barret 2019-04-30 03:07
I really loved the animations of the blood clot and how each level was pretty much it's own self contained mechanic that built upon each other to finally beat the last level. Also the music was totally jamming
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → An American Blood Clot in Techno Athens
By AndyG, shuu, gnarf, jesurka and frantic pantomime of jazz hands
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 128 | 3.90 | 34 | |
| Fun | 178 | 3.71 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 304 | 3.40 | 34 | |
| Theme | 313 | 3.65 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 327 | 3.92 | 34 | |
| Audio | 79 | 3.95 | 34 | |
| Humor | 519 | 2.87 | 29 | |
| Mood | 487 | 3.38 | 32 |
I really loved the animations of the blood clot and how each level was pretty much it's own self contained mechanic that built upon each other to finally beat the last level. Also the music was totally jamming
This game is pretty insane. Each level is really it's own system. I love how the clot gets smaller over time and the music is great. Overall a really polished game!
Gotta say this before I even play: good work on having like the best title for a game I've seen this LD.
Amazing that you have created such a polished game in a really short amount of time. The game handles well even though I think I'm really bad at it. Maybe I missed the instructions but I didn't realise you could spawn platforms until I scrolled down a bit. Is the music really loud or is it just my laptop? - thankfully I wasn't wearing headphones!
This game seems like it was made for more than just a game jam. I LOVE this game, it's creative, looks good plays great, and is generally fun while being challenging. Good Job!
It's fun and still just good and challenging.
Wow, this is great! Really nice Meat Boy inspired platformer that has its own set of cool mechanics that are used pretty well. Great job, favorite game so far!
Very fun! Levels need some fine tuning but this is super impressive!
The game is quite difficult, that is why when you lose over and over again the new game seems to start very slowly for such a dynamic playing. Btw the name is really cool
Super Meat Boy Meet Theme! It's pretty fun, and was pretty satisfying to finish (although personally I had a much harder time beating 1-6 than 1-7). I can agree that the controls need a little bit more polish to get to that pixel perfect precision, but that's hard to do in 48 hours.
The graphics though are great! The character art is cute, the knights are mysterious, and the splatters are fun! Dope music too, the right mix of arcadey to keep the adrenaline but chill enough to not make me smash my keyboard.
Nice game! I like the concept to separate a little bit one of yourself to continue. (And I can let the tab open with the main song of your game during my comment, that's a good point :D) In my opinion: - the level 1 is quite difficult for 'a tutorial level'. The level 2 is hardcore. - you should remove the animation when you restart a level, this type of game is made to be fast, and I didn't want to wait! - The itch.io window is quite small, it's difficult to show all the details.
The sound is super good, the graphics are very nice and the difficulty rises fast enough (1-6), for against the theme I find that life (blood) is more a mechanical than a currency. But the game is very fun to play
and please next time when we die the camera animation is too much for a die & retry
@pierallard thanks in particular for the note about the Unity WebGL embed being too small. I'll research how to make it bigger for the next one!
Also totally agree about making the pan animation skippable, and having a gentler learning curve.
Amazing game! The music and artwork were spot on and the controls felt extremely responsive. Overall the game is extremely well polished and it's amazing what you guys were able to accomplish in three days. Just add a couple more levels and I'd be willing to buy a commercial release of it!
Thanks for rating our game!
Maybe one of the most innovative gameplay which I have ever seen - since PinkMan (one of my favorite games). The controls are efficient, but I guess that it could be a little bit more smooth. The main aesthetic is cute and it fits the theme as good as possible because each jump costs a life. Nice musics. What you did in less than 72 hours is just incredible. Thank you. I wish you the best ++
Amazing level design, the first one was a little hard for learning, but really fun! The only thing that I would change, and that's my personal opinion, is the camera movement after you die. This can cause you a headache in the players.
This game was really clever. It's impressive how much you're able to get out of the blood mechanic. Having a platformer with a limited amount of jumps is a really interesting experience. I also like how you can get creative with some of the levels. For instance, I used a super speed jump to skip over most of the final level. Overall, a very solidly designed game. Nice work!
Great music, fun gameplay, and deviously tricky puzzles! I'm sold.
Pretty cool idea! I managed to break it - I think I hit the end goal right as I ran out of blood, and ended up immediately reappearing at full size, but also not leaving behind any blood or able to trigger the level complete.
