Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Tough without friends
By miroreflect
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 3.60 | 12 | ||
| Fun | 2.40 | 13 | ||
| Innovation | 3.50 | 12 | ||
| Theme | 4.45 | 12 | ||
| Graphics | 4.04 | 13 | ||
| Audio | 1 | |||
| Humor | 2.16 | 11 | ||
| Mood | 3.90 | 12 |
I can confirm the game works well on linux. I thought the art style and theme of the game worked well and was appealing. Maybe im just really shit at the game but even through alot of trial and error i was only fast enough to help the friend once and then he would end himself somewhere else almost immediately maybe give the player a little more time to manage to find him.
@matt-greenbury I guess that's what happens when the developer is also the game tester... Forgot to turn down the difficulty when that felt just a tad difficult for me.
I can also confirm the game works on Mac, and this game was really interesting! The graphics look great, but the game is really tough. The guy is super fast, and since you have to put back the items he uses at a slower speed, it can get pretty hard and chaotic, especially if you don't know where he is. Still, it's a great game with a great concept, nice job!
Adding one more comment to say that the game is very difficult, but it's a nice adaptation of the theme, and I think the graphics support the theme super well! If the guy either went slower or there was an indicator of where he was, that would improve this entry.
Quite nice idea but execution would need some major work. The mac version kinda worked, I think. Dunno if these issues are only present in it but there were no crashes etc. Btw, your Mac version download link icon is wrong (and you replaced the text too), that is the web version icon. Well, I do look for the mac/web version to see whether I can play so either works for me really.
Same kinda goes for art style. If looked interesting and nice but at the same time it wasn't very clear to look at. The style is neat but not very easy to distinguish what I'm looking at quickly. Especially when the movement speed was lightning fast.
First of all, every time the game came to start screen, the resolution changed to default and it popped out from fullscreen. Very annoying. And when I tried to actually check the options, the resolution couldn't be changed and there was no way to come back from it. Looking at your screenshots, that actually might have been a good size for the window. At least on those, everything looks a bit clearer. My options were either this original stamp sized window (which wasn't that bad except for the dude and the kill spots were not easily distinguished on the map) and full screen which then made the environment stuff bleed together.
The difficulty is way too hard. In the beginning at least. You could at least make the first attempts take a bit longer and then ramp up the speed once the player is accustomed to the mechanic.
The controls were clunky as hell. The actual movement was just fine but the map stuff was just ridiculous. The map should be its own button and toggled on and off with the same one. No need to have crap like restart and quit in the same view. For you should probably lock the player movement while on the map, it made it just disorientating. Or if you wanted to keep movement while on map, the floor selection should be a different key. But that way it would be easier to just play on the map screen all the time and 90% of the stuff you made would be wasted.
I did eventually beat it. That may have been partly due the fact that latter half of the whole run he went for the rope and I then intercepted his journey after which he always went for the balcony jump. Just going between those two things so it was easy as a breeze. Did kinda have to memorize the whole house layout first though. That would have come more organically if the start was slower (ramping up on speed) and the help arriving time was a bit further away. The button layout was also awkward for playing, WASD for the movement and swapping between esc and space for the "actions", not the most intuitive button configuration. Also had to keep a mental note all the time to not do anything else while looking at the map besides quick A/D when needing to change floors to not disorient myself.
saved.png
Actually went for an another run after that to verify something that I was writing at that time and beat it quite comfortably. Didn't even get that same rotating between just two spots this time and still had no issues. So there isn't really a difficulty issue here but the game starts and just goes from 0 to 100 immediately.
Was this on jam and not compo because of audio? Even though you opted out from the category, I'd still say it's a good idea to credit the author/source.
Anyways, good job! :thumbsup:
It's a dark and creepy idea. But well done!
@antti-haavikko I tried checking the edit and it shows "macOS" is selected and selecting something else and then back to the macOS does not change it back so don't know what's up with that.
Most of what you said about the mac build worked at least on Windows (resolution change worked and the fullscreen pop thingy) when I tried it before upload but yeah, that sucks :/. I don't know why the icon shows the web version.
In the settings though, you tried changing it with A/D? and tried going back with ESC? I just tried it and it worked so might be and issue with mac?
The player moving while seeing the map/pause menu...? There seems to be a lot of bugs with the mac build at least then as that's not something that should be happening... So I can see why it feels ridiculously idiotic.
I think you are right that the map/menu maybe shouldn't have been in the esc but rather in the e or some other key near the wasd.
It was a jam because it took me 72h to finish everything and the soundtracks I had purchased a while ago so I have no recollection of the source and thus cannot give it credit.
Thank you for the feedback though, I will add the info on the mac build being a fairly buggy one so knowing all this is helpful!
@miroreflect Yeah you're actually right about the icon. Maybe I'm just remembering wrong or it changed at some point but I somehow thought it should have been an apple.
Yes, tried esc and a/d on settings. And pretty much every single other key on the keyboard but nothing did anything.
**edit:** Oh one more thing. Arrow keys as alternative controls would have been nice too. I don't understand why people prefer WASD when there is no mouse controls at all. Aren't most people right handed? Why would you wanna play with your non-primary hand only.
I really like the black and white look. The music escalation at around 50s is a nice detail as well. I would enjoy it more if you didn't have to return items to where they belong at such a slow speed. There were many times where I'd catch him on a different floor and I'd barely have time to return the item. Also, it always feels cheap when you lose because of something off-screen without any idea. A timer to show how close you are to losing would help a lot with that frustration.
Game works very good aesthetically but I think there should be a difference in the friend's speed, bcs it gets very hard to follow him when you have to return the items.