Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Sky Plummet
By kaabiikaze
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 691 | 3.10 | 25 | |
| Fun | 570 | 3.13 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 558 | 3.02 | 24 | |
| Theme | 401 | 3.65 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 699 | 2.93 | 24 | |
| Audio | 610 | 2.70 | 22 | |
| Humor | 329 | 2.76 | 21 | |
| Mood | 543 | 3.09 | 23 |
It's cute, I like the art style. I found that sometimes hitting the gold blocks register as a crash if I don't hit them just right. I also fell for a long time without hitting any blocks, but I never got past the clouds seen in the beginning. From the screen shots I thought I would see some other backgrounds if I fell long enough. Maybe I didn't fall long enough, or I need to score to advance the background?
@ripter Thanks for the feedback! Good question, so those other backdrops would show up the more points you scored in your current session. So they are based on your current score, not how far you dropped.
Although I can understand seeing it like that!
I had a blast with this game! I like the look overall, the only nitpick I have is that the clouds are blurry, but I get it if it's an aesthetic choice. There's so much "juice" in a very simple game loop! I especially love how satisfying it feels to destroy gold blocks. Is there an end to the game or is it simply a "how far can you go?" sort of experience?
Very nice and challenging, at full speed it's really hard to aim into the gold blocks! Not sure if intended, but you can weave side to side to slow down your descent a little bit.
I had a lot of fun with this game. The art style is cute. The music was pleasant, and despite being a relatively short loop, didn't get repetitive for me in the ~20 minutes I played. I thought it was a nice bit of design that you need to go fast in order to break through a gold block, which makes you more vulnerable to upcoming grey blocks.
I found the spawning algorithm to be a bit hit or miss, some games it felt like long lines of gold blocks were frequent, whereas in others it felt like 5 or 6 grey block groups would go by before a single gold block would show up. It also felt like it was a bit too easy to crash into a gold block next to the one I just broke through when exiting dive mode, usually to avoid a group of grey blocks directly below - could use a bit of tuning. Finally, there was one game where I destroyed a gold block, but came out of the dive early enough that I also crashed into it simultaneously, which felt a bit bad.
Overall I thought this game was great - simple but addictive. Nice job :)
@pijamar Thank you! I am really happy that you appreciated the flow of the game! Ahaha, I really wanted to sell that nice SMASH noise when you go through the gold blocks, especially all in a row. :wink: There is no end to the game, it will loop back once you reach the "final" area, so essentially it is just a high score game!
@hungryroy Ahaha yup that is the challenge of the game, do you keep diving down to score big or take your time and weeave between blocks? There was a feature that I wanted to implement, which was a combo system where the longer you dive and break blocks, you get more points. Unfortunately, that was cut a bit early in development, but I'd love to revisit it!
Ah, that is a good catch! I think that was a bit unintentional for that to happen. Good find! I can always put out a patch to fix that up/ :smiley:
@chromaful Thank you! I'm really happy you liked the music! It was my first attempt in making game jam music, so I was a bit afraid it would get to you if you listen to it for a while haha, but I guess that is not the case! :laughing: Yup exactly! It's as I mentioned to Hungryroy earlier, all a balancing act to make sure you don't play it too safe. :wink:
Aw man, I'm sorry about that, I was a little "naive" with the spawning mechanics, since I feel it is a little too random at times. Although what you mentioned about the placement of gold blocks near gray ones is intriguing, I tried to make sure that wouldn't happen. Apologies on those frustrations on that! That will be something I can look into when I revisit this game post jam!
Nevertheless, thank you for the critiques and comments! I really appreciate these type of feedback, since I always want to strive to better my own skills and knowledge. Appreciate you! :grinning:
I tried to collect the gold but crashed :/ good game tho well done
I got up to 100 points. The melody made my ears bleed and I think you did that on purpose. Naughty. The game was really hard in a somewhat interesting way. I just couldn't be bothered to go down slowly, but diving was way too fast. So I ended up toggling dive and no dive. I wish I felt like I had more control over the bird, in some intermediate speed. And I wish that gold didn't kill me when I wasn't diving. It just feels like the risk-reward in this game is a bit misbalanced towards pain. The drill-bird was cute though :) Thank you for the game.
