Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Elemental Storm
By benburgh
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 326 | 3.22 | 49 | |
| Fun | 279 | 3.15 | 50 | |
| Innovation | 162 | 3.40 | 50 | |
| Theme | 351 | 3.16 | 49 | |
| Graphics | 388 | 2.77 | 50 | |
| Audio | 232 | 3.05 | 49 |
I really liked this game. It fit the theme perfectly and the mix of 2d and 3d in this game works really well. I also like how the game is also a story. The controls are kinda weird sometimes, as my character just freezes sometimes.
It was fun. Great time!
I really liked the intro where the story and game elements were included directly in the playing area! It's also cool how the world reacts to you sacrificing each element. Good use of the theme throughout, especially the end cutscene :)
Being able to kill the water shrine was a bit too hard. Perhaps adding holes to the waves would keep the idea but make it a little more forgiving. I'd also speed up the bullets a bit so they have a chance to hit what you're aiming at. When you die you respawn at the very beginning which makes the game feel really slow. Maybe at the very least you can move the respawn point up to the shrine entrances, rearranging the descriptions to fit the game's narrative if needed. I somehow got my character stuck shooting continuously even though I wasn't hitting any buttons. Immediately after you defeat Grimmvich the cutscene begins but it took me a few seconds to realize it was a cutscene and not just the game bugging out. Some kind of positive indication that you won, even if it's just a flash or some other simple animation would make it feel and play better.
I was able to defeat Grimmvich by sacrificing Fire and Water.
Nice job kushamo!
@shawn-moore It was on the drawing board to have more feedback on victory/defeat, but I ran out of time haha. I wasn't able to do much play testing during the jam, but I've gotten feedback from other people that the water is too hard. (This was after I nerfed all the bosses to take less hits!) I might look into the rules about making small changes to see if nerfing is allowed.
I don't get this game unfortunately. It says to shoot at 2D elements, but that does nothing? What am I missing here? I tried shooting pretty much everything 2D, and the bullets just pass over and continue on...
That said, I also thought it was very cool how the tutorial and story elements were visible as you walked through the level - and doubly so for the controls/instructions that are at the bottom when you start and revealed again only if you back up rather than go forward. Very well implemented!
Nice storyline and concept. :) I especially like the idea that the music loses tracks as each element is defeated.
BTW, I found a bug where all of the ending text was superimposed on the intro text.
Hey, this is a nice little game! At first I was really confused because I went straight for the final boss and died miserably but then I understood that I needed to attack the side bosses first. It's too bad you didn't have time to make all of the art 2D - your drawings look much better than the cubes / spheres / cylinders! I have a little bit of feedback on what I would do to improve the battles:
* Triple or quadruple the attack speed of the main character (and same for the health of the enemies to compensate) * Telegraph the attacks of the bosses * Once telegraphing is in, make the attacks more directed at the character
I think just those small tweaks would make the game feel a lot better without too much work
@frosty Oof, I was worried that could happen but I never ran into it myself. I'll take a look - which bosses did you fight?
@rsim I didn't have enough time to telegraph it well... the 2D stuff at the start is just background objects. When you get into a fight (which will be clear), the bosses are 2D and their attacks are 3D.
@frenchie I wish I had more time for the art to! But with only 48 hours, sacrifices must be made ;)
I didn't like having the shots be so slow, and for some reason I didn't think to make it faster and increase their health to compensate. I guess I got tunnel visioned, but that would help!
it's a interesting! game I wave listen the music change but the mouvement speed is so low and i can't dodge attacks very well and I don't see were is the theme and (a really cool argument) your game looks like titan souls a game were you just fight bosses only bosses
Very nice concept! I really like the hand-drawn art. You put it as "beautiful, but I really think it looks awesome! The movement is a bit stiff, so it is hard to dodge the attacks. Also the general goal is a bit vague, but after some tries I understood it. Well done!
It's a pity I can't play properly with my foreign keayboard Game seemed very original with really nice ideas. I found the tutorial in the first screens a smart idea. Unfortunately I could not defeat any enemy.
Good work, especially in a compo ! I d'ont really get the theme, through?
Boss different attacks looks great but after die its a little long to move again
It's a challenging and addicting game :smile: I couldn't finish though, a bit too challenging for me :smile:
Fun game! My favourite aspect is the blend between the 2D and 3D art, and how you had to avoid the latter only. Great job for a compo! Neat audio detail too, how it gets quieter in the end.
Wow. Boss mechanic was awesome. I loved that killing each element also removed one of the instruments from the music, along with graying out the representations of that element. The moody theme after having killed the boss and realizing that you sacrificed some of the world to assist, eye opening. Obviously this could have been expanded to be a bit more than just a boss fight, if you had more time. I would love to play more!
I opted to destroy all 4 elements because I thought that was the objective lol but the ending was really good. I basically ruined the world to make the game easier. Interesting entry.
The mechanics are cool but unrefined. I'd be interested in seeing this game with some polish :P and the art was perfect lol
@benburgh I featured your game as the first episode of my Play & Improve stream series! I made the player's attacks faster, gave the earth boss new and improved attacks, and more! You can watch the [recording here](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/344784417)
Good run here! Neat concepts for boss battles, keep polishing those up as you make more games.
