gorrion 2019-04-30 06:00
Really impressive! Probably the most fun I had with a LD44 game!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → 99Hearts
By failpositive and barret
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 190 | 3.80 | 47 | |
| Fun | 214 | 3.66 | 47 | |
| Innovation | 126 | 3.71 | 46 | |
| Theme | 281 | 3.69 | 46 | |
| Graphics | 520 | 3.57 | 47 | |
| Audio | 242 | 3.61 | 46 | |
| Humor | 730 | 2.51 | 41 | |
| Mood | 516 | 3.35 | 43 |
Really impressive! Probably the most fun I had with a LD44 game!
I liked your game but is there any way to win ? I played untill i got 200lifes but i must admit I gaveup because i was way too powerfull and all I had to do was to walk and destroy the walls. And at the beginning it's very difficult because you only fire in the direction you walk, forcing you to walk toward ennemies. So i guess it's a balancing issue between early and late game.
Still a cool game, liked the take on the theme and the retro mood. Liked the random chest with the upgrade, but in the end I had too many of theme making me too powerfull. Maybe scale the cost with each loop ?
The gun sfx was maybe a bit too strong and got annoying as well because it's basicallu firing the whole game , faster and faster, had to turn down my volume.
Cool entry !
Really like that retro vibe !
@gorrion thank you so much. This is my first time doing ludum dare. I honestly had such a blast making this game and super glad you enjoyed it.
@turbogros thank you. I am not really an artist so I decided to go with a low color palette to make doing everything easier and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out
@tbaudon Thank you for the feedback. Yeah I was trying to go for the risk of rain 2 gameplay style where you just keep looping, but my way of calculating the enemies scaling with you was really bad so you are just too powerful. Which can be for fun a while. If I were to take this into a full game I'd definitely need to do a ton of work on scaling and balancing the gameplay. In risk of rain the win screen is more like the lose screen that shows how far you made it, It would of been nice I could of implemented some screen that showed all the power ups you got and the stacked amounts and how long you played what loop you were on how many rooms you placed down and how many enemies you killed and what types. Definitely would of gave some more motivation to go
I like the idea of scaling the cost with the loops. If I had it where you could carry over the heart amounts to the next loops I think that idea would of worked since you would have more hearts the next loop.
The sound thing was another one I wasn't sure how to handle b/c I was like yeah it's going to get annoying after a long period of time. I'm actually curious now to look at other games that have constant shooting to see how they handle it.
Loved it! Easy and fast to understand, really keep me wanting to open more rooms :) I liked the way the booms, the lifes, the time and discovering new levels are all connected.
@oku Thank you for the kind words. I had some early feedback to help me try and make sense. I was trying to make things simple but yet have variety and keep the game pace going pretty well. I honestly didn't know how it was going to turn out or if I was even going to pull it off at first haha. But I am super glad you enjoyed. Thanks for playing and thanks for the comments
so much poooooower!!! nice job!
@tweedle thank you. Yeah the game definitely has some balancing issues but I think for a jam game it was fun to be over powered. Who knows maybe I'l work on it more and make it into a full game. I really did enjoy making it a lot.
This game looks and sounds incredibly good. Well done!
This is a nice first jam game. Had fun playing it, well done!
@artyom-volkov I am glad you think so. I have heard feedback the game is a bit loud it used to be louder haha. and the bullet sounds getting annoying but I tried to make everything fit and the composer doing the music is amazing so I am glad you liked it. He does a great job
@hugonun thank you so much. I have done 2 smaller jams before but never something this big so I was always nervous about it but I decided after someone said the best thing of ludum dare is being able to get the feedback. I had some people try the game while I was making it to tweak things and I just had so much fun making it. I kinda wanna adapt it to a full idea. Probably have better controls. I think I realized this game is the most fun when you have the auto aim power up so might as well just give the player auto aim
Oh wow this was really fun, I loved the music and the art style, you guys did a great job! Thanks for letting us play it!
@abraxas-interactive Thank you so much. I am super happy you enjoyed all the aspects. I wasn't sure if it was going to all fit together in such short time but I really had way too much fun
Good on you barret, great use of creating rooms this way!
@dreadusa thank you very much. It was an idea I had brewing in my mind for awhile and I hadn't really a clue how I was going to do it haha but I wanted to see if it would translate into a fun game mechanic
Everyone else was overpowered and I ended up too weak, lol. I watch the video and you place a room and get one or two guys, I placed a room and got dozens! Anyway, this was pretty cool, definitely fun. I would probably tone down or even remove the drones, it's more fun to shoot enemies than have them do it. Also, enemies can be kind of bullet spongy and with no health bar, that's obnoxious. I would prefer a better way to direct fire, but eh, fine for a jam.
