FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD42 → Brain's little symbiont

Brain's little symbiont

By local-minimum and picapica

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall10222.9756
Fun9442.8653
Innovation5273.2453
Theme11932.4353
Graphics9522.8754
Humor2093.4153
Mood5293.1953

Comments

noah-j 2018-08-13 11:51

Yo, pretty good ! like the weirdness of it ! not really sure with the theme but got my attention for sure !

pixelshorts 2018-08-14 21:28

It's a little too weird for my liking. It's interesting and I like the concept but I just kept either getting lost or trapped!

powlow-paolo 2018-08-14 21:30

This reminds me of Frog Fractions. It's got that unexplained/mystery feel to it. Good job!

danielbarca 2018-08-14 21:30

The game is really nice but I don't think it goes with the theme. You should also work with the gameplay, it's pretty funny but it lacks things to do. Anyway I love the graphics (did you inspire in VVVVVV?) and I think this could lead to something pretty neat. Overall I had a lot of fun with it.

peachtreeoath 2018-08-15 04:27

Played it through twice hoping to get a true ending lol. I actually liked the world you created, it was pretty engaging and I looked forward to how you tackled each part of Dr McSneer since you made each one pretty different. I'm interested in what you think about Bitsy, it's the first time I've heard of it. Did it have any limitations to you or was it perfect for your scope?

local-minimum 2018-08-15 18:22

@peachtreeoath Thanks for the feedback. Bitsy was really interesting and hard. I just used the core, and that left me with very few options of gamifying the experience. Not that it was high on my list of priorities. I had no experience going into the LD. Except for checking in some dialogues if enough items of certain kinds had been picked up all coding was limited to a single variable `q`. This meant that I could spend the entire time (almost) writing dialogue, playing around in the editor and doing pixel graphics (not really something that comes natural to be). So while I might not want to do it each time it was very much worth the experience.

@danielbarca I agree about the theme, I was more "inspired by" than actually attempting to follow it (which is kind of how the theme is intended after all). Gamification was really hard to achieve in the Bitsy editor without extentions since there's next to no coding possible and very little manipulation of the game world. There are probably smart things that can be done with the little available that I didn't think of... but the point of using Bitsy was to have very little focus on gamification and code. Instead almost all time was spent on pixels and text.

@powlow-paolo oh that's a very nice game to be associated with!

annie-owl 2018-08-15 22:27

That was an odd experience, to say the least. I don't think I've got the story, but trying to figure it out while navigating human body was an interesting process.

simonhutchinson 2018-08-16 17:50

Love it. Deeply disturbing and wonderful pixel graphics. Surprisingly involved for a Bitsy game.

Thanks for once again bringing to light the horrors of the human condition.

(oh, and it needs music... like disturbing body ambiences like in "Inside").

vinvirinvi 2018-08-16 22:50

wow this is really interesting! thinking of the body in such way gives me a kind of nauseous feel but at the same time it is kind of exciting and together with the little world which is satisfying to explore it makes for such a peculiar experience... i liked this surreal atmosphere a lot. and i think it doesn't need any gamification really, you already did a great job. its value is in surrealness of experience, the way it amazes your brain, and it already has this exploring-the-world-and-interacting-with-char- ...organs part.

local-minimum 2018-08-18 07:45

@simonhutchinson very glad you liked it and I do agree that if I hadn't given myself the restriction to only use core Bitsy (a bit a lazy thing to not have to deal with sound I should admit) there would have been sloshes, splashes and ambiance all around. I really should have done that, shouldn't I. I might actually steal that "Bringing to light the horrors of the human condition" to be my mission here on LDJAM.

@vinvirinvi thanks for the feedback! I did get a bit on the fence a bit there in my previous comment. :wink:

wesxdz 2018-08-18 18:55

That was beautiful. My favorite was the appendix. The pixel art was distinctly flavored between rooms and that helped convey mood to me. I do feel like there might have been some cool opportunities to use the theme through mechanics, but those were not explored.

blushine 2018-08-19 08:17

Wow, this person I adventured through seemed to be dealing with some stuff. I hope they're doing ok. I felt like there were definitely some kind of messages going on, but I wasn't quite sure I was understanding them fully.

jcwelgemoed 2018-08-19 10:16

Definitely a unique experience :)

coal-creek-game-devs 2018-08-19 14:30

I loved this game! The art was exceptional, though I would've liked some distinction between places you can and can't travel. Most of the walkable area was easy to see or figure out, but sometimes the paths look like walls or inaccessible areas. Sound would've been awesome too, especially like a weird ambient Atari kind of sound. The theme could've been a little more prevalent, but I kind of see where it fits in. I'm looking forward to seeing a "fleshed" out version! ^_^ (Alex from CCGD)

moonvalk 2018-08-19 15:58

A quirky and cool little game you have here. Enjoyable, although the theme implementation was a bit lacking. Good work!

ctrble 2018-08-21 03:46

Love the graphics and theme of this. I had a great time exploring the body, haha.

cristihkj 2018-08-25 09:56

Great game! Very cool and interesting! :D

steing 2018-08-25 13:06

It's got to be the first time i see this kind of game in the jam ! Pretty original, even if at first it may not be very clear, but i totally took pleasure to get every dialogues ! Great game ! Keep it up !

ely-shaffir 2018-08-25 14:00

"this is how biology works now", lol. I didn't really understand what happened but the game was enjoyable overall. Very creative, and suprisingly I've also enjoyed the silly art, but the game probably needs a bit more description.

glock00 2018-08-25 14:13

Definitely a learning experience for the player (+1 for innovation because of this) and something to think about! Cool game, I like it!

eric-kulbiej 2018-08-25 17:39

Great art style and sound. Good job. I like the mechanics as well. Keep it up!

Please do check my game maybe you’ll like it and leave some feedback.

sibi 2018-08-26 11:27

Very educational! :D Cool art style but could use some music and sound effects.

tom7 2018-08-26 14:55

This is good. Reminded me of some ZZT stuff. Hard to predict! I only played once, but if the Bristol stool scale is my score... amazing :) For a pixely game, it would have been nice for the pixels to be exact (some are blurry for me, probably because it is being resized to something other than an integer multiple). I also found it a bit annoying that the dialog required me to dismiss it before I continued, since there was so much. The "flow" (hehe) might have been better if I could keep moving during SLORP sound effects, for example.

logicon211 2018-08-26 23:01

That sure was weird, but I learned so much.

quicklyer 2018-08-26 23:06

As a long time appendix supporter I think this game was amazing. Certainly made me laugh. Top marks for humor and creativity.

rahim-pxr 2018-08-27 00:52

Nice game, I hope to see more updates and improvments sooner. If you don't bother take a look at our game when we focused on Graphics and visuals and see the results that we got: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42

drums 2018-08-27 20:09

That was super weird. That being said, it was funny and a nice change of pace! It's complete and original so good job.

repusv 2018-08-31 21:14

Very good game. Nice writing too! I enjoyed the visuals. Very well done!

naali 2018-09-01 01:13

Very unique and interesting. Good job.

local-minimum 2018-09-01 06:01

@wesxdz Thanks for the feedback. I agree with that there could have been better ways to use the theme, but the editor in its basic for (which I put as an arbitrary limitation for myself) don't really allow for much. Only one character and that's the only thing that can move. Things that can be picked up, things that can be talked to and walls. I was thinking of having a space close in on the player by swapping scenes but that was a ton of work and didn't turn out that well.

@blushine I think they're better now :wink:

@coal-creek-game-devs I know I broke a rule there with that on some occasions what might have looked like walls, where kind of secret passages. But I also didn't want my world too blocky. With only three possible colors in each scene (and another limitation of the engine, no sound) I wasn't smart enough during the jam to figure it out. Sloshy sounds would have been awesome, but also not included in the engine/my set limitations.

@tom7 it's strange that you got blurry pixels. I would have expected the bitsy-engine to have sharp pixels as a core value. All sprite data is pixeled. The dialogues were also controlled by the engine, and I agree that they do break up the flow. (Bristol is the best scale)

And to everyone not mentioned, thanks for the feedback. I do think I have thing for breaking some rules about expectations on form and throwing the player in and letting them orient themselves. But of course it would be nice if people don't get too confused. So if you have ideas on what could have helped in that regard, I'm all ears.

very-dark-lord 2018-09-01 07:27

GLUTEN IS POISON!!! Haha, love it. Was just sitting here giggling the whole time. I see you're making proper use of your PHD skills here. :)

The whole time I wasn't quite sure if this was a puzzle game or an adventure or something else. I think I'm calling it a fuzzle now. That sounds fitting. Well done I say, this game certainly was a local maximum in my testing.

jens 2018-09-01 10:50

Weird game :D but made me laugh. Good job!

clue 2018-09-01 19:59

Reminds me of a lot of the games that increpare makes :)

merpader 2018-09-02 20:18

lol I would have loved some voice acting for this game! was really funny at some points and was an interesting idea

blubberquark 2018-09-03 08:24

I have no idea how to rate this, but big mood haha

raivk 2018-09-03 21:17

I don't know what I played, it was strange, but great in way. Nice touch of humour

hellsquirrel 2018-09-04 14:11

Nice game!