2020-10-06 13:07
Pretty interesting concept
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Cycloop
By erlioniel and RaMoNVicious
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 400 | 3.78 | 82 | |
| Fun | 592 | 3.51 | 82 | |
| Innovation | 752 | 3.38 | 82 | |
| Theme | 384 | 3.96 | 82 | |
| Graphics | 99 | 4.41 | 82 | |
| Audio | 892 | 2.94 | 81 | |
| Humor | 981 | 2.43 | 64 | |
| Mood | 781 | 3.41 | 78 |
Pretty interesting concept
Cute puzzle game, I really had fun with it! The graphics also look very nice. Solid first project
I like the art, mostly on the background! Nice!
Whoa that art style <3 Also, my thought process: "Why am I running left" "Oh I need to go right now" "OHHH I'm back to the left, it's a looooop whoa"
pixel art work and the color palette are so charming good work!
Solid Entry! Really like the art style.
+The artstyle is amazing
+the presentation when you move from one puzzle to the next is superb. Also the itch.io implementation is great.
+loop theme is done cleverly.
+puzzles and gameplay work well, but I got a little bored at the "walking"
- add some ambiance or music to make the mood more powerful.
Great epic work!
The beautiful artwork and challenging puzzles work well with keeping the theme. It was a very enjoyable game. One minor nitpick would be that the shadow of the robot shouldn't leave the ground. Great entry.
It felt a bit on the repetitive side, but I really like the sprite art!
@remus-croft @steamdr4gon @nectanebo @robinerd @politecoy @trypants Thank you for being so positive, guys!
@patsui ye, we are not musicians and didn't find time to experiment with music :) Maybe we have to find someone next time to help with sound design & music.
@jamesor we noticed that as well, but we decided that it's is actually super minor and just left it as is. Don't think it's fair to polish the game after the publication, so it is as it is :)
@pichuscute0 did you finish it? We tried to add some special thing for every level, but for sure we are not the best from level-designing point of view. Will try to improve that side till the next jam!
So as promised here is my feedback:
I liked the website, its very pleasant for the eyes. And the graphics are nicely done. Great job on that. The slightly damaged environment gave me a nice feeling, somehow like this place was abandoned and the little robot kind of thing was left behind booting up years later.
For the actual gameplay, I enjoyed the idea of getting back from where you came from by solving puzzles throughout looping around. I have a computer science background so I liked the binary kind of logic puzzles a lot.
Now for the improvements:
As some already mentioned, it could use music. Even a really basic track would be nice. I know it's not easy for everyone especially with limited time and people. But music is such a important aspect a lot of jammers underestimate. But I was happy with the effect sounds (and youtube playing music in the back :D)
One little thing:
It would be nice to have the ability to go to the next loop by pressing a key like enter instead of using the mouse (just something little, because at the beginning I thought it would be keyboard only and I think it breaks the flow a bit but thats just personal flavor :D).I also noticed after hovering the mouse away from the gameview, the focus occasionally went outside the game, so inputs would be ignored until I moved back my mouse (not sure if it might be a browser type of thing, I used firefox)
All in all a very nice little game to play, feels very polished (despite the missing music) Great first attempt
@desertmaw thank you very much about such detailed feedback. We will consider to add Enter as a hotkey for level change with a small patch, since it's not restricted by rules, I suppose, and overall not changing the result so much.
And for sure we will try to find out how to create background music the next time and will reserve more time to work with game sound overall.
Great stuff. Love the pixel art and the way the game addresses the theme.
Super picky, and I know there is never enough time - but another nice touch would be to have the shadow stay on the ground when the player jumps -- or even just fade out when they're in the air.
Really good art, except the shadow follows the player. It fits the theme really well too. My only problem is that level four was too hard and I couldn't beat it. Good game!
Nice graphics, nice concept, maybe a bit poor sound-wise but efficient nonetheless
I loved this! Really cool gate puzzles, the 9th level had me stumped for a bit, but I figured it out in the end. This is a really clever way of reusing some simple mechanics! Good work.
@joskerdu @spaceguinea-productions @redunca @cyphyrgriffon Thank you very much, we happy that you did like the result :)
@redunca ye, sound design for sure not our strongest part :<
Very very nice, the graphics is lovely! I did like the sounds too! very nice puzzle! a lil' bit hard, it's nice! congrats dude! if U can, see my game too :D
Gorgeous pixel art ! I enjoy the puzzle too, it's a very fun game.
What an incredible game it ! I liked the fun it provides
Great pixel art
Great job! I thought the puzzle mechanics were really interesting and engaging, which is hard to do. One tiny detail is that on one of the later levels (I think the penultimate one?) there's a door with a missing sound effect.
