mikejzx 2020-04-21 05:47
This is an awesome game! I managed to complete all 16 levels. Interesting soundtrack, and simple graphics, with some challenging creatively-designed levels!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Keep it Alive - the Rectangle that is
By gonutz
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 132 | 3.88 | 41 | |
| Fun | 88 | 3.93 | 40 | |
| Innovation | 97 | 3.97 | 39 | |
| Theme | 576 | 3.61 | 40 | |
| Graphics | 723 | 3.12 | 39 | |
| Audio | 489 | 3.09 | 39 | |
| Humor | 599 | 2.56 | 32 | |
| Mood | 667 | 3.02 | 36 |
This is an awesome game! I managed to complete all 16 levels. Interesting soundtrack, and simple graphics, with some challenging creatively-designed levels!
Hey I played it and it was very well done! Feels really polished too. Keep it up! I am stuck on level 12 haha
Nice entry!
I got all the way through, but I think some of the levels could be a little more lenient with the timing. Some were really tight!
I liked the overall level progression and introduction of mechanics, though. I particularly liked the series of levels early on where you removed a brick each time to show you can move the brick behind to the front, and then that you can move a single brick underneath the character perpetually.
Graphics were simple but clean.
Nice work for 48 hours.
This game turned out being not the kind of game I thought it would be, and I have a lot of respect for that. The graphics are simple, but look nice, and grew on me over time (unlike the music, which became a little grating after a while. It was fine, but the loop was too short.) near the end (level 15-16) the levels dropped off in quality a little bit, but not enough to take away from this game being overall pretty good. Nice job, and keep up the good work in future jams!
I love the execution of the theme. Gameplay has a lot of potential, though it started crashing on level 3.
Very interesting idea. Found some of the levels dragged on a bit. Could do with a fast forward button so you can speed up if you are ready and just waiting.
crashed after 5 lvl ;/ but game seems to hava a lot of potential.
@rhinofreak You can move both arrow blocks in level 12 but I will not tell you the whole solution ;-) Thanks for playing, I will return the favor later on when I have some more time.
@jeremy-ryan Thank you for the detailed feed back. Nice that you noticed this progression. I will soon return the favor, your game looks very cool. Thanks for playing!
@dreamcastgh0st Thank you very much! May I ask what you expected, a jump n run? I heard the music issue from my play testers but it was too late (and I actually do like the music ;-) ).
@rustywolf @sheetcode What do you mean by crashing, did the game freeze oder suddenly just close? If I have a bug I would go back and fix it.
@staircase27a Interesting idea, if I continue working on this (which I serieously consider because I feel that I have not yet gotten to the full potential of the mechanics with the current set of levels) then I will implement that and see if it feels good.
@gonutz it just closed ;/ but this is could be some kind of windows protection, because it also deleted the main file. I will try the solution that you wrote in the main message
Hi there.
This is probably the best LD46 game I've played as of today. This is the kind of puzzle game that has a ruleset simple enough to understand but also complex enough to self-generate levels. I really like how in each level you discover new ways to utilize blocks.
This has potential! I really think so.
Also, great music lol. Gives me gameboy vibes and it sounded really Japanese (which is my favorite)
I'm gonna play it again. TTYL.
@sheetcode Thanks for the quick update. Once you get to trying it without virus protection, could you tell me if it worked or not. I have another idea where the problem could be and I might update the executable to log things and have people with problems send me the log. If you discover however that it is the virus protection, I cannot do anything about that anyway and Microsoft might not care about it. In that case I can avoid having a big bug search that might lead to nothing :-) Thank you very much!
Cool game, really like the way you see a preview of the block before you place it down.
While visually simple this is a deceptively deep game. I loved the way each level escalated the panic of you trying to get a block in place at the right time. The difficulty was spot on; mechanics were introduced at a good pace; and harder levels starting with the character in a "safe loop" never let the player feel overwhelmed with too many new things at once. My main criticism would be the audio, unfortunately I found the music too repetitive and had to mute the game after a few minutes, though the player SFX were spot on :)
Also! The "YOU WIN" level at the end with the player infinitely bouncing was cute, and a satisfying ending to an excellent LD entry! Nice one!
@almax Wow, you really did go play my game right away :-D
Thank you for the great feedback, my wife hates the music as well ;-) Nice that you noticed all the details, I feel like you pay attention to the same things as I do.
@brian-teng Thank you very much for the nice compliments! I feel the same about the mechanics, I was actually a bit frustrated that once I had everything I wanted in place I did not have time to really explore the possibilities of the mechanics to their full extent. I feel that there are many unique level designs to be explored even without adding new blocks. That is why this LD for the first time I feel like working on the game some more.
Also great to hear that someone else besides me likes the music - friends and most of the comments here suggest I created something really annoying this time ;-)
Nice, simple but effective! I like the design a lot but struggled a bit using a track pad, which is my own mistake, not a problem with the game. I liked that it was really intuitive and a mix between puzzle and quick reflexes, not many games pull of that balance!
