dangogamedev 2018-08-12 23:16
Incredible. This should be developed into a full game.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Huke
By hegemege
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 159 | 3.70 | 29 | |
| Fun | 114 | 3.72 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 51 | 3.92 | 28 | |
| Theme | 671 | 2.61 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 429 | 3.07 | 29 | |
| Audio | 386 | 2.82 | 27 | |
| Mood | 362 | 2.92 | 23 |
Incredible. This should be developed into a full game.
Liked mechanics! It's much harder to get in door than avoiding blue balls... It would be more great if door is like halo shaped object. Also, if the balls fill the room quickly, then it will fit more to this jam's theme!
Strong mechanics and great graphics, i would love to see this to be fleshed out as a full game!
Really cool! You should keep working on this, I really like it. My only complaint is that the grapple didn't always behave as I expected it too, and sometimes I couldn't grapple to the door even though I was right in front of it.
Really loved the mechanic! :smile: It allows new kinds of puzzle (in a Portal-like environment). I would love to see some more levels! Ping me if you ever build some new ones! :v:
Really fun concept. Made me feel like Spiderman! I really enjoyed just the visceral feeling of swinging around trying to pick up momentum.
Unfortunately, I couldn't really figure out how to get to the door on the 3rd (or 4th?) level. It seemed like there were no grappleable surfaces that would get me there. I probably just suck though!
I also wish the death effect was a little faster. Because there is a delay, I sometimes didn't realize I was hit by an enemy right away and didn't know why I died.
Still, really fun, and I definitely felt like I was running out of space!
I love the main game mechanic. Its very interesting. your game gives of a Portal vibe. Great stuff! :)
@cobear25 I wanted the player to do some work to reach the door, even if it's just out of reach. My solution for that was for the player to try to get a swing into the door, but perhaps that mechanic gets boring. I'd really like to design more levels, I just had to go with version 1 on all of them pretty much. Thank you for the kind words!
@nick-rafalski 3 is a bit tricky, but there are two ways to do it. You can hang in the corner, and get just enough momentum by grappling the ceiling part that's towards the door. I'll have to record a walkthrough video :) You can also go on the left wall, and with momentum, grapple the back right wall to guide yourself into the door. It's tough, but the player will feel more accomplished when they manage a tricky movement I think. There's also the death sound so if you played without audio, that'd explain. Thanks for the feedback!
This is a great entry! Challenging and innovative concept that could really be fleshed out into a full game. I'd really like to see how it plays if you allow the player to swing themselves from the grapple for more momentum. Great job!
@thought-reactor You can right click to release the grapple. I noticed too late that I didn't show this in the game at all, only in the description :(
Fun concept, although the level exit trigger seems a bit small and balls sometimes bounce in unlucky ways. I think raising the pull force would make it feel more reactive and open the game up a lot of new puzzles. Good job!
I like the grapping hook mechanic. Felt pretty good and the sensitivity is much appreciated.
This game is incredibly fun, and the mechanics felt like I was in VR. Swinging is a bit tricky but I guess that comes with the game. It's cute how the blue balls sound omnious when there's a lot of them bouncing around; unexpectedly adds to the mood. Such a good piece!
The mechanic of the game was quite fun! Occasionally I would get stuck on the tops of walls, but generally it controlled well and swinging was fun. I will say, sometimes swinging right in front of a door but just barely missing felt pretty disappointing, and needing to double back to try and build up the momentum again was awkward. Not sure how to fix it exactly, but maybe a way to nudge yourself around in the air, like a small jetpack that could just push you a tiny bit while airborne would be cool, but I understand the whole idea was to enable movement just through the grapple. Overall quite a lot of fun, good job!
This game would be awesome in VR.
This is some top level communication right there! The fact that I couldn't move, only look around, in the first room, showing that you're attracted to the red point and leave enough time to figure that out... aside for the less intuitive way to figure out light/dark walls via trial-and-error this was awesome! Also, the concept of grappling around as the only means to move around was quite the experience!
Definitely one of my favourite entries so far! Would totally play a more polished and extended version!
This has early portal vibes and I really like it. I think that if you really worked on this, you could have a great game! One nitpick: this is a puzzle game, but the ball distribution seems a bit random, so you can easily get frustrated by randomness because the balls just decided to launch a little to the left or right and make progress impossible. I know that the point was to have so many of them that they crowded your space, but I didn't really feel like that made for good gameplay. The rest of it was good, though :)
Interesting. I didn't like the blue balls, it's too random for a game where you don't have much controls. Would have loved more horizontal level where you need to pick up speed to go farther or higher. Also the surfaces where you can't put the grappling on are to similar to the ones you can.
Neat idea! The grappling and swinging was a bit unpredictable sometimes and the boxes coloured the same as the walls you can grapple on made me think you could move them and create new paths. So that could also be a little mecahnic you could add to allow for players to create their own solutions.
The fun of swinging around like spiderman was really good. Graphics were good for a compo and sounds were functional. A little bit of music would have gone a long way. I think the levels weren't designed particularly well. Every single level I managed to just skip by until I got to the door which is where most of my time went into. The blue balls (hehe) that reset you were a good idea, but they only ever come into play when they are in between me and the door. As others have said it was a bit frustrating to get in the door.
If you are gonna work on this further I would say you should allow people to attach to the door and let them leave normally that way, and then build your levels knowing that. Also I think the swinging mechanic you have lends itself better to a bit more open spaces. I see why you went enclosed for the theme, but if you continue to work on it try some more open levels.
Overall a solid entry and one that I definitely enjoyed playing.
Have fun out there!
@phlip45 Thanks for the thought out comments! My original idea was to make the balls fill the room and the player having to avoid and escape, but then I noticed how much fun is in the swinging mechanic so I had to adapt to that. These short compos are not very lenient on level design, and I simply had no time to iterate on them unfortunately.
I like the grappling hook mechanic but it could use a bit more work, a bit hard to control. The general feel does remind me of portal a bit
Not sure how often you check your twitter but I spent some time making a VR conversion, short little video here: https://twitter.com/TheShadowBrain/status/1037749109787185152 :)