Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → The Empty Cone
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 295 | 3.92 | 44 | |
| Fun | 125 | 4.03 | 44 | |
| Innovation | 238 | 3.86 | 44 | |
| Theme | 1315 | 3.61 | 44 | |
| Graphics | 1026 | 3.76 | 44 | |
| Humor | 170 | 3.95 | 44 | |
| Mood | 982 | 3.50 | 42 |
This game was super fun, I thought the twist was pretty funny, I definitely wasn't ready for it and made it a lot more high stakes than before. I guess my only wish was that the ice cream machines were spaced out a little bit more but that's just a preference(it's probably just easier that way and I wouldn't drown in debt). Ultimately, pretty fun game and I like your interpretation of the theme
Neat game with very cute graphics. I was expecting a twist but wow, this was something else. Amazing!
Actually amazing game! Hilarious flavour text and animations! My favourite are the demons that just go and wreck your ice cream machines. Amazing job getting so much content done. How did you guys split the work? I really like the music and the programming is absolutely solid. Really well done on this one, fun idea with a lot of humour and personality and well executed!
That was really hard! I struggled to make it past day 4... The "twist" was very unsettling at first. Overall I did like the diner dash bits, and I liked working with the AI.
Such a good game, one of my favorites! I could see myself paying money for this. At first I was worried the ice cream was going to be a slog, but those workers are so efficient! I also didn't run into any bugs, which was great. Good job all!
We appreciate your feedback everyone, and we're glad you enjoyed our game!
@jackcaunter I did all the graphics, SFX, and user interface programming, while @Epicular programmed everything else and worked on the design of the game mechanics.
Thanks for the game :) A big fan of tycoon games here, I like to handle customers at your ice cream shop :) Wish you the best of luck!
Loved that feeling to have money, and when these little monsters arrived. It was perfect. Nice game :)
Fun litle game ! :) At first I was wondering what the gun was for. I was not disapointed.
Fun little game i like that you have to ask the people what they want instead of it just kind of showing you, but serious question. What kind of Ice Cream costs $200?!?!?! lol Good Entry!
Very cool game ! I did not read the description before playing, I was really surprised when the monster showed up, I was like "WTF is happening in this game?", it was fun ^^
Nice game! I don't get the fact you have to talk to customer to take order, but it make sens ^^. Love the music. Good joob
The turn after night was very unexpected, very exciting, impressive and very good!
Made it to day 7! This game is 5/5 to me. Everything fits and it is really addicting!
The graphics are very cool, great pixel art. I love how the gun rotates in a pixelated way when you move the mouse. Everything is presented very well, the colors are very well chosen and all the icons are so easily recognizable that there was not a single misunderstanding of anything in your game. Really great job for such a detailed scene with so much going on. Hats off to you! Also nice LD46 on the wall :-)
The music and sound effects really fit what is going on. The ice cream music sounds like it and when the screen turns red, the darker music conveys the feeling of danger, like it should.
The mechanics are versatile, I like how day one is easier because you just get the ice cream but then you step it up by adding the topping. Also the three types of employees, the guns, how did you create all of this cool content in just three days?! Awesome job, very well executed.
Like I said, 5/5 in all categories, it was fun and funny, it looks great and is a very unique game, combining different genres in a consistent way. I would love to eat at the Empty Cone - during day times - myself! :-)
Really really cute and with a twist! 11/10 would serve ice cream again! It feels balanced and polished for being done over a jam, well done!
Oh! What a twist with shooting part! It was really unexpected, you should put these screenshots under spoiler mark!
Nice one!
Super fun!
I did not read the description, so I was really caught off guard by the monster attack. That was a great touch! Graphics and sound are great, concept is really cool. I guess my only criticism is that the making the ice cream is tedious with the stations being so small and so close together.
You mention that that all the other controls are explained within the game, but somehow I missed them. I didn't figure out that you could press Q to pull up your weapon (or that you even had a weapon) until the 2nd playthrough which made the first playthrough incredibly frustrating. The upgrade menu was rather hard to understand. I couldn't tell if something I was clicking wasn't working because I didn't have enough money or because it wasn't clickable or what. It seems like listing the controls in the description would be a good idea, especially for a jam game. Maybe the controls show up on the screen, but I missed them both times I played through the game. Though maybe the whole point is to surprise people? I was certainly surprised when the monsters came in. I guess you have to balance the surprise with the chance that people will ragequit. Once I figured everything out the game was fun and had a good amount of depth, so good scores all around, but if there was a rating for intuitiveness I'd have to dock you. Very impressive amount of content for a jam game!
