FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD47 → What Goes In Must Come Out

What Goes In Must Come Out

By simplepotential

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall5852.6847
Fun5412.6647
Innovation5702.5547
Theme6092.2646
Graphics6041.9646
Audio4702.3743
Humor3682.2638
Mood5682.1440

Comments

tolmera 2020-10-05 04:14

Awesome an HTML Game!

Very cool, I was trying to avoid the walls for the entire run, so was really surprised when I hit the wall and passed right through :)

I love the sounds, and they give a good bit of feedback when you hit a block that's good/bad (I think the brown box was bad?)

Screen Shot 2020-10-05 at 2.12.00 pm.png

Screen Shot 2020-10-05 at 2.11.53 pm.png

apbakeware 2020-10-05 04:15

I like the DOS style feel. It really plays like one. I think the game struck a balance between easy and hard. With more time, I think that icons to help differentiate between colors would help color-blind players like myself. Although this might take away from the style of game the blocks provide.

simplepotential 2020-10-05 13:22

@tolmera - Thanks! Yes the brown ones are bad they're the "poo" :) I may update the title screen to indicate you can pass through the wall to the other side of the screen.

@apbakeware - Thanks! Color blindness was my main concern with play ability, I thought about adding a letter to the middle of the squares to help differentiate them but ultimately it was causing my some positioning issues so I abandoned it. I think I could set it up with an icon mode, might do that in the future then the player would could use their preference.

nestral 2020-10-05 14:43

So, on the third attempt I managed to get over 200 points without dying, after that the game was really easy until the point, when a lot of area was covered by poo and food, and the game actually started lagging a bit. I ended up with a pretty good score, I think.

Снимок экрана 2020-10-05 191200.png

To solve the difficulty problem, I think, you just need to make the start easier, and the rest harder. You could probably spawn a couple food before the start of the game, so the player had a chance to get to one of them before dying. In the mid-game (what I call a stage before poo overflow) you could limit the amount of food being able to spawn(not sure how hard it is in js, never used it). The rest of the game is pretty simple, and not too bad for a quick jam.

simplepotential 2020-10-05 16:13

@nestral - thats a good score! Good suggestions too, thanks. I hadn't experienced any lag even when simulating food and poo overload, any chance you can provide pc specs and browser you used?

beavergames 2020-10-05 19:20

Nice HTML coded from scratch! at least it looks like it was. It was a little hard to figure out what to do, but the rest was good!

simplepotential 2020-10-05 19:37

@beavergames - Yeah, 100% coded from scratch aside from a copy paste of the audio object form w3c, didn't figure there was a need to write something that was going to be identical to what I wrote.

minibobbo 2020-10-06 04:09

That was a nice little diversion. I stopped around 6000 points but I think I could have gone much higher. poo.png

I think the problem is that you don't ever have to poo. Just wait until you are under 50% before picking up the purple and just randomly eat greens until you can get to a purple with under 50% food. Maybe you could add some objects to dodge or have the game change in some way as you progress?

Nicely done coding everything from scratch!

simplepotential 2020-10-06 14:45

@minibobbo - thanks for the feedback! I'm thinking of making poo happen randomly when above something like 25% or maybe after using too much %. I wanted to do levels where maybe after a certain score you could progress to a new room with obstacles or other monsters.

douwe-ravers 2020-10-06 20:00

It's a nice and unique little game. In my opinion the game was a little to long although it gave me a sense of being very good at it :D

milk 2020-10-06 20:06

the sound effects are so cute! and this is one of those simple & addictive games, i am happy it exists ・゚✧

simplepotential 2020-10-06 21:07

@douwe-ravers - I've had mixed reaction with family and friends, most find it too difficult but some find it overly simple. Definitely needs some more balancing.

@milk - Thanks so much!

pincushion 2020-10-07 00:34

The game's pretty easy if you eat purple. Those greens don't give enough energy to live on. I found that if I eat enough purple, I can have it with a side of brown.

Good job making 3 colours of squares fun. Also, it's cool that you tried something new.

barrier 2020-10-07 10:04

The game seems to be slowing down the longer I played, at some point it got unplayable. But it is pretty nice otherwise.

burnedkirby 2020-10-07 12:24

Nice simple game, easy to understand, challenging to get a high score. Good work!

judgezedd 2020-10-07 15:42

Sometimes simple is the best, and sometimes things haven't changed much over the years because they didn't need much doing to them in the first place, and I think that's where I am with this. Really simple concept, well executed, fun time.

cogcomp 2020-10-07 15:46

That was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. Nice game idea! Well done!

simplepotential 2020-10-07 20:31

@pincushion - Yeah, some balance is needed. It was intended to be a strategy but too easy to abuse.

@barrier - Heard that from one other in the comments. Any chance you can provide the browser you used and some high level PC specs? I haven't been able to replicate but both my machines are gaming rigs.

@burnedkirby - Thanks!

@judgezedd - Thanks, exactly what I was going for and it was a good place to try out a new technology (new to me anyway).

