cjblobby 2020-04-20 21:54
Seems like a decent concept, but I found myself aiming for targets that were out of frame too often, but it was still fun.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Shapes
By finn-tr
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1075 | 3.55 | 55 | |
| Fun | 1186 | 3.34 | 55 | |
| Innovation | 343 | 3.77 | 55 | |
| Theme | 2045 | 3.19 | 54 | |
| Graphics | 816 | 3.90 | 55 | |
| Humor | 2.50 | 4 | ||
| Mood | 426 | 3.83 | 54 |
Seems like a decent concept, but I found myself aiming for targets that were out of frame too often, but it was still fun.
I really enjoyed this. The graphics and music were great, I like the look of the towers. I would be really interested in seeing applications of these mechanics in puzzles, rather than just traversal. The opening area almost reminds me of Getting Over It in the fact that I kept losing progress by falling. Good job!
The art-style and music are great.
But it's difficult to figure out what to do, and the game doesn't give you much time to figure things out.
Really enjoyable ! It takes several tries to understand the controls but it is very smart and the behavior gives a good movement liberty. Great idea overall, a bit too hard at start, the "life" could be extended at start and then reduced, to allow the player to become familiar with the controls.
I really enjoyed it - especially reading it was your first game. The Timer could be a bit longer in the beginning to figure it out or maybe add a Start Screen with a Tutorial. But after a few times trying out it's fun! I love the Music and Atmosphere.
Really enjoy playing this awesome game!
Great music theme and sound design. The timer is a bit too short. Maybe a tutorial or a longer time to try at start could be useful.
Solid game, I got to the top of the tower a couple and tried to fight the orange circles but its too hard when you get two of them and the timer goes down too fast. The graphics are nice and the controls are responsive. Great job.
Enjoyed the design. Like the lights and bloom. Good job!
Interesting movement mechanics. I took me a while at the first difficult part to realize I had to double jump before shooting, to warp, to double jump again. And then once I figured it out, it took me several attempts to pull it off. Really satisfying game to play. But frustrating. The yellow orb was in view when I ran out of time, and I really didn't feel like starting all the way from the bottom again. I'm not into rage platformers, so checkpoints after the difficult parts would keep me playing longer.
Really nice sound and aesthetic, though. Great job!
Good aesthetic without needing a lot of graphics. I was able to cheese the movement pretty easily by spamming left click and right click to basically fly. Honestly I don't feel like the square needed a timer, or at least I don't understand why it had one besides fulfilling the theme. I also would've appreciated a distinction between game-over from failing and game-over from winning. Overall, a great Ludum Dare debut!
It took a while to understand how the movement worked, but once I did, I found it to be really unique and fun! Mastering the movement felt really satisfying! Watching my video, you can compare how I struggled at the start with how I breezed through the level at the end. Unfortunately I couldn't beat the game after a few tries, I found it challenging with the health going down very quickly, at times it felt like I just suddenly died (maybe I didn't have the right strategy?). I liked the art and music! You did really well with minimal colours and simple shapes and lines, and the music really fit the atmosphere. Good job!
this game is hits the mood perfectly. i don't really understand how to progress, but it is cool anyway. Good Job!
Love the graphics., The movement was a little difficult, but still super fun!
I found this really challenging, but I think that's part of what makes the game so good! There's a good sense of mood and pace. The timer for throwing and collecting the ball kept me so tense throughout - I love it when games can cause an emotional response! The movement felt nice and although challenging, I felt the game was fair with its timings. A great, challenging game. Good Job!
This game is challenging and in the beginning it doesn't give you much time to figure things out! But it's executed really nicely and a great game. :) Polished, cool artwork and nice music. :)
Wow! Simple concept, very clever mechanics. Graphics are simple but neat. Love the idea.
Nice work, a tricky little game but started getting the hang of it. It was good once I discovered jumping and throwing the ball at once, that made things easier and took some skill to pull off. Rated theme and innovation highest. Neat game!
Hello! Your game was played during my stream!
If you happened to miss me playing the game, you can go to this spreadsheet to find what timestamp I played your game https://tinyurl.com/yau8hjzn
And then look in my latest videos and find your game being play (after the current stream ends) https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos
Hello, this game was very pretty and once i understood the mechanics they were interesting and fun. Felt a bit like a puzzle platformer except i was only allowed to think for about 4 seconds lol was very stressful. I would love it if maybe instead of dying and starting all the way over you can keep in the game nearer to where you died. Maybe checkpoints? Very good game though! It was very fun
This is a really good concept. The movement is great and felt really powerful and unique even without a mouse. The graphics and music combine to give it a really nice feel of wonder.
