Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Hulagain
By squimmy
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 257 | 3.50 | 33 | |
| Fun | 297 | 3.30 | 33 | |
| Innovation | 27 | 4.17 | 33 | |
| Theme | 28 | 4.32 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 392 | 3.19 | 33 | |
| Audio | 337 | 2.96 | 33 | |
| Humor | 66 | 3.66 | 33 | |
| Mood | 236 | 3.33 | 33 |
Very cool, very interesting to try.
I didn't manage to hoop very long, and didn't get enough feedback when I was hitting the right rythum, but still enjoyed it. I managed to make it half way across the second screen when a block suddenly vanished and dropped me back down to the start :) very cool little trick and would make the game a lot of challenge.
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Great game!. Love the theme that you utilized, it was interesting!
Great work! For a game like this feedback on how on you're doing is really important and you absolutely got that down. After a few tries the hula hooping felt very intuitive.
The levels were all super creative, too, lots of effort in making them all feel unique. I needed a moment to recover after Gluttony.
Oh, nice take on the theme! I really like the concept, unfortunately it's too difficult for me, but well done.
@tolmera Thanks for your feedback! Making the hula hoop itself the main hint for the timing was a bit of an oversight on my part, especially when the hoop is only about 5x20 pixels in size. There's an audio cue when you get the timing right, but in retrospect that's mostly only useful once you've already worked it out. It's not so much help for new players trying to get their head around the hula hooping.
@luc-creationallabs Thanks! The game definitely has a couple of difficulty-related problems, particularly at the start. If I'd had more time, I probably would have spent it all on trying to make the hula hoop timing easier to understand...
It's an interesting concept. Never played or saw anything like it, and it fits the theme well. I found it very hard to jump while also focusing on the hula hoop though. The arrows when I was close to failure helped a bit, and I'd like if something like that was visible constantly.
Since the game mechanic is very different and a bit hard to get a hang of, it would be nice if the difficulty curve of the levels was a bit less steep. After the first jump there was a left jump, and then a trap that I didn't notice that reset me to the start.
I'd suggest using a different instrument for the main melody, or softening it a bit. I had to turn down the volume a lot! :sweat_smile:
Breaking news: Hula hoop man fights the seven deadly sins and ascends into heaven. Absolutely hilarious, and a brilliant take on the theme. Seriously great work all around.
@fryer Thanks for your feedback, and sorry about the sound volume :( The difficulty curve also definitely has problems. I had a very hard time trying to balance the hula hoop mechanic so that it wasn't so easy you could ignore it but also not so hard that it was frustrating. Unfortunately I think I fell a little to far on the "frustrating" side...
@blobo I'm glad you liked it! The sound, graphics and gameplay are all admittedly a bit mediocre, so it's nice to at least see the humour landing well!
That is SO clever. Really neat little idea, well implemented and presented brilliantly. I think you've done a superb job of interpreting the theme into something challenging and intuitive, well done.
Lol!!!!! very original and funny xD I love the "limbo" stage xDDD Nice!!!
That's a unique game concept! Nice one.
Incredible story/mood, Clever concept, awesome ending, this was such a fun jam game! The art definitely needs a lot of work, mostly on the palette and the assets themselves. It was really hard to know where the hoop was, in terms of direction, maybe it would be better to have the loop appear bigger as a UI element or something like that. I also really like the indication that the loop is about to fall off, and the helping arrows. Gameplay wise I didn't feel like I used the hoop mechanic too much, there were some levels where I just brute forced my way to the ending. Still The story, the delivery and the ending are phenomenal great job!
Saw your game on the Twitch Stream, it's really fun man! Congrats for the game and the concept!
That omnious music is basically telling you that this will not be easy. And it is not. It is great to see what comes to peoples mind when one say "stuck in a loop" . Really cool mechanic combined with a platformer. Good job!
@judgezedd @neowedge @zimny11 Thanks for your kind words! :smile:
@glaciereclipse You're quite right. Some parts of the game suffer from poor readability due to things not standing out from the background properly, and I suspect it's at least in part due to the palette I chose. And the hoop is _way_ too small for being the only thing in the game that can directly kill you. I also had a lot of trouble trying to find the right balance in the difficulty of spinning the hoop, and how much it factored into the gameplay. Building the levels, when I finished the first level, the hoop seemed to make things so difficult it was frustrating. I overcompensated by rendering the hoop almost meaningless in the the rest of the levels (they were largely linear and were short enough to rush through before the hoop hit the ground). If I'd had more time, I think I'd spend almost all of it trying to better communicate the hoop timing.
@gabriel-dias-oliveira-de-almeida Thanks! :grin:
@jin9310 Thank you! I hope it wasn't _too_ hard.