@literal-games Thank you very much! I actually tried it on my laptop without a mouse as well and it was manageable at least. But yes, it is much easier with a mouse :-)
Simple but cool I really like ti
No web version? No problem. I'm currently not on Windows and I'm also currently not on Linux but I'm planning to boot old PC with Windows one week before end of ratings and play and rate games on my PlayAndRateOnWindows-list. :-). You game looks promising. I'm looking forward to playing it.
A simple and nice puzzle game. Nicely done, proper, clear, with a good concept. Very effective and nice to play. Great job !
Great puzzle game, I really liked it!
Ooh I really like this! Most puzzles took multiple tries and required some actual puzzling. And it's worth mentioning that it all works. There's no glitchy stuff going on where the square teleports when I move a piece through it or anything like that. The graphics are simple but that's okay, at least they all fit a certain style.
My only complaint is the music. I take this is autogenerated? It doesn't really fit the style of the game and it's full of these high pitched tones that hurt the ear. I think I would've preferred it if there was no sound, or if I was able to mute the music. You could also try messing around with it in audacity.
In any case, cool puzzle game. I would've liked to play more levels. Well done!
@sheepolution Thank you very much for the detailed feedback. I only used eight shades of blue in this game. Actually this time my original goal was to have nice animations with a nice color scheme. In the past I had just used random colors without giving much though about saturation and value. The blue color scheme worked well for me. The animations were cut evenetually but I still made the rectangle stretch and squash, to give it some interesting visuals at least.
The collision detection is based on pixels. Every frame I move the rectangle in X one pixel, do collision detection, then in Y one pixel, do collision detection, etc. The speed is about 10 pixels per frame so I loop 10 times every frame and thus get no collision issues. Nice that you noticed that, I paid special attention to it.
Yes, the music... My wife hates it as well. Turns out, most people I showed the game to did not like it and the comments here indicate the same :-) I wrote this in BoscaCeoil two or three hours before submission, still with other sound effects to do and the (then rigid) rectangle still to be animated, GIFs and screenshots to create and what not. So yes, I know the music is kind of annoying and indeed a mute button would have been appropriate. But when I submitted the game I did not know it would be such an issue to people. So players will have to live with it for now. Although I guess I would be allowed to add a mute button to the game according to the LD rules. But I am not sure.
I will play your game a little later, my list of games to play is still quite long but I will get back to you! :-)
Original and hard, great job!
What an original concept, i'm always surprised by the ingenuity of the game development community when it comes to puzzle games. I liked it and it was definitely a challenge. I like how the learning curve is just part of the game rather than a constraint born out of poor design.
The audio was oddly...fitting. Not to say it wasn't annoying :joy: but it felt right for the design of the game. If you worked on this anymore i'd like to see improved graphics and variety in the audio.
nice game with lovely blue-ish colour that brings relaxing atmosphere,moving objects rather than moving character brings more fun to the game. However I'd say that the music is kind of boring,it bothers me a little while playing.in a nut shell,it is a nice experience while playing.
I like how simple and engaging it is. I enjoyed those levels and all of them were really different from each other. you definitely did a great job not only in mechanic design but also in level design.
Nice game! I like the mechanics and the flexibility it offers. One thing I would change is panning around because some levels cannot be seen whole and you dont know where the exit is (at least an arrow pointing to the exit would help). Other than that I think it is a nice game I can see myself playing. Keep up the good work.
I really enjoy the mechanics of the game, you introduced the concept well in the early levels. It is a hard balance to keep the levels challenging enough to be entertaining but not frustrating. Unfortunately in my case it was quite frustrating because the game was running extremely slow:
https://streamable.com/naz0b7
Level 1 & 2 was smooth and worked fine (however no user input required here :p)
I'm on windows 10 using a intel i5 processor so must be something else causing this problem.
@linus That is quite an interesting bug, especially considering that it is smooth at first. Could it be your antivirus scanning it during runtime? Or have you beeing streaming it with OBS in the background? Or maybe do you have your monitors connected via a docking station?
@gonutz I turned of my antivirus and that doesn't help. I am not streaming it via OBS nor have I connected my monitors using a docking station.
@linus Does it change when you switch between windowed and fullscreen mode? I would love to fix this bug. The less buggy my engine gets the better for me and my future LD games :-)
Would you be availabe for a modified version of the game, where I log the frame rate and profile what is going on and where the time is spent? That would be really awesome. You are the first person to report such a problem.
@gonutz no change between windowed and fullscreen mode. I've played many of your games before and haven't had these kinds of issues. I'd be happy to help if you want to send me a debug version of the game.
@linus Oh wow, very cool! I will work something out, logging is currently not included. Thank you very much, I will get back to you here in one or two days with a debug version on Github, I will @linus you with the link in these comments as soon as it is ready. Again, thank you!
