FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD45 → Build Yourself

Build Yourself

By lilkrit

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2673.3726
Fun2483.2226
Innovation2983.1026
Theme3433.1026
Graphics1743.5426
Humor2272.6022
Mood3912.7926

Comments

lanalux 2019-10-07 06:03

Nice work on the visual effects! I like the glowy aesthetics and the camera work as well as the text in game. Keep it up!

shieldgenerator7 2019-10-08 07:17

first game ive seen so far made in blender. youre an absolute madlad, making your game in blender. hats off to you

my fav part was using the ramp in the first level to ride the wall and completely skip the purple section. it made me feel clever

(1) pressing ESC exits the level and takes you to the main menu screen, losing all your progress. i quit playing after discovering that.

(2) i dont get the scrap mechanic but i enjoyed finding the new abilities and oddly enough, trying to steer the car along the narrow bridges was actually pretty fun

good job!

jonasz999 2019-10-26 22:59

I managed to find a few bugs :sweat_smile:

In the first level, you can just ride on the wall so you don't have to open the doors. Also, physics is a bit broken. First level bug

In the last level, you can jump around the wall instead of destroying it :wink: Additionally, when you fall down from the last level you don't get automatically respawned. Last level bug

lilkrit 2019-10-26 23:18

To everyone: thank you for your comments. I couldn't answer / review games before because of real life stuff, including the flu, things to do and a broken computer. I will make up for it as best as I can.

lilkrit 2019-10-26 23:20

@lanalux thank you for your comment. I did the best I could in the time I had. I'm not much of a graphic designer, so the neon stuff is the only thing I can do ;)

The signs in the game were inspired by my actual mood as I was working on the game.

lilkrit 2019-10-26 23:30

@shieldgenerator7 Yup, escape goes to menu. That's why I wrote on the main screen "Esc - quit" ;) And scrap is just used to create the gadgets that you get patterns for. It's a resource :)

Oh and the game was made in UE4, not blender haha

lilkrit 2019-10-26 23:32

@jonasz999 I know. I didn't have the time to play with vehicular physics so I just did the best with what I could do in such time.

I tried my best to make the game free of exploits but of course, players always find a way, huh? ;) You can be my game's first speedrunner once it's released lol, you have a head start!

I knew that I could forget to add the respawn killzone in some places, that's why I added the restart button :)

manomeu 2019-10-27 00:42

This game is awesome!

rodrigo-robles 2019-10-27 02:39

Very good. It's a lot of content for a compo game. To improve, I felt a bad performance in a low-end notebook.

wolf-neon 2019-10-27 05:54

It was a decent entry though there are some issues with no audio, lack of smoothed out collisions and problems with falling off objects. Overall a decent entry. well done!

commanderstitch 2019-10-27 06:08

heheheh I like the flat color gradients, the simple tricks for doing things, and the encouraging dialog. The movement was frustrating at times, especially respawning at the beginning of the level when falling off. I beat it. heheheh. Be like the R2D2H5321 or something. ;-)

almost 2019-10-27 08:13

As a disclaimer, some people may not have a way to open a 7zip file. A regular zip is likely better. Physics did some strange things whenever I drove off of a platform or ramp, which made movement a bit finicky. I failed twice at getting to the "take this, trust me" scrap, and starting the game over is pretty frustrating. Though it seemed that I was able to beat the level by not attempting to get that piece of scrap. After that I was able to get through the rest of the game without getting stuck. I liked the cute little robo-car and the special visual effects (glow, blur, reflect).

scsc 2019-10-27 11:12

Great result for a genre that was new to you, and I like the crafting concept :) I'm not experienced in Unreal, so I can't give you specific tips, but there is a huge number of issues that you can work on post-LD. I'll start with the fact that my first experience was that I pressed TAB multiple times, and I got stuck in a black screen with text, which couldn't be closed until I exit the game. Also the text scaling isn't very responsive, as the beginning and the ending of the full-screen tutorial text isn't visible on my 1280x1024 resolution. Now, when it comes to the gameplay, the car most certainly shouldn't act like it does on the edge of the platforms. The collider also isn't large enough, as a part of the car can enter the wall, and the car rotates around in a way that makes no sense physically... :) The doors flicker on top of them, which is definitely easy to notice and could be solved by making the object shorter by a few pixels. Also, it's not very enjoyable to get stuck under the bridge before exit, where the door is closed, should the player go a wrong way. By the way, there's also some invisible collider making the player stuck right where the shadow is below the platform at this place. Last but not least, the moving platforms are very easy to fail to step on, I believe everyone would appreciate if they stopped at least for half a second. By the way, it's interesting how this is the first game I played on LD that officially integrates and mentions the Win+G Game Bar on Windows :)

alphish 2019-10-27 13:02

Somehow I ended up writing a review but not publishing it, so I'm writing anew. Oh well.

