FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD42 → Captain Graphite

Captain Graphite

By honey and prema

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall8073.1850
Fun9162.8950
Innovation10632.6548
Theme11112.6749
Graphics2843.9051
Audio3363.3448
Humor6442.4840
Mood2783.4847

Comments

simonaura 2018-08-15 09:54

It's a good game, I love the art-style and the ambiance, but the "shrinking" mechanic should be more visible. Well done ! :D

zessirb 2018-08-15 10:04

I didn't know what I had to do so I kept going upward (since left, bottom and right side lead to a wall) and the enemies seemed to stack on the right wall for some reason. I think it could be more entertaining having a higher difficulty (like enemies evolving quicker, or the energy bar emptying faster) I'm guessing the enemy sound is made from tearing paper, I like the idea of using an electric guitar for all your sounds. Nothing really innovating on the gameplay side but it's okay, I had fun anyway

guladam 2018-08-15 10:04

I might be a little biased because I LOVE hand-drawn graphics, but this is just absolutely beautiful. The music fits perfectly, the whole mood is on point! :)

The gameplay is fun as well, my only problem is that there is no sense of progress. If you could implement a high score system, it would have kept me going for longer.

Awesome game anyways, well done! :)

honey 2018-08-15 10:21

@zessirb Enemies stacking on the right wall is shocking news for us, as enemies always got stacked on the left one. Seriously though, thanks for leaving feedback, we'll have a look into it and we'll try to force enemies to stop being cowards and stop stack round the walls. Thank you for taking the time to play and leaving a feedback :)

@guladam Thank you, we're glad to hear (read?) that! There's actually an end somewhere up there, but yes, maybe the progression is little too slow, we'll have a look into that. Still thanks for playing and leaving a comment, very appriciated!

@simonaura Thanks so much. Agree with the shrinking mechanic, but we had a hard time coming up with anything that looks better and still works :/ Thank you for stopping by!

jin9310 2018-08-15 10:22

What an innovative way to create a game. The sounds and art are really awesome! Great job! Really original.

flower 2018-08-15 20:14

I really like this art style) Very cool!

panurge 2018-08-16 08:31

Great little game with a nice aesthetic and concept. Personally, I would have liked a steeper increase in difficulty as to begin with there was a lot of flying upwards shooting objects with very little happening. Still fun though, and scope here for a bigger game. Well done!

alexrose 2018-08-16 09:03

Art style is fucking great on this game, really cohesive, you did a really good job. I suspect this will do very well if you get the votes!

jesusache 2018-08-16 11:26

The graphics really made this one stand out, its even kinda nostalgic. My main lil issue is that among the sea of white and gray my tiny cursor tended to get lost during some space dog fights. A custom cursor that fit the art style would've been helpful. Looking forward to what you guys do next.

anna-petrova 2018-08-16 15:26

Cool game. Funny art:)

team-infernus 2018-08-17 09:52

I love the handdrawn aesthetic - the game's a bit on the easy side though, you have a ton of health and there a a bunch of health pickups.

captainchoones 2018-08-17 15:48

Feedback:

- Nice graphics - Great concept - Sound really good - It’s easy to play - Classic gameplay

Good game

gaming-night 2018-08-17 17:18

Wow, this graphic style ... and this sound design ... simply perfect ... My best rating so far <3

nerdyherbivore 2018-08-17 17:28

This is incredibly charming. Love the visual style and the audio fits really well. Wasn't really sure where to go or what to do so I just kind of flew around shooting stuff and eventually found some enemy UFOs. My suggestion would be to add some sort of icon onscreen that points to where enemies are. Nice work though!

honey 2018-08-17 17:31

@jin9310 @flower @alexrose @anna-petrova @team-infernus Thank you guys so much, our graphic sure will be very pleased to hear that, as well as our art style designer :) Thanks for taking the time to play and leave the comment!