This game is great. Very clever! I enjoy that it's a puzzle game but it also requires a degree of skill. Also, plus 1 for it being made in go. The levels were paced very well with the addition of new mechanics being rolled in slowly. Overall, this is a great entry :)
@gonutz sounds good, I just hope the debug version won't create 1000 log files on my computer or something like that.
@linus No, not this time :-)
I took a look around my old games and really you were there for all of them (except for one)! You even commented on my unfinished try for a 3D engine :-)
I also saw that you almost have 8 games in a row. At least on the new site, I could not find your user name on the old LD site. Really impressive! And of course I remember "Bolt World". That one was really cool and I played it a lot. And the pacman game, I remember that as well.
The strange thing is that the code for all my past games builds on each other. The engine part of every game is mostly the same (except for the 1000 log file game). Even stranger that this game runs slowly for you.
@gonutz I initially found your entry for LD36 when I searched for my game called "Reinvent the Wheel" because coincidentally we practically made the same game. http://ludumdare.com/compo/author/linus123xbb/
I just tried No-Brain Jogging and it worked very well on my computer except I had to turn off my antivirus.
This is a very interesting inversion on the "puzzle platformer." I have to say I really admired the way the levels teach you all of the mechanics organically and sequentially. In my experience this is no easy feat for a jam game.
This required a lot more dexterity than I expected, which I think might have hindered my experience. I'm not sure if it'd be better if the character moved more slowly though, because I think its current pace kept it from getting tedious when it was time to wait for the character to get into position. I really enjoyed that all of the levels were brief, too, because that helped that feeling immensely.
Nice concept. I like the game. +1 for using Go and you own lib :) Cheers
@linus Hey, I have created a debug branch for the framerate issue and there is a Windows executable here:
https://github.com/gonutz/ld46/raw/framerate_debugging/keep_the_rectangle_alive.exe
This executable writes a log and copies it to your clipboard when you close the game. You can then put it here or on Github. Also I added an event for you to press SPACE when the framerate starts to drop. This way, if it is not obvious from the log where it happens, I still have some user feedback to know.
The main repository is
https://github.com/gonutz/ld46
and the debug branch is this:
https://github.com/gonutz/ld46/tree/framerate_debugging
I see that you are on Github as well (Linkaan, right?) so we might continue our conversation there.
@gonutz sure, I'll create an issue for the bug in a bit.
Took me a while to manage the level 7 tricky move, but eventually managed to go through all levels! It was very enjoyable, with the right amount of difficulty, and a simple & efficient level design. Great entry!
Cool concept, I think it has a lot of potential. Everything that's needed is there and easily accessible, so retrying felt encouraging rather than annoying, which can't be said about all compo entries. The visual style is very simple but works well, so kudos to that. I only found the music to be quite annoying, I think it would've been better without the music entirely.
I tried to play your linux build, but it didn't work (on arch linux, x86_64)
$ ./keep_the_rectangle_alive ./keep_the_rectangle_alive: error while loading shared libraries: libSDL2_image-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
This is due to GOARCH=386 in your build.sh. Once I got the 32 bit libs installed I was able to play. It might be worth mentioning to others trying to play on linux distros that don't include multilibs by default.
I'm not sure that recommending people disable virus scanning for their download directory is sound advice.
As for the actual game, I found it enjoyable but sadly too short. As some have mentioned, the music is a nice addition but slightly repetitive. The sound effects were also a tad loud compared to the music, and cut through a bit much. Particularly, the effect for the `<<` blocks.
The graphics were simple but well done. I think the theme would fit a little better if you had something more "alive" than a rectangle, but it didn't detract from the game at all. The level design was nice, with some tricky timing on the later levels which gave a nice sense of urgency to get your blocks in place before the rectangle arrived. The game takes a relatively simple concept and explores the space well. Thanks for sharing.
@bentglasstube Oh yes you are right! I usually build for 32 bit on Windows because both 32 and 64 bit Windows can then run the game. I forgot that this is not true for Linux! Next LD I will remember to build 32 and 64 bit Linux versions.
The music was critisized by a lot of people, I am excited to see what my score in Audio will be :-) As for the sound effects, I made them louder on purpose because they give you clues as to what happens. If the rectangle hits a block that you are moving, you might only block the rectangle for one frame and wonder why it stopped. The sound effect makes a difference in that case, when you hear it you better understand that you must have blocked the rectangle.
Thanks for your feedback, I will check out your game later (my list of games to play is still pretty long :-)
nice game
Is this a malicious .exe? Your description says to exclude it from virus protections ... but this seems sketchy.
threat blocked.PNG
It is like I said it. All anti virus software that I have ever seen is very bad. Unfortunately even the Windows one which is there by default. Very, very bad. The program is not malware, not a virus or anything like that. Not in the least. It does nothing to your computer, does not touch the hard drive for anything, does not connect to any network, nothing. That is why I can with 100% certainty state that anit-virus software is abysmal.
This game is polished and fun to play. It was a pretty challenge to finish it! This is the best entry of all I played and rated so far! Really good job.