I saw your post on how you used randomness to make the scenery and was curious to see how it looked. I thought it worked really well!
Really liked the visuals, and the controls felt super tight. The gameplay is interesting and has a nice mechanic tied to the jam's theme!
On the other hand, I'm not even sure this needs music, it has it's charm thanks to the nice design you're going for.
One small complaint is the fact that I managed to get myself stuck in lvl 7, even though I saw that in most levels you made sure the player could solve it without the need of a restart button.
Solid work!
Quite a fun little game. It was fun to figure out the levels and the art was pleasant and nicely varied. Very nice work!
I only wish there was some setup to the game - so I would know who the little cyclops robot is and why is he stuck in this strange facility :smiley:
I succeed to make it through! Good job overall I had a pleasant time. The puzzles are actually well made.
The design is good. It would feel better to have a little music, but it is not that important in that kind of game.
The theme is well respected. Good job.
Ah decent pixel art ! At last ! xD Really great art style ! Simple mechanic done well with neat presentation. Great job ! Thanks for the "aseprite-importer" tip, I didn't know about that thing :p
Great art style and use of theme, and overall a very nice puzzle game. Well done. :)
@mkraw @somogy @discoreunion @castrolol @elemental-zeal-game-studios @wegpast @pndaa @fabula-rasa Thank you very much with your feedback :) Happy that you liked it.
@jnkdog Yes, that's probably the only level that might be failed completely, and for sure in production-ready game this level should be polished to be possible to pass somehow without any possibility to be stuck. But since we have a 'restart loop' btn I hope you didn't have hard feelings about it :)
@forgeronstudio I highly recommend to use such practices, since they are really efficient from time/result balance.
Nice pixel art! I love puzzles but I'm stack ><
@zhanna it shouldn't be so difficult and there is no possibility to stuck completely except 7-th level :)
Nice game, man! beautiful graphics.
Nice game with stunning graphics. the loop idea is well realized and the puzzles are interesting to play.
Wasn't expecting to complete this but I got way more invested than expected! Nice logic based mechanics and puzzles that progressed at a satisfying pace. I thought I was going to be frustrated with the walking back and forth repeatedly but the level is small enough that it didn't end up bothering me.
As some others have mentioned; a bit of music, even just something ambient in the background, would go a long way to enhance the mood, but the art is great, effects and animations are nice and overall just a great entry. Well done!
Very nice art style! Chuckled a bit when I realized the shadow was jumping with the character though. :P I got to level 3 before I even realized what was happening and how the puzzles worked, and even from then it sometimes felt that just trying to use the switches more or less randomly was the easiest way to make progress. It really is kind of peculiar to play a puzzle game where understanding the puzzle mechanics make not that much of a difference. :D Sure, in the end I understood (mostly?) what all the elements did, but since the puzzles went over multiple screen lengths and you can never see everything at once, I kept running into situations where I was just too lazy to try to memorize everything and think through what I needed to do, and just went with trial and error instead. It's a very innovative game though, and I really like the visuals and perfectly smooth looping of the levels. Great work!
This is an actually difficult and thinking puzzle game, especially for a jam! I'm straight up amazed at how you managed to come up with so many of these. Beautiful graphics (the shadow jumping is a bit weird though), the sounds are ok, the super clever puzzles and simple mechanics are what really make this game. I just love how looping around the level is a necessary mechanic to master to complete the puzzles, you just annihilated the theme!
@ericbolseiro @raiponz @fupi thank you :) that's very nice to receive such positive feedback!
@andygates01 The sound design & music is a next big thing for us to learn probably. We'll challenge ourselves with that next time.
@very-dark-lord That's very fair comment. Yes, level design is very complicated, even tho we tried to simplify it as much as possible. Maybe it should be done slightly another way, to allow user somehow to see all elements together. Or maybe just a minimap of the level. Anyway since the game is small and puzzles aren't so complex I guess it is not so hard to beat.
@erlioniel Definitely, hope my comment didn't sound too critical – I think it's a great game, and it's pretty amazing you came up with these unique mechanics as well as so many levels containing puzzles with such varying complexity! Level design for this must have been a pretty unique challenge. :)
@very-dark-lord no-no, it is absolutely fine :) Like everyone around we had more ideas to do, than time for them :) And for sure we are not level designers, we are programmers and level design is our weak part. So it's a good take-away from the event for us.
Thank you again for such a big feedback.
Very good way to apply the theme, i really enjoy the loop like map, its just amazing, and also the mechanics and graphics look pretty cool! Really enjoy this one. Good job!
The graphics are awesome, theses pixel art are so well done, congratulation! I wished the sound design would serve the experience. The gameplay is nice, it's a puzzle platformer but I like the mechanic of the loop, it force the player to think differently about space. And it's quite tricky! Good job!
