Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD45 → Leverage
By bilalch213
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 283 | 3.72 | 84 | |
| Fun | 227 | 3.69 | 84 | |
| Innovation | 171 | 3.76 | 83 | |
| Theme | 805 | 2.97 | 83 | |
| Graphics | 502 | 3.61 | 84 | |
| Audio | 189 | 3.70 | 82 | |
| Humor | 624 | 2.57 | 71 | |
| Mood | 425 | 3.48 | 81 |
pretty nice graphics with nice mouse controls that are easy to figure out. The pace o the gameplay at the beginning was a little slow, but everything worked ine and you could move from one scene to another easily. animations also look nice.
Superb challenge for anyone to take on. Awesome entry! The graphics remind me of five nights at freddy's.
Bots are really satisfying to destroy! I had a lot of fun and excitement playing it.
Thank you for making this game!
Such a cool game! Absolutely love the effort that went I to this!
Nice game. I like it overall. The idea, graphics and sound were great. I wonder, how I could activate the abilities? Sometimes the menu opens by itself, but an actual right click doesn't.
Love the concept, quite difficult! It was a great idea to have the music "ramp up" when you got all of the levers down!
A very nice and challenging game, good job !
I'm not really sure why it's possible to turn off the levers by clicking them, I did it on accident and failed the run that way :cry:
Other than that, really innovative and exciting game, using the right abilities at the right moment is the key to success. The slow-motion effect is really cool :wink:
Nice work on the audio, really helps set the atmosphere for this fun challenge.
@orpartlu Thanks! That's odd. The ability menu should open up when right-clicking. I will see if I could fix this. :)
@cgixe Oh thank you for mentioning that!
@keithdae *"But be careful, your actions can themselves cause the levers to turn OFF."* That's the part of the challenge haha. Maybe, adding an easy mode will do the job here. ;)
Thank you! <3
@bilalch213 tell me, when you fixed it. I will try then to make the challenge (again)!
I like your game very much, you made a very polished and smooth gameplay with fine art and controls, well done!
Ooh this wsa fun! A bit laggy for me for some reason :/ but i really enjoyed it!
Wow, well done! The game is very well polished in terms of art and it is full of details that immediately grasped my attention. pressing that lever to open menu/tutorial and particles that stay inside of the "walls" were great, just to name a couple.
@khud0 Thank you! I am glad that you noticed those peculiar details. :D
Pretty alright! It was hard to gauge where individual bots are heading to, proly would have liked them to take a bit of time when just about getting to pull the lever on me (something around the lines of the last second of a timer in most videogames is much longer than a second).
@oneki That would be a really good game design trick + it would make the game more accessible! Maybe, having a red vignette or some warning beep when a bot has reached the lever and is about to flip it off would be a neat edition along with a simple delay after which the lever is flipped off by the bot. Thanks for the feedback :D
less than 4 20 ez :)
Great way of telling the player what to click, tutorial was very clear. I thought I finished the game as I didn't realise there was a stitch turned off, maybe add some kind of indicator showing that they've been turned off. Nice particle effects on the blobs when destoryed and great idea of having them turn into mines, that really helped with getting a mini kill streak. Oh and maybe the arrows for each level be in the same spot, it was a little jarring having to move the mouse to a different position to do the same control. Art and audio were great, well done!
@humphreysmedia Minimap shows the flipped off lever with red box, right clicking shows the number of levers that are flipped on and the timer only shows up when all levers are on. When I was developing it, I thought that it would be enough but I didn't realize that all of them are vague and hidden indicators.
There is an obvious need for a clear indicator that tells if any lever is flipped off or not. Thanks for the nice feedback!
Nice graphic, animations and sounds. Also I liked the lightning effects and sparks when you turned the levers on. I didn't notice that a lever had been turned of and I just kept on clicking those bot balls but that's on me I think :D jumping around in the scenes were made easy. Maybe if the "next scene" arrow would always be in the same spot it would work even better? Don't now. Anyways great Ludum game!
@barracudadisaster Thanks you for lovely feedback! I really wished the scene arrows to be in the same spot but then, I got this super annoying bug that I couldn't fix whatsoever. If you are in first area and you have drag ability turned on, clicking on the arrow will lead you to the third area instead of the second (sometimes even without drag). So, I ended up with scene buttons at different positions. :)
@bilalch213 it's fine, it was just a minor thing and didn't affect my enjoyable experience. :smile:
fun, entertaining game. the best i've seen here so far!
