Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Watch Your Step
By kooky
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 711 | 3.06 | 24 | |
| Fun | 594 | 3.09 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 235 | 3.61 | 24 | |
| Theme | 718 | 3.06 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 831 | 2.47 | 24 | |
| Audio | 384 | 3.26 | 23 | |
| Humor | 221 | 3.09 | 18 | |
| Mood | 620 | 2.97 | 20 |
Thank you very much for your entry - I hope you had great fun making it :smile:
What a nice surprise - I liked the idea but got to thinking - can you actually fail in this..... 20 seconds later... where did one of my blue balls go (NOT those).... 15 seconds later the other one dropped.... yes yes yes I said that... :rofl: Ah well great entry actually :thumbsup_tone1:
I hope you'll drop by mine and give it a spin :wink:
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
The gameplay really is the star here. The concept was simple, but VERY addicting!
@purpledartfrog I did have fun, thank you! :smile:
Haha, yeah, it's actually very difficult to fail near the beginning. I tried!
Ahaha, I'm glad you had fun! :laughing: Yes, I shall go check out your entry! Thank you for playing mine! :grin:
@erik-bermudez Ah, thank you, that's great to hear! I did worry that it was maybe a little too simple, or that the controls weren't good enough for it to be fun. I'm glad you liked it, thank you for the feedback!
Excellent music. Very satisfying. Thought it was too easy and then I lost a leg :smile: great job .. it took me a mile or so to lose completely. Enjoyed it. thank you, good job. Ow and funny as well due to the losing of the leg ....
Fun with some weird physics-based gameplay. I never understood what the controls actually did, so it wasn't easy to avoid falling once the level got harder. Love the headphones on the avatar!
This game was pretty fun and satisfying! It's kind of hard to tell how your inputs affect your speed though, so failing felt a little like a matter of chance-- I think the gameplay could become a ton more skill-based if you had some more direct control over your legs. My top score was 4005-- I'm not sure how good that is, but I'm pretty happy with it.
This has some pretty unique physics-based gameplay. Takes a little getting used to but its a lot of fun once you start getting into the rhythm of it (the extra legs don't hurt either :p). Well done!
@mdotedot Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you liked it, including the leg mechanics! :grin:
@vilcans Oops, yeah, I found a little tricky to explain concisely how the controls work. I'll try to explain in a bit more detail, for anyone who's curious:
• All feet are influenced simultaneously (you can't choose which ones to control). • Left and right control your feet's horizontal speed, but ONLY when they're not on a platform. If they're on a platform, they automatically stop moving, to grip the platform and keep the rest of your feet rolling along in a general circular-ish formation. You can't stop your feet from moving right, you can only slow them down. • Holding up or down halves or doubles your feet's gravity respectively (until you release said key), inflencing the speed of their ascent/descent.
So, in summary... it's a bit tricky to summarise, other than saying the arrows influence the overall intended direction of your feet. :sweat_smile:
I'm glad you loved the headphones! They were actually a spontaneous decision; originally there were no headphones! :smile:
@bipmo-bopmo Thank you for the comment, I'm glad you had fun! I agree with you about the effect the controls have on the gameplay! Originally I intended the controls to be a lot more precision-based with regard to the gameplay being about making sure your feet land on platforms accurately, but didn't get quite as much fine-tuning done as I would have liked. I was originally going to have the game only use up/down keys, and later decided to add in left/right controls as well, which I think I did mostly to give a bit more control over things when there's a chaotic amount of legs on-screen. :sweat_smile:
@delicioussalad Thank you! I do seem to have a tendency to like doing slightly unique things with physics. :smile: I'm glad you enjoyed it!
THank you for your entry! The music is excellent! I don't know much about muse net, but computational Creativity has gone a long way , it sounds very human! What's the design process with such tools ?
@dhim Thank you very much, I'm glad you liked the music! Regarding MuseNet, it's quite easy to use. The website has some instructions, but essentially, you go to the website, and can then choose which instruments you want to be used, how many musical notes you wish to be added at a time, what musical intro to use for your music (if any), and what style of music you would like to aim for. You then curate your song in sections, deciding whether you're happy with the notes provided, or if you'd like to generate some different ones. It's all mouse (or touchpad) driven.
There are certainly other similar tools out there, and each one has its own unique interface. Each can be tweaked in their own ways, some tools/programs more complicated than others, and with quite varied results. I really enjoy seeking them out, experimenting with them, and seeing what can be done!
I found this a very interesting game conceptually, there is something compelling about running down the endless stairs and watching all the little legs go. The gameplay of it didn’t grab me as much, I didn't feel like I had any control over the trajectory that I was taking. Even something as simple as some kine of effect showing the movement caused by input could have helped sell that the player has an impact. I like the design of the character, it is quite cute especially in the concept art on this page. The music is fun and I am glad that this game has music, I think that it adds a lot. Overall a great game jam game, especially as a solo game. Well done!