Beautiful art, nice game and use of theme. Hope to see more work from you next Jam!
Such a cool game! Well executed, and the puzzles were nice. Kind of got a bit repetitive and would have liked some extra mechanics but its expected from a jam game. Nice job!
The puzzles are interesting, but due to their simple nature (simplicity is not a bad thing in this situation) running back and forth pressing them isn't necessarily fun. Your movement system is very good; the jump feels very fluid. I think if you incorporated the jump into the actual pressing of buttons, it could have helped. As of right now, obstacles like boxes are only there as a source of tedium, but could be incorporated into the puzzle itself with your excellent movement system.
I commend you on the graphics and the puzzles themselves though. Great job!
I love the graphics for this game, your pixel art has a really clean and consistent style to it, which I appreciate. At first I felt like the gameplay was kind of repetitive, and would just involve going around hitting switches until the door opens, but by the last 3-4 loops I was starting to really think about the puzzles and the system grew on me. If you don't mind telling, were there any features or gameplay elements you wanted to add but didn't have time for? I'm curious what kind of things you might introduce in later levels beyond the scope of this jam game.
The in game tutorials where very good, they held my hand long enough to explain the basics, but they also let me discover some mechanics myself. That being said, even though I understood the mechanics, it was hard keeping track of everything, so I very quickly started solving the levels by brute force.
Really really great pixel art! This was your first ludum dare? Color me surprised! Having the controls shown in game in the tutorial is a sign of some nice polish. This is a polished entry. I did get stuck but I was only half paying attention to what I was doing. Great game, nice character design, love this entry.
@dizzy @toulou @mateusboga @vinmegamitensei thank you for such warn words, guys! For sure we'll try our best next time!
@kushimoto @roofloorwall @junebug Yes, level & mechanic design is for sure the next thing we will take in account. We had quite a lot of ideas how to make another mechanics (for example one-way switchable door), but time constrains were against us.
@no-grapes-games Thank you, that's for sure our first game jam, but I was participating in hackatons before (it's like game jams, but about some app prototypes), so more or less aware about how it's going and what team should be focused on. But anyway that was absolutely new experience
Really nice game, the pixel art is great, the minimalist audio is good and appropriate, and the concept is fun enough. Well done.
Super polished visual aesthetic. I would have loved to hear the same polish in the audio to really sell it all. Some light electrical purring when moving, maybe tweaking the jump sound to have a bit more reverb, and adding light atmospheric music would have done a lot! That being said, this was a super great effort even if it wasn't your first attempt at a project of this scope. Keep doing your thing!!
@kurt-roembke it was actually the very first attempt. We didn't have any idea what to do when the theme was announced. Both of us are not best in puzzle design (and that's even if we put it polite :D) and the result is just an evolution of the idea. So in that sense our hands are clear - everything that was done was done in scope of the jam (except the tools and font listed in creds section). However your mark about sound is absolutely fair - we are not so used to work with it and it was kinda the last thing for us.
@gorrgolem thank you :)
A nice puzzle game with fine grathics and level design.
nice game! I really like the graphics
Very nice! Loved the graphics, liked the logic-gate feel of the puzzles. Would have liked a little less 'dead space' between the puzzle sections.
The game is incredibly well polished. I love the graphics and have seen your take on 'differentiating' the same area with changing blocks of pixel art, which is a very subtle change which immediately removes the repetitiveness of the level design, smart! Would love to see fully working product with more puzzles, possible minimap(?) and maybe more elevation? Job well done! Keep it up guys!
Excellent pixel art; the movement is a little slow. It's quite hard to hold the entire logic of the level in memory at once, so perhaps some form of map (or an easy way to quickly scroll the camera) would be helpful? There's enough in the puzzle mechanics to make them interesting, and I'm sure I would enjoy them as part of a larger game.
~~How exactly is the player's character activating these hand scanners?~~
I love the graphics! I am obsessed with the animation that plays during the transition between levels. I am super impressed with the level of polish you were able to get with the graphics in such a short amount of time. Great job :)
Very chill game, and I liked the puzzles!
The design of this game is very clean, interface, pixel art and animations + movements. The system of puzzle is interesting but perhaps a bit repetitive, and it's difficult to have a good overview of the actions. I resolved most of the puzzles easily by chance. And I don't understand why we are jumping in this game, because without obstacles to jump, it's exactly the same. anyway. I really like the esthetic. 5/5 for the graphic.
The visual is very good, very polished, I liked especially the menu and loading screen, they had "depth" I don't know how to explain the feeling. I don't know if it was a problem of mine, but when moving the background moves with a bit of lag/clunkyness like 3-4 pixel smooth and then a lag.