Sound is awesome, I really like how it builds and warps and decreases with the levers, I also quite like the design and idea behind it. The bot destruction is real eye-candy and the sounds are satisfying. It seems well-coded and all bug-free. The UI could be a bit nicer to handle, I personally think it would have been nicer, to dedicate part of the screen to it instead of right-clicking. It took me a bit to figure out how to use it. As previous people mentioned, switching between the scenes really broke the flow, because you couldn't just click twice on the same spot. Using the up and down arrows on the keyboard would have worked nicely.
The level-building wasn't so good, though. It would have been nicer to have some smaller, tutorial-style levels that don't last as long, with less levers to protect and less scenes to switch. 180 seconds feels like an eternity and you need to make only a tiny mistake to lose all your progress. I spent about half an hour and couldn't get through the first level.
@danie Thank you for such an insightful feedback! You are on point about having a portion of screen dedicated to the abilities instead of right-clicking because it seems very optional and people tend to miss it. My mind was stuck with the mouse-only idea and I should have been more flexible in my approach. Up and down arrows keys would have made the game more accessible. The levels can definitely improve a lot and with the mindset of making the game "challenging", I ended up making the game a lot harder and unfair.
The game only has 1 level :) Thank you for trying my game that hard. Really, I meant it. <3
What a cool concept! Like a tower defense, where you are the tower. Well polished. I had a mini heart attack when the minimap disappeared, haha. I'm not sure how closely it relates to the theme, but I really enjoyed this one.
Great aesthetic definitely a unique game
nice game that is pretty fun to play it certainly builds the tension with the music and is very polished in all aspects.could make the moving round easier by lining up the arrows and mabey another way of introducing the mechanics as i was a little confused at first with how all the powers worked.the flow was pretty good though even though the gradient of difficulty was quite steep as it was a pretty seemless transition from slow paced and easy to tactical and overwhelemed.I think if the controls and theming were tweaked it would be even better than it already is.Great Entry!
oh and P.S the particles and sfx are fantastic
@storrs-steelers Yes, thank you! Mechanics definitely need some explanation there. Maybe, a tooltip would have made it a lot better. Difficulty increases exponentially. I thought that it would make the game challenging. I made it too hard instead.
Great job! The game feels well polished. As others have already mentioned, the music helps a lot with getting into the game when things get faster and more difficult. It took me a few moments to figure out what part of the map I have on the screen at a given moment. It would have been nice to have some sort of camera frame on the map as well. Overall, it is a very cool entry. Congrats!
@bilalch213 it wasnt too hard cause thats part of what makes it enetertaining just with a little explenation and mabey making it a little more smooth would make it easier for new players.overall the flow is really good and it makes a really smooth transition of more and more struggle
Loved the soundtrack, made it feel epic trying to manage everything. I liked going back and forth between different areas to check them, reminded me of Five Nights at Freddy's. Really well polished game.
On my first playthrough it took me a while to realise that the balls had a fixed path and that they couldn't float about wherever (probably just me being a bit stupid!), perhaps increasing the contrast between the path and the background/walls would help, or reducing the amount of shadowy areas on the path to make it clearer. I would describe this game as funstrating, it's fun to play but the challenge is a little frustrating, but with a few tweaks would be great, and as a game made in a weekend it's a fantastic job, well done!
@psiv Thank you for the feedback. The floor and walls are affected by the lights whereas the roof is not affected by the lights which makes it pretty clear that there are paths in the game. But I admit that the lights could have been much better and a bit more contrast could have helped. There are some bugs and UI problems that makes the game frustrating but I am glad you still enjoyed my game. :D
Interesting game and concept. Feels a little like a tower defence game, but with much more direct controls. Well done!
Nice game, big challenge I liked that
Rather intense in the end, the minimap is a very nice touch. Graphics are cool too. I liked it.
Great game, but holy crap its tough... Wasn't really clear at first how to trigger the special abilities though I eventually figured it out. Really enjoyed the particle effects and how the audio was linked with the switches. Great work, could make for an interesting mobile game!
I really like the core idea of switcher. I think the game should be around it. For example enemy can switch off some parts of the map and move switcher in other place. When you kill other enemies which you see they explode and show dark parts of the map for a short time while you can see where the switcher you can turn it on again
I understand that the game is about another mechanic, so it's just the idea Anyway I like it, good work!
The game was fun to play. The minimap was great for seeing where the bots were coming in.
I loved the transitions and audio. It was a great experience and game. Good job :)
This game was pretty great, I liked the graphics and audio, and the mechanic worked well. I do wish that the button to switch scenes didn't move around, and even had a bind, like maybe the scroll wheel.