Really good game! Very good graphics and sounds. The twist totally caught me off-guard and make this a really memorable game for me. So satisfying and addictive! Great job!
Very fun game! The first demon attack was hilarious haha. I thought I had everything sorted by the 3rd day but those purple demons were really tanky! I thought it ramped up in difficulty way too fast there. I also found that most of the time the dropouts dont get too much to do early on since the server will beat them to an order, fill that order and then beat them to the next customer again and so on!
Apart from those things (which are just minor gripes at best), I really enjoyed playing! Awesome work team!
5/5 absolutely. i was so confused with the demons lol i love it!
Interesting turn of events on the monsters ravaging your store... I wanted desperately to save the store, but it's hard! One thing I couldn't figure out is if I could bring two ice cream to two different people, it would be nice, I tried but didn't work. Graphics are simple but do the job and the music although repetitive, catchy. Nice work!
Really nice and pretty polished game! Gameplay was a lot of fun and the art + music all worked quite well together. Also loved the twist too! I feel like the days could have been a bit shorter, and also a simple tutorial at the beginning would have helped a lot too.
Unfortunately, I ran into a crash towards the end of the 4th day when I defeated the monsters and then tried to get ice cream. This was on the web version - dev tool's console says: `RuntimeError: invalid index into function table`
Either way, it was a lot of fun to play, good job!
Cool game! I liked serving the customers and keeping track of who I needed to serve first. The game has good depth to it with the day/night cycle, upgrades etc. It was smooth to play and felt polished. However, I think I encountered a bug where I couldn't select my weapon properly or shoot. The monsters attacked and it told me to press space bar which I did, and nothing happened, I spammed a few keys and then I got my gun but I couldn't shoot. I used Q, R, Space again, and click to try and reset it but no luck. This was in the Web port. I had got the gun working in my first playthrough before I restarted though (during day time). Overall, well made, and I hope to come back to playing it!
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Here's the news- this game is brilliant. I did not read the description, so everything was a surprise. You really captured the stress of retail/food service in the mechanics of the gameplay.
"Oh shit- I made the wrong ice cream cone" was a thought that actually went through my head. Trying to get rid of that cone and watching the customers slowly get pissed off- all the while glancing at the clock spinning in the corner... I'm still chuckling reliving it- omg- the twist- the release- and the consequences- perfectly executed in my opinion. The newspaper cut scenes were the cherry on top.
You have a wonderful sense of comedy and drama- not only within the plot and mechanics- but through the audio and visuals as well. I mean, the characters are very reminiscent of ice cream cones. Super impressive jam game. And the self-reflexivity! I think every game developer should be required to play this game. No matter how hard you try to please everyone, mistakes will be made, and the monsters are coming.
the_empty_cone.jpg
@scott-steffes Every control is mentioned in-game at some point, there should be a couple simple messages popping up throughout the first few days. It sounds like this didn't happen for you, which seems odd as I haven't heard of this bug happening to anyone else. Out of curiosity - were you playing the web build or the Windows build?
The reasoning behind not putting the controls in the game's description is because we wanted to try and avoid information overload, as I never appreciate trying to read everything about how to play some game before I even start it. In hindsight we should probably have included them as a sort of safety valve. Thank you for your feedback, it is absolutely invaluable.
@hulien22 We haven't heard of any such crash before so we will look into it and try to reproduce it, thanks for telling us about it.
@emperor-eagle We haven't heard of that sort of thing happening to anyone yet. We'll try to reproduce it and see what could be causing that, thanks for letting us know.
@joemid We're glad you liked it so much! Thanks for the kind words, it really means a lot to us.
@epicular I played again and the bug didn't appear which is good! Definitely enjoyed the game second time around!
