oku 2019-04-30 16:46
Loved the storytelling! The graphics are really good and is fun to play!!!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Lousy Life Lessons - [LLL]
By awesomealliterationalliance and EgonBegon
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 5 | 4.41 | 76 | |
| Fun | 30 | 4.12 | 76 | |
| Innovation | 273 | 3.45 | 76 | |
| Theme | 207 | 3.78 | 75 | |
| Graphics | 13 | 4.72 | 77 | |
| Audio | 6 | 4.51 | 76 | |
| Humor | 15 | 4.20 | 77 | |
| Mood | 4 | 4.58 | 76 |
Loved the storytelling! The graphics are really good and is fun to play!!!
Holy crap guys, this is the best LD game I have played so far. The graphics/art style were amazing, the storytelling was really good and the sheer amount of work that has gone in to this is amazing, I can't believe what you have manaed in 72 hours! My hat is off to you all!
The only problem I did come across, which is a common Unity thing, getting stuck on the side of platforms was a thing occasionally, it was a blemish on what I can only describe as a perfect game.
Awesome story, awesome cutscenes, awesome music/voice acting. Character animations were great.
I felt like the gameplay was a bit fiddly with regards to controls (or maybe I'm just not skilled enough). Not sure exactly what it was, but it felt more difficult than it should be.
This was absolutely amazing, you managed to combine different types of gameplay with a really well written story, great visuals and a pretty good soundtrack. And it was all so polished, every detail and animation, I loved the "Inaccurate reflection of events" message. Oh and the voice acting, that's a really nice touch! Best entry I tried so far, well done!
Woah, amazing submissinon! The production quality is outstanding, voice acting, art, illumination, everything! I have to admit that I found the controls a bit frustrating sometimes (small platforms, fast movement and short jump), but I kept playing to reach the end of the story... that said i am not a platformer person and i tend to struggle anyway. Congratz, among the most polished submissions i played so far!
@refraction @japes Thank you very much for your feedback! We tried to use Unity physics for the controls, but they felt pretty strange. We made our own platformer script with raycasts. That was a bit more complicated than we thought, so it has some minor bugs and indeed feels a bit fiddly. We plan to update the Platformer script for a post jam version.
Well done! Love the story and the dark/noir vibe. Artwork and music are top notch. as well. Nice Work!
Amazing game and lovely artwork! Good job
I think this game is purrfect. Great story, Amazing art, spectacular music, and challenging level design. Everyone on your team should be proud this is spectacular work. I have to say this is my favorite line from the game. "But backups don't get impact crater named after you!" I did find one bug when falling and flipping over to land on all fours, if pressed late you can bug the animator till the next jump. The character gets caught falling forever.
A really nice game in my opinion. Graphics is stunning and I love the central-europeanish english of the main character (cartacter?). I'm also amazed about how you manage to match the super-classic agility platform game in a very strict narrative frame. Hats off!
Thanks to everyone for their feedback so far! Our artists are very happy about it! (actually, they're starting to demand ridiculous things like coffee breaks and time to sleep, so please stop! You're giving them a sense of confidence that we can't afford right now!)
@ioleoso thanks for the feedback! The "noir" thing was something we wanted to to for a while now and we just thought a "central-europeanish" accent would fit with that, glad you liked it, too!
@tinykidtoo thank you for the bug report. We ran into the same issue, but didn't have the time to fix everything right away. Hopefully our post jam version won't have the same problems. And very cool, that you appreciated that "impact crater" line. I was hoping someone would pick up on that, so thank you very much:)
I love the art style !
Great Jam here! Amazing visuals, amazing storytelling, and the controls felt perfect. The game is very polished, great job!
Holy shit guys. That's really all I can say. Absolutely in love! Might be the most stylistically amazing LD game I've ever played. Brilliant!
Wonderful game, the best I played so far. I loved the story, the variety of the levels, everything! This universe feels so deep thanks to all the details you added and the cat/dog related trivia. It's impressive how much you could do in 72 hours. I'd actually spend money for a game like that.
Incredible and amazing. Well polished platforming mechanics, enticing story, beautiful graphics. This game has it all. Had me hooked from the get go. Even your screenshots pop out when compared to others. Really incredible job! The only advice I can really give is to make it a bit more clear in the first scene what you can jump on and what you can't. I got a little confused there as to what was foreground and background. But really, amazing job!
