Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → blank
By dreadusa
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 204 | 4.00 | 25 | |
| Fun | 298 | 3.80 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 578 | 3.50 | 25 | |
| Theme | 1284 | 3.34 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 410 | 4.10 | 25 | |
| Audio | 273 | 3.88 | 24 | |
| Humor | 835 | 2.75 | 22 | |
| Mood | 900 | 3.50 | 23 |
I had a lot of fun with this. The controls were hard to begin with but once I get used to it, it was a ton of fun. The music was really good too. I hated the octopus (in a good way). I think at some part I was able to squeeze out of the level though through a small hole haha.
Seriously though good job!
Made it to the first boss but couldn't kill it, great entry! The music was awesome. I had some problems with some of the enemies being kind of unavoidable, if you were moving fast enough. The fish sometimes got stuck inside the ship, but overall it was a lot of fun!
The music and graphics are awesome. Really loved the dash-to-turn mechanic. The controls and the whole gameplay flow could be tweaked a bit more to be faster, crunchier. But overall I pretty enjoyed playing this game.
Thanks for bringing your game by my stream for playtesting! If you’d like to revisit the play and commentary you can view the highlight at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1006134879
The unusual controls were fun to play around with!
Well done!! :smiley:
This was fun! I don't know if it's my inexperience with this kind of game, but using your gun as dual purpose weapon and propulsion felt inventive to me.
Gathering treasure was a little tedious. It would have been nice if they were attracted to me--perhaps there's an upgrade that facilitates that?
I never managed to find the shop and in the third map I broke out of the mini map through the bottom and started wandering and endless black void. I'm not sure if that was intentional, but it was very on-theme.
This is fantastic! I had difficulty getting used to the controls at first, but after a while they were second nature. The music slaps as well, great job!
Nice entry Dreadusa! I had much fun playing... it took me a bit to understand how the movement works and afterwards i had a blast moving with the kickback and killing everything in my path :P Very nice idea! I don't remember ever seeing mechanics like this. As the comment above me said, yes, the coins were a bit difficult to collect (sometimes i was circling around the coin) and also the time to pick it up was a bit fast and i lost many due to time. I very much appreciated the full map on the left, that was very handy. The music was cool but the graphics cooler. I really liked that you implemented death animations and the fish death was excellent pixel art. I laughed when i saw the shop and the mermaid is funny and a beauty. When i consider that you are one person.. it's twice as good. I've enjoyed playin your game man, great job! :)
@kaminos Thank you so much! We were actually 4 people, a programmer/designer, 2 artists, and a sound guy hahah
Thank you SO much @marcmagus your reactions to the game were hilarious! I have some clips I wanna make hahah
@michael-harris thank you very much, yeah there are holes in the generation due to some bad catches, the procgen code is actually very subpar.. but the results are great! I'll be cleaning that up postjam.
Wow, really cool art style and fun gameplay, and quite challenging too!
Very cool game. Love the gameplay and the art style. Good job.
Very kind @yword and @ahspike , I'm glad you folks enjoyed it!
The proc generation was pretty good, you saw some of the bugs I ran into on stream, but outside of that really impressive for a Jam. The movement is hard to master, but really fun to play with. I thought the difficulty curve was just about right. The graphics were a lot of fun too, I really felt like I was playing a game out of time. Probably due to inexperience, but I don't have much in the way of solid feedback, other than keep leaning in this direction, I'd love to see more enemy types, a little bit clearer instructions on the starting area (just easier to read, though the style is fun).
@chrispy977 Thank you SO much for playing our game! It was really fun watching you play it on stream and you'll probably like to find out that the procgen generates levels in under 1 second now, and doesn't have any flaws in letting you go out of bounds now! You'll definitely see this game when it becomes a full game, I'll be sure of it :)
[Thanks for submitting your game to our stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007626304?t=06h43m09s)
This was a super solid entry! The controls and visuals were super juicy, and although it was a little difficult to move around at first, I very quickly felt like I was improving, and I felt like I could pull of some pretty sweet maneuvers. :smile:
Very nice job with this one!!
This game deserves more ratings. The audio felt really stylized, and the music was great. The pixel art has a unique interesting look that I love. Adding a minimap was a great design choice. The game felt smooth to play. The controls were a bit difficult to use, maybe a mouse control to aim and shoot would be a good choice, but it wasn't frustrating. My only suggestion is try to make a web version, if you can, so more people will play it!
Thank you VERY much @tengusheath , those are very very kind words. The pixel artists did a fantastic job creating and designing assets for the game, I'll try looking into making a web version but a new version of the game is being created and the game may enter full production soon!
While the 'shoot to move' mechanic isn't the most original idea, I do like the inclusion of an instant reverse key. Though the movement itself didn't always feel that great - it felt mostly fine when navigating through the stage, but more precise operations (like dodging the enemies that charge directly at you or collecting coins) are incredibly awkward.
The one time I reached the shop I did get a different gun which had a different turn speed, which seems very strange to me, since rotating is kind of the 'core' of movement here I would think you would want to make it as easy and consistent as possible.
I think most of my grievances with the movement system would be fixed by making it mouse based, allowing me to turn as quickly and precisely as I wanted - which may go against your original vision here but I think it'd be a worthwhile sacrifice.
As I said, I only reached the shop once, and had I not known it existed before playing I probably would have quit before ever seeing it. The first area can feel very repetitive and slow to get through, I wasn't counting the number of subareas in it but I feel like it could have been cut in half. The new elements introduced in the second area seemed interesting, and I would have liked to have seen more, but I died pretty quickly there and didn't want to slowly trudge through the first area again.
Banger of a soundtrack :v: The controls are a bit difficult, as there is some randomness on the direction when shooting and when turning 180
I had some trouble on my end getting this to run but concept is awesome
Nice job ! The graphics are so cool (i love these creepy fishes, they look so dope) and combined with the soundtrack, it really creates a feeling of action and danger in these depths. The fact that you integrated a procedural aspect to it is great, but it can also screw your game. During my first playthrough, i was locked in a cave without end and at first i thought i was supposed to find some upgrade to shoot the wall because i didn't even catch that it was generated.
The randomness of the shots is a bit frustrating at times when the controls are already not so easy to use at first but it gets better with time.
procgen.png
@theapplecake Yeah procgen during a game jam can be tough, I fixed it up now though! Can't wait to put out a post jam version of the game.
I really like the soundtrack. I found the clusters of little turret enemies shooting out a tonne of bullets at once to be a bit unfair. All the other enemies were tough but fair. I also couldn't figure out how to buy anything, whether I wasn't hitting the right button or if I didn't have enough money.
Strong entry, good work!
@arguablyarugula can you remember what methods of purchasing you tried to do when you tried to buy an item?
@dreadusa I tried space, enter, clicking on the word "buy", z, and x.
I think I just hadn't collected enough coin.
Amazing game!! It made me feel nostalgic for some reason haha. I really liked the controls and the inclusion of a minimap.
Here's my results after my first run:
hell.JPG
Overall a super fun, unique, and well executed game! Well done!