Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Poser
By peachtreeoath, gswong, Allenia Lee, elykyevrah, DoubleDragonBimmy, Watashi, evedoll, Zetafactor, Dcarter599 and deadlytoothpick
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 584 | 3.44 | 61 | |
| Fun | 694 | 3.17 | 62 | |
| Innovation | 171 | 3.69 | 60 | |
| Theme | 501 | 3.50 | 62 | |
| Graphics | 784 | 3.10 | 62 | |
| Audio | 368 | 3.36 | 59 | |
| Humor | 415 | 3.25 | 58 | |
| Mood | 689 | 3.13 | 60 |
Overall a pretty good game that matches the theme in pretty unique way. Also props for having a good, lengthy tutorial. I also like how each clique had a unique mechanic. That being said there's only so much enjoyment I can get from standing next to people while avoiding others. To end on a high note, the art was also quite nice and there were plenty of assets despite the short time period. Overall this is definitely one of the more unique games I've played this jam.
Interesting take on the theme.
Gamified the feeling of scool cliques well.
I liked that there were different songs and mechanics for each clique.
Quite the sad naritive though. I share danman's like of the fact that each group had their own mechanic. Overall a very good little game. the music was cute, whoever did that props!.
Very innovative idea, i like how each group has their own 'mechanic' and music change is also very nice. There could be more mechanics to getting popular with groups than just standing near them. Maybe throwing ball at jocks, doing sick tricks with skaters etc. But of course due to the time limitation it is understandable. I like graphics, pretty cute and easy to read. Music is also pretty neat. In overall pretty fun, innovative game.
Well that was different for sure. I enjoyed it. Congrats on your entry ;)
Ha! I like it. It took me a moment to work it out, but, really, your game teaches the mechanics quite well. You always do a great job with the audio.
Who knew furries were a clique.
@Zeriver Totally! We brainstormed out 15 different cliques and considered each one having its own mechanic for reputation gain rather than AOE but alas.
Got to hold a furries hand for points. +1
Love that skater melody! Great job on the project!
Yet another really original idea. And executed well to boot! My absolute favorite part is how the music shifts when you change clothes. It had my wife and I laughing out loud. Also, kudos on organizing with such a big team! That's amazing.
Neat concept, I had fun. Could have used some polish, though.
Interesting game idea
Thats a really unique and interesting idea. The skater control was a bit hard for me - all I did was look at my prey but forgot about the other cliquetypes - but thats my problem here. Well done by all of you.
Interesting Gameplay and the music was ok so far. The Tutorial was really good and explained the whole game.
In Total it was a pretty good game, In only expected a bit more of such a big team.
Well Done
Very nice idea but the game is kind of boring to play. Also the music was a bit annoying if you listen too long.
I played to the end. It exceeded my expectations that I had from reading the description. There are a lot of careful details, which are really nice.
Firstly the mechanics could easily have been as confusing as heck, but they were minimally explained and then tutorialized just the right amount. This was well designed!
Next, I had transparency into the underlying system. When making friends, not only did the bar go up, but the green circle visibly expanded as well. This later had gameplay implications when I was being a poser, but it also reinforced the learning phase and kept things totally clear throughout. The bar alone might have been trickier to see, for example when learning to be the skater, I wasn't sure if just being near was enough, or if there was some spacebar mechanic I had to use - but nope, I passed by another skater and saw the circle expand and knew what to do.
The separate mechanics for each clique are of course the showcase feature. And they are key to it all working. I enjoyed the skater the most, because I'm a fan of unusual movement systems. But the difference in move speed between the furry and the jock was also quite significant, and the ability to hold hands and take a furry with you away from trouble, or to flee danger but use the ball toss to beckon a jock with you, this all mattered in the later stages. The strategy I settled on was to do the furriest first while there was nothing to lose, and then convert to skater because while they are fast they are a little awkward and need room to maneuver. I finished with the jock, who has the fast but simple movement, and the ability to beckon another jock away from trouble, so they were good at cleaning up last.
I don't know what it is, but maybe there is some insight that can make me change up my approach. Once I got decent, I would always switch, do that entire set, and then move on to the next and never come back. It may have been fun to be force to switch more, and hammered the thematic message of being a poser home even harder. Given that my approach was the same once I'd learned the rules, I was glad the game wasn't any longer.
But my favorite detail of all was one I didn't even notice at first. And that is the ghostly normal student which you can only half see. These sub-humans are not in the social cliques I am interested in, and so they hardly even exist! That was a really great small supporting detail to include.
And of course I shouldn't neglect to mention the fun music and how it switched between cliques to reinforce the identity shifting.
It's amazing to me that your crew can make games in such a large group! I still remember enjoying Meteor Jam, and looking back at it I notice there is much but not full overlap on the team members. Makes me curious about your backstory.
Anyway, congrats on an intriguing entry that clearly had a lot of thought and care put in!