@cogcomp - Lol, thanks. My brother said something similar and apparently wasted too much time on it

unicornfrog 2020-10-08 01:30

Nice pure js game :)

simplepotential 2020-10-08 01:35

@unicornfrog - thanks!

vleue 2020-10-08 20:29

when the game started I almost expected a snake like game, where the length of the snake would depend on how full the belly is, which would also give a clue to how close to death you are without looking in the corner.

fun game, with just a few coloured squares, nicely done!

simplepotential 2020-10-08 20:35

@vleue - Thanks! Yeah, I need to visualize the Belly better. Either color change, size change, or something. Originally it was very much more snake like, but I wanted to get away from that and I had a funny bug where the snake tail would drop off and thus poo was born

island-jam-2-group-3 2020-10-08 20:39

Simple but cool game!. I missed having retry button instead of having to refresh though.

simplepotential 2020-10-08 21:54

@island-jam-2-group-3 - Thanks, yeah scrapped a New Game (as well as score board) due to time constraints but I do plan a post compo version with some improvements at some point.

leofiremage 2020-10-09 18:47

Nice Idea. I like how you interpreted the loop as what goes in comes out. Some of the blocks start to overlap when you play for sometime. Maybe you can add like a collider and check if a block exists? I don't know which engine you would be using so you could do like check if something is already present and if yes then don't place green or purple block there. Anyways nice game. :smile:

simplepotential 2020-10-09 20:11

@leofiremage - Thanks! I didn't use a game engine, I wrote everything custom in JavaScript but I do have collision detection and could certainly add that type of thing.

unimaginable-code-studios 2020-10-09 20:12

Fun game. Nice interpretation! Fun and challenging! Well done!

simplepotential 2020-10-09 21:46

@unimaginable-code-studios - Thanks!

flaterectomy 2020-10-10 16:43

Super simple concept, but it works. In the end I scored 7520 points.

I noticed some purple cubes covered by brown poo squares, but other than that everything seemed to work well.

As for graphics, well... they're cubes, and in colour tones on a black background that don't really come across as a balanced colour palette. I'm glad you had the audio that was there, and it definitely suits the retro look of the game, but there's clear room for improvement there as well.

That said, a solid idea executed well enough. Good job!

simplepotential 2020-10-10 17:29

@flaterectomy - solid feedback, thanks!

ramble-house-games 2020-10-10 23:59

Solid little game, I had fun.

simplepotential 2020-10-11 00:21

@ramble-house-games - Glad you liked it!

toby1645 2020-10-12 13:31

Cool retro feel. However I find it a bit difficult to get started, I kept running out of food before I could reach the next piece. I don't know if that's just me being bad or the game. Anyway not that bad for something made in HTML5 and JS in 48 hours.

simplepotential 2020-10-12 13:37

@toby1645 - Thanks, great feedback. My post version is going to generate food guaranteed in movement distance. And more like 10 hours of work too, so that's why I didn't get to things like making sure you'd have food in range.

doc-moustache 2020-10-12 19:47

I quite liked the game. Maybe the beginning was a bit difficult (always running out of food) and was about to make me miss the main "end game" part of the game where it's to avoid your own poo, that is created because you eat too much food with your speed. Which was nice!

simplepotential 2020-10-12 19:51

@doc-moustache - Thanks for the feedback. Definitely some balance work needed.

flying-dog-fish 2020-10-13 17:10

Simple but fun. The controls seemed to get sluggish towards the end, when a lot of stuff was on the screen.

simplepotential 2020-10-14 01:19

@flying-dog-fish - thanks, I'm trying to fix the sluggish controls, haven't pinned it down yet

noxymu5 2020-10-15 08:15

I don't relly like that player moves in increments mush slower than its size. It leads to difficulties with aligning to the food and avoiding poo. Also I had some problems, when I clearly did not touch poo, but collected it anyway. And performance seems to worsen, when you play some time. Other than that, I really think that thats pretty addictive and good game. Add leaderboard and that is a pretty complete game, ready to publishing to some marketplace!

simplepotential 2020-10-15 17:01

@noxymu5 - thanks, good feedback. I think I have most of the lag fixed in the post jam version, it looks to be related to sound mostly. And yes, I need to get it to move in pixel increments relative to the player size and spawn food/poo accordingly. I haven't noticed the collision issue, but will check into it, could be a visual issue with ticks to draw version movement.

healthire 2020-10-24 12:26

It started off hard and got easier as the game progressed, because more food spawns as you play and there's more food spawning than you need. The game also slows down as you play so it's easier to control. Other than that it works fine and the gameplay is solid, well done!

simplepotential 2020-10-25 23:59

@healthire - Thanks! I have a new version in the works but it is nearly a complete re-write but it should take care of most of the slow down. Apparently the Canvas object doesn't take kindly to having the entire thing redrawn over and over. So I'm working on a layered canvas approach that I think will take care of the issue. The food has been balanced a bit more too.

tim-eriksen 2020-10-27 14:33

Cool game! Working in js + canvas is a lot of fun! The game is simple but works well, I like it :)

notime4games 2020-10-27 16:51

Good job! I experienced the slowdowns aswell, I'm on a new gaming rig with Firefox here. As was mentioned the non-alignment of the squares were annoying, and also just passing (0 pixels from the other square, not intersecting. Even diagonally) resulted in a hit so I sure ate some stuff I didn't intend to :)

Would have been more enjoyable without the slowdown, however the basic idea is good and could be expanded upon. My best score was 12245. Oh, and I couldn't restart once I lost so I had to refresh the window everytime. Brave of you not to use one of the common game engines. :) Overall, well done!

simplepotential 2020-10-27 22:29

@tim-eriksen - Thank you! I enjoyed making it, I had some experience with Canvas through building charts but first time trying to use it for a game.

@notime4games - Thank you as well! Pretty sure I figured out the lag issue I just gotta take time to rewrite it :) As for the restarting of the game, I have that in the post jam version but didn't get it into the original unfortunately. Not sure on the collision issue, I haven't experienced it. My guess is I have something messed up in the collision function maybe a float is getting parse as int and rounding off the position. I'll look into it.