FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD47 → An Exercise for the Reader

An Exercise for the Reader

By jordan-kelly

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall14752.9144
Fun15622.4243
Innovation3633.7246
Theme15172.6644
Graphics8833.4645
Audio2903.7945
Humor1803.7543
Mood5703.6143

Comments

extar 2020-10-05 22:06

When life gives you lemons, you make a developer's commentary. Can't wait for the DLC. :)

fupi 2020-10-05 22:25

Well at least you made something, surely shattered all my expectations.

This has been one weird jam.

Anyways, you made a fully functional drawing app! I'm impressed!

ggfd.png

jordan-kelly 2020-10-05 22:36

@fupi Amazing! There was a game in there after all :D

zachary-barbanell 2020-10-06 01:18

Well, it was interesting to hear you talk about it at least. Personally I've been avoiding using any 'real' game engine because it always feels like I'm working around then engine more than with it. The idea of having robots call each other is really cool, maybe worth developing further? IDK.

trypants 2020-10-06 02:49

Just listening to your voice... ASMR! Weirdly.. I loved it

yngvarr 2020-10-06 17:28

I've added your profile to my backlog the moment I saw your post with a game idea. I didn't regret doing it, thanks for such complete commentary. Great art and voiceover, hope to see you next Ludum Dare. :)

joh 2020-10-07 03:16

You did it! Got a great a voice, sounded very insightful and for what its worth it listened to it all(twice!). I did (almost) 0 artwork, and yeah I agree. Now I almost want to have commentary in my games, cause this was nice to listen to and I guess explaining the thought process/idea just feels right.

Better luck next time, but you've got the right spirit!

jon-nova 2020-10-07 10:57

Captura de ecrã 2020-10-07 115158.png This Game is not a fail to me! I loved! My game has the same drag and drop idea. i still didint post the code yet, but i think that could help you. i made in godot to.When i post the code, i will comment here again with the link :)

hungrycatgames 2020-10-07 15:00

You did meet the theme... your commentary loops! :) I really like the concept, it reminds me of a game I did for a jam earlier this year. https://hungrycatgames.itch.io/the-mars-incident I wrote the mars one in Unity in about 20 hours... so your 10 hours you said you put in had you about half way to your goal/concept. I'd be happy to discuss the approach I used if you're interested.

tomate-salat 2020-10-07 15:03

How you saved your submission is really cool :-). Actually the most fun part was when I saw the comments here afterwards. While you were talking about spending too much time with art, I was doing art and other players did even more art. Unfortuntaley I haven't saved my art :-(. Overall this somehow feels like a loop. Others will listen to your game, do some art, may screenshot it and post art here. Have I mentioned the art-aspect?

coda-highland 2020-10-07 15:11

Nice lemonade. Pleasantly sweet with a bit of a sour edge. :P

jordan-kelly 2020-10-07 15:14

@hungrycatgames Hah! A hidden bonus loop, wish I could say it was on purpose... :D

@tomate-salat and now the comments have become loops! I'm definitely putting on an art show for all the screenshots at the end.

@coda-highland yes... sour, not bitter; sour :D

ithildin 2020-10-07 19:35

The concept sounds great, sorry to hear you couldn't finish it. On the plus side, I really enjoyed the commentary :D Hope you can find the will to continue working on it.

Was it your first time using Godot for a game? Besides the mystery bit, did you find yourself fighting a lot with it?

I've had a number of engines to try in my LD backpack for a while, but since there's never enough time to create decent art or sounds/music (you're totally right about artwork! >_<) I prefer to stick to tech I'm more familiar with. I'm still out of time, but at least it's one less fight to deal with in 48/72h

inferture 2020-10-08 00:57

Hey, I found that your idea was promising In the case you want to continue, it reminded me a little of a programming game that I played in the golden era of flash (which will be tragically ended on December 31st, which is sad but not the point) that was named [Lightbot](https://www.minigames.com/games/lightbot_2) I thought you might want to check it out and take some inspiration from some of the ideas of the game :)

jin9310 2020-10-08 09:18

I would say that failure is a necessary part of gamedev or gameJams. It is good that you publish the stuff you did and should be proud of yourself that you took the time and record such commentary. Not much people would do that. I know that it can be really frustrating once you realize that the stuff you wanted to do don´t work the way you wanted, or don´t work at all. And you might not feel like a winner, but you faced the situation and did not just bailed out. And that is a big success (at least in my world) ;)

l30nard0-b 2020-10-08 18:16

It would have been a good game for shure, and even if you didnt finish it i enjoyed the commentary. hope you are relising the game in the future :).

shujal 2020-10-08 18:21

You had a great idea, it's unfortunate you couldn't finish it. Remember that every failure is a learning experience. Kudos for making the best of it and sharing your story!

jordan-kelly 2020-10-08 18:22

@l30nard0-b I'm definitely going to come back to this idea, once I've decompressed :D

temulgeh 2020-10-08 20:00

Capture d’écran 2020-10-08 215924.png

i drew something :D also your voice is nice

feesh 2020-10-08 20:01

I loved the Idea, bummer you weren't able to finish. If you get the chance please go check out my game, this was my first game jam and I am pretty proud of how it all turned out (though I have worked on other games before) @jordan-kelly

clemonades 2020-10-08 21:20

Well...its definitely unique! Honestly, I like it...you still submitted something, its kinda funny, and you have a pretty thought out idea if you want to do something with it! Be proud, you did great!

stracker 2020-10-08 21:29

Such an interesting entry, despite the lack of game within it, you have a very soothing voice you know ? :)

It's interesting to hear how someone else dealt with the alloted time, or lack thereof here ! You get better at estimating how long things will take as you practice more, and you can alway get more things done with a team, especially if you want to focus on art ! The other solution scaling down and making simpler games, which can still work quite well if it's well executed enough.

Thank you for this, and hopefully you'll do better next time !

iron-leonem 2020-10-09 05:53

Smile.PNG

I adored this! Best of luck next time, and I'd love for you to try my entry. ^^

asue 2020-10-09 07:27

I'm really glad that the people in the comments were able to come up with something despite the fact that the game is not finished. Next time I'm sure you'll make a great submission =D

mog13 2020-10-10 15:07

I love this, i love that you dealt with it this way and to be honest i just love the vibe of what it ended up as! you have a great voice for this, its soothing, calming and full of character! The art is really stylized and lovely. You may of not got the intended end but you really made something great out of this :joy: honestly thank you for uploading this!

pbootly 2020-10-10 15:17

Idea is very cool. My lord your retrospective with a "made for radio voice" is just a refreshing twist on what went wrong.

phlip45 2020-10-10 18:47

About the game that failed to be: I love the concept. I know there is an older board game that is pretty popular called RoboRally that has a pretty similar concept although in a more competitive aspect. If you haven't heard of it I would recommend you check it out.

About the commentary: I really enjoyed the commentary. I know many people have different approaches to game jams, but mine has always been the points you've made here. Make the game first, and use something you are comfortable creating with. I always make my game jam games in vanilla javascript even though it has basically no tools that are conducive to accomplishing that goal. Sure there are engines and libraries I could use that add all these fancy features and graphical sugar, but I always find they get in my way for just making a simple gameplay loop that I can expand on over the course of the jam.

Even though you didn't manage to make the game that you wanted, I enjoyed my time with your project more than most other games I've gone through during this jam.

nocity 2020-10-10 19:31

You finished. You might have had a not-so-professional approach at the start but going for the commentary was a phenomenally good decision. Sometimes you just crash, but THIS is how you crash with grace.

5/5 in the "I learned something" category.

Screenshot (1).png

PS: It had some slight "The Beginner's Guide" vibes to it. Maybe something can be done with that... ^^

amirrajan 2020-10-10 21:58

I listened to the entire dev commentary and really enjoyed you explaining your game idea. Sucks that you didn't get a chance to bring it to it's full potential. But it's a good start nonetheless. The assets are really nice and the blueprint approach is really fitting with regards to the idea. It would have been cool to see the infinite looping robot programs do their thing and I'm sure it would have yielded some crazy solutions :-)

flying-cat-of-the-pepes 2020-10-10 22:09

An excercise for the reader XD amazing

thesedatedprince 2020-10-11 16:00

I think this is something that most people here can relate to :). I've also been in a position of having to abandon my entry on a previous jam, so major kudos to you for embracing the failure, and providing a entertaining and enjoyable commentary.

My general thoughts on what I saw on screen: the artwork is absolutely great. I think it's a major plus that you defined your aesthetic, and it ties all the graphics together nicely. From your description of the planned mechanics, I think you have a great core idea worth exploring further without the pressure of time constraints.

One final comment - it may be worth spending a bit of time Godot to unravel its mysteries. I use Godot as my primary engine, and when you've spent a bit of time with it, it becomes very intuitive. It may be worth creating a few more small games/prototypes - when you've tried a few things in a few different genres, you'll start to identify common Godot patterns that you can quickly re-implement for a variety of purposes.

duke 2020-10-13 19:45

That was actually pretty fun :) not the game mechanics per se (it's more of a rudimentary paint program at this point) but hearing you reflect about it in a humorous way was really interesting. I refrained from rating the fun and overall category, but the rest is covered! Thanks for still publishing this :) Like you said, the art was pretty nice and I thought "that surely took a while" and then you said it yourself :D Handling such a project alone usually leads to really shitty art and for a reason I guess. I've never participated in a jam alone (yet) but that prospect really scares me. I love doing art but I'm rather slow when it comes to implementing stuff on my own.

So, again. Thanks for covering our game so well and putting a smile on my face for sitting through you commentary track :)

vesk 2020-10-17 14:53

What a great game :D To be honest, though props to you for actually publishing this. The commentary is quite cool and it also loops, so it does fit the theme after all. The art looks really cool and I really like this aesthetic. The idea also seems dope, so please finish the game one day!

jack-lance 2020-10-19 20:24

Despite not being a game, was not the LDJam game I've played so far! :) Glad you did publish it. It was refreshing to hear someone just talking about their experience, and hope you continuing trying for future Ludum Dares!

ditam 2020-10-21 10:43

Definitely the most enjoyable unfinished game I played this jam, congrats :) I also found myself doodling with the colored sheets while listening, but I didn't think to take a screenshot - I didn't realize there's an art gallery here in the comments, eh.

dinoraz 2020-10-24 05:59

did the only thing there really is to do in this game, and drew a massive snake spanning the entire dimensions of the screen. wonderful. I wish you luck finishing this game