Good use of theme. I had to sacrifice a few elements to take out the boss. Removing instruments and colors after taking out elements is a nice touch.
For you next game I would advice you to work on gameplay feedback as there is not enough feedback from the game. Small things like audio clips when you shoot, deal damage, take damage and die would have given your game a big boost. More than once I got frustrated with my character when he stopped moving, but then realized I had died. You have sound effects for the bosses but nothing for the player. Taking and dealing damage are important events in the game, it should be clear when they happen.
The mix of 2D and 3D makes it really hard to tell what you can shoot. Destroying the player bullets on impact would make it clearer when you hit something with a hitbox.
You did a good job with the elements, they all require you to move in a different way while fighting them. Of the 4 elements I had the most trouble with Earth since the attack often appeared directly underneath me without warning. I got around the earth attack by moving in a square, but sometimes the flower would become really aggressive and run into me, dealing damage and killing me anyway. (The flower leaves the arena and follows you around if you die while fighting it, and I found that to be kinda cute to be honest. :smirk: :sunflower:)
I'm not sure if it's the intended behaviour, but if you aim in a different direction than you are moving, the bullet will not go straight towards the mousepointer. The bullets are also really slow. It made it really hard to deal damage to a boss while moving, and since all the bosses require you to dodge it got frustrating. Realizing I had to stop moving to deal damage helped but it felt really unintuitive.
The time you spent on secondary stuff like music tracks, color changes and the cutscene could have been spent on gameplay. It's ambitious to include all these things, but unfortunately I think gameplay suffered because of it.
Overall it's a decent entry. Good luck in the future! :v:
@kraftkar Thanks for the write-up! I agree with about all of your points. I'd like to give more feedback for shooting and death/victory, but I wanted it to look better first. I was using spheres and cubes up until the last 8 hours, and I didn't even have time to draw everything I wanted to! I tried to do a bunch of playtesting, but I didn't run into very many bugs until after it was finished. (I think they have to do with if you and the boss both die in a short time frame?)
Frenchie: That's awesome, I'm honored! I'll @ you in a new comment with my thoughts after I watch it
@frenchie Thanks for the feature! I got halfway through, before I realized I need to go to sleep.
A bullet hell style was actually closer to my original vision, but I didn't want to implement a different health system for the bosses. For the Earth, I lowered the collider a bit so it so if it spawned on top of you you wouldn't instantly take damage. It makes sense that the objects should be responsible for themselves, but something that I wasn't really concerned with in the timeframe.
Regarding IEnumarators, I think it's a point of the creator understanding its exact purpose which may not be as clear to an onlooker. I probably do rely on them to much though, haha.
I think the presentation and structure of your stream work really well, and you're great at talking through your thoughs. It shows how small changes can make big differences in feel. You were able to predict a lot of the behavior and structures, which is very impressive. You said it was your first episode, but you present it really well!
@benburgh glad you caught some of it! Be sure to check out the end if you don't have time to watch the whole thing so you can see how it turned out :smile:
I said this at some point on the stream: there's more than one way to accomplish things with code. As long as the game works that's what matters. I just wanted to do things in a way that worked for me since I was trying to make changes. Also, hopefully seeing another way of doing things is helpful! I for one am going to go brush up on coroutines / enumerators so that I can use the next ones I see rather than refactoring them out.
Thanks for all the compliments on the stream! Come watch an episode live if you get the chance :smiley: I'll be streaming at 6 PM PST each time. And if you notice anything that could be improved please let me know as well!
It was a nice little game! Sometimes the character just freezes which caused me to just randomly die sometimes, not sure if that was intentional or not? It was great fun nonetheless!
Wow, thank you for that experience! It was like a full Zelda game crammed into one level. Reminded me of Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, as well. Ambitious, but you pulled it off. The ending was perfect. Walking back through the world...man. You really showed us how games can be meaningful.
Just work on the shooting mechanics, and you'll be golden :P Great job!
@afroant Thank you for the kind words, that's very high praise! I'm planning on making a post-jam version to improve the feel and add drawings to the attacks.
it was alot better than i though it would be! :)
More hand-drawn art! That was one of the better parts of the game, so replace the 3D models. I like the concept of de-powering a boss fight by taking down the different elements. Definitely wouldn't mind seeing more of this!
Your game was played on my stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos ) on the third day of Ludum Dare streams. Thank you for sharing your game with us! You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://goo.gl/N2rkr8
I liked the game, and the idea of sacrificing the elements for power. I think it might have worked better in a longer game though, where I cared more about them, and about the effects losing them would have on the world.
Nice game. I liked the audio and the paintings are cool :) Good job :)
I really liked the way the narrative and directions were given to the player. It was simple, but nice and effective. The art style is very cute, and the boss was unexpectedly intense. Very fun!
Unusual way to explain the gameplay and some keys. At first I said to myself that it was a little game among others, but it is more than I expected. Good job. I guess that with a big work on aesthetic it could be better. Thank you ++
really like it!