@ubershmekel Thanks for the feedback! Part of the challenge is to make sure you dive bomb into the gold ores while taking care to not go so fast you crash into anything else. But I do like the idea of having a middle ground speed! I'll have to look into that when I revisit this game. :smile: Also sorry not sorry for your ears :grin:
@neowise06 Thanks for playing the game! :smile:
Great idea & well executed! The game is pretty challenging, I constantly got myself killed by trying to just go full zoom, the slow fall felt too slow & the fast fall too fast, but that's the challenge!
Eventually I settled on spamming the toggle a bit to try and get a speed between the two - but then it's hard to keep track of which state you're in! Might've been nice to have a cooldown to stop the toggle being spammed to much though!
The little jumping off animation at the start was really cute, and a nice touch of polish! Also hitting the gold blocks felt great!
Good job with the sound effects, music might not be your strongest point though :hear_no_evil: :laughing:
All in all, great entry!
@darkfrost Aw geez, thanks so much for the kind words! Actually, you bring up a really good point that I had on the back of my mind about the "spamming" the dive bomb and not dive bomb. Part of me wants to make it even harder than it is :grin: , so having either a delay after dive bombing would be a nice touch.
Yay! I'm glad someone else noticed that! I was really happy with how that turned out, since it was on a whim that I wanted to do that. Especially since I wanted to get better at animations.
Ahaha sorry for your ears, but hey you did have fun though... :wink:
simple game but it's done really well and i like the cohesive art style that makes it feel unique. there is some great polish like the diving animation which is really satisfying to play and the sound/feedback on hitting blocks. the music is fun too.
Cool game, the switch between falling slow and fast was nicely executed and felt satisfying to do each time. It was an interesting mechanic too. Once you get to the second background things get very confusing, I wasn't sure what was the background and what wasn't.
@kiptok Thanks for the feedback! I'm happy you really enjoyed the art style and the polish in those animations! :smile:
@jakobthequizguy Nice job on getting to the second BG change! That's a good point you mention on that, I appreciate that feedback, my own art skills got the best of me there haha. Nevertheless, glad you enjoyed it, I'll be sure to keep that in mind on my second revisit!
Haha, the character looks very cute when he's diving! Congratulations on your compo entry, well done!
Fun little game! It's a simple idea, but I think it works well with the theme. I like that the background changes with progress. It may have been neat to see a more gradual change, but it's understandable that a compo entry wouldn't have time for that.
The instructions could have been slightly better. "And avoid slamming headfirst into anything!" is a bit confusing when the character is basically just a head with a drill for a nose. Took a little bit to realize that I had to be plummeting to go through gold blocks.
The change from plummeting to hoovering and vice versa felt a little slow, but maybe that's just me. It also seems that when the character is plummeting or not isn't totally lined up with the graphics. I had broken some gold blocks, they were visibly broken, and I switched to hoovering only to die that instant.
Otherwise I thought the game was quite fun. Nice job!
This was a fun one to play, and congrats on finishing COMPO! I did feel like I got mixed messages from the game. Some of the mechanics reward me for going fast, others for going slow. Perhaps that's exactly what you intended and it's working perfectly. It confused me until I realized that I would ONLY get points for drilling through gold, not just falling farther. Perhaps falling farther gives a slow drip of points while gold blocks give a large amount at once?
@lex Thank you for the compliments! :smile: I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
@thecritterscove Hey I remember you, you're the one that made the really charming cat mermaid photographer game! Thanks for trying out my entry! I wanted to get more time to do some more polishing with the backgrounds, but unfortunately, that got to the best of me. Although, now that you mentioned that, I do have an idea on how I can get that to work, so back to the drawing board! Thanks for that feedback on the controls as well, I should have realized that is what the character IS doing ahaha :face_palm: . Hm that is an interesting bug you found, thanks for letting me know! Hitboxes are fun.
@mhorth Thanks for the feedback! Yup, you only get points for going through the gold blocks, although I was thinking of having other ways of making points (drilling consecutively i.e.). Thanks for the feedback though, since the text is a bit misleading on my end (apologies for that!)
Great game; the feel reminded me of "An Untitled Story". I'd recommend making the bad blocks stand out a little more (flashing red maybe?) and also "zooming out" a little so that more of the screen is visible (it's hard to react in time). The game controlled well and was fun to play; enjoyed the graphics too!
@sorlok Thanks for the kind words and feedback! I have not heard of that game before, but after hearing it, now I have to check it out too haha!