The game had some cool ideas, and I liked the power up system. I wish the arrows pointing up+down were in the same location on each map so that I could double-click to move down twice (for example). Landmines are the best!
@tort60091 That's a superb idea! I will be trying more of switches and levers in my future games. Thank you for sharing it with me. :)
@nisovin Thank you for giving a nice feedback! Man, scroll wheel would have worked really well in the game! It never came in my mind. :)
Almost everything about the game is incredibly done. I think the lighting could be a little more atmospheric(flood lights maybe should have a blue and grainy tint?) but all in all good work. I would love to see an upgrade panel if you decide to keep working on it.
@zachary-shah Thanks for the nice feedback. I would definitely be working on its post-jam version. Lighting is too focal and needs to be more atmospheric + upgrade panel would be a really cool edition.
Wow very clever puzzle mechanics, would be nice if you could press up or down to switch rooms. Love the music, especially the part where the time slows down. Did you use middleware or some other workaround to achieve that effect? Either way, great work!
@amerigo-gazaway Thank you! During the slow-motion effect, the game decreases the pitch of all the audio to half the normal pitch using Unity's built-in audio source component. Link: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-AudioSource.html
Wow, that's intense.
Really cool idea for the theme, thank god you included a minimap, I don't think I can give much other feedback than what has already been said by others, great job.
Lots of very good player feedback (sounds and particle effects). For the most part this game feels very well put-together.
However, I did find that a lot of the time I was disoriented as to which screen I was on. I'm not entirely sure why this is but it happened quite a few times. The arrows being in different places also made it difficult to navigate between screens. I'm wondering if there would be any way to make the game just one screen? Or maybe have an option for camera controls that scroll up and down the world smoothly rather than one screen at a time?
I'm guessing this game is too hard for me to win, personally. Perhaps if the timer was shorter I would give it more of an effort but as it is the robots get my levers around two minutes in so waiting out that much time repeatedly would be a bit of a chore.
I like your idea a lot. I think that this is an interesting spin on the tower defense genre. The flow of the game was quite fun, interactions were satisfying and the game looks nice.
There is one core design issue that I feel holds the game back: To achieve victory, you have to have ALL switches active. So the game isn't really ongoing if you don't have all the switches active. However, switches also act as power ups. This means that while the game is actively running, you always have all powerups and all the progression is front loaded. I think that if you only had to have a certain number of switches active to keep the counter going, it would make for way more interesting decisions and interactions. "I just lost a switch so I can't see the map anymore but the timer is still going so I just need to fix this problem to get back my power". This could be a situation in that case. Another way to fix the progression would be to unlock new switches by having micro-goals. Like, at first you only have to keep one switch up for some time, then two, then three and so on. This way, you'd have a progression that is running throughout the game. Just some of my thoughts, hope they make sense to you :)
Very fun game regardless!
@honey-pony Thank you for the nice feedback! Color of lights is different in all 3 areas to make sure that player knows which area he/she is in. But then, it is quite a subtle difference.
Scrolling camera would definitely make the game much better giving the player a much better sense of space.
@yaen Thank you for the feedback and for telling me what is missing. I appreciate it!
That makes sense. Optional levers would have made the game more flexible. That way, the player would have to decide whether to go and switch that lever ON or beat this bunch of bots first.
I had thought about this lever progression concept. There should be some delay between flipping levers. That way, not only player will feel progress but player will also notice the change due to the lever and try that change to his/her advantage. But I didn't have time to implement it. :)
A post-jam version is needed. :D
Good job on this game ! It would be better if the arrow were at the exact same position or moving around with the arrow on the keyboard . I though there will be tower as you mentionned it will be a tower defense but in the end i was happy to defend the lever only by clicking on the bot.
It's a nice game, but I felt more frustrated than I had fun as I didn't feel like the game was fare. An interesting concept none the less.
@bilalch213 cool, I'm looking forward to what you could do with these concepts. I appreciate how well you receive and respond to feedback :)
interesting concept and well made art effect audio ... upgrade is a big plus specialy the mine who turn the game with a little tower defense feature
But : A little frustration with arrow button, maybe it will be far better just with a big map Same for UI in general for exemple a panel with upgrade in the corner will help to concentrate on monster
anyway good entry !
Great idea! It certainly feels like a tower defense game without towers, but it's a fun way to waste some time.