@panurge You're right, we were so afraid that the difficulty would be too high (you never know when nobody else than developers is testing) that we dumbed it down too much :( Definitely a thing to learn for next time! Thanks for playing and leaving a comment!

@jesusache Yep, agree with that, too many lines make it a bit hard to find a cursor :( Thanks for playing and leaving your comment!

@captainchoones Thanks for nicely formated feedback, very appreciated! :)

@gaming-night Hey, I'm glad that you noticed the sound too, seemed like the art is stealing all the show! Very glad you liked it, thanks very much for playing and leaving your kind words for us! :)

honey 2018-08-17 17:37

@nerdyherbivore Hey, thanks for sharing your experience. We kind of hoped, that the ship starting position would be a visual hint where to go, but apparently we should've add some more. Enemies should have hunt you down, but they sometimes don't. I hope that you enjoyed your flying around even so :) thanks a lot for playing and leaving a feedback!

leodesigaux 2018-08-17 18:42

Those hand made graphics are gorgeous, nice work!

patrickrmc 2018-08-17 18:54

I love those graphics! I hope to see more types of games with this artstyle in the future! Good work!

nam-nguyen 2018-08-17 18:55

Hey Im playing your game but I could not see any enemies, I have gone to all of the borders of the map, still dont find anything. Its an empty map in the version I play :(

Update: Found them. I know why this happens. So I did not know that I was supposed to go UP. Maybe you should have an indication somewhere. In my first 2 tries I keep searching down and left and right and couldnt find anything, because there is nothing there, I need to go up.

Anyhow, control is super intuitive, art style is cohesive and fantastic, movement of character feels right (I love the steering momentum) and sound effect fits the game. A great entry, I really liked it!

kromzem 2018-08-17 18:59

I love the artstyle! But theres not much todo and the gameplay is kinda boring due to the empty space and lack of enemies. But the idea is fairly great and with more gameplay value this would be really nice. But good job anyways ;)

fakefirefly 2018-08-17 19:01

I thought the graphics were really charming! I liked the ambient music as well. I wasn't really sure what I was doing, even getting shot by the enemies didn't really seem to do anything besides push my ship around. I flew around for a while but couldn't find much else to do. Maybe in the future, you could add more indicators for what to do in the game world.

Overall, it's a solid attempt with some cool visuals.

simplepotential 2018-08-17 19:12

It was overly obvious what I was suppose to be doing and the controls felt off. But with a little more time I think you'd really have something fun. The graphics are wonderfully child like, I loved them. The sound effects were good and the lasers from the Saucers were well done. What the heck were those things I was collecting?

Overall I did like this entry.

dwemthy 2018-08-17 19:24

Really great style, sound effects and music created good atmosphere. Never felt like space was running out. Noticed that the bottom got cut off eventually but the top just extended forever. Limited space, planets, and satellites would create more of a feeling of needing to hold on to resources for actually fighting the saucers.

smbe19 2018-08-17 20:06

The game looks very nice. But I think the game play is quite lacking. It takes way too long for anything interesting to happen and you are not really sure what you are supposed to do. Also, you don't have to engage the enemies, you can just fly away from them, so they are not that interesting to fight. At the end I found a swirly thing, not sure if this was the portal. When I fly into it I just came back to the main screen, maybe I just died. But there was no message, so I don't know. But I think with a bit more time this could be a very cool game.

weine 2018-08-17 20:11

Love the art style and the moody music. Very well done basis, but it seems to be lacking some gameplay.

velvetlobster 2018-08-17 20:21

Wow what a style! I am so loving this

hi-irie 2018-08-17 22:44

i didn't hear music when I played the game even though my sound was up. For the most part it is a pretty simple game of moving and shooting but I think because I didn't have any kind of indicator to tell me what was going on it felt like I really wasn't doing anything in general. The idea is there but it needs a bit more polish.

joloujed 2018-08-17 23:07

Very Beutifull game, the art is so different and feels good. The controls sometymes got stuk or something,but wasnt a big problem, I am a bit sad, I destroyed so many planets and spaceships, so many deads... (so sad).

honey 2018-08-18 07:58

@patrickrmc @leodesigaux @kromzem @velvetlobster @weine @joloujed Thanks, looks like we moved the right way with artstyle direction :)

@nam-nguyen Thanks for giving it so much time! Yeah, we really let the player down with instruction, definitely need to keep that on mind next time (or in postLD version of this, you never know).

