FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD42 → Breathing Space

Breathing Space

By goffmog and cassandrakhaw

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall6653.3124
Fun4533.3624
Innovation6513.1124
Theme9892.9324
Humor1953.4324
Mood4293.2924

Comments

celdur 2018-08-16 11:17

Cute game, didn't really grasp the whole point of the game until I got my first ending though. But once that clicked, it was a lot more interesting trying to balance saving people with the space you need for other things.

linheha 2018-08-16 11:36

I had two endings: the one when I die underwater (I don't remember the name) and "This is fine" :) I enjoyed the experience and I really like the concept of swiping cards to progress in your adventure! (For information I never played Reign so I just discovered this gameplay) However, it's too bad that there is no sound or music, and graphics could be more appealing (yeah I'm being honest). Also, if you want to polish your game, maybe you could add a tip for controls just at the begining of the game (like an arrow next to the cards which encourage players to drag the card to right or the left). I didn't read your description in the Ludum page before playing the game so i didn't know what to do the first time :) Anyway good job, I hope you will continue to develop and polish your game in the future! :)

goffmog 2018-08-16 12:57

@linheha thanks for playing, and for the advice! Good catch on the controls, it's probably unfair to assume anyone's played Reigns.

As for the graphics, there's a reason we've disabled that voting category and it's because all of the graphics are 3rd party, hence the inconsistent style. Top of the list of things that must be done to a post-compo version of this game is acquiring an artist!

linheha 2018-08-16 13:11

Oh! Sorry, I didn't even notice that you had disabled the graphics rating x) Well I'm happy to know that you will continue to develop your game! Good luck, I'm sure that you will find a talented artist! :)

arche-san 2018-08-16 18:40

4 endings until now. My favorite for the moment is the fluffy ending.

There's so much content for the amount of time!

Great job! :D

andrei9 2018-08-22 22:26

Good game :v:

masterkrepta 2018-08-22 23:13

Im impressed to hear there are multiple endings. Rather surprising for a game jam. The only thing i would like to see is some music or at least sound effects to help enhance the story.

sheldonzs 2018-08-23 00:00

Ran out of space and died both times I played. Could make it a little smoother by having the two options on either side of the card to start with, rather than having to wiggle every card back and forth before making a choice. Not really sure how to win, but called it quits after I started seeing the same scenarios pop up in one playthrough

lucas-carvalhaes 2018-08-23 00:27

Didn't understood what was going on. If the card is stocked than it is bad? Why would that be? Why "yay" most of the time means something that kills you? What do you mean by the pressures of live? This game is kinda weird. It is an amazing innovative idea though, and it gave me and idea for an awesome analog game haha. So, what I would suggest, is focus more on the way you display your core mechanic, use more intuitive elements to tell the player what is going on.

michelle 2018-08-23 02:21

Nice game!

goffmog 2018-08-23 10:03

@lucas-carvalhaes Hey thanks for playing. The premise is that you have limited space for cards you acquire and you have to carefully manage the combination of stuff you end up with. The exact way the cards interact is something you have to learn but I agree with you that there's room to communicate more about what's going on to the player. Essentially, you play to tell your story.

goffmog 2018-08-23 10:04

@sheldonzs The reason you see duplicate scenarios is perhaps not obvious. It's a card game and once you've run down to the bottom of the deck of valid remaining cards without picking up enough things to fill your inventory, everything is re-shuffled and you start drawing from the deck again. What's missing here is an animation showing the discarded cards being shuffled back into the draw deck.

merpader 2018-08-23 13:58

Really liked the large assortment of endings you had! Was really re-playable and I had a few laughs!

paulo-augusto 2018-08-23 20:58

nice game man

yami-no-tenshi-8 2018-08-23 21:04

Nice idea ! Reminds me of Reigns concept, like this kind of games ! :slight_smile:

rend 2018-08-24 08:18

Really cool little game, I like the inventory mechanic built on top of the Reigns one. The story felt a bit more random than in Reigns but the writing is nice and makes you want to do several runs. Congrats for the original entry!

koala-squad 2018-08-24 23:40

Great job! Impressive work on the writing, and the art is well done! The complete lack of audio does kill the mood a little though, but other than that great job!

Cheers! - The Koala Squad

azumin 2018-08-25 02:16

Nice game, I felt the story a bit random, but still enjoyable. Good job!

nonimad 2018-08-26 12:58

Great use of the swipe game concept and fun encounters all the way through! Great job!

gudval 2018-08-26 13:37

Nice Reigns-like game ! The dog-tastic ending is the perfect one for me. I just feel that there are too many slots, so I didn't feel the urge to prioritize some items over the others. Also maybe a "restart from the beginning" button would have been useful. Aside from that good job !

goffmog 2018-08-27 08:41

Great feedback everyone. @gudval we may end up doing a post-jam version and anything that helps us get the balancing right is good. @azumin and @rend, we actually built an engine that supports chaining events together and setting variables, which together would have allowed for Reigns-like storytelling, but we simply ran out of time to design any content that used these features. @cassandrakhaw did a monumental job writing all the various token cards we wanted, plus enough variety in the story cards that lead to acquiring them, while also having a full schedule of real work over the jam period.

blinkenlights 2018-09-01 12:44

A pretty neat entry, liked the writing and the idea.

remco 2018-09-01 22:04

Well, you got me to play it multiple times, which is a good sign :-) So far, I got; the 'surprisingly dark' (at least twice), 'oddly meh', 'fluff', 'dead in the water', and 'this is fine' (three times now) endings. (Yes, I tried to save the dogs as well, see below.)

You can take some wounds if you have enough med-kits, but I think I've seen only the 'relax a minute' card which takes away problems of a more psychological nature.

To my taste, the writing is indeed very good ('a madrigal of mouths' in particular is something that will likely linger in my subconscious for quite some time, and I'm equal parts concerned an intrigued by the crewmember snacking on spatulas), but as you try to find the different endings, the cards start repeating. I know you've written a lot of cards in a small amount of time, but eventually it stops to be about the writing at all and is just a means to the different endings.

As you learn the different outcomes, and know which sort of ending you'd like to try this time (on my last few runs I tried to save the dogs, for example, but got waylaid by my fragile psyche) it just (seems to me at least, but maybe I missed something?) to become a matter of luck (which events you get this time, and to a lesser extent, in which order).

The visual effects of turning the cards, and the little icons flying about are nice.

Some smaller issues:

- On my smaller laptop display, if I go fullscreen, the 'Start Running' button overlaps some of the text. I think this is present on at least one of the endings-screens as well. - The 21th century _confectionery_ vending machine somehow spit out a very mundane ('no fantasy') set of bare minimum rations. - (I think) Taking along a single crewmember (and too few foodstuffs) can cause the ending where you're chewed on by dogs, but that same ending implies you took multiple crew along with you.

goffmog 2018-09-03 08:33

Thanks for the feedback @remco it's all extremely valuable. Some of the points you've raised are due to limitations of the engine we built during the jam and sheer lack of time to implement story cards with some of the features we did build. e.g. You can't actually award specific cards, only a random card of a certain type, hence the rations thing.

Also, I personally find the presence of many plushies helps to mitigate psychological stress.