Will be very good game if there will ability to switch between rooms with keyboard. Tooo hard to manage that enemy flow. So, this is just interesting concept =)
Mate, I won it but it's tough. Some of the mechanics make it more frustrating than challenging at times, but the idea behind keeping all the switches turned on was interesting. I did enjoy all the abilities, and winning the game felt rewarding, but there was times where I accidentally turned off my own switches which got annoying. The way it introduces turning the switches on was good, but I don't think there's a reason the player would turn off the switches, so I'd probably disable it :)
Overall, I enjoyed it :smile:
@mr-chocolatesalmon Thank you for accepting the frustrating challenge. I am glad that you completed the challenge. I thought that it would make the game more challenging if the player's mistake can also flip the lever off. But it is quite frustrating that a single click on the lever can lead to the timer reset. I will fix this issue in the post-jam version. :D
Such a roller coaster of emotions! At first I thought it would be a quite boring game, then I thought the game would be way too hard, then I thought the enemies were to slow and the game would be easy, then the game actually got quite challenging, then I found myself excited and playing the game over and over again trying to beat the 180 seconds... I stopped when I lost at 178, I just rage quit :rofl: Such an simple and yet interesting concept! Amazing game, really well done!
@hcursino Thank you for the kind feedback. I tried to implement this up-down feeling for the game and I am so glad that it actually worked! :D
I couldn't finish even once, but this game is VERY well made. It looks great, the feedback from the controls is great, all the sounds are nice and the effects are too. Yes, it's very challenging, I wouldn't recommend it to people with little patience. But for fans of hardcore - definitely. Somehow I was reminded of the challenging levels of Five Nights at Freddy's, when you need to act quickly and be very focused.
The execution and polish are amazing. The gameplay just feels great. My only beef is that I was unable to keep track of all enemies just with the mini map, especially since I mostly had no idea where each one was trying to go, they seemed to choose a lever at random. But maybe that's just me sucking at the game :sweat_smile: . See me failing here: https://youtu.be/pwZXouM-cyI
@rialgar Thank you so much for trying out my game! This video is perhaps the best feedback I have received up until now and it really made me realize a lot about my mistakes. There are some moments in this video where I really wanted to shout, "NOOO! You have to do it this way." :laughing:
UX is perhaps the weakest focus of this game. I made the game based on the 'It would be COOL!' (which lead me to add Drag and Box Selection even though they don't really do much) and didn't really consider how the player would interact with the elements. There is the odd bug that both arrows are displayed when the game is played fullscreen instead of 1 functional arrow. Also, sometimes the right-click abilities gets activated randomly (that's a bug).
At first, I have set the bots to target the nearest active lever. But then, it seems too predictable to me. Therefore, I ended up adding some random element to setting the target lever for the bot.
No, you don't suck. The game is just unfair and sometimes, even frustrating. :)
For more insight regarding the game issue and its post-jam version, you can check this post: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/leverage-1/leverage-i-learned-a-lot-thank-you-for-all-the-feedback
Interesting concept. At the start, I was a bit lost but I understood what I have to do. It as a very simple idea that works really well. I love the audio. Congratz :)
Very interesting idea. And it's all presented really well. Everything seemed to work together well and there was a nice sense of progression.
Good stuff :8ball:
What a cool idea. I liked the game very well.
The connection between switch and "superpower" are maybe not necessary. Maybe there could be a timer to "recover" the All Switch On State after you lost one.
It would be grat to have a keyboard shortcut to switch the windows, because with mouse its very tideous to switch especially when the buttons are not on the same spot when switching.So I can't just doubleclik to get to the most top window.
The learningcurve is cool and the difficult is pretty high but managable. Only very frustrating point is that you can click through special abillity list and deactivate an own switch and in the stress it can happen that you just click by random on one of your switches. That sounds not really like a good mechanik and its more frustrating thatn really a good design decision.
But in generall a really cool game.
@deathstorm Thank you very much! Sorry, I couldn't come for the stream.
Hmm, 'All Switch On State' recovery timer would be awesome. That's such a superb idea and you are the first one to suggest that! The other solution for this "rigid no-mistake gameplay" fix is having 1-2 optional levers as mentioned by some others.
Yeah, it could have been much better if keyboard arrow keys are used for this.
Hmm, I thought that misclicks on lever would make the game more challenging. It turned out to be frustrating instead.
Definitely, I would improve it in the post-jam version. :slight_smile:
More info on post-jam version: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/leverage-1/leverage-i-learned-a-lot-thank-you-for-all-the-feedback
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/494941349?t=3h29m31s
Hope you got some valuable feedback on your game and looking forward to seeing you next LD jam if I dont catch you before then! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin