Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Fountain Of Death
By sawtan, emil-sunesson, khorm, Bellivit and catams
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 942 | 3.40 | 22 | |
| Fun | 910 | 3.25 | 20 | |
| Innovation | 1395 | 2.71 | 21 | |
| Theme | 1539 | 2.62 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 842 | 3.50 | 22 | |
| Audio | 182 | 3.91 | 20 | |
| Mood | 276 | 3.90 | 22 |
The level design was good, the movement responsive, and the music had depth and created an eerie atmosphere. The graphics for the character and objects were very nice but the levels themselves were a bit plain looking. Overall I enjoyed it
Fun platformer. Puzzles are fairly simple but good level of difficulty doing the platforming to complete them. I also liked the character and animation. I think it would have been fine to increase the puzzle difficulty just a little bit and adjust the jumping a tad - although the latter may be just my playing. Felt like I tended to hit the arrow key always a fraction of a second too soon. It would be nice if there were some sort of visual indication when a pressure plate needs additional weight.
nice platform puzzle. we made a kind of puzzle too
Nice little puzzle game! I got stuck on level 4 I think though..
I had a lot of fun! Great music and character art. I constantly had issues of catching on the corners of platforms though. Also the text box at the top was hiding important parts of some levels. I thought I was halfway through a level before I the text box disappeared and I realized I missed something critical. Still fun!
I like how the puzzles where designed and the way you could use the time loop to solve them, it was a nice interpretation of the theme! The jumping felt a little bit odd, but other than that it was a very good game. Well done!
Very good atmospheric music, a great character sprite (I kind of wish the walk animation played faster to match the walk speed better) and good puzzle design. There were some points I felt I needed to address though:
The level intro text appears very slowly. I stopped reading it because I'd already be trying to go for the puzzle. Something like [space bar] to complete the text instantly would've kept me reading as well.
An interact button for levers would have been welcome, as I kept flicking the lever twice after turning back, closing the door again. Character movement speed sent me just past the levels usually, so an interact button would've been welcome.
It was pretty frustrating when I've made the level unbeatable by accidentally pushing a crate just a bit too far - the ability to also pull crates back would've been great. Restarting works as well, sure, but with failing jumps and such it added frustration.
Speaking of said missed jumps, the jumping sometimes seemed unresponsive, or maybe a little laggy. It's a common mechanism in platformers to have a brief grace moment after getting off a platform where you can still jump, and that would've been very welcome here, as I think it registered my jump just beyond the edge and I was already falling down then.
In the end I didn't finish the game as I just kept missing jumps, but I did feel bad about not pushing through. After a series of missing the jump, pressing R, missing the jump, pressing R, missing the jump, pressing R, I just couldn't bring myself to continue.
And finally a pet peeve of mine, the art seemed to have been scaled up by 1.5 or something, distorting the sprites. I really liked the character sprite but I feel like I didn't get to truly see it as it was designed. The brick environment art also shows this, sometimes having 1 and sometimes 2 pixels in between each row. Always scale pixelart by whole numbers like x2, x3 etc, or the art will be distorted.
Props for a solid concept, but those elements I mentioned put together kept me from finishing.
Good game. Jump controls are a bit lousy tho, I kept falling down
I was expecting this one to lean more toward "puzzle" and less toward "precision platformer". I wish it were more clearly telegraphed what switches did and which pressure plates require two crates. The soundscape is good and atmospheric - the loudness of the footsteps relative to everything else underscores how alone you are. It's a harsh game, where one mistake can lead to a reset. There were points where I felt as though *I* was stuck in a loop doing the same jumps over and over again. I did eventually make it to the end, but, as you seemingly intended, it didn't feel like a victory.
Your game is really fun. The puzzles are very well designed, I liked the graphics and the sound too. The experience in general is very pleasant. I had some problems with the jump, but it's ok. Good job.
I don't feel at all the theme. It's a classical puzzle game. I like the clean pixel art, and the animation of the character is well made. The music is good and fit well the ambience. The puzzles are very clever. Perhaps some feedbacks problems : in my humble opinion, you have to make the visual of the button different if it need more weight to be activated. And the crate is not moving well if we move it on the small wood trapdoor. The LD is sometimes very harsh with the platform (beginning of level 5 for exemple) and the jump don't react always on the border. So it's not very smooth. But I enjoyed to solve theses levels. Good job, guys.
There's a lot of potential, and sadly, missed opportunities. The protagonist sprite looks awesome, crates and doors are nicely shaded. The blocks aren't. They look plain and boring, and spoil the overall visual feeling. You could add a few hilights to the brick tiles, make a few variants with bigger bricks, and it'd look so much better. Add some environment/scene lighting and a mild camera movement noise, and the game would look great.
The puzzles are fun to figure out, but are spoiled by the platforming. I didn't finish the game on the first try, because I got tired of falling off the edges of the platforms, when it felt like I was supposed to make the jump, or the character would hit the block above it and not being able to finish the jump. The platforming rather than being challenging gets annoying in some parts. I did return to the game later and finish it though. The story was interesting, and well done.
The audio was great - I loved the music, and it added a lot to the mood. Adding a few tweaks in other aspects would make this game a 4-5* mood candidate, with this soundtrack.
Don't take the negatives in my review the wrong way. The game is still fun to play, and I loved it so much I was actually able to feel dissapointment with certain aspects - didn't happen with any other game this LD, and I played around hundred of them so far. I would definitely play a post-jam version. Nicely done.
Nice puzzles, and the character animations were well done. Often hard to see what's going on due to gray on gray. Platforming was very unforgiving, and was more difficult than the actual puzzles. Didn't really read the story, might have been more effective with text screens between levels. Audio contributed to immersion. Overall a fine entry. There were some glitches with the collision detection, was able to stand on walls. Would also have been better if jumps and restarts detected pressing a key from released. Right now I could hold to jump (or restart) and things would get glitchy. Would have been good to somehow incorporate the theme into the core gameplay.
I think the puzzles are great. The buttons requiring two boxes makes an interesting variant on the usual thing, and you took good advantage of that in your puzzle design. The game is hindered by the too-unforgiving platforming. As @flaterectomy said, the cutoff for being allowed to jump off the edge of a platform seems too early. Combined with the fact that difficult jumps are a substantial part of the game, it makes it pretty frustrating.
Anyway, I'm only complaining because it's such a captivating game. The concept of searching for the fountain of death is great, and
!> the way you incorporated the theme
really caught me off guard in a memorable way. The art and music is very nice and suitable.
!> I have to know if there is some way to escape the loop? I went round a second time and still couldn't find anything...! But the timer is still going, so....?
I loved the mood. The music creates a really good atmosphere and the graphics (apart from the bricks) are really good. I think the issue with the bricks is that they are "noisy", if you get what I mean. They repeat too often and the contrast within them is too high. If they were a bit more subtle with larger bricks (and variation like mentioned above), I don't think they would be an issue.
The texts also turned out really small on my display, but it wasn't really that big of a deal.
I would've also appreciated a visual hint of some sort for switches that require two boxes. If there was one, it was too subtle for me :smile: Caused a lot of level restarts.
The music is great, reminds me a little bit of the mood created by the Mansions of Madness app, not a "begging for attention" detailed tune, but just a really good atmospheric buzz :smile: The sounds fit the general atmosphere too.
Cheers! I'm happier to have played this!