narudgi 2017-12-05 02:57
Good graphics and great feel in game, the music is nice ; but a bit linear, not finished ; overall very good entry for first ludum (i guess ?)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Widget Satchel
By noble-robot, lanedavis, Leonyx and furet
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 217 | 3.80 | 52 | |
| Fun | 294 | 3.61 | 53 | |
| Innovation | 668 | 3.06 | 51 | |
| Theme | 376 | 3.66 | 52 | |
| Graphics | 79 | 4.44 | 53 | |
| Audio | 86 | 3.94 | 50 | |
| Humor | 317 | 3.43 | 47 | |
| Mood | 181 | 3.79 | 52 |
Good graphics and great feel in game, the music is nice ; but a bit linear, not finished ; overall very good entry for first ludum (i guess ?)
Haha, that reminded me of Supaplex a bit! That's a pretty chill game. Kudos on graphics and animations! Even the buying menus move super smoothly. The controls are a liiittle bit too slippery, but that works well with a pad still.
Maybe add some pictures in your post!
Edit: I see them now |m/
Thanks for the early feedback!
Amazing! I have no idea how you managed to make all this ace artwork in just three days. Fits the theme really well. Good job!
Trust me, I have no idea, either! Thanks for the kind words.
This may be the best game I have played yet. Everything worked pretty smooth except for the buy menu. I couldn't purchase anything. Well done guys!
This game contains some amazing artwork .. and a cute ferret! The absurd situation it is in is just hilarious. The controls are good, but I had the impression that the space station had ice on the floor (which isn't that bad, it's just hard to get used to). Looking at level 1 and 2, this game is very good, and I hope level 3 will be finished someday.
I really liked the game, the controls respond very well, I found the jump a little bit fast, both in the fall and climb .. Music nice.
This game is cool! The jump is wild as hell and I love it. The music is good stuff and fitting -- I like the purchase music best -- and the graphics are a treat. Great work.
@wikidbotta Thanks! The new build (7) fixed the buy menu - it's x on controller and E on keyboard. @the-triumvirate Thank you! I'd love to see level 3 finished too. @mateusculpo Thanks for the feedback, especially about the music ;) @fluidvolt Thank you, glad you liked it. Big thanks for your music comments!
Love the aesthetic, Sprocket is adorable, and the shop system is a nice touch. I feel like the platforming may be a little too slidey personally but that’s a minor gripe, overall this is a fantastic entry, Congrats!
I was so excited to play this, the art looks so cute. Windows only .... :(
I love how running around feels in this game. Yes, the floor seems to be slippery, but to me this added to the "ferretyness" of the game - instead of being just a random jump'n'run character, Sprocket felt like something different while weaseling around the station. The station itself felt a little empty and linear and on my first playthrough I encountered a weird bug where the robot at the end of Level 2 fell through the floor and I could not jump over that small gap. The second time he behaved normally.
The art direction is really cool and I especially like the music. Good job there! Nice little game, keep up the work!
Wow this is incredibly polished for such a short time span!! I think this is my favourite so far. Absolutely fantastic!
@alex-bezuska We just added a Mac build (OS 10.9+). Thanks for the heads up.
I really like the art style and can't believe how well done the game is in such a short amount of time. The only thing I had to complain about was that the character was a bit hard to control in the beginning. Slid around a bit too much for my taste. All in all, a solid entry.
beautiful animations and the sound is excellent. Great job on these aspects.
One thing i'd like you guys to try to improve is the camera. When you move too quickly, the camera is having a hard time following the character. otherwise, the game is very fun to play!
Good job! :)
Solid game! The art and animations look great and it felt pretty good to play. Only wish there was a bit more to it. This could be so much more with a bit more content added. Good job!
There are great art but some issues with realization of visual presentation. The controls are challenging. Good music and a lovely main hero! Want to see a little bit more polish version.
This was a very nice game with a solid artwork, and the music was cool too. I only problem that I faced is that the charcter slides, too much especially small platform.
@furet Thanks!! If your engine can do a web build too it's easy to host on itch.io. Less barrier for people to try your game. I'm excited to try it out. (I'm on Mac and my teammate is on Linux we are the odd ducks, but web covers all your bases)
Really nice art and animations! And good sound too. I started to understand the level design as I got a bit further in - it's all about getting the widget deposits in the right order, as picking up some make others impossible.
I also was frustrated by the sliding. It made moving stressful.
The fluent motion and clear graphics of this of this really sold this game to me, well done.
Nice game. Very good graphics and animations. I like this flat minimalistic style.
This is overall a well made platform game, and both the graphics and music is really good.
Cool game! Weasel cuteness activated!
Nicely done team. Really solid work on with the art, and overall a high level of polish for the 72 hours you had. Cheers!
Amazing! Great graphics and animations and amazing music. Gameplay mechanics are also interesting, but I felt like the controls were too floaty and made me feel like I had very little precision. Other than that, real good job.
Graphics and animations, music and sound effects are great. Being weighed down by stuff you pick up is an interesting idea but doesn't really lead to any interesting gameplay. Maybe you should be able to drop your satchel temporarily or something like that? Jumps are nice but it's too easy to fall off platforms. Camera moves around to much, even to the point where you can't see yourself. Still, a really impressive start.
really nice game guys! fun and simple! there only thing that annoys is controls =( one of the best games in this LD
When it comes to the game itself, I can't think of a lot that hasn't already been mentioned the amazing (and adorable) art, the slippery controls (but only in your unweighted state; when you're laden down the game controls just fine), the nice music, etc.