@smilewood Thank you very much for such detailed feedback! I'm really glad you liked the concept, the art and the music. I completely agree with you about how the game would benefit from giving more feedback to show how the player's input is actually affecting things. That's definitely something I would have liked to work on if I'd had a bit more time, but I got caught up in making sure things worked properly, and finetuning things. Up, down, left and right (or WASD) all do have an impact, but the movement is kind of vague and floaty. Something for me to work on. I did at least make the character's head tilt based on their running speed though! :laughing: Thanks for playing!
3019 on my 2-leg run, 1300-ish for 3- and 4-leg runs, and then on the 5-leg run I lost all but one of my legs before 1300 and made it to 3229 with only one leg.... 🤔
This is great, nice job making this during the Compo time! The leg feature is a very unique addition, making it so each time you play you get an extra leg (essentially an extra life) definitely gives this some good replay value. I love the little legs flying all over the place!
Oh, boy, I love when I see these crazy ideas! The concept is very innovative, and maybe the ingredients to be one of those fun, casual (and with some luck even viral) games we see now an then.
In my opinion, there was one big problem, though: I never felt like my input was having much impact on what was going on on the screen. Or, put another way: I don't know what I can effectively do to improve my score!
I guess it felt a bit like the young kid "playing" with the disconnected controller given by the older brother, you know? I mean, I had some genuine fun until I started to suspect that something was not right. :wink: (To be clear, I am not claiming the controls are not doing anything, it's just how I felt while playing.)
I think this could be a very, very nice game with some overhaul on the controls.
Kudos for your Ludum Dare debut! Hope you'll be here again on the next one!
(Final note: the music sound a bit Jethro Tull-esque, nice!)
Very interesting idea! I also love that you added legs/ balls every time. Only complaint is that it felt a little hard to control and it seemed like just holding right was way better then trying to "manage" anything especially with more than 1 leg. Still very neat game!
Very interesting concept, that could be related to "Heave Ho" on the Switch. I really like it when mechanics are very simple, and the quantity and arranging of simple elements provokes an "emergent behavior".
The rules about the leg are simple. As you said in one of your previous comment : the leg goes to the right, and bounces when hitting a platform.
But with enough legs, this simple rule really gives the impression that the creature is walking. Laying one leg after another, in a rolling movement.
I agree with previous comments saying that control is not easy and not immediatly understandable. But while I was typing this text, I looked back at the game. The creature has now about thirty legs. It advances alone. It learned from its previous failures. The numerous legs it decided to have, one after another, give it the capacity to pass obstacles, further and further.
My own personal and "deep" opinion about your game is that you should completely remove the controls by the player. A pure idle game. You watch the creature walk by itself. It does not need the player. It is alive. It realized by itself how to survive longer and longer in the hostile world where it has been placed.
I made a high score of 3037 when controlling it. I let the creature live by itself during about 20 minutes, and it made a high score of 3178. The creature is better than me, and is completely independant. It does not want to be controlled.
A simple and fun game. I liked the idea of the game, it's very creative. Congratulations to the developer.
Sorry I'm a bit late replying to everyone!
@peace-of-cake-games Wow, well done on making it so far with just one leg! 😁
Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you liked playing! The extra-legs feature was actually kind of an afterthought; I thought, "Yes, I COULD just program this game to have just two legs... but why stop there? If I plan ahead, I can make it work with any number of legs!" and boom, I had the ingredients for leg sauce. 😁
I'm really glad you enjoyed all the extra legs so much! You're right, my intention was that the extra legs are supposed to be a bit like extra lives, to help you a bit for every time you've failed. They may or may not serve that purpose very well yet, but I'm very glad you could see what I was going for!
@lmb Thank you, I'm glad you love the idea. I love crazy ideas too! I always enjoy trying to make something a bit different, so your feedback is really appreciated!
I agree about there being a lack of clear feedback showing how the player can get a better score. Originally there were going to be less legs, and the player would be in control of making sure the feet descended at the right speed to be timed correctly to land on each individual platform. But then instead of finetuning that idea, I ended up working on other things, like testing all the extra legs... (and the parallax background)
I really appreciate the feedback! I would definitely like to work on making the controls more responsive, so it feels like the player is more connected to the gameplay.
I do indeed very much hope to participate in the next Ludum Dare!
Finally, oh wow, I see what you mean re: Jethro Tull! That's really cool, thank you for pointing it out!
@turkey Totally agree with you. Honestly, in this version of the game, that's how I usually play too, until I get down to the last legs. Hopefully I can make the controls a little more useful. Thank you for the feedback!
@recher Oh right, I've played Heave Ho! That's a very nice comparison, thank you! I very much agree on enjoying emergent behaviour based on simple mechanics.
Indeed, I did have to program in some specifics to make sure the feet were rolling in a circular-ish fashion rather than just randomly bouncing in something of a tangled mess. Your description of the movement pinpoints what I was trying to achieve, so I'm happy to see you describe it this way!
Reading your comments about the creature advancing alone certainly inspires me to consider trying to program it to learn, evolve, and adapt. Very interesting to think about, thank you.
Your idea about it being an idle game certainly inspires me too! I've been having a think about this, and will do so some more. Thank you!
Your final remark certainly emphasises once more that I should definitely consider letting this creature evolve, and stop trying to tell it what to do.
@yurikun Thank you for your kind words, and thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked it.