concept. Looks good, plays good. Would have been nice if you didn't have problems that stopped your work. GJ
The last phase is very hard but this was interesting to understand that must have only one bullet to jump high enough to touch the boss. May be there is too much effect for having bullet, slow done the movement and gravity can be enough I think.
The game looks great but the movement is a bit too fast :(
Interesting idea with ammo thats heavy. But game impossible to play because of awful controls =(
I need to check with you guys on this one. Did you guys played it before the update that was released hours prior or downloaded an old version? (aka the same version with the layout on the screenshots) * @edmond00 - You can actually shoot the boss with 4 bullets. Gravity is also the one responsible with the jumps and it's possible to climb up with 4 bullets. * @11tomi12 - It was worse in the earlier versions you move really fast with no bullets and the stage is more against you back then. * @saintheiser - What's troubling you with the controls? Maybe I can help. The layout allows for people with QWERTZ keyboards to play and is pretty much the actual default layout of most plaformers, too.
Really well executed, but the mechanic seemed to force everything to be less fun rather than more. I think a lot of this has been said in other comments. The only contribution I would make is when you start the game, I think you should be able to make that first platform jump. That was a big obstacle for me, just understanding how to shoot the vortex in the first place.
The game was hard to get use to but having in consideration all the constraints of doing in 15h I think its really good.
I think you're game is pretty hard to me ^^ , but I like the design, it's work very well ! :)
Very hard for me. But I think it's a cool game with very cute graphic
Not an easy game. Very difficult for me.
It's quite polish, nice graphics and animations ^^ Good entry, especially for 15h.
Cool game. It took me a while to figure out how to get up onto the platform and not die but after I figured out what to do it was pretty straight forward. Unfortunately there wasn't much depth to the mechanics and I worked out a fairly dominant strategy fairly quickly. A few more levels probably would have fixed that problem though, so with a bit more time it could certainly be an interesting game. I love the art style and retro sound effects, they worked really well together. Great work!
I just noticed that this should be "Dense Revolver" <--- the last R was missing :P
Loved the graphics and game feel. Game was kind a hard for me I didn't menage to kill first boss :(
I want to play it but I can't press 1 on my EU keyboard without numbers :/
I really liked the aesthetic choices! Congratulations for the game.
Gostei muito das escolhas estéticas! Parabéns pelo jogo.
@reality-blind Alright! ~~I'll see if I could patch that in!~~ Patched!
Very good game! super well documented and organized!
Check out my game if you would like! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected
Nice to see the improvement the patch has provided :-)
Loved the game! playing it was really funny, amazing graphics job. I think the controls are a bit hard to get used to.
Heya! This is pretty nice, I like the visual aesthetic of it. The only thing I found frustrating was the wall jump- it took me several tries to get it, and even after figuring out how to properly do it, it was still somewhat hard to nail down. Other than that, I liked this entry, great job!
Pretty neat little game, I wish the main enemy moved from the top of the screen more though. Controls I think could have been a little tighter but all in all a good little jam game.
Pros:
I was immediately attracted to the aesthetic style of the game
The "prepare" sound bite is a nice touch.
Cons:
I am kind of confused as to what was going on.
I know I can jump, shoot, move and reload but the gimmick seems to be that reloading makes you "weaker" or "stronger" which I guess translates to better movement/higher jumps? Sometimes I can wall jump other times I cannot.
Comments:
I dig alot of what you have here, but as a player I had a really hard time with it. Mainly it just needs a way of either tutorializing the player OR UI that is more intuitive so that people aren't confused.
The controls are a bit rough. Maybe consider movement on WASD, jump on space, and shoot and reload on the mouse.
The best thing about this game is the black and white graphics. It is so cool. The audio could be improved by having a theme song. Your game does not fit the theme very well though. Another suggestion is that you can include the instructions in your game to make it easier to understand the game (it took me a while to know that I can reload).