@fakefirefly There actually isn't much more to do than shooting enemies and stuff around, maybe we should add something more :) Still hope you had at least some fun flying around!

@simplepotential Hey, you were collecting graphite, but no wonder you didn't know, the sprite was actually last-minute repurpose of what originally was some bullet. When you read through the feedback, you're probably the only person who found the goal of the game "overly obvious" :D What do you mean by off? Too floaty? Too slow? If you could tell us, it would be really appreciated! :)

@dwemthy Hey, there actually is final tile up there, but it probably should come sooner. Overall all the game should have been more condensed considering the feedback.

@smbe19 Yep, that was the final portal. Unfortunately, the game kind of fell apart just before the end of time limit, so we had to cut off plenty of stuff to get it error free and compilable, there was no time left to reintroduce the winscreen. However, you did it! You found the final portal, you won the game! Congratulations! :) We glad that someone eventually did!

@hi-irie Hey, sorry to hear that, were you playing the browser version? If so, what browser? Were the sound effect working or no sound at all? Hope you had at least a bit of fun not doing anything in general :)

gumbarius 2018-08-18 09:47

As everyone here says: The artstyle is top notch and the music is also really pleasing to the ears The gameplay seems to be fun, but there are like 90% stationary enemies, which kinda destroyed it for me :/ But still very nice game, with a lot of potential

simplepotential 2018-08-18 11:50

@honey Lol, my comment is missing a word, "It 'wasn't' overly obvious" is what it should have said.

For the controls, my mind does click well with this style of game where there isn't always a single forward button. I like it when pressing the "W" or Up arrow always moves you forward no matter what direction you are pointing when you can move along all axis's. So if I'm pointing Left, "W" moves me left.

There is nothing technically wrong with the way you have it now, it just isn't for me.

aaron-lehnen 2018-08-19 14:49

I am a sucker for space shooters, and good job despite being very minimalist in art and sound. The controls felt very good. I eventually got bored by the same sounds/music and art the entire time. Wasn't too challenged but I think if there more Music/Sounds and alot more different objects to interact with, or even a score counter even more than 1 continuous level, I think would extend the games enjoyment period for a bit longer. I Still had fun playing it and one of the games I could see myself putting on for a few minutes for a quick fix. Thanks for making it.

roman-petrov 2018-08-22 19:06

I love games with paper drawings! I don't know, if it was a bug, but when I started a game, I had the empty field, and I flew around for about a minute until I found the first object to shoot. I think, it's better to have something to interact with right from the beginning in such games. Other than that — nice game, thank you!

psychead 2018-08-24 07:35

Ah the good old doodle art style. :hearts: I remember spending a whole day of the compo on another LD just doodling because it was too much fun :laughing:

I liked the game, all the core elements are there and firmly in place, it feels complete for a game jam game. At first I didn't know the bullies would rip off parts from the bottom and when I realized it, I was a bit disappointed not to see ripped paper there. I think 'snappier', more reactive player movement, maybe with more movement options (a barrel roll?) would help the feel of the game a lot. If you make the enemies stand out more, improve upon the core concept etc. I can see this work as a mobile game.

Good job!

g11 2018-08-24 07:41

I was reading the description with the game's main theme on and it was really immersive! Good job creating this atmosphere!

rahim-pxr 2018-08-27 22:26

Nice game, Love how everything is balanced! Good luck, Don't forget to take a look at ours if you don't mind and see what it's like when we just focused on graphics in this game jam! Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42a