odlog-oglog 2019-05-02 15:36
A very nice game! :) but I would like to have a better explanation about how the theme is in the game, Good job! :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Little Dead Riding Hood
By aim and Michael Marney-Brusstar
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1021 | 2.87 | 33 | |
| Fun | 1038 | 2.59 | 33 | |
| Innovation | 1088 | 2.31 | 34 | |
| Theme | 1106 | 2.26 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 587 | 3.46 | 34 | |
| Audio | 381 | 3.30 | 33 | |
| Humor | 782 | 2.40 | 27 | |
| Mood | 638 | 3.21 | 34 |
A very nice game! :) but I would like to have a better explanation about how the theme is in the game, Good job! :)
Not really sure how the theme applies here, and the collision with the spirits could be a little strange at times. The graphics were really nice, though! Aside from the theme and the weird collision, this is an alright game for something made in a short period of time. Good work!
The graphics are cool but the combat seems a little confusing.I liked the cute ghosts.
@odlog-oglog @hunter-towe @hans1203 Thanks guys. We were thinking about deals with the devil/trading your life/soul to the devil then we decided it would be interesting to play a low-level minion of death collecting souls in the underworld. I'll be working on the hit boxes for combat and adding the ghost animations I forgot for a post-jam version. :)
looks really great. For my opinion is everything really cute. good pixelwork!
@codesity Thank you for the compliment and for playing! :)
Animations are really cute and the gameplay was really enjoyable. Well done!
@copper-aardvark-games Thank you!
Great visuals! The animations were simple yet well done. As mentioned already, I found some weird hitbox issues where I was being hit by ghosts that were far away from me. It also isn't clear how many respawns you have before losing - might be nice to have a UI for that.
@mharring Thanks for the feedback! Appreciate it.
Excellent spritework, and the minimal amount of music fit very well. The only thing that needs a bit of work is the collision on attacks. Great stuff!
@dankovens Thank you so much. :D
Played the post-jam version. Worked well, not too tough to get into and doesn't outstay its welcome, so overall alright. I hate to be harsh, but I feel like you did just one thing with this and didn't do it very well. The attack ranges are unclear for both combatants, the cooldown is longer than the animation and there's no indication of when you can attack again or how much damage enemies have taken. (There is a nice animation for them taking damage, so that's good.) I can't tell you what this game needed, but I think it needed more than is there to be fun for me. Music's nice.
I see the graphics as the main highlight, with well-fitting music and good sound effects as well. I appreciate the difficulty being about right for testing and reviewing purposes as well.
One issue was that there were ghosts stuck outside the walls and they'd have weird teleporting behavior. And it seemed a bit random whether I got hit or not when swinging at enemies.
@pyrian Most feedback in Ludum Dare be like: Scjerry.png
I don't disagree with you at all. I did only do one thing, and it's been done before countless times. Additionally, my execution of said thing is not flawless. There's a lot to be desired in the smoothness of gameplay.
Stepping back and using your feedback, however, what I can do is notice a pattern in my game creation process. I've been refining my ability to complete a well-rounded game with all the bells and whistles. While in school, I remember being in awe of the guys who could 1-man a game jam and come out with a complete game that looked almost ready for distribution.
While I've gotten a lot better at doing that (still not there), I haven't spent much time using or improving my game design skills or striving to invent new novel mechanics / try new things.
I'm going to shift my focus in that direction moving forward, onto the next jam.
Thank you for your feedback. :)
I don't think I have anything to add that hasn't already been said, but nice entry! The sprites/tiles stood out to me. I did have some challenges with collisions (as others have mentioned) but I was able to complete it on my second try. Good entry.
@gentel Thank you for your feedback. I initially thought it would be cool to put the ghosts off the map but it seems the collisions are wonky. I'm trying to find a workaround for children objects collision boxes being treated as their parent's collision in Unity as well. It's why ghosts will hit you when you hit them. It treats your attack as your player hit box which is not ideal. D:
@cppchriscpp Thank you for playing! Also, I love your potato icon. I clicked on you and played your game initially because of the potato. :P I'm glad I did.
Ahaha that's so true about the feedback, I read the comments on my game and I'm thinking "Wow I'm like winning here" but then I see similar comments on games that are mediocre to terrible. Some people just want the karma, I think.
That's actually a really good starting point, though, right? Being able to produce a functioning game with beginning, end, gameplay, sound, music, animation, all that. With that as a goal you definitely succeeded and you're in a good place to extend that. My first game jam project had miserable balance (almost nobody got past level 2 of 10), no sound whatsoever, and colored squares for the graphics. I just ran out of time.
The game is a bit simple but works, I liked the animations, and the designs even if a little classic, works well
@pyrian Yeah. I'm feeling good about my momentum and progress since I started programming in addition to being a game artist. Running out of time is a real challenge these days. I used to have uninterrupted weekends to jam. These days there's a lot going on and I rarely get the kind of time I'd like to spend on a jam game.
