2021-10-04 00:12
nice game, but the first level was a bit confusing to figure out where you can walk and where not.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → B.A. in Animal Psychology
By frogravity
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 211 | 3.60 | 25 | |
| Fun | 259 | 3.41 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 259 | 3.37 | 25 | |
| Theme | 220 | 3.71 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 133 | 3.83 | 26 | |
| Audio | 102 | 3.68 | 26 | |
| Humor | 24 | 4.06 | 24 | |
| Mood | 138 | 3.56 | 24 |
nice game, but the first level was a bit confusing to figure out where you can walk and where not.
The minimal 3d artwork is well done.
GG!!!
I love the idea ofmentally instable animals. I almost destroyed my keyboard by trying to get around with the penguin.
Nice game! Congrats!
Good job ! I prefered to control the ostrich, the penguin was a bit frustrating at times :/
@ben-mkiv - Thank you! I agree, but I couldn't find a way to fix it in the time frame...
@theviraldragon - Thanks! Glad you liked it!
@varundevs - Thanks!
@erikengineengineer - Thank you! I hope your keyboard is okay now :)
@guine - Thanks!
@maluskhan - Thank you! Yes, I might have made the penguin a bit too unstable.
Hilarious game! I really enjoyed trying all of the wrong answers. My only remark is that the minimap was oriented differently from the main scene, for the ostrich at least.
Very cute game, nice work on all the models! The minimap being the wrong way confused me for a bit.
@cagibi - Thank you! Glad you liked the dialogues! You're right about the minimap - I don't know how I never noticed - I'll fix it.
@brads-space - Thank you so much for playing it on stream! I was indeed watching it! Yes, the minimap orientation was accidentally different from the game, I just never noticed. The controls are janky on purpose, to mimic riding an unstable animal - I should've probably made it clearer. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to add riding on the wolf... Thanks again for playing, and I'm glad you liked it!
Really cute penguin! I love this idea. I included it in my Ludum Dare 49 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/6UdIqDKcGPw
Neat 3D work. This would have worked well without the questions, was just a little surprised by them. Reminds me of a certain type of flash games that were widely available online 10-15 years ago.
Really funny entry, I had a good laugh while playing :D Great job on the voice acting too! I found the gameplay frustrating, which I know is the point, but I think it might have been more fun if the "hard controls" felt less random/more predictable?
@jupiter-hadley - Thank you for playing! It's always nice to actually see people playing my games. I'm glad you liked the penguin and idea!
@lakrits - Thank you! The idea of the questions actually came first, although they are a bit disconnected from the gameplay. Yes, the conversation part is heavily inspired by old Flash games like The Impossible Quiz and the Henry Stickmin series.
@xlambein - Thank you! Glad you liked the voice acting and humor! I was afraid that making the hard controls predictable wouldn't be Unstable enough, but I agree that it would've probably been more fun and less frustrating...
I love the messed up take on the theme.
I had a lot of fun! The dialogue for the ostrich was a bit difficult to navigate, but otherwise it was quite good. Made me laugh out loud :)
Good game, very glad for the checkpoints.
Dialogue trees were trial and error but you kept them short so it was alright.
Very impressive graphics given the time limit.
@shellofagirl - Thanks! That is a compliment, right? :)
@bougiebirdie - Thank you! I wanted the Ostrich to be more mentally unstable (and thus harder to talk to), as it was the second level. Hopefully it wasn't too frustrating. Happy to hear it was funny!
@laurenceogden - Thank you! I try adding checkpoints to most of my games to prevent frustration - I'm glad it worked! Yes, the dialogues were indeed trial and error, partly because I hoped people will find the fail messages I wrote for most funny. Glad you liked the graphics - I spent most of my time on those & the dialogues.
@frogman best compliment there is!
Yay! I now have accomplished my lifelong dream that is to earn a degree in animal psychology! Anyway, great job making this game! I had lots of fun playing the levels and meeting those quirky animals. :)
Fun! This was very funny. It was a little hit-or-miss having to replay conversations, but the game was short and you could really fly through the conversations very quickly, so it wasn't such a big deal. It might have been fun to have some branching conversation paths, but I get that there is only so much time. I love the whole package, everything really comes together to make a silly game thats a great jam entry. Sound was excellent! Voices and music both were great. I really liked this.
Neat little game.
In my opinion, the conversations worked pretty well. The correct answer was always obvious for me at least; the main reason I clicked the other options was to see what game over message I would get, as those were usually quite funny.
The ending test was also a great use of the conversation mechanic; it was super cool to be able to recall that the ostrich was wearing three green hats, and therefore be able to answer the hat question and have a good idea about the color question.
The walking gameplay was fine, although I think it could possibly be more interesting. In particular, it seemed like the way the penguin moved was somewhat random, and I think it might be a more satisfying game if the penguin has a predictable movement pattern where the correct sequence of lefts and rights can be learned; in that way, the player learning how to control the penguin would sort of be the way that the game expresses the penguin learning their own motion.
The minimap was a pretty neat addition, though. It made it pretty clear for me at least what the checkpoint system was, and that the walruses were hazards.
One small point is that sometimes I confused the shadows in the penguin level for water.
Overall, pretty fun entry. Definitely one of the funnier ones I've played.
@fluffygamedev - Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!
@pbg - Thank you! I wanted people to be able to view all the fail options, which is why I made the conversations restart, hoping their short length and the consistent right answer would prevent it from being too frustrating. I originally thought about making branching conversations, but was afraid it would take too much time, so I discarded the idea. I'm happy you liked the sound!
@honey-pony - Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! I'm glad you liked the conversations! I'm happy you noticed the Ostrich's hat color - most of my playtesters didn't. You're right about the walking - I focused too much on making it unstable (thus random) instead of fun, and I really liked your idea of learning how to control the penguin expressing the penguin learning their own motion. I learned the importance of minimaps the hard way, after my first Ludum Dare game had a ton of requests for one. Yes, the shadows looking like water is a problem I've been unable to solve - disabling shadows made the level look really bad, while keeping them has the aforementioned problem. I'm happy you liked the humor, and thanks again for all the feedback!
Impressive amount of work and fairly polished overall. I only caught some uv stretching for the art but I still gave you 5 stars because darn that's a lot of good art :)
Minimap (good job making it) was confusing to me on the first level but I got it on the 2nd. Perhaps a more obvious indicator for the player or a shape that points in the direction they are facing? I would have to reference other games but yeah.
I love the artstyle of the 2nd level with the vast space carved out. I'm surprised you managed to do so much in a short time - but it does have some decent pacing in level design aesthetic. If the first level was just a bit shorter I think you're golden.
The pacing/downtime with the conversations was interesting and I don't think I've ever been quizzed before after collecting stuff in an adventure game so... gj.
This was fun to play. The art is cute, and the music fits the tone of the game.
The voice acting really enhances the humor.
Overall I have no complaints. It's a short, fun, and kind of weird experience.
*Thank you for the Linux build by the way.*
@crefossus - Thank you so much for playing this on stream! It was pretty insightful. I'm glad you liked the art! I couldn't fix the UV stretching in time, so I just tried putting a lot of cacti there to hide it :) Yes, the minimap was pretty minimal - adding a direction indicator is a good idea. Each level is actually a single Blender cube with a ton of Knives and Extrude Regions, which were very useful for creating these carved spaces quickly. I agree that the first level is a bit long, especially since the penguin is much slower than the ostrich. I'm glad you liked the conversations and endgame quiz!
@ldjq - Thank you! I'm glad you liked so many aspects! Somebody once asked me for a Linux build during LD46, and I try to always supply one ever since.
I will start my stream about 9pm Uk time. Hope to see you there. https://www.twitch.tv/thesoulselector
Awesome game! Featured it in the finale of my let's-play-series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AwL0uxK5SI
@erkberg - Thank you so much for playing & recording! It was really great seeing you play, and I'm glad you liked it so much! I'm happy you managed even without the minimap :)
Lol, door to door animal phycologist, this is hilarious. Good job!