pawel-w 2018-12-04 05:43
Game looks and plays amazing. It's super responsive and satisfying. Good job guys!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → AkimBear
By ecmjohnson, tonynguyen3102, UrSupremeLeader and Jeffrey Newton-Evans
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 48 | 4.11 | 100 | |
| Fun | 45 | 4.06 | 102 | |
| Innovation | 162 | 3.66 | 101 | |
| Theme | 817 | 2.99 | 96 | |
| Graphics | 38 | 4.48 | 101 | |
| Audio | 41 | 4.06 | 100 | |
| Humor | 52 | 4.05 | 98 | |
| Mood | 122 | 3.90 | 97 |
Game looks and plays amazing. It's super responsive and satisfying. Good job guys!
Yesss! This! This game has an excellent mouth-feel. Gorgeous art, sexy sound. The polish on this is incredible, I wish I had a controller instead of a keyboard so that I could enjoy it more. Also - thanks for uploading that Vlambeer talk, very interesting stuff! :rocket:
Hilarious game! I love it, great controls. Could easily be seen on the google play store, steam even!
@pawel-w, Thanks so much! So glad you enjoyed it.
@doctormozart Hahaha, thanks for the positive feed back. If you get the chance to try it with a controller at some point definitely give it another shot, it's a completely different experience (i.e. a much much better one :smile:)
@woofdog99 Whoa, thanks for the kind words! Hmm... Maybe we will... :thinking:
this is the best game ive played so far, the gameplay is really smooth and the graphics look amazing
I have to agree with @woofdog99 , this game could easily be released! Insane production values. You even have a trailer already!
Everything feels just soooo right. Graphics and audio are top notch. The responseviness is incredible - The screenshake made my day (I will definitely look into the talk you posted!)!
Thank you for making this game. It's a favourite for sure.
Can I give you some productive feedback? Hmm... Maybe the enemies in Level III are a bit hard to see. But then I guess that could also be the point.
@purrseus Ahh, so so glad you enjoyed it! Comments like this make creating this game worth it.
The last level's enemies were definitely a talking point amongst us, but in the end we decided the increase of challenge as well as tying the enemies into the game's narrative was more in line with our vision. But definitely a valid critic, thanks for the feedback!
Really fun! I had a difficult time with it, tbh I'm just not that coordinated, but could see myself getting good at this with repeated playthroughs. It feels exceptionally polished for a jam game and it's incredible you put this together. Your reference to Vlambeer in the description is apt. I didn't read it until afterwards, but when playing I could really feel that influence. Great job!
@f4kethis Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah... If you're playing with Mouse and Keyboard it's pretty difficult and takes some practice, but it's a much much smoother experience if you have a controller to use! Thanks for playing!
Amazing job you guys! I played it with a controller and found it very smooth and immediate. The pixel art and sound are superb too, love it! (:
The game is gorgeous! I really love this game!
Your game was played on my stream ( twitch.tv/ursagames ) for the first day of Ludum Dare streams - you can find the timestamp of your game here: https://goo.gl/N2rkr8
@vodish Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW(trying not to be overexited) Nice game!
WOW! I WAS NOT EXPECTING SUCH A GAME! Amazing job on the graphics and controls!
Just amazing, beautifull and fun.
@captaincorgistan Haha, no need to limit your excitement! So glad you enjoyed it :smile: Tell your friends! :sparkles:
@gamers-blood-entertainment Hooray! Thanks for the positive feedback! Spread the word, and tell your friends!
@leothil Thanks! Glad you had fun with it! tell your friends! :bear:
Super fuuuuun, hahah XD I recomand it to my friends ! I saw the bear and i was like "okay that's gonna be DOPE" Good job !
@antoine-vion Hahaha, thanks for the recommendation! great to hear you had fun!
Pretty solid and well-put-together game! Great fun! :D Tried it with keyboard and xbox controller too... well, on keyboard better use WASD + arrow keys next time and on xbox controller I would use triggers instead of the top buttons.
@kornel-meszaros Awesome! So glad you enjoyed the game! And thanks for the feed back, we couldn't get the triggers to function for some reason so we settled for bumpers instead. Tell your friends! :bear:
So slick, so polished, very impressive.
@Trifectuh Hey thanks! Had a lot of fun making it, glad you enjoyed it!
Very well done! Polished and fun to play. Hard to believe it was made in just 72 hours. Congratulations for such a strong entry!
@eddie-li Thanks so much for the kind words! Made in 48 hours :wink: Tell your pals! :bear:
smooth feel, juicy effects, snazzy pixel work and swinging music choice!