Wow! Probably the best game on this Ludum Dare that i played so far. Graphics and audio are matched perfectly for me, love that you used one color palette. It was simple to understand, really made me want to unlock more levels. Quite simple but amazing job!
Great job! The graphics were great and the gameplay was fun.
@pyrian Yeah that's one of the problems with the randomness. I do prevent certain enemies from appearing till you have placed down 5 rooms. And the enemies health goes up but I did a horrible job of balancing the scale so your example is a great one for why it needs much better scaling so that you don't get into that situation too early. The bullet spongy ness was me trying to figure out how to scaled but failing miserably at haha. After watching Z_Doctor stream the game I realized the auto aim power up he said now the game is enjoyable. I actually really like this project and am thinking about maybe going further with it so I am very happy you left some good quality feedback that hopefully I can use to improve the game if I continue
@raska Thank you, I am gla you enjoyed it because I am not an artist so I decided the only way I'm going to be able to do anything decent is using a very low color palette. Because art is usually my biggest barrier but with this I felt I was able to keep things consistent and look decent enough to where It would all fit together and I just focused more on the gameplay mechanics than worrying about art like I normally do haha.
@wrimo Thank you very much I am glad you enjoyed the gameplay and the graphics. Especially considering I'm not very much of an artist that makes me happy. Plus saying the game is fun is probably the best thing I could ever hope for
Wow, this was a ton of fun! Creating the play are was a great idea. At first I thought the game was broken because I ended up with negative hearts, but then I found the lose condition. That was a nice touch as well, makes things less abrupt.
I must say, I really wish I had read those instructions before playing. I didn't realize I could stand still and shoot simultaneously XP I saw the post about your game on the feed and went straight to the game.
Anywho, amazing job!
Edit: Forgot to mention I found a bug! Before I got a bomb upgrade, I could place a second bomb right as the first was exploding, and have them both explode at the same time!
Edit 2: I decided to do another run, and managed to get OP. It was a blast! I do with there was more of a challenge at some point, or a reason to keep playing after you get to that point, but hey. Ludum Dare. The Graphics, Audio, and Gameplay worked perfectly together. One of the best Ludum Dare 44 games I've played so far!
Graphical weirdness: If you pick up multiple upgrades they stack the images on top of one-another.
My only real complain is the controls. Too often I drop a bomb when I only wanted to stay foot. I would enjoy it more if shooting was separated from movement. Apart from that, great job! Having in-game instructions on the first screen is a clever idea. The concept of "buying" new pieces of land (like in Forage) works great. The graphics and audio are spot. I personally love palettes with limited colours.
This was great, felt like a real game. The music track was really good, got me in the mood to shoot the uh... bad guys? Couldn't really understand what I was looking at as far as the visuals go but the low aspect did give the game some style. The theme wasn't strongly represented but the mechanic of revealing the level was a really cool feature. All in all this is a really good entry and you should all be proud of this.
This is an impressive game that i have played so far in ludum dare. Really like the retro vibe of the game.
@mrpiedpiper Yeah I stared to realize that the autoaim makes the game a bit more enjoyable. I was trying to do minimal controls so I was like ok here we go you can shoot when you move, oh but what if you wanna shoot in place haha. So it was probably not the best solution
I wanted to do a better job scaling the enemies. I was trying to scaled them with you but instead it sort of has this inverse difficulty where it starts out hard and gets easiser and easier b/c you become so OP, but being OP can be fun for a point which is kinda why I think it works for the jam game. The endless loops don't really offer any challenge, so If I ever decided to make this a full game I would need to really work hard on that. I wanted to have that risk of rain 2 feeling where you just can keep playing and it gets harder and harder but instead I just let you get OP haha. Balance is everyhting.
Oh yeah the bombs, so I did something where bombs chain react and you can kinda lay bombs infinitely. The bomb and the explosion are actually 2 different objects so when you have 1 bomb you can't lay another bomb if one exists but once it explodes there are no bombs just explosions so I think that's one way to kinda bypass it but I figured what the heck i'll just leave it in
I wasn't aware of the images stacking on top of each other I think b/c I wasn't paying as much attention to the upgrades, that's a good catch though thank you for alerting me.
