FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD48 → Transcendental

Transcendental

By pdotjpg

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall724.0438
Fun1143.8838
Innovation2083.6737
Theme1514.0237
Graphics954.1238
Audio44.4038
Mood44.5038

Comments

flaxhass 2021-04-25 22:34

loved it!

schwede 2021-04-25 22:52

Our games do not only share the same concept, they are listed beside each other. :smile:

meditation.png

littlegamer 2021-04-26 10:03

Very good game ! Loved the vibes. The music is really nice and I like how bouncing negatives emotions creates a melody. Congrats !

ariorick 2021-04-26 10:45

Physics of light trail are cool, it was satisfying to grab the snowflakes, and different sounds on reflecting bad thoughts feel nice. I wish sound wasn't always mono, it would be much cooler for it to be positioned in 2d and overlapping into echoing chords

pdotjpg 2021-04-26 13:07

@ariorick that's an excellent idea! Didn't give the audio much thought and didn't even consider stereo effects. Thanks for the feedback!

steven-c 2021-04-26 14:58

Pretty cool! The lasso-mechanic makes it a cool addition and makes it a bit more unique. IMO trying to get the withe things is not worth the effort as it almost always caused a dark one to hit me, which is unfortunate. But definitely a cool game overall, and nice entry in the jam!

smeljey 2021-04-26 15:09

It was difficult for me to play, but it was fun. Very relaxing sounds

pdotjpg 2021-04-26 17:28

@steven-c , yeah, you definitely have to be opportunistic with the snowflakes and ignore them a lot of the time. In general, it seems that I've tuned it a bit too difficult, judging from some of the responses I've gotten from friends. Thanks for the feedback!

luc-creationallabs 2021-04-26 17:43

This is a really moody and cool game. Nice to see how you repurpose the trail, I love to lasso the white particles and pull them towards the character, it's so satisfying. I enjoyed it a lot the experience, well done!

fabian-g 2021-04-26 18:01

Cool mechanic and nice presentation! Was a bit too hard for me (bad vibes moved too fast, little health) Good job!

wuzzywizard 2021-04-26 18:38

Really Chill game, just wish that the tumbleweed would be destroyed

fussenkuh 2021-04-26 20:15

Nice job understanding your time constraints and scoping your game appropriately! That's always a difficult task to pull off and I think you accomplished it nicely. I enjoyed the game's concept and the lasso mechanic is an interesting twist that I've not seen before. However, ultimately, I felt that the 'better' path forward was to concentrate on repelling the 'bad' thoughts and basically ignoring the 'good' ones. Overall, well done!

nethead 2021-04-26 20:52

beautiful sound design :3 lots of fun + really relaxing until you get a rock to the face

c4scar 2021-04-26 22:38

Very cool and relaxing game! It was a little frustrating to lasso the dark energy into myself. Was there a version where the dark stuff exploded or something instead? As it is, the lassoing of the snowflakes usually just causes you grab a bunch of dark stuff also, which kills you. The light trail, audio, and visual effects were super on point.

axeltherabbit 2021-04-27 11:30

nice music and sounds

haydads 2021-04-27 11:34

Cool, addictive mini game! I like how your personal best is saved within the game which encourages you to try another game straight after to better your score. Well done!

orcpaladin 2021-04-27 11:43

Easy to learn, hard to master game! Good job!

jake-b 2021-04-27 13:41

I really like the sound effects.

tetrapteryx 2021-04-27 14:34

Great vibe, and cool interpretation of the theme! The difficulty of keeping the bad thoughts away is very accurate to my own experience with meditation.

niterich 2021-04-27 14:36

The visuals and audio are on point, and the lasso mechanic was a neat twist I don't see a lot in jam games. But I was initially confused when deflecting the negative thoughts. My first instinct was to bat them away as hard as I could, but they ended up clipping through the lasso and got launched right at me. I eventually found out the optimal strategy is just to lightly bump them, but it still seems odd to me that I have to be do delicate with them

bqq 2021-04-27 15:09

The lasso mechanic is very satisfying when you reel in a good one!

goodwincek 2021-04-27 16:03

Would have loved a bit more visuals and movement in the background/character to create a meditative trance experience!

I love the concept of keeping bad thoughts away.

civmaniac 2021-04-27 17:58

Sound design is pretty cool! It may actually be a meditative experience, since to be good, you need to focus to the exclusion of distractions ;) Well done!

