cercle 2018-08-14 19:47
Cute game, with surprisingly tight play! Love the concept, and enjoyed the thoughtful challenge of machine downtime and starting positions.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Squirrel's Revenge
By axavian
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 786 | 3.21 | 40 | |
| Fun | 467 | 3.35 | 40 | |
| Innovation | 558 | 3.21 | 40 | |
| Theme | 511 | 3.59 | 40 | |
| Graphics | 1022 | 2.72 | 40 | |
| Audio | 574 | 2.93 | 40 | |
| Mood | 458 | 3.26 | 38 |
Cute game, with surprisingly tight play! Love the concept, and enjoyed the thoughtful challenge of machine downtime and starting positions.
pretty good game, especially considering your constraints with only one person.
Cutting down trees and that squirrel's resistance are good idea for game. I liked it a lot.
Fun little game! I had a blast when playing it! The idea is very simple and it's executed well. I even managed to beat it! (With only 20 nuts, though). The art is decent and the audio is quite good. The aduio creates the right mood for the game.
Great and fun game! Well done!
(3 minutes feels like an eternity now...!)
Controls are smooth and responsive, and the gameplay is decent, simple objective, good little arcade title, not bad for a first outing. A nice interpretation of the theme. Clearly art is something you need to improve with, the biggest problem with this was the visual hierarchy of being able to see your character on the screen in the world. Being the same colour as the ground makes it really hard to tell where you're at which isn't a good. A good way to check your game's visuals are clear enough is to do a 'squint test'. Take one step back from your screen and squint your eyes. If you can still see all the important elements of your game then the odds are good that your player won't miss anything either.
You've got potential to be a better developer and we all have to start somewhere, this isn't bad for what it is. Hopefully see you in the next jam with an even better game!
This game is nuts! :)
But seriously now: I like that the machines are almost unstoppable (although for flavor purposes this is kinda sad), because it fits better the theme of space running out.
Thank you @historymaker118 for your in-depth review. Art is actually not for me, I just tried :) 'squint test' is a good idea. I will definitely keep that in mind.
Thank you @wendel-scardua. You are right, I made them powerful on purpose. You can still make little impact but the game also meant to send a message.
I really like how the game gets harder as your food source is getting chopped down, a nice way to combine the gameplay with the story/morale of the game. I think you hit the right mark with the difficulty, because it's difficult enough to pose a challenge during your first game, but not so different that it's impossible to win. It would be nice if there was some kind of feedback that the diggers are disabled (like a smoke effect or similar), because at first I tried to kill them with the nuts.
@walnoot yes I should've added some effects but unfortunately I run out of time. As a feedback, when you hit the machines they stop playing their cutting sound but if multiple machines come together it is not noticeable.
I'll not make a joke about games with nuts in your mouth... Oh, crap. :grin:
A simple concept, elegant in how your ammunition comes from the resources you're protecting.
The brown background is super busy-looking, which is kind of distracting. It feels very separate from the style of the trees, which are differently scaled sprites than the rest as well (a personal pet peeve of mine). The colour scheme of brown and green and greys didn't excite me very much.
Music works, sound effects worked well and told me where to look for wood cutters.
I agree with most of the other comments, the graphics definitely need a palette swap. The gameplay is tight, and the core mechanic is pretty fun. Not sure if this was intended, but I found it much easier to hold off a group of enemies by just running into them all over and over, because even though I lost nuts it delayed the enemies for a pretty decent amount of time. Other than that, great job flying solo!
@flaterectomy Well that's how squirrels work :smile: Sorry for making your eyes bleed. This is my first time drawing. I need to learn a lot about color schemes if I will attempt to do it again. At least the music worked :slight_smile:
@coal-creek-game-devs I noticed that when I was play-testing and that's when I implemented the nut drops. I wanted to discourage the player from getting close. I think ending the game there would be an overkill. Maybe I could've added fainting to the squirrel on touching the machines a lot.
Nice game, The controlls feels nice and the mechanics are nice, the only problem I have was with the lack of vissual indicators when a machine is not working, when a tree is going to fall and a bit of polish for the art but the game is well done overall.
Hey Im a programmer too and the struggle is real.. There are so many games I saw made by programmers with the character being a primitive white box hahaha, so good job with the graphics here xD. Agree with everyone that you need some indication in the game, not only whether the wood cutters are working or not, but also where they are on the map, like a small arrow on the side of the screen pointing to which directions the cutters are (or faster, a minimap). Otherwise, elements of the game are all there, you also implemented a high score too (which I couldnt manage to in my game). Good job!!
@nam-nguyen Thank you for playing. A minimap would be great yeah. But I need to be faster to implement more stuff to the game. Those art stuff took more than a day! But i think a primitive white box could be awesome when its used wisely :smiley:
Good game. Would like it if the squirrel could do something about the machines taking over the forest ><
Nice idea ! Don't mess with my forest you stupid humans ! :rage:
It's a bit frustrating that we can't destroy the wood cutters because we know that when we take care of some of them, the others will start running gain, so we just feel absolutely powerless (well I guess that's what squirrels feel when we are destroying there forest).
Congrats for finishing a game alone! Being a programmer, of course your art cannot be perfect. But there are few things about your game, that you could improve: At first, the game ends all of a sudden and you dont know why. thats something you could improve. Maybe the game should end only with the last tree falling? Secondly, not being able to win the game or destroy woodcutters, is kinda frustrating, so it's only a matter of time and doesn't feel that exciting. In my opinion the forest is a little bit too big, you don't need that much space to experience your game, if the game then takes too long, or worse, feels endless, it gets a little bit boring.
However, you can definetely be proud of yourself for finishing a game alone within 48 hours, so keep it up!
Nice but very hard ! ^^
Just miss some nice graphics but fit well in the theme and fun to play. ;)
Even if the sounds and art were "programmer" quality, they were utilized well - I liked that the stereo effect on the woodcutters could help me locate them in the forest.
I would have liked to see a separate sound effect for stunning a woodcutter, because from what I could tell the sound was the same whether the nuts collided with a tree or a woodcutter. A sound for them becoming un-stunned would be helpful as well.
I also found it frustrating that the stumps blocked my shots. I think trees should block but not stumps.
Nice entry. Is a bit similar of my game. It is funny and addictive. Congratulations
Nice game and an environmental friendly one... kkkk warrior squirrel
Very fun game! The game play is easy to understand, I really liked the graphics and theme. Awesome work, was truly fun to play!
Nice work! as someone already said - some sort of reaction (either audio or visual) when the nuts hit the woodcutter would be very valuable to the game's feel. Otherwise - extremely well adjusted controls, feels smooth. And a great and cute idea for the theme!