FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD48 → Despair

Despair

By blaster391

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2203.7431
Fun1433.8330
Innovation5673.0030
Theme5133.4830
Graphics4213.4830
Audio1073.8330
Humor2163.1128
Mood1523.7630

Comments

lakshyaisagod 2021-04-26 06:05

TODO: review game

jaybaus 2021-04-26 09:59

Awesome music and I love the animated art style, sound effects and the boss fight at the end <3

2021-04-26 16:17

Pretty good and fun.

doc-kaos 2021-04-26 16:23

This is about as much fun as possible "Sinking into the depths of despair". Love the power ups ... except -DMG. :fist_tone3:

Love this style. Great job I truly enjoyed playing this.

ennacirruh 2021-04-26 16:24

This was a fun well made little game. Nice job.

thegreenworm 2021-04-26 16:26

The animation adds a lot to the simple doodle art style ! The game is fun and backtraking still presents some challenges. I would suggest changing the player's bullets to distinguish them from the ennemy bullets. Also, the upgrade choice is interesting, but having random "downgrades" + the fact that you have no idea what your getting makes the "pick red or blue" choice completely random and without any thought given. Still, fun game that packs it's fair share of content ! Loved the sound design.

cubex 2021-04-26 16:34

I really like the art style! A fun game

blaster391 2021-04-26 22:40

@thegreenworm changing the bullets isn't a bad idea - originally all bullets could damage everything, but that was absolute chaos so I changed it, never thought of changing the art too.

The powerups do have some consistency to them (although I'm keeping the exact mechanics a secret :wink: ), however I will admit that it may have been ambitious of me to assume that players would figure out what the different colours mean in such a short game.

chensu 2021-04-26 23:01

Love the graphic, really good :)

bipmo-bopmo 2021-04-27 18:30

This was a really good game overall! I like the doodley art style and sound design, the pacing felt good, and it had a really good sense of atmosphere. The only changes I'd have made would be making the player's bullets look different from the enemy bullets (since the later fights can get kinda cluttered with projectiles) and adding healthbars to enemies, especially the final boss. (I think I got two Attack-- effects, and it was hard to tell how much damage I was dealing to the boss.)

kooky 2021-04-27 18:47

Nice Binding of Isaac vibes!

I LOVE the audio (excellent atmospheric music, funny voiced sound effects, and spooky jarring ghost sound), and I really like the doodled art style too! Good idea to have the protagonist's face show their health without needing to glance at their hearts, and nice death animation. :smile:

I like the stat upgrades. Fun, and encourages more thorough exploring. I also enjoy the in-game messages scrawled on the walls; it helps encourage further progress.

Very nice boss battle and ending, wooo! I'm proud I made it to the end. :grin:

fatebreak 2021-04-28 15:50

Fun dungeon run! The art style is really nice with the hand drawn images. I really liked the audio too. I feel like it probably could have done with some checkpoints because when I died on the boss I just didn't really have it in me to go all the way back through again. Nicely done overall!

daniel-whittaker 2021-04-28 19:37

I lub the art and audio so much! Very fun and addictive, hard but not frustrating. 10/10

eldogg 2021-04-28 21:37

As basic as the game looks it's actually an incredibly complete experience, the gameplay loop of upgrading constantly was really fun, as was picking what I wanted to upgrade. The level design was well done, nothing outstayed it's welcome. Everything was clearly laid out so I knew how each mechanic worked. I would have preferred the enemy projectiles to be a different colour than my own, but that's a small thing. Well done.

gnolfo 2021-04-28 23:18

The ghosts were a clever enemy mechanic!

billnotic 2021-04-28 23:19

While the graphics look rushed, the gameplay itself is quite fun, although player movement was too slow for my liking.

ben-taylor 2021-04-28 23:24

This was fun, thanks!

brad-make-games 2021-04-28 23:24

I can say with confidence that this game was a pleasant surprise. I didn't expect it to be so thought out and polished based of the initial looks. That being said this game does have some rough are and a lot of "Pop-ins" during gameplay where stuff just appears (like enemies when entering rooms). Although the music is really well done and the sounds are simple but get the point across. The gameplay does feel a bit slow, lacking much variety and I think knowing what the powerups would be ahead of time would have led to more interesting decision making. Overall this is a great entry to the compo.

hutchings90 2021-04-28 23:40

Great music and SFX! The art style was entertaining despite its simplicity. I spent more time playing this game than most others I've judged so far.

fabula-rasa 2021-04-28 23:52

Under the programmer art hides an interesting and hard game. The controls are solid, movement feels nice, shooting works well. I liked the challenge and the randomness of the buffs you get from - let's call them "upgrade orbs" :grin:

I liked the music track as well. Ominous. And the main character head changing expression with health level was a very nice touch!

saintchristopher777 2021-04-28 23:55

Cool game - def see the Binding of Isaac inspiration. And the "MS paint" graphic style actually works! I _do_ think player speed needs to be enquickened(tm).

miej 2021-04-29 01:10

hahah i approve of this art style. nice, simple and clean implemention of a twin-stick shooter

blaster391 2021-04-29 07:13

@billnotic @saintchristopher777 I think that I struggled to find a nice balance where the base movement speed felt good but the speed powerup was still useful, definitely something to consider next time!

blaster391 2021-04-29 07:18

@brad-make-games I wasn't too happy with the enemy pop in either, initially I only wanted ghosts to spawn like that, but time constraints meant I didn't get chance to make a different spawn mechanism.

Glad you enjoyed the music though! I'm really proud of it :smile:

lokt02 2021-05-01 20:52

There is cool graphics and pretty good gameplay. If this game had some background story about depressed child or something that would be so deep. A think you were inspired by The Binding of Isaac) It have similar style and gameplay

2021-05-03 03:24

I like the animated mspaint art. It's kinda like baba is you but not pixel art.

Needs some balancing. I build ms over atk and the final boss was an enormous sponge. Bullets were also frustratingly slow and random.

flogames 2021-05-06 15:25

Haha, great little lo-fi barebones binding of isaac like game, complete with upgrades, end boss and ending sequence. I love the doodle graphics and was motivated to play till the end. Character's slow speed was annoying at first, but that's what upgrades are for. Sometimes the projectiles only had a very short range, if I moved the player a little, they seemed fine again, maybe that's a bug? Anyway, well done!

felo07 2021-05-06 23:48

Nice little casual game. Wish i could kill the ghosts, but well, there are deade right hahaha nice game =)

gamebuilder 2021-05-13 19:13

This is a fun game, though a bit too challenging for me. The audio is top-notch and I like the art style very much. Overall, one of the better entries here.