The best entry I've seen yet! The graphic style and audio really fit the game thematically and look and sound awesome. The main gameplay loop is really fun, interrupting your relatively peaceful life just at the right time with monster attacks. I also really liked how the game was handling feedback showing who is already being served
Now to some cons: - I felt like there was a lack of progression in terms of ice cream parlor. You can hire all 3 employees very quickly and both upgrades are basically aimed to make more money. Something like faster severs' speed, stronger mercenaries, cheaper repair costs would make progression feel more varied imo. - The combat generally felt kinda awkward. I haven't tried second weapon, but all others seemed to have rather small clip size with long reload times which didn't feel nice, especially considering how fast paced the game is otherwise - Maybe partially due to the last point, difficulty spike on day 6 felt very sudden. I managed mostly fine before, with monsters only maybe killing a few people but on days 6 and 7 I got completely wrecked.
I hope my review doesn't come of as negative, I really enjoyed your game but I'm kinda bad at describing what I like about things. Great job!
Back again for more. I made it to day 17 and only because my son started to cry and I had to leave for two days :-)
So my winning stategy is hiring three mercenaries and training them as best as I can. The money comes back in eventually. I only upgrade the market thingy twice, that is enough to keep everybody busy. I get a reaper and nothing else, with that I start shooting the big guys as soon as the screen turns red. I have a felling that enemies do not get more after day 12 or so, is that correct? My mercenaries will clean up all red devils and DOOM monster eyes (are they called cacodeamons?). Once everybody around me is asleep I might try to get a new highscore yet again :-)
I have to say, playing this for so long at a time it gets a bit repetitive. But not so that I would not want to play again. Maybe I will be back with a third comment. Your game is one of those that I can come back to. Great job!
@lamossus I agree that all three of those things are weak points for the game. Thank you for the detailed feedback, it is invaluable!
@gonutz Day 17?! I don't think I've ever made it past 9 or 10. Also you are partially correct that enemy waves stop growing significantly around day 12 - they keep growing in a linear fashion, so eventually the law of diminishing returns kicks in and each wave starts to feel almost exactly the same as the last. We're really glad that you've enjoyed the game so thoroughly.
Love this game! Would make a great android/apple phone release. Also these customers are getting ripped off for there ice-cream!! Haha goodjob!
Hahaha the enemies suprise me, I was not expected to shoot guys but it make laugh.
The game play works well and it's very addictive. You should make the shooting phase more juicy by adding FX. And also, update the customer face to show which client is bored.
Overall, very fun game !
Now that I am becoming somewhat of a power user, I have some things to be improved:
- I sometimes get the wrong topping. The ice cream machine gives me a nice feedback. It shakes and the ice has one of three colors. The topping however is only a few changed pixels and some combinations look very similar. Especially when you are in a hurry :-)
- There was some issue where the screen just turned black. Right in the middle of day 4 or 5 maybe. I was getting an ice cream and everything turned black. It would not come back for a minute so I had to reastart the game.
- I had an issue twice where I would keep moving left/down without pressing the button. After a couple of seconds it would stop.
- Bullets came out of the top-right and bottom-right corners of the shop in two or three games when the deamons arrived. I guess they were stuck there and shot through the walls?
Are you planning on releasing this as a full game? If you kept working on this and fixed the last bugs, maybe made it so that I do not have to play to level 30 before dying... ;-) This is a great game, I am going to play this again in a minute...
@gonutz Keep the feedback coming! We can never have too much of it.
We are toying with the idea of expanding the game and publishing it as a mobile game, or maybe as a cheap/free Steam release. Aside from the obvious bug fixes and balance improvements, this expansion would include more weapons/employees, training for the individual employees (plus the ability to hire more than just three), the ability to buy/move furniture in your parlor (including extra ice cream machines and topping stations, as well as aesthetic items to improve customer moods, and defensive installments like turrets and traps), refined combat with more enemies, and likely the ability to sell your parlor and buy larger buildings in new locations, in order to create a larger scheme of progression.
As for your individual points of feedback:
- We agree that the topping stations need more feedback - I haven't heard of this specific bug, although we've had a few people report randomly occurring crashes - Haven't heard of this one yet either, I'll have to look into it - This one's a known bug. We just never got around to fixing it, lol
OK then, back I am. Some more things before I forget them:
- When I stand next to my employee, waiting for an ice cream machine in use, once the employee is done with their ice, I have to move out of and back in to the trigger zone or I cannot press E.
- While at it, E turns out is a quite inconvenient button to press while you are moving with WASD. Space, Shift or user-definable would have been better.
