Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Raising the bar
By spacemonkey and J-Star
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1632 | 3.31 | 29 | |
| Fun | 1434 | 3.22 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 1563 | 3.11 | 29 | |
| Theme | 2364 | 2.79 | 29 | |
| Graphics | 1408 | 3.48 | 28 | |
| Humor | 1007 | 3.03 | 28 | |
| Mood | 1202 | 3.40 | 29 |
A pretty interesting core game loop . Its a shame I couldn't mix different liquids to create interesting mixes to sell for more. I also didn't see an end state or fail state, which made the game feel a little pointless.
Overall good job though!
I like alcohol, so I liked mixing all these stuffs together ! Overall it's nice, but it took me way to much time understanding I could buy other slots to mix stuff (the one for a new bar is great, but the small one it took me 10 minutes until I saw the overlay). From this point it was indeed more fun :D
Great game. I would have liked to "collect" recipes so that between days I can review what made them. There was no time to remember while frantically mixing stuff.
Collecting recipes would be good idea, also adding some kind of win statement or anything. Anyway I had fun discovering new recipes!
Great game! I loved combining different drinks to make different kinds of soaps and sanitizes! I was impressed you were able to get a leaderboard in too!
Great game dude! It had more to it that I anticipated.
But for sure it needs some additions, like a list of recipes you unlock forever and some story.
Otherwise, this game deserved the time I waited.
Nice idea! A pretty relaxing game (unless you make the mistake of wanting a higher score...) helped by a fitting music choice. The graphics (and esbottles look just right for this.
I did get the impression that sometimes those blenders got stuck when they were full (web build in firefox).
It might be a good idea to have an option to not end after a set time.
Good times! Leaderboard and a wide variety of combinations and ways to approach the game for achieving a high score were good 'addictive' qualities - had a lot of fun with the game and spent almost an hour (on and off to give my mouse hand a rest) trying to get higher on the leaderboard. Very well put together, music was good and didn't get repetitive after my long stint playing.. great work! I do think with some tweaks, balancing, feature enhancements, etc.. it could be a full fledged mobile game!
Great game! Figuring out the combinations was fun! Although I still hadn't unlocked that third slot to do a 3-ingredient mix XD.
I would however recommend some sort of a timeframe. I was having fun playing then it just ended without warning. Just a little blurb saying "You have X weeks to save your bar" would be great :)
Huge thanks to everyone who played the game! You guys make it all very much worth the effort.
@ladymistleaf I'm sorry for this sudden ending. I just added an item to the How to play section.
This was a rushed race even though I didn't shoot for the stars. This is why I didn't really catch the difference between the items I sell: "no time for thinking, I have the open slot, need to fill it with something". Just a little slower pace would definitely help. The other aspects are wonderfully executed. Online leaderboard is a sick feature to have on a jam. :) Nice work!
Very well done on this one guys, the sprites set the mood so well along with the music, an easy 5* for me in the mood category, hands down! As for gameplay, you know me @spacemonkey, clicker & strategy games aren't my forte :wink: So I focused much more on time min-maxing and upgrade path optimization rather than playing recipes & market, and I felt your game design's real strength resided there, ending up in a much more fun and frantic result than I expected from that initial pitch! On the flipside, it overshadows the whole cocktail-mixing barman aspect a bit, but I believe the leaderboards will make it much more worthwhile for the stubborn strategizers.
It took me a lot of time to find out that there were mouseover tooltips (as they displayed too slowly), the critical information that is upgrading cost would have been better placed directly near the upgradeable part, so the player loses less time to access it and it makes the upgrades more obvious to the eye (I initially thought the mixing slot upgrades were locked out of buying for some reason, because they were too discrete). Also a minor UX problem prevented me from seeing the end result pop-up by mistakenly clicking on the Main Menu button right as it appeared, since I was mash-clicking the blender below it at the time. Making the menu items uninteractable for 2 seconds after it appears would solve that issue.
By the way, I fell into a state of deep abysmal despair when I tried to play around with the jukebox and nothing happened, dem fake buttons! :laughing:
Congrats!
After the world is blocked, the lonely bar. Reminds me of the milk tea shop in this special period, and basically survives by sending orders. Since no guests can interact, the gameplay is a click-to-click collection game. But because of the dynamic price adjustment and good BGM, everything is very atmospheric. I really like this kind of music.
complete game,really good job in the available time! topic was smart and fitting. did not really "grab" me, but very positive impression.
Happy to see cachaça to blend with other drinks :) I couldnt see the leaderboard after i played it :( I really wanted to see my score :drooling_face: It would be nice if the jukebox worked hehe I didnt understand in the beginning how it worked, maybe some tutorial or player feedback would be nice. Good job!
Relaxing little game! I liked it a lot. I don't really know many drinks so I mostly made hand sanitizer, but I had fun anyway. Maybe a little drinkbook for morons like me? Cool idea, good execution, nice work!
Nice relaxing music, a good contrast from the others made this game stand out to me! Amazed at the graphics and how the game has got a feel of a bar with the neon lights!! Would want a post-jam version of it!! Took a little bit of time to understand the game and since I am a minor, didn't make sense to me at first but after a while I understood how to play it! Really loved the game! Would also want a leaderboard for the Web as it makes the game a whole lot fun!! Agreeing with @picross there should be a drinkbook for morons like us!! Superb execution! :D
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Pretty cool, I like the idea and think I rocked the score?
Sorry, the score on the leaderboard is too high Nice Game , I like it!!
The idea of alocohol to make hand sanitizer is just so cool and topical. However, I'm not sure if the theme of Keep Alive was really addressed. I didn't feel I was doing anything particularly to that effect. However, apart from that, the game was really cool and relaxing to play. The leaderboard is quite cool! However, is it possible to score highly once you've figured out a combination and just keep making them repeatedly? Not sure, since I didn't get to the 3 combo stage. Loved the juke box too. Very cool.
There are enough elements here to make a Diner Dash kind of frantic game I think (the world depends on you making hand sanitizer fast enough? lol). But not sure if I prefer that or the relaxed state of being a humble bartender making coc...er sanitizers.
Cool game! I had fun playing it. The ability to blend so many different drinks etc to make combinations was a great mechanic, it added depth to the game and increased the progression (in terms of money made and so on). I liked the theme and the audio was really good too! It was intuitive enough to not require a tutorial so well done! The "ka-ching" sound was great and made me want to continue selling my products, and the diversity in the drinks gave me so many options. As for things to work on, I would have liked to see the neon theme from the menu continue throughout the game because that was spectacular, and some more information on how to optimize profit (even certain mixes working better than others, a bit tough for a jam though) You already did this to a good extent with the blending of up two three ingredients so that's great! But the game overall was really good, the and the mechanics worked well. Unfortunately I closed it before I finished (my bad) so I didn't get to see the leaderboard, but it's great that you have one in your game! In summary, really good, unique job!
Thanks everyone for all the positive feedback so far! We really appreciate all of your efforts to play the game and to write about it!
@reallyqbert We thought about the theme "keep it alive" and what "it" could be. During these awful times with the Corona virus a lot of local businesses, like bars and restaurants, will have a hard time keeping the business running. So to keep it alive, you make hand sanitizers and soaps from the drinks :)
@reallyqbert Thanks for the inspiring feedback! I agree that the theme isn't very well addressed, as we don't even have a loosing condition. It's a recurring thing with my game ideas. I take the theme as inspiration, but end up doing my own thing. I've learned to live with it :D Maybe one day I'll try and nail the theme for a change? In the meantime, I'm perfectly fine having a slightly lower theme rating.
Thanks for mentioning Diner Dash. It's a classic I've never played. Now I can fix that!
We plan to have a post-jam version and we want to support both relaxing and frantic gameplay, as I understand both can be interesting.
Damn, loved the title screen and the sound effect that went with it. Generally great idea and themematic execution :D The weeks went by too fast for me xD It was week 4 and I still hadn't figured out some of the stuff but i was overloaded with ingredients. the tool tips helped
Yeah, a mixing game. Shame i wasnt able to remember what i mixed together for the good selling stuff. but i can imagine introducing recipes into the game in 3 days would probatly been insane. Keeping your business alive in finding new ways to work with what you habe is a nice idea. The first leaderboard i met in this Ludum Dare.
Hey, here's the VOD from the night I played your game on my stream if you're interested:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/611063015
Thanks again for the submission!
@weeping-rupee Thank you so much for playing our game on stream! Interesting playthrough. We surely have a lot to improve on the UI and UX.
This Game is enourmous. A lot of recipes and a lot of work which is in here.
I would like to see prices of the upgrade slots , but next to that the Games is flawless.
Really Really Awesome
Well Done