I am glad you enjoyed it :)
@bauke-regnerus Yeah possibly a seperate button for bombs would of been better. My thinking was that this game would have very minimal controls but sometimes re-using controls to do many things can be just as confusing as having a lot of controls so I think there is definitely a balance. My hope was that with the limited controls the players would shortly discover what you could and couldn't do. It only halway worked haha.
I will admit I have had this idea of a game brewing up in my mind where you lay down rooms for awhile so I kinda just used this gamejam to execute that idea and tried to make the theme fit in how I thought it would make sense. Your life goes down every 30 seconds there are enemies with the timer, and you need to use your life to purchase the upgrades and build land. There is technically one aspect where you can get negative hearts but you have the chance to get back in the positive again. If you have negative hearts and you try to build land you lose, so I had a time where if I bought the power up it would bring me negative so I just bought the land which at the time of purchase I wasn't negative but aftwards I was , so I had to gain up my hearts and it was pretty intense.
The palette is what truly saved me. I am not an artist so I wanted to limit myself b/c I am very limited in my artistic skills. I am glad you liked that aspect
@no-grapes-games You have no idea how much that comment made me smile "felt like a real game". I do have a very proud feeling mostly b/c people are having fun with the game and that's my whole reason for creating games is so others can have fun. So I can at least say that now I have made something that people had fun with :)
@poovi so awesome that you enjoyed and found it impressive. I am also glad people still enjoy retro vibes this day and age. I know I'm gettig old haha but it's good to see the appeal is still there
More powerups .... More POWERUPS ! ... MOOORE POWWEEERRRUUUPPPPPPPSSS !!!!!! Nah I'm good, not getting too cocky because infinite shields etc. Oh? I'm dead. ^^
So, to be serious, great game. Must have been a challenge to make a system like that in the jam time. The begining, for me, was a bit difficult and I felt the shooting mechanic was missing something (didn't feel great), that was until auto-aiming and increased rate which transformed your game into a Shoot em Up.
I'd have only a few ideas for improvement, because we can always improve ^^ but your game is great as it is. Here are the ideas:
- maybe make your ennemies more distinctives from one to another (color palette, shapes, projectiles) and also from the landscape (more contrast on the outter lines of the monsters maybe?). I'm talking art here, not mechanics. These were good more or less, some ennemies felt a bit similar but that's no problem because the overall cast was diverse. You could, neverless, have added some close range fighting guy that, especially when we have a huge map, would make us run back and _use_ this huge map we've build. - Yeah, that's maybe something also: if you plan to make this into a game or reuse the idea somewhere, maybe consider giving more purpose to the _rest_ of the map, the one we've "cleaned". Maybe shops that don't disapear, heal spots, lore spots, timed powerups, or simply add unbreakable rocks that force us to backtrack a little ... idk
Else, good music and art also. Great job :)
Awesome game! Its addictive and satisfying to play, and has basically infinite replayability, since I assume the levels are always random. Great work!
@pl4typus Yeah I was trying to figure a way to scaled the enemies and ended up making the game start out too hard but then it gets too easy haha inverse difficulty. I also have realized auto aim should just be the default for this game. and maybe have it only shoot when enemies are range so you don't have to hear shooting noises non stop.
The enemies are incredibly simple. One enemy just moves up and down, another left and right. Then you have two enemies that just fly towards you and a spawner that spawns enemies.
The art is probably one of my weakest areas, I tried using such a low color palette to help me do semi decent art haha and stay consistent. but yeah lots of extra work needed.
I like your ideas for giving the map purpose. One of my ideas I wanted a giant boss that could actually destroy the rocks and woudl have a giant beam lazer or something that you could take cover behind rocks but as it chased you more and more it would start clearing the world.
I also thought it could be cool if you made certain shapes with the rooms that it did something special but that was way out of scope for this. Like maybe if you did a cross shape or filled up a square of 8 rooms something special appears or happens.
I actually might work on this more and try to figure out how to make it a full game that while probably will be simple still but have more power ups like you said and better things to do and more polished enemies and variety so and so on. But I think the core concept from what I experienced and am reading is good.
Thank you so much for the feedback. and glad you had fun
@mateusboga the randomness isn't quite infinite. I hand crafted 32 rooms and the first one is always the same. However within those rooms the order you lay them down is randomized and the power ups you get is randmized and the enemies chosen are randomized. You can keep looping through the game and keep your power ups and the enemies get more powerful, but I did a bad job of scaling so the enemies are still pretty weak compared to you after you do the first loop.
thank you for the feedback . glad you enjoyed
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/421755452
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
@elysiagriffin thanks for playing. You brought up a lot of good feedback. If I were ever to take the game further I definitely have tons of great suggestions!!!
