Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Spaceabon
By agecaf
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 33 | 4.03 | 33 | |
| Fun | 112 | 3.72 | 33 | |
| Innovation | 29 | 4.08 | 33 | |
| Theme | 5 | 4.48 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 264 | 3.46 | 33 | |
| Audio | 56 | 3.72 | 33 | |
| Humor | 295 | 2.54 | 26 | |
| Mood | 58 | 3.71 | 30 |
Well i'm not fan of puzzle game at first and this one was at first strange to handle. But after few minutes the mechanics was easier than i though. And really like the concept but i guess we may have get more control with the robot. It's not very clear how to handle it. But nice game, keep it up !
This is the best game I've tried so far in this LD. Good graphics and music, too. The concept is pretty solid and the design and the game in general feels polished. Good work!
Insanely great entry. First impression was "another block pushing game" that turned into amazement.
Fun puzzler! I found the game very easy to get into and very soothing in puzzle mode - especially with the great music just keeping me sliding those blocks around and tidying up! Very zen. :expressionless:
Great job! Could sink into that for longer times! I really enjoyed it. Graphics, sound and gameplay, all really well executed. Great work.
Thanks @randdir , I wasn't sure of how to explain the controls too well (If anyone has ideas please tell me). I've added a few gifs in this page which hopefully make that clearer, but as for in-game instructions... I wouldn't know what else to do (adding gifs/animations would be too complicated, as would a tutorial...).
@andy-d I'm glad you liked the puzzle mode! It was an idea I got when my sister playtested it early on, she was getting too stressed with the other game mode, and doing the puzzle-mode only needed a single conditional!
Great work. First I was like: What's the problem. Then I was like, ahh now I get it. And at the end I was like: NOO DON'T PULL IT! :id: Very nice mechanic, well executed. Nice little details. Good job.
I don't normally like puzzlers, but I found this one very engaging! The mechanic is very fun, and I like the space station setting.
It works in Firefox with no problems. That was a cute little game! I love the music, I could listen to it all night long :smile: The graphics were nice and crisp too. Congrats on completing your game!
I really liked how you got faster and faster as you played the game as you started to recognize patterns and realize where you could and couldn't move. My favorite puzzle game is Tetris Attack because it has a huge speed-skill ceiling and I saw hints of that concept while learning your game which is great. The level design is interesting, I wonder how you came up with that? I know I would personally have been lazy and probably just made a big square to play in, but I think you had some more ideas in terms of constraining the player. TBH I did feel like there needed to be just one more mechanic to keep up the longevity of the game but I don't know what, perhaps some kind of chaining system but that doesn't really fit here. I think you did a great job putting together something with a high skill ceiling with just a few mechanics, always the sign of a good puzzle game.
The control feel nice and sleek, also love the music its very moody, the art is very coherent, Good entry overal.
@agecaf is there a way I could have the audio file to listen?
In the beginning it was to hard to understand what to do, but when I understood I can say that I 100% love your game!!!! :)
Fun little game. Controls and the music are great!
Very well executed. I really enjoyed the calming music. It kept me relaxed as I fought with making every cube placement count. This is a game I could see myself playing (and enjoying) on my phone while waiting around for an oil change, or doctor's appointment or whatnot. Great job!
I really like the easy going mood in this game. You can spend some time in this game and relax and clean your spaceship a little. It reminds me of those little robot vacuum cleaners. I also like the combination of a topdown map with controls that let you move only one tile and one keypress at a time.
Hey everyone, thanks for all your feedback!
**If you want to get the soundtrack**; download the "Source Code/Löve executable" in the itch.io page; it is a ".love" file. Just rename it into a ".zip" file and unzip it (That's all love files are); it contains the sourcecode, but also the assets, including the soundtrack! Feel free to do with it whatever you want, it'd be published on Opengameart with a CC0 licence if I weren't as lazy as I am. If you're interested in how I made it; I used sunvox with samples from the kiarchive. @tomeks @kunonooni
Also there is a *secret*. If you wait in the main menu for long enough... A special code will appear. If you input it, you'll be able to start the game at a harder difficulty. This is especially great if you want to try puzzle mode with a ridiculous amount of colors.
@peachtreeoath Re:level design; I think I first thought of the setting and then of the game, since then the idea of having little space 'cause you're in a space stations stuck around. You could say the level came before the gameplay, the only major change I made after that was the block in the middle, which I think is a nice obstruction. I was thinking of maybe making more levels for a future release. In fact, I think I'd be opensourcing it, so if anyone wants to do that, they're free to do so. It's all made with Tiled... except for a couple of hardcoded things (player's initial position, the first blue block, the camera, the little human typing as you type, etc)
Re: New mechanics; Actually, you can get four blocks together instead of three (e.g. filling up a T-shaped tetris block), which could definitely give you more score if I hadn't been lazy. Other ideas I've had would be having a "swap your position with the block in front of you" which would make the game much easier and "Actually, you control two robots at the same time!" which would make it way more confusing.
Re: skill-ceiling; Actually... after the last level (each level has a number of colors of blocks that appear, and a different speed at which they appear in arcade mode. You can know you're in the next level when the next color appears) you should pretty much crash the game since I never added a "check that the next level actually exists". To "address" this, I made sure the last level is inhumanely hard! Then I toned down on each level. I'm curious to see how far can people get. My highest score is like ~~18000~~ 28000 or so in arcade mode.
@fussenkuh I like the mobile port idea! I hadn't thought of it, but it would be perfect for the type of playsessions I have on mobile. Also the controls are simple enough that it'd be a piece of cake to translate them to mobile. I've never actually done it, but I might try later on. Thanks for the idea!
Cool! It's a unique, interesting, fun, and polished puzzle game! The concept was hard to grasp at first, but once I understood it I found it to be pretty fun! Great job!