@stu Hey thanks! :bear: :sparkles:
ok...just one word: awesome!
@acaral One word, Thanks!!! :bear:
Wow, awesome game, the music, art and game play were all great. At the start I was like infinite ammo?! why would I stop firing and then I found out you dont move and shoot, pretty cool feature have to balance defense and level progression. Good Job!
@block97 Thanks for the positive response! yeah, the sacrifice of shooting while stopping movement balance was our tie in to the theme. But personally when I have some extra time left I like to just shoot at the sky for a bit haha. Glad you enjoyed it, tell your friends! :bear:
I'm so sad. The game look great, the graphics and music are very cool, but, dunno why, I have a lot of bugs with right gun. When I play with controller, the gun move a bit but stay blocked in the direction of the bear, and when I play with keyboard, the 'I' and 'P' seems to not work with gun. :cry: (I'm with the Window version, I'll try on linux later)
Ahhhh. Love it! Great gamefeel and look! I had a lot of fun with this! Congrats!
I loved this game! One of the best ones so far. Tha gameplay and the art are amazing and polished. Congratulations to the team!
@matoux42 I'm really sorry you had issues with the game! It might be related to the controller you used (we tested with Xbox controller), but then the keyboard issue wouldn't make sense... so I'm really at a loss. If you can :bear: with me for a bit, I'd love for you to email me at ecmjohnson@gmail.com with your setup details (e.g. controller type, keyboard type, machine, windows version).
@gerardb I'm so glad you had fun playing! We spent a lot of time on feel and look so it's great to hear it payed off for you!
@theonethatneverwas Thanks! We put a lot of attention into the polish (including some really sticky bugs with showing multiple :honey_pot: for health) and I'm glad to hear it was worth it!
Solid entry! The graphics are amazing!
GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME, WHERE CAN I PAY FOR IT?!
@boopsgames Thanks friend! Glad you liked it! :bear:
@chaosthelegend Haha, wow! Thanks so much!! We have an Itch page if you want to help us out: https://ecmjohnson.itch.io/akimbear
Cool Game, Love the artstyle, nice concept. Definitely was difficult with the keyboard but nice concept. Good Job :thumbsup:
@game-coder28 Thanks for giving it a shot! Sorry your stream wasn't working yesterday, but I'm glad you came back to it. Tell your friends! :bear:
I love how juicy this game is :) i've also seen that Vlambeer talk, it's really interesting. The game looks great and sounds great, LOVED the background music, the song is very catchy! I played with the keyboard and it was a bit hard, but it was really funny. my only negative feedback would be that the birds were hard to hit sometimes and you didn't had time to react (that could be because playing with keyboard tho) and when using both machineguns at the same time the sound effects overlapped and it sounded weird. I'll try to play again with a controller, i want to see what's in that underground lab :P. Good job!
@jaimuepe Ahh, great to hear you enjoyed it! Yeah, it's much much more manageable with a controller. The birds are still tricky with one, but it's at least do able (If it makes you feel any better, on keyboard I still haven't made it past the first level so you've done really well haha!) Definitely give it a shot with a controller if when you have the chance, and let us know what your theories on the ending are :thinking:. Thanks again for playing! :bear:
@jaimuepe Oh! And if you were at all interested I put the (short) soundtrack for AkimBear on band camp for free! https://closecallstudios.bandcamp.com/album/akimbear-ost
The graphics are incredible! Very fun game. However, I didn't understand how this relates to the theme.
This was a fantastic game. Really fun gameplay and great art. I've got nothing else to say besides great job!
Twins shooter bad keyes.
I absolutely love the humor and execution of this game. Its the coolest bear in town yo. To be honest, i would have wished for even more explosions in the back, and some more sound effects, but overall its really fun!
Really nice done! love the graphics!
Wish the controllers were better on keyboard setup. I got lost! Great art btw! And keep up the good work.
This looks great! I am a huge fan of the art style and I love the reflections, zoom, and visual effects. I really enjoyed the sound and mood as well. This was a good fit for the theme. It was unconventional but made perfect sense!
I tried it several times with the keyboard controls before grabbing a controller. It is great with a controller but almost unplayable with the keyboard controls. I wonder if using the QWE for the left gun and the mouse for the right gun would feel more natural.
Anyway, keep up the great work!
@mohrro Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! We used the theme in the design: the player must sacrifice forward progress in order to shoot.
@legavroche Thank you so much!
@edward-dassmesser It really is much easier and makes more sense with a controller
@tekses I'm glad that you realize Grizzle is the coolest bear in town! We were planning to add more sound effects but the time limit squeezed those out.