I loved how u used a sort of spatial sound to specify which doors open/close and where, it's a necessary addition to help exploration, and also help immersion by a lot. It's incredible how a little detail can change so much.
Connection with the theme is there, but not that much to be honest, the only thing I can see is the looping level.
The gameplay itself is nice, the idea of the puzzle is good and I managed to reach the end without being bored. That said, the wire thing is a bit too confusing, it's hard to think what will happen when you change something, especially for the long wire (more than the screen you can see), and the game, instead of making you plan what to do, lead you do a more trial and error approach that makes it seems not that deep as a mechanic, but just a matter of attempts.
It's true that when you're close to the solution you must look closer to avoid switching for 10 minutes and that a that point is also easier to know what to do since you've explored a bit (but also reduced the complexity/variables since some switches are active now), the issues is that the first part of every level is more about switching randomly and see how close I've become to the solution. I don't know which suggestion to give, maybe being able to see the whole map or something like that.
One thing that was not too clear is the single circle box, that I think is a sort of NOT operator, or like only one can be active, it's ok but my suggestion is to change the shape to not confuse it with the other multi circle boxes. At first, I thought that u decided that for one circle only you made a separate sprite, but later on I saw that you have also one circle only boxes (with the other 3 circles disabled).
For the boxes, wire that goes into it does not have something on the sprite and therefore it seems that the wire is passing behind them, i think that just adding a bit of pixel to specify that would solve the issue.
Those are just suggestions that I think would improve the game, to be honest I really liked it, it was fun enough and very polished, with just a background music missing to complete the package!
Edit: i don't know why but the first time I needed to wait a bit for the game to start and thought it was not loading! After clicking run game the screen went total blue like the background of the page for more or less 30 seconds maybe.
@toccio94 thank you for such a big review, don't actually know are we deserve it :D You are correct in almost all your feedback - we felt that levels are more about try and check, rather think and try. And about music, sprites and so ever I kinda have absolutely the same feeling.
The only excuse I have for us that we had time constraint plus it was a very first time for our team. We got our take away from the event and looking forward to blow people mind on the next LD :)
@mikoziq we had some idea of minimap, but decided that player will be able to find out the level by exploring. But ye, maybe that's a mistake.
@tjm we didn't manage to tell the story (I personally feels especially bad about it). By idea that was a recovery unit to resurrect station to live. And it is kinda connected to it, so it can scan the panel to activate. But since the station is a human-made one it has panels for human first of all. For the unit it's just an access point to station circuits.
@tricky-fat-cat @flying-cat-of-the-pepes @mcovert @sophiemae0 @aimainiac @matootsy Thank you for such warm words, guys!
The art assets and the art direction in general was astonishing! Very well done and polished to perfection. Audio was rather basic but still good to have some audible feedback wen pressing switches and jumping etc. The game play mechanics didn't really click with me. The puzzles seemed strange and it was hard to really understand what the switches do and how to solve the levels. I just brute forced my way up until the fifth level until I lost interest. Brute forcing worked pretty well which should not be feasible with a well designed puzzle game. I guess that it might not work anymore with the later levels, but as I said, the game play din't click with me. I kinda wished that it was a more traditional jump&run or platformer with other interesting mechanics other than just toggling switches.
Still, a good first jam entry! Especially the polish in the art department was well done!
aww, the level transitions though! <3
Obviously you chose a great artstyle for this game! The gameplay was way less brainy than I anticipated, which was also pretty cool, as it was thus very "intuitive" and "trial and error" for me :D
Absolutely impressive for a first jam entry! Well done!
Hi, I played your game on my livestream today!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/772381107?t=2h29m51s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
I liked the puzzle mechanic, but I wish the levels themselves weren't that long to walk - or maybe the robot should be able to walk faster. Great pixel art, the "cycloops" robot is really cute.
[Super sorry we got distracted with a bunch of unrelated conversation as we played this](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/772739699?t=02h20m04s) :pray:
However, I still have some thoughts! I think this game is downright adorable, and I love the aesthetic of it. I do wish that the mechanics were a bit more clearly defined. I got a sense of the fact that I needed to turn certain buttons on and off in order to open the exit door, but I never got a good grasp on what a button would do before I pressed it. The red and green lines were decent indicators, but I still had trouble figuring some things out.
I think with a little more polish, this game could turn into something really neat. :slight_smile: Overall, well done!
Very nice looking pixelart. The puzzles were cool too, could use a little more polish but overall a very nice entry.
The level design of your game is very well designed. Your game is creative and the interaction mechanics of the scenario are well elaborated. It's really fun to watch the scene looking for where you should interact. The graphics and animations are beautiful. The sound effects are good too. I think you did something very good for the first game jam you participated in. Congratulations.
Cool Conzept and awesome Art Work.
Very well done