On to the parts that could be improved. It was very frustrating when you die at the start without doing anything (you don't even know how or why though it could be a timer or something chasing you, however, it does take away from the mood of the game). The purpose of the red line is also confusing; I thought it would kill me or do something but not really. Sometimes, the ball also goes through it or perhaps only a part of it. Despite all that, it was largely enjoyable and I would actually like to see a full version of this. Good job! Kudos.
:thumbsup: wow love this game. even the graphics are simple but the warp mechanics is really neat. music played their part to brighten the mood. this is just awesome..
I have some mixed feelings about this one. I like the concept of tethering the projectile and the player character with health bars. personally, I think only one health pool would have been enough, and doing either action could have refilled it. There were a few mechanics going on r.e. movement options (wasd, jump, double jump, shoot, teleport). It took a while to get a handle on them, and I'm not sure the game gave me a good reason to alternate or use them in a specific way. I found that just jump-teleporting worked fine for me for all platforming. I really wasn't into the way that getting hurt created a third kind of "health", by increasing the rate of lost health. Honestly, I would have loved to see what you could make with half of these mechanics. Outside of that, I liked the aesthetic and mood. Some UX issues with colour association but, overall, I think your game isn't far from being a really interesting take on the platformer genre.
Wow. This blew me away. Beautiful art, music, and idea. The controls take getting used to, but after that it's really fun to navigate the world. The writing is really good too! I can definitely see this as a full-release! Amazing job! :smile_cat:
It took me a bit to get used to the mechanics, but once I did it was REALLY fun to play around with. I could see this being a really good action puzzler style game that does well on Steam if it was fleshed out more! More levels and bosses, etc.
Played on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/601008132
This is a great entry!! I love the elasticity of firing the teleporter, it was super satisfying.
Great game, but hard to get hang of. You need to implement better movement and throwing.
Great idea and lovely art direction. It all felt cohesive and set a good mood. I really like the movement mechanic but I think it would benefit from a few real easy levels at the start to help get the hang of it. But great effort and it's really good to see some original ideas! Really well done!
Hey there - I thought this was a fundamentally sound platformer with a unique twist and generally good execution.
I couldn't see either of my own health bars for any of the game, which made it really hard to play as I would die seemingly randomly and without warning. I'm not sure I agree with including that mechanic in the game at all, it doesn't really complement any of the rest of the game mechanics and only really served as a source of frustration (at least for me).
The teleporter throwing physics were a bit tough to get the hang of, but they were smooth and consistent, and helped add to the aesthetic. I think it would've been interesting to see a few extra applications of teleportation outside of just platforming, like avoiding moving hazards or solving puzzles or something.
I disagree with the idea of "winding up" your throw with the mouse instead of just pointing in the direction that you want to throw in. It was frustrating not being able to throw with full strength because my mouse would hit the edge of the screen, this would've been resolved by simply removing the inversion on throw direction (and would've felt more intuitive IMO).
The graphics are a master class in creating a minimalist theme that still clearly communicates what's solid and what's not (which is usually a problem for other designers). All audio sounded nice and fit in with the graphics.
I didn't understand this game at all. I could move and jump and holding down the mouse released a ball that I could shoot onto a platform, but then the game immediately gave me a 'game over' screen and told me to try again. So I did, and I kept experimenting trying to figure out just what exactly the game wanted me to do. And the same game over kept appearing. I read the description and tried again, and once again made no progress before the game seemingly at random decided to end. This game desperately needs a tutorial, some form of UI or way of telling the player how close to a game over they are at, and clearer objectives.
@historymaker118 I'm really sorry about that. There's a bug in the webGL version that you have to play at full-screen to see the UI, I fixed it in the post-jam build though. But really appreciated the feedback and thank you for playing!
Really challenging, but it felt good once I got a hang of the warp mechanic. I think adding just a bit of a slowdown on the fall after the warp could really make it more accessible. I got to the part with the yellow sphere but I wasn't sure what to do at that point? It seems my life was draining really quickly at that point and I would've liked a bit more guidance at that point. Great job overall!
Seems a bit hard but really good atmosphere! Goes well with the theme and the music is really relaxing. SHINY!
Nice and moody. Takes quite a lot of time to get used to and can be frustrating, but nothing wrong with a bit of challenge!
Congrats with the first LDJAM game!
I love the simplicity of the design. Music is nice too.
The controls are hard, though. I couldn't even get to the second platform: because I had to drag the mouse down outside of the game window, every time I clicked "right button" it opened a context-menu and lost focus from the window =( So, any in-the-air jumps are barely possible.
I played HTML version, though. Maybe a full-screen version doesn't suffer from that behavior.
a very good first ludum dare game! I like the simplistic art style with the black backgroun, it really sts the mood.
The main mechanic is really cool, but its very difficult to get the hang of it. I think some tutorial area where you ould slowly learn it over time, instead of having to both jump and shoot at the same time from the start.
The jumping/warping felt really good. Aiming was kind of hard. I would have liked some sort of visual indicator of my health. It took me a while to figure out what exactly makes you die. A health bar would probably ruin the minimalist aesthetic, but I'm guessing there's some sort of graphic you could add that would indicate your health situation without looking too much like UI.
Great game once I was able to figure out the game mechanics. Although this indeed took a lot of trial and error, I didn't realize I could combine the aiming with my double jumps to reach much greater distances. This is something that wasn't explained, maybe having a easier first obstacle to introduce the game mechanic would help because now it creates a bit of frustration when you can't even reach the second platform.
The art style was cool and looked beautiful, however it was also somewhat hard to know what was part of the level and what was just the background.
All in all a nice entry which could be further worked on to make it even cooler.
The game starts off really hard! It's especially confusing that without fullscreen you can't see the bars and you just die without knowing why. But once I figured out the mechanics it was a nice concept! :)
First and foremost, great mechanical concept. I'd say that, especially at the beginning, it was a bit too easy to not be paying attention and die. Of course, getting used to the fact that not moving is still a threat is a part of the game, and that's fine, but I have a few suggestions that may be able to serve this issue. One is simply making the timer not start until the player moves or shoots for the first time. That way, they won't be sent back to the start screen without ever having gotten to touch a button. Second, make the death transition faster, or skippable after the first death. Three, you could make the timer drain a bit more slowly in general.
Overall, it was a bit difficult for me to progress, primarily because of the inverted angle controls. Some people might find it quite intuitive, but the fact that so many games have an inverted y-axis option makes me thing that it might not just be me - adding an option to make the arrow face the mouse's position and not 180 degrees away from it could help a lot. That way, I could more easily enjoy the awesome mechanic you've got going here. The collisions were problem-free (which isn't a given in a game involving teleportation and non-rectangular platforms), the art was super clean and served the gameplay, the environment simple and elegant to match. I'd really love to see more of this concept and world, with some quality of life improvements. Keep it up!
Interesting. Keep me invested for a few tries until I had trouble with the boss which frustrated me a little. But let's not get ahead of ourselves :) The art was very nice, great use of shapes and contrasts. Also loved the architecture of the pillars etc. Great stuff. The background track was mesmerizing and added a lot to the general mood of the game. Very poetic. The same goes for the whole presentation, including the text passages etc. Very rounded and polished.
The throwing and teleportation concept worked ok, I guess, but there's room for improvement. It got very stressful getting up some of the pillars where you needed two to three throw/teleportation combos. The gravitational pull on the ball was kinda off. Didn't feel like actual gravity but more like it was sentient and pulling itself down all of a sudden. I like slingshooting mechanics like you implemented them, but there was the issue with screen limits. It also kinda felt a little too fast for my taste. Basically everything. Maybe that's due to my monitor running at 144hz. Already played some games, that didn't have frame rate independent physics and the games were almost unplayable on my setup. Maybe this is the case here too.
That brings me to the boss design. I guess it was a boss? I wasn't able to beat him because it was just too hectic and fast and death came very quickly. I had two goes at him, but there didn't seem to be a health bar or something to indicate my progress so I stopped. I didn't even know if tackling him with the ball was the right thing to do or not. He had a crumbling animation when hit, so I guess that it was correct after all. Just didn't know how much more abuse he would take. As I said, death came abruptly and even though I really tried to keep the guy moving and teleporting to reset the time bars on him.
Still, a great entry with a fresh game play concept. Good work!