Hilarious concept and hilarious, but somewhat philosophical ending. Very innovative use of the theme as well!
I read right above that you made hoolahooping pretty much obsolete on higher levels - I definitely felt that, as I progressed through Gluttony/Lust/whatever else there was right away. Probably tweaking the difficulty a bit up on those levels wouldn't hurt, but then again I'd rather people saw this awesome ending than struggled with puzzles and gave up!
Love the use of the theme, hula-hooping rhythm/platformer was sure an interesting experience.
I ended up managing my hoop by a combination of instinct and the audio cues: after the intro level I couldn't use hoop visuals effectively to know when I was supposed to be pressing which direction. tbf that's about how I hula hoop IRL too: badly, using some vague attempt at instinct and not really knowing which way I should be going. But it might have been nice if that part were either more clear or more forgiving.
Very unique idea. I like how you explored the mechanic in different ways (especially the ending). It was a bit hard in the beginning but it got easier after a while. Overall a very creative entry.
Impressive Idea, very cool executed. I also liked the pixel art.
This was a cool take on the theme. As a PUBG player I have my computer sound set to "bleeding ears" by default so I was missing a volume control of some sort. It was a very challenging game, a bit two steps forward one step back. I did like the level design :)
A fun take on platforming, juggling having to hula-hoop and moving around in the same motion. That said, I had to give up because my wrist and hand started to hurt from alternating direction so much.
At a few points I was certain I was accurately following the arrows when the hula hoop got too low, but it went down anyway. It's hard to really gauge how the hula hoop is moving.
I did enjoy the character art, but the background art was a little bright. The lime green of the hula hoop against the yellow brick doesn't stand out much. Either darker backgrounds (preferred) or outlines for the character sprites would probably have helped there.
All in all, a solid entry, but ouchie my hand. :laughing:
Lmao this was awesome, and a great use of the theme. The hoola hoop mechanics were a little hard to figure out even when I reached the last level, but it wasn't that bad, and it added some difficulty. Although, some of the levels felt pointless since you could just run to the end faster than the hoola hoop could reach the ground.
Also, the victory condition at the end was super clever. This is definitely one of my favorite submissions! Nice job!
I liked it.
Great idea, overall a nice entry
Well that was a great game, really nice ending!
Nice mechanics, very clean
This game makes really good use of the theme. The idea of having to move back and forth in a rhythmic way as well as try to platform is an interesting and very difficult challenge!
The problem is that it is such a difficult challenge I am incentivized to try as hard as possible to avoid it... and so, on every level except the first one, with the disappearing blocks, I simply ran through the level before my hoop had time to fail.
I really just don't see how to successfully move through the level *and* hula-hoop at the same time... any forward motion you gain is immediately canceled when you move the other way. And so this means that the only possible strategy is to build up some time to let your hoop fall, and do some normal platforming, and then hula-hoop for a while. But this is really hard! I could never really get the timing down if I wasn't hula hooping for an inordinate amount of time...
I think, really, the way to fix all these problems is a two-step process: 1. Make it straightforward to get the hula-hoop rhythm going, for the player 2. Design the levels around having designated places to hula-hoop to build up platforming time, that the player must locate and use appropriately
I think that would really make these mechanics work. As it stands, when I tried to hula-hoop on the first level, with the traps--I kept running into the traps. This is, I think, an unfortunate intersection of too many things at once--I had to keep track of hula-hooping and keep in mind the hidden platform! Had I been able to simply hula-hoop safely, I might have gotten more used to the game mechanics.
IDK. This comment is kind of rambly, but hopefully it's something to think about at least. :smile:
@honey-pony Thanks for the detailed critique! You're right about the difficulty. I spent quite a lot of time tweaking the timing and parameters trying to make the hula-hooping feel intuitive without it being too easy, and making it influence the platforming without getting in the way, but ultimately I had to move on to creating the rest of the game. I wasn't really satisfied with the balance I arrived at and opted instead to design the levels with this shortcoming in mind.
I also made a last-minute change of tweaking the timing of the hula-hooping and the tempo of the music to match each other. This makes the hula-hoop timing a little bit easier if you notice they match, but I didn't add anything to tell the player that moving in time to the music helps. Besides, the game was never intended as a traditional rhythm game so while they start out in sync, there's nothing to ensure they stay that way (I had problems making Bosca Ceoil output a track that looped properly, so when the music loops, it falls out of sync and is no longer in time with the hoop).
Anyway, I don't know if I'll ever revisit this game, but if I do I'll keep your comments under consideration.
Literally stuck in a loop! Pretty funny. The gameplay was pretty hard and when I got to Wrath it was almost impossible to get past the fireballs while trying to see which direction the hoop was going. Overall though it's innovative.