FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD46 → Pug Panic

Pug Panic

By alex-davies

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall833.9766
Fun1853.7365
Innovation434.1464
Theme154.4265
Graphics584.2766
Audio593.9563
Humor443.9564
Mood1083.8363

Comments

maqo12 2020-04-20 11:30

Hello friend!

Your graphics are amazing! I loved them. The game is a bit hard I think. But I liked it. Good job!

jeremyfa 2020-04-20 12:25

Wow, it's hard :'( But the idea of being stuck in a window mess is very cool and has a lot of potential. Graphics are neat! I wish it was easier to understand how things works, what button does what etc... Nice entry overall good job!

alex-davies 2020-04-20 12:30

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not really sure about the difficulty - it's really hard to judge it when only you've played it.

I also would have loved to make a more interactive tutorial, but ended up only having time for a simple help screen :( .

alexey-akulovich 2020-04-20 12:44

Oh, those pop-ups! At the worst possible moment :) It's amazingly what you did do it on time. This game contains a lot of small things and has smooth fast gameplay.

sndr 2020-04-20 12:52

I really like the take on the theme!! It's a fresh idea, and very well implemented. There's something super satisfying about having lots of buttons to press to control things around, so definitely enjoyed it.

My main piece of feedback is that it is quite challenging particularly at the beginning. Previous comments mentioned maybe having a tutorial but I personally think that this game's theme goes will with learning by trial and error, so I'm not too bothered about that. I do like the extra challenge of figuring out how do those panels work... When you actually do, there's that AHA moment that feels great.

What I do think is that the overall experience could benefit from a slower pace at the beginning while allowing the player to understand the mechanics, as you introduce them one by one. Maybe popups could only appear later on, as complexity ramps up, after you've successfully interacted with a few of the basic controls first.

That being said, I know it's 48 hours, and balancing is a tough one to conquer during a jam. Overall, it's a very neat game. Needless to say, love your aesthetics too!

saviqq 2020-04-20 12:53

Wow this game feels so professional. You did amazing job on it here are my notes:

**Things I liked** - art is very beautiful - I love the whole idea about the game, implementation of these windows are very cool - various mechanics are simple enough, but adding them together keeps game challenging and engaging - background music and sound effect add another layer to the atmosphere of the game

**Things that could be improved** - Difficulty of the game could be ramp up after a while, don't get me wrong I like challenging games but maybe keep first 30 seconds more chill until player get used to all mechanics - actually this game doesn't need that much to be released on mobile, just to polish it more, maybe add more mechanics and difficulty levels

Amazing job in such short time! :smile:

masterkrepta 2020-04-20 22:57

I loved this game. It does ramp up in difficulty extramly quickly, which is kind of frustrating but the core concept is amazing. I love the variety of ways this little dog can get itself into trouble. The popups were not only funny and clever, but caused exactly the feeling of fear and anxiety I think you were going for at that point.

lcstark 2020-04-21 07:47

Amazing game, I just wish I was better at it. ;) Perhaps it could use a bit easier difficulty curve, ramping up the challenge as time goes by. A simple tutorial to show how every system is operated would be nice, too. Other than that, I love everything about it. A well-thought-out indirect control platformer with great graphics and sound.

evert 2020-04-21 19:55

This feels super polished, amazing! I agree with previous assessments in that it starts off a bit too difficult, but it definitely captures the stressful mood (those pop-ups! :|). Had a good time playing your game, thanks! :D Also, I am a positively inclined towards pugs this game jam... ;)

nekoruma 2020-04-21 22:00

i liked this concept game !! is a goog job!!

ghast-neoh 2020-04-21 22:24

This was a lot of fun and really creative! And I actually thought the difficulty curve was fine - it's definitely hard, but you tend to learn something new with each death so dying rapidly in the beginning lets you absorb the mechanics quickly. Awesome game. My record is 2:03 and it was stressful!

wekaj 2020-04-22 09:12

This was great! I think your game is my favourite take on the theme yet. I love the amount of stress it generates. The spammed pop-ups were definitely the hardest thing for me to deal with.

minusc 2020-04-22 10:52

God that was funny ! Really cute and fun game, nicely done. A little confusing, but I laughed so hard. Really great job !

alex-davies 2020-04-22 10:56

@sndr @saviqq Thanks for the particularly in-depth feedback. It's really appreciated. @masterkrepta @evert @wekaj @alexey-akulovich Thanks for the comments :) I'm glad I really captured that feeling of panic! @lcstark I completely agreed about the tutorial. In fact, it was on my list of things to do, but due to time restrictions (and my bad hacky programming that would need to be reworked), I had to cut it.

soldierbear 2020-04-22 11:11

One of my favourite submissions so far. I love the UI with draggable windows. The graphics are simple but clean and aesthetically pleasing. The soundtrack does a great job of inducing a sense of impending doom in my lizard brain. Great submission!

kassjak 2020-04-22 11:13

The game is really fast paced and in your face in the very beginning of learning to play this gem. It was really fun to play and kinda reminded me of my first LD submission!