@pkenney your reviews are always so introspective, they give incredible insight into what a player is thinking as they're playing :)
My goal is pretty simple. Any gaming friend I have I try to bring into gamedev because I know everyone has great ideas in their head and would love to take a crack at it regardless of their skillsets. Some people are already veterans of their craft, and others I'll teach Unity/art/music/design so they can contribute somehow. Despite what some people think, this is a terrible idea for optimal game quality, as it is super chaotic coordinating everything at once. Regardless, this makes for a really fun environment and we are also forced to churn out some pretty crazy ideas in order to satisfy the entire group. I'm constantly growing the crew, and usually if they're missing from the roster it's only because of scheduling conflicts. Thanks for asking!
There were some good and interesting design choices here! I especially liked the addition of the radar. The different movement mechanics were nice to experiment with to try and separate the cliques, but I still feel more feedback is needed (for example I couldn't tell if pressing space did anything as a skater. Great work, especially with such a large team size!
Nice game ! After the ntutorial I understood the goal of the difficult movements of the skater ;)
I enjoyed the different controls for the game, the map was a good guideline and the only real downside was that the music got pretty annoying
Funny game! I like the graphics! :)
The game is... strange. I don't know why buy it is! Also I'm really like the gameplay! The skateborde moving is the best. Good luck
I love the mechanism of throwing ball! This simple mechanism just let this game become a lot more strategical and level up the gameplay! Great job!
I felt like I was playing some weird and wicked Comic-Con turf war of sorts and I enjoyed it a lot. I like how the theme is relevant on more than one aspect: Having more suits makes it harder to keep everyone satisfied, and it's harder to move around the more satisfied they are. You really squeezed the theme to its limits.
Most importantly, it's mechanics were the best. Just switching suits and avoiding the "enemies" would have been enough to make the game into an interesting stealth game, but actually adding different movements and skills to each clique made it far more tactical. For me, going for skater, then jock, then furry worked out the best, although I kinda thing that leaving Jocks for last would have been more optimal.
Also, I couldn't help but to notice that this entry is one with the largest teams I've seen so far. Most entries are 3 or 4 people tops. How did you manage to organize a team of that size? That's quite impressive, and possibly worth a post in the main site.
Well, once again, congratulations on making a game with such deepness. [In behalf of my team](twitter.com/whalesandgames), we're looking forward to seeing your future projects. Kudos! :whale:
Nice game! I liked that you had different music and different movements for each different costume. I also liked that the radius of the circles of your friends got bigger over time, and with the red en green circles it was clear to see who were your friends at that moment. I finished the game, but actually in the last level I got a bit bored and almost quit. My strategy was always: skaters, furries and then jocks.
Great entry with a good concept for the theme!
Good job!
Awesome game. Really liked the idea, I think it was very original and a great approach to the theme. I enjoyed that there was a learning curve before throwing all 3 types at the same time, but even then, with the help of the different mechanics I had some fun trying to avoid the wrong crowd. I think you managed to create a very well balanced game and a really original experience. Congratulations!
Balancing your rep among different groups can be a fun mechanic and using different outfits to do so is a cool idea. I really like that each outfit had its own mechanics; thought the football throwing idea was great, the skater controls not so much. It would be nice if there was some kind of mission you had to do to increase your rep, even if it was just a fetch quest, rather than just standing next to people for a while.
The graphics were OK, it would be nice if the movement animations only played while you were actually moving. It might be nice if the level design was more interconnected too, so you could take different paths to get around. The music was good but did get repetitive quickly.
Great idea, but a bit boring after a while. I didn't find it much of a challenge to avoid the cliques that I was not currently posing as, and I think what this game needs is for it to be almost inevitable for there to be some loss of reputation now and again, otherwise you can just do one group, then the next, and so on. I think it needs to be more of a balancing act. I don't really have any suggestions for how to achieve that though. I liked the different mechanics per clique and especially the change in the music, very fun ideas.
I really liked the idea. And some of the moves where really fun. It was very cute how the jocks just ran wherever the ball went. They were a bit greedy for attention though. The hand-holding furries were much easier to deal with. And skaters falling in-between. In some way that seems like a fair way to structure the game.
I also liked how I got to practice with easy type before trying out getting everyone happy.
Now I might not have figured out how you were to throw that ball, but it was very tedious to get the individual jocks to appreciate me. And skaters moderately hard. So it basically took too long. I would instead suggest making it easier to get popular, still retaining the differences in how you interact with the distinct groups. But if that isn't difficult enough. I would have everyone slowly loose their status over time too. I think that would be a better way to balance and make the challenge fun and rewarding.
I really like the idea. Maybe we need new costumes more we advance in the levels? Anyway, I like having a mini tutorial, it's a nice touch :)
Brilliant idea, and I love the way it was introduced. As others have said, it is clear to get feedback on your actions, and the first levels offer a smooth way of learning the game mechanics! Besides, each of them are different enough, offering a nice degree of variability.
Well done!
I really enjoyed this!! I really love how you worked the theme in, the more friendship you have the harder it is to get around them. Great submission!