jeremy-wolf 2017-12-05 03:37
Game play is pretty fun and reasonably well polished. Biggest complaint is the camera, a smooth follow would make the game more enjoyable.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Forgotten Machines
By saphires
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 590 | 3.43 | 25 | |
| Fun | 373 | 3.52 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 753 | 2.97 | 25 | |
| Theme | 1021 | 2.71 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 205 | 4.13 | 25 | |
| Humor | 784 | 2.47 | 20 | |
| Mood | 690 | 3.13 | 24 |
Game play is pretty fun and reasonably well polished. Biggest complaint is the camera, a smooth follow would make the game more enjoyable.
Thanks for the feedback @jeremy-wolf, will keep it in mind next time :)
Pretty fun game! I played it for a while and it definitely got crazy haha. It got to the point where the game wasn't smoothly anymore though :/
@benjamin-san-souci Thanks, haha I didn't plan for anybody to get that far, probably should've thought of a win condition too, or increase the difficulty so nobody gets that far. Thanks for the feedback! :)
Lol, I've played it quite long only from sheer interest of how many upgrades you can take until my line of shooting didn't fit the screen even diagonally! It seems that upgrades are infinite, are them? That was funny though. But you quickly becomes pretty much invincible.
Visuals are great, game models looks really good and pleasant to look at.
On the technical notes, the camera movement is pretty jerky and makes gameplay little uncomfortable.
I love the pixel-art 3d look, I think it looks great! I played the HTML5 button-- if I started clicking while moving the movement would bug out and stick to one direction, and the firing would happen erratically. Neat looking game tho!
Very funny game, nice graphics. The animations are really cool ! When you go super upgraded, it becomes so messy ! Those boom-boom everywhere XD
I tried both the web build and the Windows build and couldn't make the firing work while moving. I had to sit still when firing and even then it was intermittent. It's really a shame because I loved the graphics and sound. The enemies that float over to you and sit right on top of you seem difficult, maybe they'd be easier if I could have moved backward and fired at the same time.
I played the game, then I read the comments. I was surprised when you said, "I didn’t plan for anybody to get that far." Anyway, with this theme, so many games went the route of becoming impossible, because they created tons of enemies, or weight, or whatever their thing was. So, I'm glad you didn't go that route. I got a kick out of the direction you took this - the more you have the worse it is for the enemy. Which is why I'm surprised you didn't expect anybody would get that far. I don't know if you thought people would quit on the game or what, but you literally become invincible. But, it was fun. I enjoyed my experience. The look and feel was nice. And, I appreciated the freshness. Thanks. Here's a pic from my game:
ForgottenMachines.png
P.S. I played directly on the web and had zero issues with firing or anything.
Thanks a lot for the feedback everybody, much appreciated! I set up a github repo (linked as "Source Code" above) and intend to fix everything pointed out here. :)
@sun-wukong: I tried to create a smart camera system which focuses on the area between cursor and character. I now realize a simple but working camera system would've been better than a smart but half-assed one. Keeping it in mind next time and I'll update this one for sure.
@ahintoflime @disperse I never experienced this problem, neither did my testers, but I'll definitely look into it, sounds like quite the gamebreaker here. Could you maybe provide some infos which systems you were using if possible?
@mgadrat: Glad you like it!
@cubeeo: I worded that wrong, I didn't initially plan for anyone to get that far was what I tried to say. ^^
Hey this was really fun! I really liked the lowpoly machines and the whole art style. Collecting the powerups was fun and it was surprising to see how powerful you become, but imo it did make things a bit too easy... Perhaps harder (or just more) enemies later, or limited duration powerups would keep the pace steady? Another little suggestion is a tiny bit of smoothing on the camera movement. I loved how it moved with the aiming direction, but suddenly switching would throw it across quite a lot. But overall, a really good-looking and fun game! :)
Hey @samboyer276, thanks a lot for your feedback! I'm definitely planning on fixing the stuff you mentioned, first of all the balancing. I already implemented most of the stuff you mentioned (available at the github repository). Next is smoother camera movement :)
Fun little game :D my only real issue is the camera, and a bit of collision.
interesting game.. the camera had some weird behavior in a few spots and the loot would fall outside of where you could go and you wouldn't walk everywhere.