I really love the visual style and the music, and the gameplay concepts are quite unique and interesting (spending health to grow the level at least!). I didn't really like the way the shooting works, and trying to kill enemies with the bombs was also quite frustrating as some of them are a bit erratic it seemed to me. Bomberman style bombs might have workeed better maybe... After reading a few of the comments it sounds like the combat mechanics change a bit as you progress, so I might have to take another crack at this one.
@randomhuman First off I want to thank you for playing my game and providing feedback. I am super thankful for that.
My idea originally was to make the controls easy only have directions and one button to do everything. However having watched people play the game I realized the game is more fun with the auto aim power-up and maybe that should of just been the default.
Since the game is randomized. There are 32 rooms but the power ups enemies and order the rooms go in are different besides the first room, your play through can be very different.
The bombs can set off chain reactions and set off other bombs. however the bombs are mostly for blowing up the blocks even though they can kill enemies as well, it takes a bit more skill to pull it off.
there are essentially 6 enemies. I didn't have a lot of time to do really interesting things so I tried to keep it basic.
1. vertical moving enemy that shoots in a rotating manner 2. horizontal moving enemy that shoots left and right 3. enemy that moves horizontal and vertical that shoots in a rotating manner 4. small flying enemy that flies towards you with rotating shots 5. big flying enemy that flies towards you with 8 shots at a time 6. spawner enemy that doesn't move but spawns any of the other enemies
Very cool... I played this for quite some time, though I didn't notice there was a stats screen! I did feel a bit OP quite quickly, and found it rather difficult before getting the auto aim powerup. I also at one point managed to get stuck in a wall that spawned over the top of me! Bombed it away though. Could have done with a bit more variety, but that's to be expected with a jam game. Overall, very very good.
Giving the player control of the generative aspect of a procedural roguelike is super duper cool, and the aesthetics altogether are extremely polished. Unfortunately though, my brain can just not come to grasp with movement and shooting being tied together, so honestly I can't play for too long without becoming frustrated.
@garys Yeah the balancing of making the enemies scale I was struggling with. and just sort of left it in a state where you kinda get OP quick which isn't that bad for a jam game but a full game it would be pretty bad.
everything I'm hearing and have seen makes me think auto aim should just be default for this game
Thanks for playing and the feedback. I really liked making this game and maybe will turn it into something of a full game one day. Of course with tons and tons more variety and polish.
glad you were able to get out of the wall.
@jjjjason thank you so much for the comments and feedback. What's funny was that I was trying to simplify the controls by just having the 4 movements and action button. But I noticed from watching people play that the auto aim power up makes the game incredibly more enjoyable.
I really like this concept and hope to improve on it. Thanks for the feedback
Awesome! Very fun and re-playable, although it was a little confusing to begin with (I may have spammed too many bombs...)
Audio and graphics work really well together! Great job! :grinning:
@conk Thank you very much. It's funny b/c my idea was to make things simpler by limiting the amount of buttons but I think that added to the confusion. The auto aim power up seems to help make the game more enjoyable.
Thank for the kind words and glad you had fun. Making this game was actually really fun for me. Maybe the most fun I've actually ever had working on a game. The fact that people are having fun is probably the best thing I could ever hope for.
Addictive game, couldn't stop playing anymore, especially one gets the drones.
Top game especially the theme implementation. Congratulations on your entry!!
@puppetmaster thanks so much for the feedback I am glad you enjoyed the game.
I love the style! the mechanics of the game is very good. and the music is perfect
@matu thank you so much :) glad you enjoyed it and the music too!!!
Genuinely this game is great. This absolutely is just a stone's throw away from being a game you could think about selling. Some boss fights, some more music, more variety of weapons, boom, you have a solid project. The art style is cute (maybe some more pallets could be unlockable like in Downwell). The music was megaman levels of awesome (what chip tracker do you use?) and the game concept itself is fun. It does get a little easy, though I guess the point is to become ridiculously powerful. That being said, I think the Faustian bargain of it could be played up to increase the challenge. Maybe the more powerful you are, the closer you are to death kinda thing. Health should be more rare maybe? Tough to balance for a game jam though, I think you made the right choice in the short term.
Edit: LOL I seem to have played the wrong game... oh well, I had a lot of fun with it anyways! SORRY! I'll play your LD46 game now. (edit again) Looks like I already did! Oops! Well, darn! I wish I could rate this one too.