This is a neat idea, I liked how you'd need less bullets for more maneuverability - interesting use of theme! Won't complain much seeing as the time constraints this was made under - but for that period, great stuff!
Given the time constraints, this is a great entry.The black and white artstyle looks great.The mechanics match the theme well.The controls could've been better but you did your best within 15 hours. Don't abandon this prototype. Reiterate on it and you'll have a great game in your hands.
quite solid entry... music could make it even better. Seriously, this game need some chiptune music
Nice visual direction and it basically felt like an actual part of a much much larger indie title. Good job!
black and white visual was great. neat game play. congrats.
YAY! I've beat it! Nice implementation of interesting concept, i love it.
Nice graphics it all went together quite well. Also good play on the theme. Good job!
Like I said in my video, these game has one of the most solid concepts that relates to the Jam theme. Having a gun whose bullets directly effect the difficulty of the game around you is great. I can easily see that being evolving into a system where you have a variety of weapons which each augment your environment. Some weapons might hinder you when they are full of ammo, some when you're on empty. I think thats certainly an interplay you should explore further.
That said I found this game was very solid. It would be interesting to have some context as to why were are doing battle with an interdimensional rift. Other than that the controls are solid, I didn't feel like I was sliding around or having trouble getting the wall jumping to work. The graphics are simple yet on point to communicate whats going on around you. The only thing really missing is more sounds and some music, but I understand that when time is a constraint its often better to just nail the important bits. Which you did.
Great work! and thanks again for your shoutout about my video in the blog feed, I really appreciate it! https://youtu.be/DYoYvCeQ9XE
I love the "prepare" whisper sound at the beginning. Very cool.
the platforming controls felt really loose. like it was an accelerated rigid body - made it really had to stick landing on jumps and when you had to be down to 0 or 1 bullet to even make the jumps, you really want tight controls so you can quickly get up, shoot... then somewhere safe to reload - empty - shoot again.
only after i figured out that really the only way to reliably do damage to the vortex was to go down to one bullet and wall-jump did i start having fun. i think this has a lot of potential but there wasn't enough there to keep me interested after i completed it. i did enjoy it, though!
Good concept and ties to the theme well. The one issue that jumped out at me has apparently already been covered in the comments which is that when I reload, all I do is dump my ammo so I can move freely again. I think if you popped just one more mechanic/consequence in there you could have a real winner.
Nice idea, great choice of graphics and the gameplay is nervous. Well done
Liked the way you used the theme, thought it was a clever take. Was fun trying to balance the amount of bullets I had and my actual movement. Made it a challenge to figure out a strategy to move around in position and then to reload once in position. The graphics also worked well for the minimalist feeling of the game.
Artwork is very nice! It's a bummer when you get stuck on top of the vortex and continually take damage, it doesn't feel fair... The controls often didn't feel fair to me in general. Otherwise a cool game, and good use of the theme.
Very cool ideas! Great job in a such a short amount of time. I had a really hard time at first but understood much better once I read the list of mechanics related to the amount of bullets I had. It's too bad you didn't have more time to include a tutorial. I could totally see those mechanics used in other ways outside a boss fight setting.
Gameplay seems solid. I wish there were more levels. Theme incorporated nicely, with the bullets making it more difficult to run. One thing I thought was really well done was when I was hit by a projectile, it only knocked me to the ledge of the platform and didn't push me off. That avoids a lot of aggravation on the palyer's part. I wish more platformers did that. I'm pretty sure I defeated the boss, but I just got a stat screen, which said it took me 39 seconds to finish.
That 4th shot was hard to land, but this was kinda fun! Obviously you were pretty strapped for time so I don't know how much more you could have done, but interesting mechanics, though as mentioned by others it seems to have a pretty slippery slope once you get hit once or twice since it throws you off position a lot.
really like the simplicity of the graphics
It was fun, I want more!
Difficult controls, yet nice game!