Great game, loved the 3d pixel art, how did you get the 3d models to look so realistically pixel art? Music helps with the mood too. Good gameplay mechanics, I felt it was easy to control the mecha, however couldn't make it fire while walking around, which makes it harder.
I think the pixel art on the edges/limits of the green ground are way too low res, kinda off from the rest of the look/feel. Also, I can see Unity's skybox where there's no ground limit (to the sides).
Other than that, really liked it, great work :)
Great looking game (kind of reminded me of original DS games). Gameplay was a little bit too easy and with no real goal or interaction besides shooting up enemies, I got bored quickly. The borders of the map are also a little strangely placed and decorated but overall I enjoyed the experience :-)
Are you sure this got worse the more you got? :) I played for a while (on Web) and after a while it got quite silly with my line of shots stretching from one end of the screen to the next. Kind of fun though for a while. Some of the sound effects got a bit too loud when they happened too close. The camera was a bit too jerky when swapping aiming direction. Other than that, the 3D/2D combo worked nicely and the game ran smoothly.
Played the original HTML5 build -- also ran into the same input issues as disperse did, though it didn't make much of a difference since you just need to hold down left click anyways, so you just need it to register once.
@nekomews: Thanks, I agree with the camera. Are you referring to the invisible bounds with the collision issue or something else?
@jason-kennedy: True, noted and will fix this! thx
@saramartins: Spot on observation with the texel density on the adges, need to fix that. Odd you couldn't run and fire, definitely need to look into that. Because of time constraints I only implemented a fire mode which uses a big delay in the beginning, so you get a constant fire rate when just holding down the mouse button, not one shot per mouse click. Maybe that was the issue? If so, it's on my todo list!
@king-kujito: Thanks, glad you enyojed it. Felt so too, next time I'll make sure to leave some time for balancing ;)
@local-minimum: Nice user name hehe Great observation with the sounds, putting it on my todo list! Camera will be redone too!
@ddrkirbyisq: Glad you found this one out, I'll implement a one-shot-per-click firing mechanic until the fire rate is up to a certain threshold when holding down is more convenient to fire.
Thanks to all of you, I'll checkout and rate your games now :)
Graphics and animations are great. I felt that I was overpowered the whole time, but I think this is something that you want to change in future updates? Great LD entry, if you keep up the work, this would become a nice full game :) btw. I had the most fun beeing overpowered and getting a literally light lance as a weapon while shooting countless bullets. The fun stopped as I didn't got any challenge after a while. Maybe this experience is something you want to takle in future updates.
2017-12-28 17H35M52.png
That was definitely a bullet-powered experience. First off all, It's nice to see another person tackle the theme as it getting worse _to the enemy_, and I think the whole upgrade-based gameplay transmitted that theme interpretation very clearly. It was endearing to see the number and spread of bullets increasing as I collected the different upgrades found on the crates and which enemies dropped, although I never really got to the exact same level of chaos as the gifs you included in the images in the description. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
As others have mentioned though, the one thing that really felt off in regards to the gameplay was the camera controls. I felt that, both of the times I played, immediately after moving and attempting to aim, the machine became un-centred in regards to the camera, making it hard to see what exactly was in some of the sides of my surroundings. The low FOV also didn't help much in regards to this, and it would have been nice to have the camera just slightly a bit more zoomed out, especially with the previous issue present.
The graphical presentation is overall one of the best aspects of the game and I really liked the whole pixel-art inspired texture and model work. However, sometimes I would get the particles/feedback, such as the cube collecting particle and the explosions stuck on screen. I don't know if it was intended effect (although I wouldn't think so) but it felt off to see them like that. Seeing the Unity default skybox and the completely off-style grass tiles at the edges of the map was also slightly immersion breaking.
[In behalf of our team](https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames), congratulations on making it through your first _Ludum Dare_ with such a action packed entry, even with all the points I mentioned previously! Being able to successfully going through one is just the first step to many other great ones, and we personally can't wait to see what you create next! Cheers! :whale: