raffe 2018-04-23 13:34
You could have done some kind of background instead of only one solid color. The game works well and looks fine! Good job!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD41 → Code T
By good-enough
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 553 | 3.02 | 21 | |
| Fun | 624 | 2.63 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 588 | 2.84 | 21 | |
| Theme | 662 | 2.60 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 596 | 2.57 | 21 | |
| Audio | 509 | 1.83 | 17 | |
| Humor | 398 | 2.47 | 19 | |
| Mood | 563 | 2.55 | 21 |
You could have done some kind of background instead of only one solid color. The game works well and looks fine! Good job!
@raffe Yeah, the sum of my texture building was "White square, blue square, red square, ... green square, and we're done!" On the main level, the background has grid lines to keep the feeling of movement.
The moving mechanics are nice. Didn't like how the character stayed in front of the text. Slightly bizarre choice of texts - if it was something funny you wrote, this could quickly be a very good game!
@radical-dog Ha ha, right, I just went and picked a book off of gutenberg.org that I thought an eccentric engineer might pick pass phrases from. Initially, I was planning to have the pass phrases picked at random from the whole book, but the time it would have taken to make that work nicely was too much.
Interesting concept. The movement feels extremely smooth, especially for the engine. The puuzzle mechanic was clear and easy to understand.
Sad you didn't make the bg because i like it <3
Walking around took some time, so I started to try to remember large portions of text. Not word for word of course. ;) Doing that for engineering books on surface treatments would be excruciating. But after "badger-hair brushes" I got back to the first hallway. I was confused. There was nowhere else to go. But I saw through the wall that there was another passageway. So I ended the game there. I liked the placement of doors and texts. It was overwhelming at one point, but I got through it.
It was (altho the player sometimes blocking the test was annoying) fun, and I quite like the 2 themes used in the game. Good job
It mostly controls well (although the player seems to get stuck when jumping up through a platform and moving left or right) but the main idea of having to memorize words from a book doesn't seem that fun to me. It isn't really challenging or anything, it just slows the player down.
I basically agree with what others have said already. Controls are smooth as hell (almost too smooth one could say) and the player blocking the text is not ideal, but just a minor issue. I really like the (albeit very simple) visuals, especially the character animation, and the choice of background colors for the different areas. It's also always nice to have all the required explanations directly within the game instead of having to read a wall of text as preparation.
Only downside for me was that the puzzle mechanics felt more like work than fun - there was no real thinking or puzzling involved for the most part, just scanning text basically.
I thought this was a decent amount of fun. I ended up beating the game - almost got stuck, not on the last password so much (which I came close to guessing from context before I found what I needed), but on finding the computer that I hadn't entered the correct password into yet to get to the underground section - I ended up just following the wall all the way along until I saw it. Would have been nice to make password computers, especially ones you hadn't entered a password into, more distinct, or glow like quest objectives or something. In any case, I enjoyed this.
Yeah, the theme falls slightly flat, in that this has a very escape room feel. It is kind of a cross with a story game, or book or something - that is to say the mechanic by which you escape is pretty unique. There also isn't platforming to speak of, despite being a platformer. I did like the platforming mechanics that were there though. Especially that holding down doesn't shoot you through ground platforms. It was nice to have that added bit of control. There was the problem with colliding with the floor from the side stopping your jump, that could have been better.
I liked the way that irrelevant parts of the level were closed off as you progressed. It made it easier to navigate the areas. It's one case I would have especially liked some sound effects, so you could hear areas closing when you opened a path - just so you weren't confused later on. Would have been nice to change the coloring of the background wall to further divide sections of the level as well, to help the player keep their bearings a bit easier.
Of course there's no audio that I could detect, and the humor was only in the 'random = funny' sense of learning minutiae about coating processes. The mood was reasonably good, computers and hidden passwords, secret doors, and laser grids. Even the silence wasn't too out of place in a game that should theoretically be stealth oriented. I really would have liked if our protagonist was more of an agent type though. Something a bit sunglasses and suit oriented maybe =P.
The graphics worked well, but most of it was quite simple. The font was a bit problematic at times, especially the 'a', whose tail was too long, and some of the capital letters were a bit low on detail, and thus difficult to make out clearly.
I actually wanted to use something like this in a game (looking through books to find information), so it's interesting to see an implementation and get a feel for what the gameplay experience might be like. I found it surprisingly challenging to pick out the relevant information, although it helped a lot to form a general idea what each 'book' covered, so I would know where I might find the information I'm looking for.
Overall, I actually quite enjoyed this, it was a really good amount of content, and the gameplay was unique enough to keep me interested. I also like _Choice of Games_ titles though, so I may be unique in the amount of reading I enjoy in my games =P. In any case, good effort.
Wow, just checking up this and I find a lot of comments! Thanks everyone for spending the time to play my game, and good luck with this coming jam!
@gamecarpenter Hey, Thanks for such an in-depth review! It's encouraging that some people found CodeT not totally boring like my siblings did when I forced them to play test it for me! =P I'll be sure to check out your games in the upcoming Ludum Dare jams!