I've found the entry challenging, but enjoyable - though this might have been affected by me playing a game with frictionless movement just before, when I couldn't even stop the character. Here I could wait for the car to stop and I could freely change camera perspective, so the game didn't make itself more difficult by depriving the player from some quality of life features, at least.

The maze at the beginning of level 2 was tricky, until I realised there's no point in trying to see my way out and instead just opted for moving along an arbitrary wall. It was hilarious in hindsight when I had to restart and using the same method found the exit right away.

I liked the graphics, especially the neon car with its add-ons. The levels were also varied rather than using the same colour or texture over and over again, providing a cheap way to prevent the monotony. The encouraging text was a nice touch. The lab UI could use some improvement, e.g. highlighting the add-on currently in use or actually show jumping in the list of passive upgrades. Sadly, there was no audio.

Well done, overall.

lilkrit 2019-10-27 16:19

@manomeu thank you!

@rodrigo-robles that might be the case. I just had no time to optimize it and I had no way to test it on a lower end computer.

@wolf-neon Yup, I'm not a musician. The collisions and falling off is the case of same issue. I didn't have the time to work on a proper vehicle controls, so the game actually works as it's a character with wheels LOL. And I know that if I'm gonna improve it, that is the first thing on the list :P

@commanderstitch Congrats at beating the game. I'm glad you liked it. I know controls are to be improved. It's the first thing to work on :P

lilkrit 2019-10-27 16:34

@almost Really? I didn't think getting 7zip is a problem :P The physics aren't perfect, I know. I didn't have time for proper vehicle controls, and that's the reason. I worked on them until the game was playable and then worked on everything else. And yes, you can skip that scrap... it's my mistake lol. The extra scrap near the pattern was for testing purposes and I forgot to remove it LOL

@scsc Thank you for telling me about a lot of those things. With the deadline, and only testing on one computer I couldn't see the text issues. I couldn't replicate the TAB issue :/ I know that the controls are far from perfect. I didn't have time to use proper vehicle controls so the game basically thinks it's a person with wheels lol. That's where all the issues come from, including the collider being too small, falling off etc. However turning on the spot was a concious design choice from me. Advanced vehicles with independent power for each wheel can do that ;)

lilkrit 2019-10-27 16:59

@alphish I am glad you liked the controls. I know they weren't perfect, but I did what I could in the time. You got the meaning of the maze. Looked scary but if you just tried and looked around, it was pretty much over. The walls were metallic on purpose so the lights would reflect making it a bit harder though ;)

No audio because I'm not a musician. I just had no time to play around with sound, not even knowing if it would be worth it. I did work on the graphics, thanks for noticing :) And I know the UI sucked. I just didn't have the few minutes necessary for the passive UI widget.

scsc 2019-10-27 17:22

@lilkrit When it comes to the wheel rotation design, I think it would look very nice if you rotated the wheels of the car by 90 degrees. Even if you didn't properly animate it, at least it would explain the intention :) And when it comes to the TAB issue, here is a set of screenshots to help - when on the last screen, there is no response from any of the keys, including Esc: buildyourself.png

lilkrit 2019-10-27 17:50

@scsc Yeah, that would work. Or showing that the wheels actually spin in different directions. Again, that was just lack of time :P And thanks for showing me the problem. That is most probably the game locking out when you have two pieces of UI trying to get input at the same time.

lychee 2019-10-28 05:38

Interesting game, I had some performance issues on my laptop. I think that the menu could maybe be implemented without using a separate menu also. I liked the graphics though!

doodums 2019-10-28 10:17

The look and feel of the game is very visually appealing, great job.

dcrdro 2019-10-28 12:49

Generally good platfomer-like game, with cool features. Good visuals But although it's interesting idea with free cam, but not always conveniently :\ And sometimes car is twitching.

sir-galloy-de-fierpate 2019-10-28 22:32

Nice little game ! Few physics laws broken but it's generally good for a compo. Good work !

hwaet 2019-10-29 03:17

Very nice! I mistakenly hit escape and restarted the game, but other than that little hiccup I had a lot of fun with this one :)

lilkrit 2019-10-29 18:29

@hwaet I knew people would do that, so I put a warning on the bottom of the screen :P "escape - quit game". I can't protect players from misclicks though :P