@lavinski Thanks for the kind words!
@tpamir Thank you! We wanted to have some keyboard controls so that everyone could experience the game, but we definitely realize that, despite our efforts on tweaking them, they're really not the optimal input method.
This is so great! I love games that embrace the lighthearted nature of the ldjam and put some humor into them. This is by far the best example ive seen so far in this jam!
Why do the cute forest critters want to kill Mr. Grizzle so bad?! :bear:
This has a lot of personality for such a small game. Using a controller felt perfect, because I tried playing with a keyboard and boy was it bad. Sometimes the ground enemies were a bit hard to see, and it chugged a little when a lot of bullets were flying. But aside from that, the concept, art style, and the sound/music blew me away. Great submission!
Games like this make the LD rating experience so much sweeter. I enjoy the loop of playing lots of games of various qualities, leaving constructive feedback, participating in the community, and all of that, but most games just..._are_. They're neat, they're creative, they're an awesome endeavor for 48 or 72 hours, but okay cool now I'm onto the next one.
Every once in a while a game makes me sit up straight and smile, and sticks with me for a little while. Usually I don't even know what _exactly_ it is, there's just something different. It's just that this game is different. This game is _special_.
Akimbear is one of those games, and I wanted to let you folks know. Every little bit is so finely put together - I love all the visual touches, especially the reflections and the RGB-distortion damage effect, that wonderful Vlambeer screen shake and time stretching fanciness, the awesome animations, the character and style oozing from everything, and the super tight gameplay. There's not much here in terms of novelty that sets things apart (though honestly now that I say that I can't immediately think of an on-rails side-scrolling twin-stick shooter off the top of my head...), but it just doesn't matter. It's fantastic entirely on its own merit, and it's just plain fun to boot.
One of the intangibles that shines here is the way a particularly well aimed shot, or perhaps a big desperate barrage fired to fend off a large group of enemies, feels like a personal accomplishment. The mechanics are simple, but the execution and responsiveness is so spot on that I feel I can take pride in the waves where I do well, and I know what I should have done differently when I fail. For me that sets hooks in deep, and is super compelling.
Thanks for this game, and I'm looking forward to seeing more in the future!
P.S. I didn't initially notice controller support and yeah, wow it's _so_ much easier with thumbsticks. The keyboard controls did feel pretty great for what they could provide, though, so kudos for polishing that up as well!
This bear is a badass lol Graphics are great. Didn't go far with the keyboard (as expected). Will have to come back with a controller. Nice job!
Really nice game, very polished art and cool controls (although with was difficult for me to get used to them in the first few minutes, but after a while I was fine with them hahah). Good job!!
Great game! Controls were difficult in a fun way!
Super cool game! Great graphics, great sounds!
Very good! This is a very polished game, good job!
Haha this is the first game that made me smile while playing (and definitely my favorite so far). The polish in this game is insane: screen transitions, screen shake, particle effects, good music, it's all there. AND it's certainly believable this was all done in a weekend because of how simple the game was. THIS is how you do a game jam. Good job team!
Thank you for sharing your game with me. I played it on my stream tonight at https://www.twitch.tv/saoigames
I have rated your game, but all of my feedback was captured in the stream.
You can hear my comments in the archive at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/345723905
@drekler We did think of doing that, but decided against it for various reasons. In retrospect I think we should have gone with that scheme, then at least it would better match the difficulty on controller and allowed everyone to experience the full game. I'm so glad you like the art style! I worked on the reflection system and it was not an easy thing to figure out so I'm very happy that you liked it!
@gentoogames We find that levity and humour makes the creative process much more fun!
@sodaraptor :wink: That's part of the story. I've noticed the framerate drops (seems to be especially noticeable on the web build) and I'm not sure what the cause is. It's somewhat hidden by the fact that we intentionally dilate time on some events, but I do have the nagging suspicion that there is something to optimize (I guess there really always is...). We already pool all the things so I doubt it would be garbage collection, maybe physics (those bullet casings...) or the double rendering for the reflection? I'll have to look into it more when I get some free time. Thanks for commenting on it and, of course, playing!
@lilou-cormic Grizzle is one :dark_sunglasses: :bear: Thanks!
@jesse-santana Thanks a lot! I'm glad you picked up the controls!
@aj-jones Glad that the difficulty was fun for you!
@deemoo You're cool! Thanks!
@acoto87 [We find the joy in the polish.](https://bit.ly/1xrSWQh) Thank you!
@gizmolo Bringing a smile to your face is exactly what we wanted! For our polish, I think we owe that to how we worked as a team. Our programming of new elements early on managed to keep slightly ahead of Jeff's assets which let us delve into adding the camera effects and reflections. Thanks for playing!
@saoi-games Thanks for streaming AkimBear! It was cool to watch someone playing it! We are, of course, very sorry that it was such a challenge with the keyboard. Also, we regret not having a tutorial or in game instructions to help with picking it up for the first time. Although it didn't take you long to figure out the keys!
Great game! high polish looks really nice and is full of... feel? I can see the vambleer influence, great stuff!
I love the little details :smile: The elevator door says no smoking, yet the bear has a cigar. That honey drip screen transition, and persistent bullet shells, etc. Really fantastic job on this one.
I felt like I wanted the guns to snap to my thumb stick position faster. Sometimes an enemy would be at my feet and I would instantly aim the stick right at it but the gun has to make a slower turn toward that direction so there was no way to get them.
I also feel like the enemies should contrast the background more.
Make sure you add the HTML5 link to the page above so those like myself looking for HTML5 don't pass on this great game. I found if from your feed post about adding the web version.
@justinmullin Hey Justin, sorry about the late reply. To be honest, our whole team including myself have been so humbled by your lovely comment that we're a little speechless! It warms our hearts to know that you enjoyed our game so much, and we're so proud that you believe it to be something special. To me having a game be something special is the highest praise and i'm so touched that you believe our game fall anywhere near that. Thank you so much for this comment, it has legitimately made my week (and it's Smash week... sooo...). After all these lovely comments on this page, including yours, taking this game further is definitely something we're considering right now, and hearing we have something special from an outside party other than amongst our selves is definitely another layer of inspiration to do so. Have a good one Justin, and thanks so much again for taking the time to play our game! :bear:
I've tried this game with keyboard and it's so much harder. I still love it anyways :laughing: everything is well done in this game and the shooting feels super satisfying. Amazing level of polish went into this one. Overall I loved it. Awesome Job :thumbsup:
@joh Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for giving it a shot! Tell your friends! :bear:
@trevor-hayes Thanks for the kind words! Aiming sensitivity is definitely something we'll look into, thanks for the feed back! Re: HTML5, a version is now available from this page. Thanks for the suggestion! :bear:
@lazertrax Haha, yeah I still haven't beat the first level with a keyboard! Thanks for the kind works and giving our game a try. tell your friends! :bear:
Playing this was a joy :D It feels just right, even if it's a bear with an akimbo gatlin XD It also looks really nice. Relly good job!
@kromzem Thanks for giving it a shot, and super glad you enjoyed it! Tell your peeps :bear:
From the very first post you made about this, I thought, "I have *got* to play this game". I also thought, "As cool as this is, how does it fit the theme?", but I see now you've gone for a gameplay sacrifice rather than a literal one. It's a different take on the theme than the other games I've played so far, and it works very well.
From a graphics and audio standpoint, you've done a fantastic job for 72 hours. Everything is so neat and crisp! I was playing via keyboard so that made things much harder, but I understand that this was optimised for controllers and it actually made for a fun challenge. Might have done better if not for those bloody birds! They kept hitting me before I could point either gun at them.
Still the coolest game I've seen this Ludum Dare. A cigar-chomping bear dual-wielding Gatling guns?! How is that not pure awesome? Great idea, and great game!
[My Internet derped and submitted my comment twice, whoops. Ignore this one.]
@f1krazy I'm so glad you liked it! Yeah, we wanted to be a little less literal with the theme and bake its concept into the gameplay instead of making it a game about literal sacrifice. So we're glad you got what we were going for! And yeah, haha, the birds are annoying... But we wanted to make sure there was a reason to change the direction of your shooting laterally rather than just shooting down all the time. We'll Possibly be building this game out in the future so... stay tuned! :thinking: Thanks again for playing! :bear:
@ecmjohnson Really solid game, tight, responsive controls, and the feedback was to die for! Nice going!
You can watch me play it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99187aER7DQ
Very juiced up entry, although I found it a little weird that my speakers made clicking sounds as though the shooting sounds were a little too loud and clipped.
@alext-design Thanks for playing you two! hope you enjoyed it.
@randomphantom Hmm, intriguing... Were you playing it in browser? Haven't experienced this ourselves so thanks for letting us know. Thanks for playing! :bear:
Oh man nice game! I'm sucker for pixel art and this reminds me so much of Kingdom game. A bear juggling with dual miniguns? Who wouldn't love this shit? All those pesky squirrels and seagulls trying to steal my honey. Fuck them up! SFX's are pretty much gold and gameplay satisfying yet frustrating. Overall I'd say you go far with this one.