What you can improve: * after death don't reuse the camera movement cinematic, just refocus on player * add levels
Great job, i enjoyed the Super Meat Boy vibes and the puzzles was really good
Okay so you've told me the solution to level 2, but I didn't go further than level... 5 I think ? Where you have to wall jump. Here's why : the level is pretty hard and unforgiving, it seems you need to perfectly jump at the right distance so that you don't lose too much blood and then you can create a platform to reach the end. The watching eye is in my opinion not necessary and simply adds a challenge that does not belong in a level where you want to : first, teach the wall jumping mechanic, second, validate the platform creation system. The reason I quit is, when I finally reached the end, there was a bug I guess but I could not end the level. So I threw myself out of the level because I realized you would die by falling, but here I didn't so I just kept falling forever. Those are bugs I guess, but I did not want to play again because the game is pretty hard.
Or that's not that the game is hard, it's more the difficulty curve that is very badly dosed. As you said when explaining me the level 2, you've already been told that you need to teach a mechanic, then apply it to make sure the player fully masters it, so I won't say it again.
The controls are also too slippery for me. I think the reason I could not achieve level 2 is that it didn't cross my mind I needed more speed, since I am already really fast and I already can jump pretty far. So maybe slow down a bit the player because it's so hard to get used to. Another thing I did not like is to create platforms then fall under it. I feel like, when creating a platform mid air, you create it under your feet so you can just land on it (and that's what I thought I needed to do in level 2). It's not normal to jump, create a platform, fall, then jump on the platform you just created.
It seemed I could somehow get my normal size back, by maybe running into my blood or something, and I did not understand how I did that. Overall I think the games lacks explanations and feedbacks, it does not bother having to find out something by myself but here you have to guess almost everything. So yeah, fully explain your mechanics, and then create puzzles where the player is like "I know all the mechanics but I have no clue about how to do that ?".
And to talk about some details, remove the camera animation when you try a level again, or show it every 5-6 tries, because your game is a kind if die and retry, and so waiting a bit, even 2 or 3 seconds, is too much and quickly becomes boring. Also you have to wait for a few seconds before dying of falling (and you can see the skybox).
I know this comment might be hard but, keep in mind it's only so that you can improve your game and that it is also my personal opinion, you might not agree with me, and then I'll invite you to tell me what you think ! :) I liked the art, sound, and the game idea is really cool and fits the theme, so I'll be happy to play again if you update it ! Good luck and good job !
@saering don't sweat it, that's not a hard or overly critical comment. We haven't been "told" anything, we've just been critical of our own game, in many of the ways that you mentioned! I think you have a good eye for game design/difficulty curving/introducing mechanics. Specifically better in-game explanation of mechanics is where we would have focused if we had another day (or even another couple hours). I think I'm particularly bad at keeping an intuitive difficulty curve inside of game jams -- it's less of a problem with less time constraints, but it needs to be addressed nonetheless, no excuses! Thanks for the wonderful comment!
This is a very unique game! I love challenging platformers, and I love the idea that every action you take is costing you. This is a very cool interpretation of the theme, and I really enjoyed playing it! Since you guys seem to like platformers you should check out ours!
Very hard!! reminds me a lot to super meat boy (I'm pretty sure it inspired you). As some said the webgl was a bit small, nothing that ctrl + can't solve. Music was a bit too loud, I almost jumped of my chair when it finished loading haha. The game gets a bit too hard too soon for me, I could't get past 1-4 :cry:. Besides that, it's great and responsive, controls felt pretty polished and the game explained itself. Really good entry! Congrats!
Really polished game. Audio is very good. Only concernt is heavy meatboy inspiration, but at least with a twist. good job Oh and respawn in this kind of game should be nearly instant, because sometimes You are waiting longer than trying.
This is a _great_ game! The physics are pretty difficult to master and it'd probably be a bit better on gamepad, but I loved the mechanics of it. My game is similar - spawning platforms to get to the end... but I love the blood loss mechanic too. Really cool. ;)
Holy crap the mechanics are awesome. Fantastic in all departments!
Great game. As some have said, faster respawn time would be great because I died ALOT. Mechanics not bad, hard to get the hang of. I probably should've plugged in a gamepad. Really nice pixel art and character animations (blood splatter when landing, death explosion, etc), and backgrounds/tilemaps looked nice too. Sweet!