I honestly don't have any critical feedback to give.

purrseus 2020-04-22 11:36

Oh my god, this game is amazing! Yes, it's a hot mess of WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING, but this is so, sooo perfect. It's ultra satisfying to keep the pug alive. It's the best kind of stress. The music simply amazing too, just listening to it makes my blood pressure rise.

furraran 2020-04-22 11:48

This game is another real challenge for people with bad speed reaction. And I even like it. There's a proper amount of mechanics to keep the player busy enough and don't have a spare moment to chill - this game is fully about being under pressure. Also it feels nice to have control over the elements of the screen. Overall, good job!

Talking about some minor minuses, music is slightly annoying, when you keep listening to it for some period of time. The font choice is also doubtful. It fits stylistically, but looks a bit messy and not that easy to read sometimes.

tic 2020-04-22 11:54

God damn I feel so stressed right now :D It's quite hard to get at first and then it felt like playing a lot of mini games at the same time, which is still quite hard ^^

edj99 2020-04-22 11:55

Much to like about this game. Solid graphics, music and sounds. Tricky gameplay, but very enjoyable once you get the hang of it.

mravec 2020-04-22 14:21

Very awesome game, and surprisingly challenging. Can imagine this as a mobile game. Only criticism is that the colors felt all too similar, most of the stuff was just blue - I would love to see some variation in both the level and the UI. That could even help the player decide what to do.

jason-woerner 2020-04-22 19:55

I've seen a few other games of this type during this jam, but this one had, by far, the best presentation! The graphics were great, the music was tense, and the idea of having to control the minigames to affect something that wandered around randomly was really creative. I did find the initial difficulty to be a little harder than I would have liked, especially the constant popups that would move all of my carefully organized windows around. There was so little margin of error for observing what your dog was doing and what needed to be disabled that by the time I got the popups closed and even found the window I needed to interact with, it was usually too late for him =( Poor pug. Could also just be my slow reaction skill... All in all, I thought it was great concept, and I had fun playing it. I think it would be a blast if the difficulty were brought down a bit and ramped up later on. Great job!

alex-davies 2020-04-22 21:25

@mravec Thanks for the advice. The different colours sounds like a great idea to improve readability.

@jason-woerner Thank you for taking the time to leave in depth feedback. You comment on the small margin for error never occurred to me, but I reckon that you've pin-pointed exactly the reason people find it too hard. Thanks again for the insight; zooming the dog camera out should help the difficulty problem significantly.

amkingtrp 2020-04-23 14:11

I second the comments that it's extremely stressful to play :) Loved the whole idea, and the graphics were excellent. As others have said, it would be better to start the difficulty off lower; I think I got spammed within about 30 seconds of starting and by the time I'd cleared it the pressure grew and the pug imploded.

blackgoku36 2020-04-23 22:04

The graphics and game concept is really cool! Maybe there should be tutorial at start on how to control what, because it little too hard in the start. This game has potential to be release commercially!

duke 2020-04-23 22:53

The idea is cool and I like the general twist of the lemmings formula. But I thinkt you went a bit overboard with the difficulty... There is no real progression, just after a few dozen played seconds the game will crush you with popups and stuff. A very stressful, but funny experience :) Would be cool to have levels with difficulty progression to learn the mechanics and buttons first. I didn't even know what half of the buttons did because the whole screen was filled with popups half the time. The art was cute and made the premise very silly (in a good way) Soundtrack was pumping enough to keep me hooked for a few rounds. Good job! Just... let the player play for while before completely obliterating him ;)

crazyrems 2020-04-24 16:56

It’s a solid entry with a good execution. Does fit the theme very well, actually it was quite funny to **try** to not kill his pug.

Well done 👍

johnnysix 2020-04-26 21:42

This had amazing depth for a 48h entry. I couldn't manage to keep poor pug alive for more than 40s though. Trying to manage all the windows and various stuff going on was pretty high stress :laughing:

Since it seems pretty random, if you do keep building post-compo, dooing it with a bit more structure, and starting smaller missions first would be cool. BTw, the randomising of the windows each reset was particularly evil. I think several pugs perished while I was organising my windows! :slight_frown:

khud0 2020-04-27 19:34

Yay, a whole game about Spelunky's damsel!

corbak 2020-04-27 19:42

I had a lot of fun playing! What a fun game! It's so stressful that's it's so fun! Did I say it was fun? :D Well done on your entry, I really enjoyed it and you got yourself a new fan! Well done again!

bloham 2020-04-27 20:23

Very nice game! Full of chaos! I like it! Its a little hard though! It took me so long to survive a decent amount of time xD

ismael-rodriguez 2020-04-27 20:55

Good entry. Very hard to get into because of the unforgiving difficulty. I'm a dog person, but I wish this was a cat game so I could get some more lives lol!

thebreakfast 2020-04-27 22:27

I love this idea! It definitely ramps up in difficulty QUICKLY. Once you have the minesweeper on the screen it gets REAL lol. I really enjoyed the music and the sprite art. Honestly this was really good. I think it might be a bit too difficult though.

tomssuli 2020-04-28 11:21

Same thing that everyone else says, difficulty curve is too steep. If it started a bit easier, you would hook player into "I can do this" mood and then continously add the pressure so player has to adjust his/her rhytm all the time.

Otherwise, very solid game. Great simplistic graphics, quality sounds and music that make up the atmosphere, well functioning game mechanics.

Also, this game has lots of potential. For example, it could be enhanced with campaign mode, where you had to lead the pug through levels to safety. Open/close doors, activate fans, maybe even deploy food or a squirrel to lure it etc.

elvaka 2020-04-28 21:08

Super hard but fun. Sometimes, it's unfair because you need to press a button but several popups appear in your way and there is no way to close them in time. If it was more forgiving it would be better (eg: you had several lifes, or if random events didn't trigger in the middle of the action... dunno)

a333 2020-04-28 21:31

That's going to be my first solid 5 for theme on this LD. Great job.

Now about that shattered monitor and broken mouse you owe me..

euforia-games 2020-04-29 19:23

I totally agree with @elvaka. The game is kinda fun, but very hard.

zubspace 2020-04-29 20:25

You Sir are cruel! How can you unleash such a panic inducing game on us mere mortals without feeling bad?

But seriously, the game is awesome! The art, the music, the idea, the window management, Damsel. I can't believe you did all of this within 2 days. That's crazy! Are you insane? Well, that would explain this game!

Well done! Now let me kill this dog once more.

marvalgames 2020-04-30 01:56

One of the best I have played. Pug looks awesome. Very original mechanics. polished. ramped up audio. Only quibble is the progression of the mechanics. It was hard from the jump. Take it easy on us first. lol. finish this up. I'll donate a couple of dollars :)

god-colo 2020-05-01 08:33

Great pixel art! But my heart is so weak when it comes to animals! Felt so bad for the dog! :cry: Great sound design! Greato Jobu! :smile:

convg 2020-05-01 12:34

This game is really intense. The concept is really original and fun. Nice work!

zyow 2020-05-02 17:33

That was a funny game with a great pixel art! Maybe a little to hard with all the popup x)Well done!

elio 2020-05-06 14:51

Great idea and amazing graphics, poor dog i could not save him from anything hahahaha, Keep the hard work :D

robert-van-duursen 2020-05-06 21:57

Really impressed with the level of polish, great graphics. I've managed to keep mine alive for 11 seconds xD

conor-galvin 2020-05-11 18:16

Wow... Definitely a unique entry! I don't even know how you came up with this, haha. Really great game with a ton of polish. Massive fan of the audio and art. If I could nit-pick, I think some form of tutorial or more information would have gone a long way. You're kinda just thrown into the game and there's no context. Took me a while to figure out what I should be doing and how.

Overall, though really great work :)

fabula-rasa 2020-05-11 18:23

There is A LOT going on in this game. I think you overdid it somewhat on the popups - you can get like 10 at the time and be completely swamped by them. And there is already a lot to keep track of without them. In my opinion, you could get rid of the popups altogether.

Graphics are nice, doggie is cute and I really liked the concept of this game. It is an amazingly impressive achievement for two days of solo work! I don't know you did that but I bow to you, sir!

alex-davies 2020-05-11 21:06

@conor-galvin I agree about the tutorial :smile: I wanted to integrate a tutorial with the gameplay originally, but only decided halfway through making it, and my messy code made it pretty much impossible to manage it within the time. At least I know for next time that I should make a plan sooner rather than later.

@fabula-rasa Thanks very much for the feedback. After testing it more after submission, and from everyone else's feedback, I've decided that for the post-jam version (when I get the time to finish it) will most likely either tone down the popups massively, or remove them completely for another mechanic that feels slightly less unfair.