@pixel-boy Thank you! :)
This is definitely a neat little entry. It was pretty fun, although I felt that ten souls wasn't enough, and the game was a bit short. I got more of a kick out of just going around and killing every enemy without collecting the souls rather than just collecting the minimum 10 and finishing the game. I will mention that the enemy hitboxes and movement were.. odd, to say the least. Sometimes enemies would sit still, sometimes they would chase you, and sometimes they would just glitch around the screen when you got near them. Sometimes I had to be really close to an enemy to hit it, and other times I could hit it from a mile away, and the same was true for them hitting me- which made for a few frustrating moments. The game wasn't really that innovative- it was just a matter of going around and killing a few basic enemies. I also didn't quite understand how it incorporated the theme. However, I absolutely loved the graphics! Everything looked so clean and detailed, and the glow that some of the sprites had really made things pop. The ground actually gave me Super Mario World vibes and made the whole place that much more appealing! The dinky little ghost-souls were a nice touch as well. The audio is great as well- the sound effects provided clear audio feedback for your actions in addition to the visible feedback, and the music combined with the general emptiness of everything really helped to create an eerie atmosphere. Overall, well done!
The graphics and audio set a nice atmosphere. The game felt a bit broken though because the hitboxes for attacks and enemies didn't really make sense to me.
@purrfexionator Thank you so much for your in depth feedback and for playing our game. I'm glad you enjoyed your time spent in our little world.
I really liked the game, sound wasn't anything special, gameplay was interesting but carried out poorly due to hitboxes. I liked the aesthitic you had where everything had a slight glow, really interesting. Overall this game has a really good idea that could become a full game if you flesh it out, work out some kinks and throw some more polish in the audio and gameplay areas. Great Work!
@sylvie Yeah, it was a bit of a hack-job on the programming.
@jomiak Thanks for playing. :) I'm especially experienced in consistent art style. I originally started as a game artist and then I learned to program games so I could explore game development more freely without having to rely on others.
Very well for a game that has been made in such a short time. The graphics are nice. The collisions could be a bit better however. And furthermore It is not really clear, how ghosts and currency goes together.
@gbugge The main character is a minion of death and makes his living by dealing in souls. Souls are lives. Their lives are his currency. I was going to have a section of the game where you take the souls to Charon (The ferryman of the underworld from Greek mythology) and exchange the souls for power ups/equipment. Have him act like a shopkeeper type character. 800px-lytovchenko-olexandr-kharon_1_orig.jpg
Perhaps the practitioners are more concerned about the completion of the game.
Read every comment of you.
@pengda I don't follow. Could you clarify?
I've found that professionally trained people care more about game completion.
Most people don't notice the importance of completion.
I read all your comments and found them interesting.
@pengda Ah that's a fair point. How do you feel about the commercialization of games?
I think a business game is an exchange of value like any other commodity.
As long as the game is profiting from value like entertainment rather than malicious psychological manipulation, that's fine
Liked the character art. My main problem with the gameplay was that I couldn't tell when the ghosts were going to attack. Some kind of buildup animation on them would be nice.
@ectucker1 Thanks for playing! I think that's a great idea. An attach animation would greatly improve combat. Did you play the jam version or post jam?
Played the post-jam version.
I get the intended relationship to the theme, but the gameplay has difficulty communicating it. It gives Death a "life bar" and "life counter" that is not the "lives currency"(misdirection - "my" life vs "your" life), and it only portrays one facet of currency through "collecting currency" and not having other kinds of transactions. These things are issues with conceptual coherency, something [I've written about](http://ludamix.com/dive/coherency). If you bring the ideas to some coherence, the rest of the game explains itself much more easily(even my game this time, which had all the usual issues of ramping up a large team with limited experience - the baffling parts of it are all the bits that the base concept could not explain).
Regardless you did succeed at executing on the game idea, so good work there!
@triplefox Thank you for your feedback.
I disagree with your notion that our interpretation of the theme is obstructed by giving the player a life bar.
"Your life is currency"
It doesn't have to be the player's life that is currency. It's true that I didn't have time to get that extra transactional gameplay element in, which would have helped further cement the theme.
Taking some extra time to make sure the theme is clear will be on my to-do list for game jams moving forward, although I personally don't think it matters that much. When I game jam, I use the theme as a jumping off point and the value of what I make is self-contained and not dependent on the original rules and parameters of the game jam.
i.e. If I join a jam and make a game that has nothing at all to do with the theme, but I like what I made, then I'm happy.
I really like the art. The gameplay has a few hiccups but the idea is solid. It looks like the ghosts sometimes morph around when first aggroed and the knockback when they get hit is is a little jarring. Also, running into the wall makes everything jittery.
@cole Thank you for playing and for the feedback. :)