@keppu Aeee, so glad you enjoyed! Tell your friends!🔫🐻🔫
There was an animation glitch when I was first opening up the game. The scene transition didn't scale correctly. Overall I think that this game is hilarious,
@franciszek-pyrc Hmmm, I've never seen that myself, but it's definitely possible. I use a script to scale the transition to fit the screen. If you know how it was caused or could send screenshots, I'd really like to know more; my email is ecmjohnson at gmail.com. I'm glad you found the game funny! Apprise your confidants! :gun: :bear: :gun:
@ecmjohnson it was probably because I clicked the full screen button and the transition was scaled to that small window.
@franciszek-pyrc Ah.. that makes sense. I should have spent a bit more time testing the WebGL port for those kind of issues. Luckily the rest of the transitions will be computed from the new window size, so it'll only be first menu transition that will be messed up. Thanks for the find!
Awesome game! Very well done!
It is very visible that you were "guided" by the talk by Vlambeer and you did it very well. I especially liked the shells piling up. However, I think you overdid the slowmo part a bit.
The game is quite hard (even with a controller) and the last few meters took forever. But it was really fun to play.
@smbe19 Thanks, friend! I'm glad you enjoyed it! We really stole our game's sauce from Vlambear :bear:
I appreciate the feedback on the slowmo; next time I'll tune it to be a bit subtler :timer:
Freaking YES! Brilliant looking hilarious polished game. This marks so many boxes of excellence for me. I'm astonished this was made in a Jam. Great Job on this! Well Don!
I liked playing this game and I love how badass the bear looked with the cigar. Audio visuals mood were all very good. I did find it a bit hard but I played with a keyboard. I ended up spraying a lot, which admittedly felt very satisfying. The only thing I didn't really like was the sacrifice mechanic, I don't think the stopping really added to the gameplay but I understand you needed it to fit the theme. Overall very nice game but the sacrifice-mechanic is unnecessary in my opinion. I also wanted to keep playing so that's a good sign!!
@ratherjolly Hey, thanks a lot! We are very proud of it! :gun: :bear: :gun:
@shakedimus I'm glad you enjoyed it, even with a keyboard! Thanks for the feedback on the movement mechanic! We understand what you mean about it, but we really like what it contributes to the choices a player is required to make. Maybe it would have been better handled by us if we clearly communicated the mechanic and how that interfaces with the timer
This is Kingdom with guns. Really like the art style, everything is consistent and I can really appreciate that. The theme is not just slapped on there for the sake of having to be there. It actually makes sense if you want people to be able to shoot without worrying about ammo, but still having some downside to constantly firing. Controls are hard, but I would not want it any other way. Nice work guys, hope to see much more of you in the future!
These graphics are outstanding! It is a great game with an interesting shooting mechanic!
@hare-software Thank you for the kind words! We're glad that you liked it! We really enjoyed playing Escape from Arex and we actually had a question. We were wondering if the guy you had to kill at the end was the friend who’s in the picture hanging in your house? We had a wicked row about this so we'd really appreciate the clarification. I think that's your character's wife in the picture and you discover that she's missing (to be continued?).
@emperor-eagle Thanks a lot! :gun: :bear: :gun:
What a concept! Took me a couple of attempts to really get it, but after that it felt good. Unfortunately it was just too darn difficult for me, so I never even managed to get halfway through the level on successive playthroughs. Would love to know if someone managed to finish, haha. It's a really cool game!
I think maybe the encounters should've been toned down a little because there were occasionally long stretches where I just wasn't able to move at all, and sometimes they felt a bit too random, with enemies approaching from both directions both from above and below at the same time and it just didn't seem possible to get them all without taking a hit or two. :p
The control scheme was well chosen and felt like a very natural way to do something like this. Reminded me a bit of playing something like StepMania. Maybe this would be fun as a rhythm game? 💃
Great audio, both music and sound effects. Music kinda drowned in bullet hell sometimes, haha.
Graphics are amazing! I hadn't noticed your many posts on the front page about them, but will make sure to have a look now. 👀 Really pretty overall. I do feel like the screen shake and blinking made it a bit difficult to fully appreciate the gorgeous backdrop at times tho.
I think maybe the easiest balance act would be to make the health refills simply refill more lives. p:
Really good entry! Rating it highly! I hope I didn't come off as overly negative with my little nitpicks, but I'm providing them because it was such an amazingly polished game overall, and these were the minor things that nagged me just a liiittle bit. Great work! <3