Delve

gavin-camlin 2018-04-23 20:35

I love the style of this game! The art is super well done and the character super expressive! A problem I had was that I was kinda lost on what I was doing, I knew interacting with some stuff would make some values go up and down but I could never tell which ones were going up and which were going down. I would add some sort of feed back so that the player knows(maybe have the numbers flash red or green). Another thing was the size of the window, I'm not sure if this was just a problem that I had but it was really small. There also didn't seem to be a way to resize it. Overall the game looks great and seems like it has potential! If you keep on working on it I'm sure it'll come out great!

radioactiverambo 2018-04-23 20:40

Nice work. This game looks gorgeous and the controls work smoothly. You have provent that the genres platformer and management certainly aren't incompatible, but actually a lot of fun. I do have one suggestion: it took me a few tries to understand what exactly I had to do (oxygen, water, energy) and where I should do it. Maybe update the game description (or add a short tutorial) to make the game easier accessible. Overall, a very good entry.

2018-04-23 20:44

Very well made and balanced, plus the art is beautiful, had a lot of fun with it, only wish the amount of days survived was shown in the end.

handle 2018-04-23 20:57

Great fun after I figured it out, but not very intuitive at first. I do wish it could be resized!

formalcloud 2018-04-24 05:24

This is an excellent entry! Tight controls, great artwork, and an awesome mashing of the two genres. Great work all around!

jima 2018-04-24 19:05

Well, at first, you have really cool graphics and nice controls.

And now for the bad part. This game is really confusing at first. I almost gave up but then I reread your description and decided to give it another chance. You should have added some kind of small tutorial to the game. After some time I thought that I understood how to play it but then player dies of unknown cause (all stats were at least at 20).

neon 2018-04-25 13:25

I like the feel of the game a lot. Pressing buttons repeatedly to emulate effort, and tight movement contorls make the character feel very good. Balancing all the stats was very hard, and coffee started to really feel like a requirement after few tries. Overall, a very good game. Good controls, good graphics, good feel. :ok_hand:

differentname 2018-04-25 16:42

Impressive game with good art and controls. It's really tough keeping all those resources in check!

riordan 2018-04-25 19:05

@gavin-camlin I do agree on the lack of feedback for the numbers. It's one of those things that I intended to add but didn't make it in the release. As for the window size, it was a compromise I had to make to maintain pixel perfect graphics. I'll see what I can do about these.

@Handle I already updated the description with your feedbacks. I forgot about not putting up how to play the game. A tutorial was planned for the game but, like the value feedback, it didn't make it on release. About the window size, I do wish that too. Haha.

@RadioactiveRambo Thank you for reminding me about the lack of instructions. After you left your feedback, I updated the description and added some how to play images in the itch.io page. I'll look into adding a tutorial in-game. :)

@Jima The death by unknown cause is a known bug. Although, it's also possible that to miss "Depth", which was located in the top center if the screen. If it goes beyond 400, it also spells a Game Over.

@WarIIn This was another thing I didn't get to add. It was planned too. I'll see if I can add this in the future.

**@differentname @FormalCloud @Neon and the others, thank you very much for the feedback!** My apologies for replying late.

kwisarts 2018-04-25 21:36

I agree with the feedback, the beginning feels confusing! Aside that, graphics are pretty sweet!

maytch 2018-04-26 05:53

Great graphics! Can't say much else except perhaps replace the coffee with a slightly faster walk speed?

riordan 2018-04-26 09:38

@Maytch Thank you! The addition of coffee in the game was my tie-in for another game jam's theme, where Delve is also an entry. I might remove it after the game jams. :)

ekkoekko 2018-04-26 11:22

Cool 2d pixel art!!!! 5 out 5 Sir. 😍

reality-blind 2018-04-26 13:54

First tries are a bit overwhelming when you don't really know what you're doing, you have to learn few things before starting a real playthrough.

I enjoyed the ambience, that poor professor running everywhere and drinking too much coffee made me laugh 😄 I read you want to remove coffee, but don't : having a way to speed up the character is a really good idea !

It took me 4 or 5 tries to succeed, so you achieved a huge goal : making a management game easy to learn. Great job !

croewens 2018-04-26 15:07

Easy 5 stars for me.

:heart: What I loved * Gameplay & overal feel * The artwork is soooo good!!! * Smooth controls * Awesome mix of the 2 genres

:thinking: My Thoughts * Don’t remove coffee!!! I love the way you can speed up your character. * It takes some time to know what you’re doing, but it’s really fun afterwards!

Overall great entry and I’d love for you to review my submission as well.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/keyboard-warrior

bodaciouslycrazy 2018-04-27 02:02

Well done of this game! The graphics were clean and the controls felt perfect. It was quite fun! I wish there were sound effects, specifically notifying you of a stat about to cause a problem. Otherwise, this game was great!

pranjalbisht 2018-04-27 05:45

Wow, that was...hectic! Kept me on my toes, running all over the place trying not do die! Awesome artwork, feels very consolidated.

Some gripes I had with the game:

- You start off at the depth control, but since depth never goes below(above?!) 200m, I had no idea, for a long time what the first console did; because I tried to use it right at the start and nothing happened. That made the whole game confusing at the start because I didn't get anything after interacting with a console.(I was just running around getting high on coffee until i found the others XD) - The interactable stuff needs to stand out more(visually), otherwise it looks just like the other non-interactable things; unless you get close and get the prompt. Especially depth console, with that screen on it that's in multiple places. - It wasn't clear if a stat was at the max, and I had to remember all the max values or waste time, because I intuitively thought each would have a max value of 100. 100, 80, 80, 90 seemed very random.

There was perhaps a collision bug around the power system(slope not working as intended?) but that's not a problem since this is a jam game, and you could get around by jumping.

Even so, once I'd figured out where all the systems were and what they did I had a lot of fun playing it. The visual cues on those were done nicely. Good job, and good luck!

caterein 2018-04-29 19:02

Good job! Some comments:

- maybe consider adding some background music and audio? I think that would have contributed to the atmospheric feel of the game, which was already really well done - as others have mentioned, make clear which elements are being affected by what the character is interacting with

Overall, really well done!

riordan 2018-04-29 23:21

@pranjalbisht The player starting out in the room where the control center (the depth control station) is located can be mostly explained by the absent story. Same goes for why the maximum values for some resources are not 90. I planned to include a repairing mechanic but that and the story unfortunately didn't make it.

For the slopes, there aren't any. :) They will appear in the post game jam version though.

@caterein @reality-blind @Bodaciouslycrazy @croewens @EkkoEkko and the others, thank you very much for playing the game. I really do appreciate your comments and suggestions. :)

jsmars 2018-04-30 08:36

Very cool idea and nice execution! I actually had a similar one a few years ago :D It was a bit hard to understand which machines go to which resource, it would be nice with an icon over them when passing or something, and also some sound effects and music would go a long way in this game.

biobazard 2018-05-04 17:16

A simple idea but well executed ! I love the graphics ! Good job !

ruslana 2018-05-05 23:29

Nice game!

diptoman 2018-05-14 02:19

Loved how expressive the animations are (even how the door opened hahah). Also reminded me of a game I made a few LDs ago, so there's that - but really good stuff overall. I didn't hear any audio (and you turned teh category off, so I assume tehre wasn't any) - but that would've added a lot to the "expressiveness" of the game too. Great job!