Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Ball Monster
By marrero171 and UltraArceus3
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1280 | 3.48 | 27 | |
| Fun | 1016 | 3.42 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 680 | 3.56 | 27 | |
| Theme | 890 | 3.80 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 1210 | 3.64 | 27 | |
| Audio | 946 | 3.30 | 27 | |
| Mood | 1367 | 3.31 | 26 |
Fantastic job on the game! It's so much fun to toss your lil buddy around. The reverb really helps to sell the aesthetic, and the music is very good. Losing so much progress and having to redo rooms I've already completed is annoying.
Great game! I can see it being speedrunned by people! Art looks cool and the gameplay is both creative and challenging:D The only problem I noticed is that once you jump on a platform your character slides for a bit, making some sections really frustrating
I really liked this. The only thing i'm annoyed by that your buddy dies ALOT. Or maybe my player just didn't care ;P
I'm not sure if it's only on the browser version, but the fact that you had to start all over again when you died was quite a pain. I really like the reverb effects, though.
Nice concept, and nice puzzles that make you think where you can throw your buddy. But it was a bit hard to a frustrating level. I think the following may help: 1. When dying, restart the screen, not the game. No need to go over the tutorial every time. 2. Character was a bit too slippery, which made it easy to fall into pits. This was not the focus of your game so no need to make it hard. 3. You should be able to pick up buddy by touching, not with space (do you ever want to NOT pick it up?) 4. Reconsider the time-based level (where shadow is coming), or postpone it to a later stage. Players are still learning and experimenting with the game physics, and it is hard to do under time pressure.
Overall, great potential. Good luck!
It was a good concept but the character was a bit too slippery it was really hard and I could barely get past the first shadow level thing. The walking sound was a little annoying but the music was good. I also didn't like needing to keep redoing the tutorial after dying everytime but other than that it felt polished and it was overall really good
As other said having to restart the entire game on each death is a little rough. That plus the lack of precision in throwing your buddy means that the game is quite hard to play. I stopped playing at the shadow level... :/ But the idea and the aestethics are really good, that's a big plus !
I love the concept, but it is a little frustrating to have to retry the entire level because of a mess up on one screen. I stopped playing well before I normally would have because I didn't want to redo the entire tutorial.
Nice job on this. I agree with some of the other feedback that it got frustrating having to start from scratch after death. Maybe speed runners would embrace that. :) I liked the clarity of the pixel art. I felt the throwing and jumping controls were a little tough to get used to. I'm curious how gameplay would be if you slowed down the running, jumping, and throwing into a more concise package. Overall well done!
Very interesting concept. I love the art, sounds and music. Controlls are not quite responsive so the game is a little hard to play though. A little bit of polish and the game would be amazing. But great job anyway.
Really fun game! I loved it.
A bit challenging, I think you could add some checkpoints ! Otherwise good job !
The game is fun, but the lack of checkpoints and the weird throwing mechanic gets in the way all the time...
Just a tip, if you put a throwing or "Aim like" action on the mouse, the player will expect that he can Aim with the mouse as well..
But besides that the game is really good
You all did a great job on this game. I do agree with a lot of the points previously stated. I could not get past a certain part because it was too hard. I tried like 50 times lol and I gave up. Very addicting, great job!
I couldn't get past the first screen with the spikes :( I either slipped into the pit, or couldn't catch the ball monster after throwing it at the button. If there had been a checkpoint, I would have tried for longer, but having to start from the beginning each time took too long.
Really neat idea though, I would be interested in seeing a post-jam version!
Great game, but just like mine(its all over my comments! D:), has a lack of checkpoints or something to make it easier to try again and again and again. Very challenging, and a good mechanic, keep it up :D
Uh what a little cute pixel cahracter. The animation is sweet aswell. I really like the echo in the sounds but part of the sounds felt annoying after a short while. Like to see some checkpoints. The ball mechanic is cool and I really took care of my little ball friend :D
I really liked the game and especially art. Music was fantastic and other sound FX as well. I totally agree with @brusi on each point he made. Level 3 and 4 were quite difficult and I gave up dying many times on level 4. Brcause I had to re do everything again and again. Got annoyed and gave up even though I liked the game and wanted to play it. Overall great potential and a good entry.
Good job with the in-game tutorials! It's a feature that most of the gamejam games miss or leave to the end and it's really important. I really love thea nimations of the main character and the movement of both characters. The only con for this game, it's that I miss a background loop music to get caught with the game. But the steps and the jump sounds where done nicely. Congratulations for this entry!
point.PNG Just so everyone knows, we have checkpoints now.
That was super hard. Got stuck on the windy hallway with a bunch of spikes. The controls were really loose and the ball physics felt random at times. I also found that the level design was really inconsistent. The first tutorial level with spikes was one of the harder levels out of the ones I got through. It would be nice if the ball was picked up automatically instead of when pressing space. I never found a situation where I didn't want to pick up the ball. Having to press space just makes it more difficult and inconvenient.
I started out with the web build and the framerate felt like 30fps or less. I was able to beat a few levels, but I could not get past the S-shaped level because the framerate was too low to control my jumps. I then tried the native build (I run Linux and the Linux build worked perfectly for me) and the framerate was much better, something close to 60fps. The game became a lot more fun and I managed to beat the game without much trouble. I am an avid player of platforming games though (e.g. Celeste, Mario Maker, Spelunky) so my experience may have been an outlier.
That being said, I felt like my character was moving so fast that I never completely got the hang of controlling him. I especially did not enjoy controlling my guy in the air, because he falls so fast that I don't have much time to react.
Of all the aspects of the game, I enjoyed throwing and catching my little friend the most. I don't see why he has a face, because he doesn't seem to do anything on his own. I suppose his specialty is pressing buttons, being that he only has arms, though I don't see why he has to be an animate object to be able to do that, seems like the physics takes care of it, and it isn't clear to me why my character cannot press buttons himself. I kept wanting to catch my little friend in the air, but it seemed close to impossible as I never pulled it off. I would have felt really cool though.
I noticed there were some hard levels towards the end that were almost exclusively about platforming, with little to no ball-throwing. That gives me the impression that the ball-throwing was an afterthought. It was also tedious, like the difficulty was being artificially increased using repetition instead of novel material, on the S-shaped level for example. I would have really loved to see the ball-throwing mechanic explored more, because I really enjoyed throwing the ball and would have like to do some more cool tricks with the ball. Ultimately I feel that the tight platforming levels served only to shut out newer players and irritate players of all skill levels.
On the level with a tall wall, it took me way too long to realize that I just had to do a max-height jump to get my ball-friend over it. It didn't seem possible at all at first.
I wish it was clearer when the darkness would kill me so I'd know exactly how much time I'd have left. On one hand, it was mysterious so as it got darker I felt more tense, which is a good thing I suppose but I still wish I could tell more easily exactly when I would die.
I felt like I was never able to predict where the ball would go. For that reason, a lot of levels boiled down to guesswork: (1) find the exact right spot to stand, of which there is only one, (2) jump to the exact right height, and (3) throw my little ball-friend. The error tolerance in this process seemed very low. Just a few steps to the side and instead of tossing my ball-friend to victory I'd be hurling him towards a gory death. I felt like the design of the level did not clearly communicate to me the correct course of action, so I spent a lot of time just guessing, which meant I was spending less time doing cool tricks.
Congratulations on making a complete and playable game!
@turncoda Thanks for the very in-depth feedback! We will take those points into consideration and improve the game after the jam! Sorry the ball mechanic felt like an afterthought and wasn't explored enough. That wasn't our intention. Anyway thank you for this good feedback!
Definitely cool concept! I see the buggy browser version though. I had to get up to do something real quick and when I came back I was unkillable, but I also couldn't progress the game. Other than that, something about using space to throw instead of jump I just could not get my brain around. Think I would have preferred mouse click for the throw, but that's me
Loved the music, and the concept of the game. A bit of finesse on the platform movement would go a long way, it felt a bit loose on the skinny platforms and very easy to slide off. I liked bouncing the ball around.
Truly a challenging game ! The concept is neat and technical ! I liked a lot the mechanic of throwing the helmet, it worked pretty well !
However, I don't know if it is "as design", but I could bypass some levels by throwing the helmet to the buttons, then rushing to the door, by doing that even the helmet got killed, it was considered that it was a success, and I could pass to the next level.
Overall nice work !
I forgot to comment on this! This is a really solid entry! It looks feels and plays really nice, but it definitely needs some sort of checkpoints... Good job!
Like others said, way too hard, I think the darkness moves too fast and after the tutorial you threw this hard level in the player's face. I feel like this could have been the last level where you show your combined skills/knowledge you obtained over the course of the game! Graphics and gameplay/idea are very good, I feel the controls were off when jumping but that could just be me being a noob lol :) I think if you implemented contoller support the jumping part might be a lot more intuitive! I also didn't realize any bugs, the game seems very smooth :)
All in all a cool entry good job on finishing a game you two! :)
Btw, the "too hard" thing might not even be a valid point, as that could have been your goal all along (cf. Dark Souls) so don't let all this noobs like me get you down ;)