In no time my Zoltan became a big fan of Pawel Purrlovski XD. He'd love to meet him some day. What a great atmosphere and flawless gameplay. The hints for moving are a blissful plus. What I look for in a game is story first and here we have a masterpiece in screenplay. It's not easy to find a graphic style that is both simple stylish and consistent. You really nailed it.
I love the art style! I love the story! I love the music and the sound fx and how it doesnt restart in between deaths! The theme integration could have been better though, but I love everything else about the game! The storytelling is amazing, takes the game experience to a whole new level. Great game overall!
Man, that was pretty damn good! Love the Noir/Art Deco aesthetics. Everything comes together really well from the art, narrative, sound and gameplay. One of the best entries I've played!
Such a beautiful game! I don't really know what to say, apart from the fact that it's one of the best game I've seen so far ! The art is beautiful, the music, the voice recording, everything make a great atmosphere! Thank you for making this game !
Awesome! Very cool experience you put together in such a short amount of time. The gampley itself isn't too innovative (even though mixed up the old runnder game formular with some nice cat moves!) but together with the cutscenes and the story, you lift the gameplay to a whole new level. Very well done! The art is fabulos and the soundtrack very fitting which all leads to a great and funny experience that looks and feels very polished. Good job guys! One of the best entries I played so far
Amazing, beautiful and fun! And can't believe this was made in 3 days
Wow! Just wow! I really enjoyed it! Very nice all around! I like how the video played when you beat the level. The whole thing was very well put together. It was fun too! Haha, you guys are great!
Thank you for submitting your game to be played on my stream!
Once the stream is finished you can find the video here: https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos If you want to know when it was played you can find your game in the queue here: https://tinyurl.com/y5rdokvp
@ursagames Thank you so much! It was a blast to see you play our game. You can find all of our games at https://gamejolt.com/@AwesomeAlliterationAlliance/games
skipping cut scenes would be nice for a second play through. Also I wanted to hit spacebar when "retry" was prompted. would have been nice for that to work.
Over all one of the better Jam games I have played. Well done, I hope you all do well. Might think about turning this into the real money making deal.
Fantastic writing, narration, storyline and stylized cutscenes which kept me fully vested and thoroughly entertained! So good such that the gameplay felt slightly subpar compared to the top-notch inbetween scenes. The gameplay was still fine with tight controls and fine platforming, and its amazing you managed to fit in that sky diving scene which was a nice change of pace too. Awesome work!
Poor cat. What an amazing project! If I could rate your game with 6 stars I will do that. Incredible story with a lovely dark humor - incredible graphics which are more than a simple black/white shades - incredible (with a pretty accent) speech. Your project fits the theme as good as possible. The background music reminds me an old game - Rolling Thunder. So you deserve more ratings. To do simple, I loved this amazing experience. You made my day. Thank you ++
Incredible entry --- just in terms of delivering a narrative, probably the best I've ever seen for Ludum Dare. The graphics were top notch, the animations were smooth, and the cut-scenes were amazing. The writing was great; the character was defined very well, and his actions and motivations were clear.
On top of that, great tutorial and in-game graphics and animations. The gameplay was pretty simple, but varied, and the landing-on-all-fours mechanic was satisfying when you got the timing right.
Very cool, I really liked cutscenes and mechanics.
Pretty purfect, but it would be nice if the cutscenes are skippable for those that want to see both endings. The art, story and voice acting was great though. Kitty has nine lifes too right? So it would have been funny to see everyones reaction to the hero not saving the girl.
Love the voice acting in particular, and the presentation of the whole thing. Makes what would have otherwise been a simple 2d platformer into a very memorable experience. Loved every moment I spent with it.
Presentation & story telling are top notch! Really sells the theme
Thank you all very much for your feedback! We really appreciate it! :)
@mika-la-grand @krapht We had that skip button in the game but there where a lot of problems related to the audio script. 1 hour before the deadline we had to make the decision between the seemless audio and the skip button and we decided in favour of the seemless audio. We are working on a postjam version at the moment and fixing this is pretty high in the priority list. As well as the retry with space bar thing.
Are you sure Kitty still has all of her nine lifes? .... Prequel time!! :D
This is the best Jam game I've ever played.
Phenomenal story telling told through narration in cutscenes and continuing during gameplay. The visuals enhance the experience more than take away, which is atypical of game jam games; normally the artists don't have enough time to generate visuals that enhance the story. The exact opposite is true here- they used a minimal yet purposeful design that creates an amazing atmosphere for telling the short story they crafted.
The music is intense, suspenseful, exciting, energizing, and yet not at all distracting. It seems to parade itself around the narration in a wonderful dance that reinforces the story while also keeping you as the player feeling like you're inside this wonderful world.
The gameplay shifts between platforming, falling, and quick-time events yet no part feels out of place. I believe some of the QTE's could be polished such that having to repeat one right after death is not too jarring (for example the first "slide under truck" pop up should not reappear after the 2nd or 3rd attempt), but overall they are well placed and elegantly pull you along through the game.
The alternate endings are superb and wrap up the overall experience in a wonderful way.
Overall I have absolutely nothing negative to say about this game; this is sincerely the best jam game I have ever played and is just simply perfect.
This is the clear winner of LD Jam 44, if I had to choose.
This game is pure purrfection. It deserves much more than 8 Oscats! All jokes aside! I really enjoyed the experience! It was special, at times I forgot I was playing a game and just couldn't wait to find out what happens next - I would never guess this was made in three days!
I also love how all your games throughout the years are made of three words with the same initials and (at least in this game) the name still fits perfectly.
Thank you for your kind comment on our game - it's what brought me here. :wink: Otherwise I'd probably be here only after the results are announced and I saw you amongst top three. :medal: :grinning: Good luck!
I really liked the art style and characters. The game is very visually attractive. The music could get a little bit annoying once you repeat the level several times but over all, this is one of my favorite entries.
Loved everything about this game! The sketch art-style with the voiceover work was incredible to see! The silhouette of the cat was simple, and his idle animation of him smoking was hilarious. Music was a masterpiece, as well! Intense in all of the right places and tranquil where it needed to be... especially the ending.
No dudes, it's this game that's pawsitivily purrfect.
Every thing is done right:
- The storyboard sketch style not only looks great but fits in the film theme. All the characters look super cute!! - The silhouette art style for gameplay fits well with the noir aesthetic. - Voice acting is great, the accent and delivery are quite funny - Music as well is very sleek and sexy and perfect for the tone you're going for. - Dialogue is that right level of hilarious cheesy cringe that I expect from a noir parody. I *loooovve* how the narration carries into the levels as well. - The Prince of Persia-esque death joke. - With cats, the theme inclusion is obvious, but you still found a funny, novel way to integrate into a story. I was so happy when it was revealed he was a low-level actor rather than an actual spy. - For some reason, you even decided to make the platforming feel super tight and have some neat mechanics on top (like why, why did you do everything aesthetics so well and decided gameplay needed to be good too, people don't get to do both!!!)
That is really the running thread here--everything has been thoroughly considered and polished. Holy shit.
My wife mad me play this. And I am grateful :smile: Very well executed :smile:
I had some troubles with jumping, but it's probably just me being clumsy. The game feels extremely polished, very well done! :) Keep up the good work.
This is incredible. Possibly one of the best Ludum Dare entries I've ever played. The music, graphics, storyline, dialogue... everything is well-executed and ties together perfectly into your noir aesthetic. Pawel is such a charismatic character, I love him. There's a surprising amount and variety of content here for a Ludum Dare entry, as well.
You should be really proud of yourselves. Giving you an immediate follow and looking forward to your future Ludum Dare entries!
This was a really well-polished platformer/infinite runner! Enjoyed the story and tone quite a bit. The physics were tight, and movement and platforming felt good. I can't stand how floaty and imprecise Unity's defaults are either, so props on making your own raycast physics system for this!
Curious about the disclaimer at the start: "This work was (...) produced by a monocultural team of no religious faiths and beliefs." I've never encountered one like it before. What was it's intent?
I don't have much critique to offer about the execution of the game; it was all very well done, and extremely impressive for a jam! I'd echo that the gameplay was a familiar formula, but I liked that it was changed up between levels. The stylish cutscene art, voice acting, comedy, and noir aesthetic were all really well executed too. Loved the driving sort of ambiance created by the background music, and the lighting and set detailing in the earlier levels; really moody! Played through twice to get both endings (no clue if there was a 3rd for making no choice, though), and enjoyed the story quite a bit.
One abstract critique I could offer is that I like when games unify the gameplay actions that the player is taking with the story itself. In this, the story of someone choosing between their career as a stunt actor, and their crush on a cute actress, felt sorta separate from what the player was actually doing (feats of acrobatics, followed by a comical death). Good old "Ludonarrative Dissonance," and all that.
In a world where there was more time, it might've been neat to see gameplay that reflected Pawel's choice between career and love; perhaps the player had goals to accomplish in the level, as a stunt actor being filmed in a scene. A countdown timer to reach the end of the level, and a checklist of optional goals like "[x] Get lit on fire" or "[x] Jump dramatically over the spike-filled pit", ending with a final necessary goal like "[x] Fling flaming body into the fuel stockpile" or whatever. Something that made the player a participant in Pawel's Stunts, more than just the narrative backdrop the game was set against.
Then, include some harder to reach behind-the-scenes area, where you could spend precious time from your countdown timer schmoozing with Kitty, trying to get her to notice you. Or some other way of trying to win her heart, but that might cost time, and make it hard to do those optional objectives for that level. Basically, find some way where the player is making a choice between Pawel's career as a stunt actor, and his pursuit of his heartthrob, in the levels/gameplay itself.
Then, rather than a either-or dialogue choice at the end, you can make their gameplay throughout influence the outcome of the story. If you don't get all the optional Stunt Acting goals by the end, Pawel gets a bad end as an actor. If you don't schmooze with Kitty, you never get the chance at the smooch scene, or have a reason to try to save her and risk your own life. And if the player finds some way to do both, then they might have the athletic skills (or have saved one of their Nine Lives at some point) that they might save Kitty, and live. Even if, in keeping with the noir theme, the outcome of them both surviving is just that Kitty gives you a perfunctory peck on the cheek, and still barely notices Pawel.
Of course, that's just one way to do it... but games always hit hardest when the story is unified with the actual things the player is doing during gameplay. I think this story would be well served, if the player was making some decisions, or doing some things throughout the levels, that might reflect Pawel's choice between his own career and his crush on Kitty... some way the player's actions influence the outcome, rather than a binary dialogue choice right at the end.
Anyway, it's hard to find some constructive criticism to give, since this was such a well-polished game. I hope some of that is of use. Thanks so much for all your effort in putting this together, and sharing it with us!
- Day
This submission is great and needs more visibility! The artwork and amount of details is just astonishing :smirk_cat:
Here is my playthrough:
https://youtu.be/jr32mHxoJ2o
(my comment seems a bit useless comparing to @solifuge's one :smile_cat:)
Twitch chat forced me a second play-through to see both endings. Really well made!
Holy crap, we never expected this level of feedback! Thank you guys so much, getting so many positive comments about our game has been quite overwhelming tbh!
@kaisean-games Tell your wife "thank you" and to keep us in mind for future forced gaming experiences :D
@popdaddygames thank you :) that might have been the nicest comment we ever got on any of our LD games. Really great to see someone appreciate your work like that!
@jjjjason thanks! getting a positive feedback about our mechanics from you, after playing your game, really means a lot! It's also nice to see someone pick up on that "detective/spy? oh wait, he's a stunt man!" thing we did.
@icxon @nopogo thank you very much for playing our game! It's always very interesting (and valueable) to actually see someone else play your game and getting their opinions and reactions while they're playing it for the first time! But we never really know how to find good streamers and how to get them to play our game, so we were really happy to see that you found it :D
@nopogo Thank you for your feedback about the camera movement and controls! Duely noted, something we will keep in mind for next time. We have adjusted the jumping mechanic for our post jam version (which will be out soon!). Also cutscene skipping was implemented! We never imagined that people actually wanted to go through it twice, so thank you very much for doing it :)
@solifuge Thank you for taking the time to write this monster of a comment. So of course we want to take the time to answer accordingly:
- About the disclaimer at the beginning: We just wanted to make a joke about the disclaimer you see at the beginning of every assassins creed game, where it states ".... This work of fiction was designed, developed and produced by a multicultural team of various religious faiths and beliefs."
- "Ludonarrative Dissonance" is always a problem with story heavy games, much more so when you're making it for a LD Jam. The story went through multiple revisions. The original draft was a bit heavy and the amount of cutscenes wouldn't have been doable for our artists in that time. And we didn't want to communicate the missing parts just through text on a black screen. Too much text is a problem we faced in previous projects and the problem we encountered with that is that many people don't have the patience for a LD game that is so text heavy (also just dumping so much exposition on the player without any visuals or gameplay would have felt a bit cheap to us).
- I'm sure many of you can relate to the problem of wanting to do too much in too little time (especially on the first evening of a LD). We had the initial idea to implement more player decisions and multiple story threads/endings, but in the end, none of them would have been as polished (or even finished) as we would have wanted them to be. So we decided to streamline the whole thing and give the remaining story and gameplay all of our attention. We wanted to tell "a fun little story" that uses a few tropes, so the story feels a bit familiar and still seems to be original by having some fun with those tropes. Same goes for the gameplay, the visuals and the animations. We wanted everything to feel finished, familiar, but to still be varied and interesting to experience.
So, your points are valid and some of your ideas for enhancing the gameplay and the story are really nice (we might steal those for future projects :D ), but like I said, we prioritized making a game that feels finished and polished over risking a game that feels kinda unfulfilling by trying to do everything that we wanted to do.
Still, the final product wasn't purrfect to be sure, but thanks to you guys we now know it's still something we can be proud of :D We had a really great time making it and seeing so many people enjoying it makes the whole experience so much more rewarding!
This game's great, adding more checkpoint would make it better but else I love everything in it :)
🔥🔥
Best production values in this LD so far. Awesome work!
I've had high praise for games in the Ludum Dare that deliver "complete" experiences. Any game that has a beginning, middle and end to it's structure built in a quick game jam is something special. However, the integrated narrative throughout the whole experience makes this game stand out even among those "complete" experiences. Had the game just been a series of runner/platform segments, that would've been plenty. Threading the story into the game play itself, and rewarding the player for completing these segments with more story beautifully drawn interludes made it a whole lot more satisfying.
The driving desire to know what happens next was present here. That story hook was well utilized to grab and hold my attention throughout the whole game. The heavy use of voice-over was pretty cool to see as well. The visual style, voice-overs, and music (which was also amazing) really help set the mood. This game oozes style.
I have to dig pretty deep to find criticism for this game, but for the sake of it I'll try to offer up some kind of feedback in that regard. The level designs were all quite good. They were just varied enough that the game didn't feel stale at any point. There were a number of times though when I felt I was making "leap of faith" jumps. The game teaches the player that there are deadly pits they want to avoid, but also has them intentionally jump or fall into areas not currently visible to the player. During the bull chase scene I also think it'd be cool to try to fit more of the bull in frame as well to keep the tension up. When you manage to keep it mostly off camera it isn't quite as exciting as when you can see it's still coming for you. Both of these issues can be solved with a bit of play using camera zoom during each affected moment.
That's pretty much all I can come up with regarding criticism, and even that felt a bit forced. This submission is rock solid. Loved pretty much everything about it!
Great job Loki, you have outdone yourself!
:trophy: :dog2:
The rest of you did pretty darn well too, so don't sell yourselves short. :clap_tone3:
Damn how did you pull this off in such short time of development? Good job! The narrative is so good, the whole experience is a lot of of what you would expect from a game jam game. The voice was very well edited to fit the character, the soundtrack is amazing, I wish I could give you more positive ratings. There are only minor problems but just stuff that usually happens on a game jam, like sometimes before I fall I would tap 'space' and if it was too close to the ground the character would jump after falling, but overall everything is great
Awesome noir mood, black and white retro style increases the drama and tension, even the fonts fit the theme. A short music loop but the way it beats like a heart is awesome and invoking.
The voice over is waky, but it fits the character and the personality inherited by the art.
The music's growing tension is awesome and bring you into action like a music asking you to dance.
There's a lack of ambience, like a noisy cityscape with ambulance and police car sirens, people talking, car horns, and a some reverberance to add hight to the roofs of the buildings.
There's also a bug with your parallax script on the first level, if you run into the wall to the left, the foreground building goes to right;
The core mechanic of falling with your 4 paws into the ground is lame, you just have to press it anytime with the spacebar in the midair ... you could make the cat spin in a stunt pose and let the user spin the cat with the mouse to adjust the 4 paws perpendicular to the ground or at least force the user to press the space bar when really close to the ground and make the cat roll like a stunt maneuver ...
The scenario is a lot static and it lacks movement, you could add a small motion to the platforms after the cat steps into it to wable due to its hanging cables ... add some lights flicking, and if you could.... 2D volumetric lights would be awesome to add depth...
The Narrative is also good and the art enhances It, you should also add some subtitles to the ingame voice overs!
Wow, one of the best games of this jam.
@khofez that thing with the jumping thing was kinda intentional, it was a side effet of a jump buffer we implemented (when your in the air there is timer that let's you jump right before impact) . We implemented that so the player could "correct" a jump if they went of ledges and pressed jump too late.
@ivan-garcia-filho Thanks for that constructive critisism (not being sarcastic btw) - about the ambient noises: we thought about it, tried it at first but decided that is was distracting and just thought " well, he's on a film set so we have an excuse for there not being that many ambient noises except the jumping sound"
- thanks for that paralax bug report, never noticed it, because none of us tried going left
- the qte with the falling down wasn't meant to be the core mechanic. It was something we wanted to build in so that the we could make a little joke about cats always landing on their feet and to add a little bit more gameplay. So I get why you could see it as "lame" and that it is something that could be a lot more complex. We implemented our own 2D platformer script in unity for the first time and there were major bugs at first, so we didn't have the time to make it more innovative (your idea with getting him in the right position by having to give more inputs is something we were thinking about, too). Also it would have required more animations for the character and our artists had already way too much to do.
- about it being static. You're not wrong, but like I said managing our script and all the other things, it was just not doable for us in that time frame.
Happy you still enjoyed it over all :D
@vinay-rao Thank you very much for the feedback. Camera movement is something we want to improve for the next time we do a platformer. And the bull was supossed to be more of a funny little feature, but your point is still valid :D Loki was quite happy with the outcome. Although, she wanted to port the whole thing onto the nintendo switch. We told her that we weren't able to, but she insisted and then tried to do it herself. She gave up after she realized she had no thumbs and couldn't do any playtesting.
cac05114-0a69-4295-84eb-7b4aca41cf4f.jpg
Pawsitively purrfect. The VO is amazing, the visuals are just great and the music is really fitting.
Pressing space to land just before doing so causes a jump which has thrown me a few times. Making the player replay the game just for the ending scene is a bit of a jerk-move in a jam game, but it was worth a replay just to chuckle at the wheeled bull again.
um wow. This is frikkin' awesome! Love love love the art direction, voice acting, music, atmosphere, comic noir sketches... Can't say congrats enough on making this. Everything played smoothly and I loved the mechanic for falling. The mechanics of the game seemed secondary to the story, but for me I like the story so much that it didn't bother me. Could have had some more interesting use of the "landing on all fours" mechanic, but again, for me and for a Jam game this was purrfect. All in all, nice relaxing game play with nothing too challenging thrown at the player as a vessel for a very interesting film noir story. Congrats to everyone that worked on this, a lot of talent in your team!
So...much...STYLE!!!!
Hot damn,everything visually and musically was so ON POINT with this one! Usually stories in jam games are fairly cumbersome to me, but in this game, every cutscene felt like a reward. I loved every single key frame and how they were used to set the scene. I loved the silhouette player character and his idle animations. It was all so well done!
I do think the game could have done with some checkpoints here and there. Especially for the "cat on fire" scene, I found myself having to take several blind leaps of faith because the camera was so pulled in. Restarting from square one every time I died was pretty frustrating.
But that's a small blemish on an otherwise awesome game, well done all!
Congrats guys! You are our benchmark ;)
@tommyflower thank you! Not just for your feedback, but for mentioning us in your posts. Hopefully we will see you again in a future LD jam! Really excited to see what game you will make next time.
Although Boomf is a company created by millennials, we're always asking our team to reach out to their parents. We know how much love parents can give us https://boomf.com/collections/christmas-cards-parents. We asked them to share their favorite moments spent together.