Well, there is one thing I suppose: I got stuck on a robot when starting the game (because I didn't know it was a mob yet -- is that specified anywhere before you begin?) and after I shook myself loose, I got the same camera-overshoot problem that another commenter had. I sort of suspected that it was because I got stuck earlier, so I restarted, which fixed the problem.
Concerning the Linux build: I had to adjust the permissions, but it's not that much of a big deal. More serious was that I had to force-stop the game when I was done, which was made difficult by it grabbing the focus.
I'm a lot more positive about it than I let on here. Sometimes (not always though) it seems like the more negative comments I have, the more I enjoyed it... :upside_down:
@remco thanks for the review! If you have a sec, would you mind schooling us a bit about linux permissions? This was the first game I've built to Linux, so we're still feeling our way.
Glad you got it to work in the end!
I have made a few platformers and I know it's no easy task, especially in 2 days! But yours really came together with a very interesting mechanic that captures the theme just right. The character is cute, music is upbeat, and the art is good. My one nitpick, which you are most likely aware of is how much you slide around. "More paw less claw.". A little control goes a long way! Other than that Great Job!
@lanedavis When I perform such tasks in Linux, I often find it easiest to open up a terminal (from the menu, or with --I think-- ctrl-T). Maybe you can do this in an easier way from the GUI, but I don't use that, so I can't really explain (also this changes per Linux-distro).
_Long story short_: Just type in `chmod 755
_Extended explanation (which just scratches the surface really)_: In order to view files, first navigate to the directory (with 'cd', just like in dos/windows, -- you can use ~ as a shortcut to your homedir). The command `ls` is sort-of equivalent to 'dir', but in order to view the permissions (and a host of other info), we need `ls -l` or `ls -la` (so often used, there is an alias `ll`).
Now, in front of each file, you see the permissions, something like `rwxr_xr_x`. For 'normal' files (non-directory, non-'device', etc.) the letters, which show the permissions, can be 'r' for Read, 'w' for Write and x for eXecute. As you can see, there are _three_ times a group of three letters, one for (in order) login, 'group' and 'everyone'.
We'll need to change the game-binary to be executable for 'everyone', so we'll use the command 'chmod', short for 'change modifiers' (file modifiers include the permissions). We could use `chmod a+x
Hope that helps! :smile:
P.S. Also useful is `chmod -R 0755
Could have been a very nice entry but i founded that the overall physic of the player was too weird and difficult to control..
Nice artwork - in a few days it is just impressive. Great graphics, animations and music track. Gameplay mechanics are interesting, but the controls were too smooth - weird. Overall a very good entry. Thank you for playing my game in your video ++
Super-slick music, great sound effects, and very nice art. This has a lot of character.
Unfortunately my impression was that the controls really worked against me. Since this game has such a high polish in all the other areas, and I think a few tweaks could change the feel a lot, I'll go into some detail here. But don't take the fact that I'm going into detail on the critique side means I think this is a bad entry. On the contrary, it's because it's good that I dive into the area for improvement.
Here is a short unlisted youtube video of me demonstrating my difficulties with the camera and movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80uplWd4wJg
I'll highlight a few of the issues that I have:
1) CAMERA: The camera is pretty wild in how fast/far it whips ahead of my motion. The most obvious problem is demonstrated at the start of the video, where the main character is totally off the screen. But more generally, the camera was so eager to change positions that I felt it to be very disorienting.
2) INERTIA: It's okay to give a bit of inertia to a character, but I feel it takes too long for your character to get up to speed, and then to get back down to a stop. I had serious control issues. In the video you can see I struggle badly with a basic jump. At the 17 second mark you see an example of where the air control inertia is too high: I have positioned myself near the base of the platform and I jump and then hit right, but the character does not start meaningfully moving right until later than I expect. I fail to make the leap I wanted. The next try, at the 21 second mark, I start pressing right immediately and I do manage to ramp up the air control to get on the platform, but then upon letting go of the controls I slide right off because the high inertia causes a slipperiness. I think I would feel more in control of the character if the time between direction-press and full-speed (or full-stop) were significantly shorter.
3) JUMP INPUTS: At 54 seconds you can see a clear instance of where I press the jump key but don't get a jump. I even get the jumping sound effect! You could consider adding the "ghost jump" idea where if I was on a platform in the last ~100ms or so, you let me jump even if I'm currently not. That way, input lag won't rob me of jumps. At 13 seconds you can see another instance of where I get the sound effect without a jump, this time on the ground. A window of time where you'll buffer a jump to see if I land in an instant is nice to add, so that I don't lose a jump if I press the input a frame before landing.
A jam is time-constrained, but my advice is to spend a LOT of your time just moving around with your character, especially for an action game. Try spending 15 straight minutes right now with your game, just in that zone from my movie, leaping up onto the various blocks. Do it over and over and over for that 15 straight minutes. See if you can stick all your jumps, and if you feel like a total boss. If you don't feel like you're smooth and in charge, you have to start grinding out all that little stuff that really matters in the feel. 15 minutes is *nothing* either, I do this for hours and hours over the course of an LD!
OK I'll stop being hard on you about feel, which again I only do because you have such an awesome game in the other aspects!
I liked your character, your environment, the whole thing felt tightly cohesive in its presentation. There were lots of awesome little touches to the animation, such as the way the character rolls when landing from a jump over a certain height. You could really do something awesome with a handful of feel tweaks to bring me into the game's world.
Hope that's a helpful write-up and not going too far!
Also, thanks for doing your 1-minute rip through a whole slew of these on youtube, that was great to watch. :)