Fun to play, game feels polished and smooth, the movement especially. Great work!
I loved it, it is a really fun game. Everything fit together so well. I also absolutely loved the soundtrack, so smooth, so dark jazzy.
I see you already adressed the "more than 3 blocks" problem wich was the only thing that bothered me, that's the only -small- thing that was frustrating in the game.
Congratulations on your entry, it is a great game overall. I made it to 16500 in arcade.
This is actually a really cool concept. First of all I find it impressive that you fixed a web version with Löve, something I intend to look into for future jams. The art is all super nice and has a coherent style that just feels perfect. I love all of the small details like that the character has an animation that triggers when you move. Last but not least Music fits the calm gameplay like a glove.
It's insane that you managed to do all of this in a compo. Well done!
This game has a very nice feel to it due to the sound and visuals.
the music is very pleasent and give a good atmosphere !
gameplay seams not interesting at first but when you begin to run out of space it's getting funny. Maybe the map is too big to reach the interesting part of the game.
Still a nice concept and well executed, good job!
UGGGHHH so close to 40000 :weary:
Spaceabon-YIKES almost 40000 resized.png
This was quite the puzzler, and gets quite fun as it does get challenging. I spent most of my time in puzzle mode, but the Arcade mode also presents a nice, difficult task of having to think fast as blocks spawn rapidly on the screen. Puzzle mode gets CRAZY once you start handling like 8 different blocks in the tiny space, and I found myself running out of storage pretty quickly. It didn't really help that the way the character interacts with the blocks is kind of finicky. I get that the area is designed around this "once you touch a block and move, the character automatically takes the block with them", but I found myself getting more frustrated when I accidentally forgot this and went to get move a block but ended up moving another because it was on the other side of me. Ah well, it's all part of the challenge. :joy:
I've noticed that there seems to be a bit of a glitch in the music? Like just before it loops (I think), it makes this loud, jarring white noise. There also seems to be a big discrepancy in the dynamics of your track from the beginning and the end (the beginning of the loop is much softer than the end of the loop), which makes me wonder if this is what's causing the loud noise. But I also notice it is inconsistent; sometimes that blast of noise is a mere click upon looping. I was playing the Windows version, too.
That's a shame, because the game music is quite nice. It's got this aimless, 12/8 feel, like I'm floating around in space. I love the saxophone lead and the dry bell plinks. That being said, I think the sound effects are too quiet and subtle. I would have loved to hear some more satisfying sounds, or at least have those current sound effects be louder. Maybe some BFXR blips to help contrast it from the music more. The harp sounds made me think of Monument Valley, which I don't really think meshes with the graphics.
I like the various block designs and the little person at the top controlling the vehicle whenever you move around. The game, overall, is a fine puzzler, albeit tedious in the Puzzle Mode. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: But I enjoyed and got frustrated with it, as a puzzler should do. :rofl:
That was a really fun, relaxing puzzle game. I like the space setting and the little fact that you are a dude in the 'cockpit' who controls the robot. I don't know why but i like this detail, it adds to the game. Gameplay is pretty simple and surprisingly relaxing for a puzzle game under time pressure. I like the music and graphics, it just fits together nicely. Fun game!
@rakart Unfortunately the "more than 3 blocks" issue is more of a practicality problem; it is super easy to detect when there's three blocks since one of them must be neighbor to two of them... But when it comes to more blocks, it becomes harder to know, as well as harder to decide where blocks should be reduced.
@mgsx I had quite a lot of problems with the difficulty curve for arcade mode; I wanted new players not to be overwhelmed, but having experienced players not to have to spend too much time doing easy stuff. You can enter the konami code in the main menu, press 1-9 to choose a higher starting difficulty, if you want.
@random-storykeeper I'm glad that someone got that far in puzzle mode! After 40,000 you're on the last level, you got so close!!! I'm glad you liked Puzzle mode, it was an idea my sister gave me after she playtested it. If you use a certain secret code, you can start with the number of colors you want, if you want to get to the crazy part faster ; ) The way you pull blocks is mostly there so that blocks don't get stuck on corners... Though the main difficulty in puzzle mode comes from the player messing up, so it is a bit of intentional difficulty...
I didn't playtest the Windows version for long enough for the song to loop; you're right, and the clicking is very loud. I hope the "Löve executable" version is ok, you might want to try that one instead (You'd only need to install Löve), The sound loops ok in that version (in my computer). I've got no idea why there'd be that click, the samples shouldn't loop as badly. The dynamics *should* be similar in the beginning and the end; the instruments have unchanged volumes (Though the first loop the song does fade in).
As a fun fact... the HTML5 version doesn't have the fade-ins/outs since the loop would sometimes restart at a random point, desyncing the two songs, which made it sound horrible..
I wasn't sure about the sfx (to be fair I've never been super comfortable with them), so I put them at a lower volume than usual. Ideally I'd add the options to readjust the music/sfx ratio for that reason. I'll try using sfxr next time, I didn't know if they'd fit with the music, but the current sfx don't fit with the game, so...
Thanks for your feedback!
Wow this game is great. It gets really tough really fast. The only thing that irked me during the game was when I'd be happily moving a block along and one would just spawn right next to another of the same color and all of a sudden I couldn't move that way anymore. Other than that I think it was great. I love how brain burn-y it gets when there are lots of blocks on the screen. So much fun, fantastic job.
I think most of my feedback has been covered by the others here, but yeah - I loved this game. Super fun, and definitely unique on the puzzle front. Had some minor quirks with movement and such but overall solid work.
Here's a video of my play and feedback: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/303323174
Really neat game! I included it in my compilation video series of the Ludum Dare 42 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/CCzYoSZIQ24