- Random crashes here as well. Once on day 3 and right now I was doing great on day 14, with 2000 cash but then it crashed! This is a show stopper. I will now stop playing this game because of this.
- The employees do not wait on me or each other to get their ice out of the machine. This is a minor detail but seems a little inconsistent.
As I said, I will stop playing now because I am afraid I will never get to level 100 without the game crashing. This however brings me to my next question - are you going to release the source code to this. I like this game so much, I would really enjoy working on it myself for a bit. If you published in on Github for example I would be able to work on it and hand you back any improvements.
Your ideas for expanding this game sound a bit too much for me. It reminds me of when the Command and Conquer games turned into a confusig pile of options, most of which nobody ever used. To this day I prefer [OpenRA](https://www.openra.net/) over the latest commercial Command and Conquers. Do not fall prey to the same false assumption that more is better. Only better is better and to me what you describe as your final goal is worse because balancing 3 things is hard but balancing 30 things is impossible. As of now I only buy mercenaries and one extra gun and make it to the end of the game (the eventual crash) every time, meaning you would first have to balance this out right. Every piece you add on top of that will have an effect on the overall balance.
I think you have a great game here - fix the bugs and make a free Steam release out of it. That sounds like a very cool thing to do. As I said, I would love to help you with finding the bugs!
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oh! i was in fact not expecting that. Huh...
Pretty hilarious! The twist is great. My main complaint is the topping station, it's not easy to select the right topping. My other complaint is that there is no bin to dump incorrect ice creams into. I know that you can just make another and it overwrites the current one, but that doesn't make sense to new players. I made it to the end of day 4. Also @epicular, why is Godot is better than GameMaker?
Oof. Really fun, but hard, so soooo hard.
Heh, when the demonic surprise same, I LOLed a bit, nice idea :D
Fun game. Wasnt expecting a demonic visit in the ice cream shop xD ! I had some trouble with the control of the riffle, but overall its quite well polished and nice to play.
@gonutz Thank you for the continued feedback.
I'd love to try and track down the crash that you're experiencing but I'm a little tied up at the moment, I may see what we can do in a week or two.
As for your concerns about expansion, I generally agree with that sentiment, but at the same time we absolutely need to introduce a broader arc of progression if this is to experience any amount of success outside of a jam context. Only 3 employees, 4 guns, 3 enemies, and zero variability in your parlor is generally not enough to keep most players entertained for any longer than an hour or two. Of course balancing could prove to be tricky but that's what testing and feedback is for :wink:
I have nothing against releasing on Steam, but we'd need some sort of financial incentive to continue to devote time to this. Maybe that means a paid release, or DLC, or something. But a completely free Steam release is off the table at the moment.
Unfortunately, for this same reason we're also not open to publishing the source code at this time.
Oh dear...note to self -- prioritize safety over profit margins =( My store got absolutely wrecked after I decided to. The limited ammo mechanic really got me -- after such huge profits on day 2 I wasn't sure how much ammo my "grim reaper" needed -- turns out two purchases of ammo wasn't enough. My first playthrough I also didn't expect how quickly the machinegun would run out of ammo (is there any way to replenish it???), and my store got ransacked.
I would suggest maybe having a handgun or melee weapon that is weak but has unlimited ammo, it feels like if you ever run out you're just sore outta luck right now as the monsters basically wreck everything you have and you're sunk way too deep into the red to ever do anything about it.
Anyways, this was great fun :) I do wish there was a little more to the ice cream serving portion of the game. Yeah, the toppings sort of added more to keep track of, but at its core it was still mostly just following directions. I can imagine this going in either a multi-tasker game route, where you need to direct all of the servers (more micromanagement of different things), OR an overcooked-style route, where delivering the actual orders is more frantic. As is it just feels pretty mundane, which although realistic isn't exactly thrilling.
As a final note: Please give credit to the original source of the audio track!
Great job on a successful LD entry! :D
Hey, how is it going? I am thinking about your game every now and then and I wanted to ask you again if I could get access to the code? I basically just want to play the game a bit more but without the bugs. You would not even have to make it open source and I would not be allowed to use it for anything open source if that is what you fear? I would give what I find back to you. Are you open for it?
If you want to see two streamers play your game, here is their channel https://www.twitch.tv/cyberlightgames