Screenshot from 2021-04-27 20-49-39.png

notinatal 2021-04-28 07:31

The concept of this game is unique an visual effects are very well made and very polished and I really enjoyed playing it on the stream. You have to export this for mobile platforms!

verygenuinecraze 2021-04-28 08:28

So relaxing. Your game is very very good! The sound design is perfect, it was satisfied. The effect of self consciousness is terrific :clap: :clap:

pdotjpg 2021-04-28 10:13

@tetrapteryx , I'm right there with you. Thanks!

@niterich , yeah, the physics are a bit janky, it turns out. The light touch seemed really intuitive to me and I didn't really think to test any other approach than the slow and methodical one I use (see the gif in the description). Valuable feedback, thanks!

@civmaniac , haha, I like that interpretation – I'll use it the next time someone tells me the game is too hard :D Thank you for the kind words!

fatebreak 2021-04-28 14:16

Loved the sound design! Ran into an odd situation where many of the obstacles I deflected lost momentum and just hung out around the edges of the screen but I just had to nudge them again lol. Very well designed! Had a good time! Well done!

sanemsky 2021-04-28 14:37

Great job! I really loved the mood. Graphics and sound are so cool they comliment each other perfectly. Really not a relaxing game at all. Keep up the good work!

fabula-rasa 2021-04-28 16:42

This game plays best with a graphic tablet instead of a mouse!

It looks and plays very nice and feels polished! Really great job. The additional effects that appear somewhere around 1000 points look awesome, but they also make it harder to play (harder for the eyes to focus on the balls). I guess that it is a devious design decision though :wink:

And you say it's unmeditative, but actually at some point I think I achieved this zen state of hyperfocus.

Screenshot_14.jpg

lalaki7 2021-04-28 19:08

I also had a similar take on the theme but with a different style of gameplay. It's my first LD game as well (jam though) and the similarities are interesting! Great work! :smile:

nakedtruth.jpg

pdotjpg 2021-04-29 15:05

@fabula-rasa , wow, I didn't even consider trying that! You're right, it plays pretty nicely. I'll stick to the mouse, though. Thanks for the feedback, and, since I've tuned it so difficult, it's nice to see someone get such a high score!

@lalaki7 , thanks for pointing out your game! It's super interesting seeing all the different meditation games. I feel a sort of solidarity with all the devs who approached the theme in a similar way :)

thegreenworm 2021-04-29 16:30

Some people's highscores are unreal, I can't get past 200 x) I guess meditation isn't my forte.

This is a simple game but totally complete. The mood is calm and relaxing, the notes and ambiance work also toward that. The gameplay is simple but this is the kind of agility game where there's a lot of mastery involved.

Great job, congrats, I really liked the mood of this one.

lokt02 2021-04-29 17:41

This is cool! So simple but i cant stop

glaikunt 2021-04-30 20:40

Got to 440 points, looking above that might not be so great. xD really relaxing game, enjoyed the simple gameplay with those sweet pinging noices. Thanks for making it :)

shumarie 2021-04-30 20:55

It’s a very nice game. The mechanic is very interesting and addictive. I liked the simple but cute art (it would be great to add animation for the character). Also sound enchanted the feeling of calmness and diving into meditation.

peace-of-cake-games 2021-05-03 19:53

What a good relaxing game! (Until you discover you're bringing 2 or 3 bad thoughts towards you when you grabbed that snowflake, then it's a good unrelaxing game) Admittedly I can't get higher than 220 since I'm obsessed with getting as many snowflakes as I can.... πŸ˜…

dobrila 2021-05-03 20:01

The scope for this was perfect! You've managed to complete the game and make it fun and polished. Excellent work!

justinmullin 2021-05-04 01:45

This is very nice! The sounds and music work great, and I love the visual effects that start to come in as you get deeper and deeper. =) The different mechanics between pulling in focus and pushing away distractions were neat; I had a few cool moments where with one large sweep I could simultaneously pull and push away a number of bits, and that was really satisfying. I would be very interested to see what this game looks like played at a very high level. It's funny that, as you say, playing this game is not a very meditative experience, but it's definitely an exercise in focus!

transcendentalScore.png

bentglasstube 2021-05-04 06:55

I quite enjoyed this one. At times it felt like I had to spend all my energy focusing on deflecting the negative thoughts and couldn't rope in the good feels, but maybe that's some kind of statement about mindfullness :)

The sound design was superb and the graphics were simple but worked well for the game. My biggest disappointment was that I wasn't good enough to hear more of the background sound.

schwede 2021-05-16 20:34

Your sound effects hit the nail! I could feel the deepness of the game. :smile: