Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Darkness In Bloom
By simon-rahnasto and Belle
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 436 | 3.74 | 27 | |
| Fun | 638 | 3.52 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 247 | 3.79 | 26 | |
| Theme | 500 | 3.81 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 235 | 4.23 | 28 | |
| Audio | 293 | 3.75 | 26 | |
| Humor | 1001 | 2.52 | 26 | |
| Mood | 235 | 3.92 | 27 |
Pixel art is awesome! I really like the one-resource-bar thing too, I've been wanting to make a game based around that for ages. The one thing I think was a bit unclear was the pillars - you have to fill/drain them to two squares, but I forgot what the text said immediately + also didn't really notice the squares fill / empty at first. A big halo around them when balanced, or something like that would help a lot.
A simple mechanic executed nicely, I really liked how you could restore life to the enemies and bring them back to life. Changing player sprites based on lifeforce/chaos is a nice touch. The ending was good, made me question my actions for a second there. Cool entry overall, congrats to the team!
Short but fun game. I liked the mechanic, it could be expanded even further to many kinds of puzzles. This felt like it was only a start level to something bigger. Graphics were nice, music and sound set a great gloomy atmosphere. Everything seemed very polished, but I would have liked a little more length.
Also, was the hitpoints shown somewhere? I took a couple of hits on my first run and just died.
@tomssuli Thank you for the kind words, we tried to focus on quality over quantity, glad to hear you whished there was more!
Regarding your question: Enemy damage increase your instability, by giving you Chaos/Lifeforce (The black & White bar at the bottom). It selects whichever you have the most of, so taking damage while you have a nearly full bar will kill you.
The graphics are cool. I like the soft vigniette. Makes it atmospheric.
The character design reminded me a lot of No Face, how when he absorbs too much he becomes kind of this monstery thing. Overall, loved the game. The art and graphics were inspiring. The solid music bonded well with the mood. I see a lot of potential with this idea for a puzzle game. It was a lot of fun just hanging around and experimenting with the environment. Really well done.
Really incredible definitely the best LD 49 game I've seen so far!!
would love to see a longer game with these mechanics!
Thank you for this fantastic entry, I had a lot of fun playing it! When I started the game I was just sitting in the main menu listening to the music, it creates a great atmosphere. For the dialogue / lore screen I would prefer a continue button so I can read at my own leisure (getting old here). The game screen looks fantastic, small particles that symbolize wind or dust and the colors used blend it all together forming a nice atmosphere.
This comment is if you intend to polish the game more: For the tutorial when it shifts to the lifeforce / corruption bar or the plants I would add a blinking icon/ rectangle around them. The same effect that's used on the plants with your lifeforce feed ability.
The character design and animation is well done, the game reminded of Black & White a game I played back in the day. For the theme I think your team nailed it, the balance between good and evil or life and corruption is a unique approach, kudos on that!
The game mechanics: Multi targeting must have been a nightmare to implement, this does make the gameplay a lot smoother. I like the part where the rock monster had to be used to open the door. Speaking of doors, the only thing I would change is the color of the lights, this because your lifeforce beam is also white.
Superb graphics and sound design. I can imagine this to be turned into a much bigger game.
Super cool. I had a couple of issues when I didn't realise that I couldn't make plants grow more and I would've liked some of the smaller scale plants to really bloom when you funnel energy into them and have a big explosion of life.
That said - Great! sound design is lovely, graphics are ace - liked it a lot.
The good ---
* Nice art and animations, really smooth movement * Easy to learn controls * Nice UI for the chaos bar * Super interesting and innovative concept. I really like it and I think you can take it in many different directions. * Nice music and sound FX * Nice intro and outro cutscenes
The bad ---
* Very limited gameplay and a small game overall. Didn't really have much time to expand upon its core mechanic. * Enemies can easily be avoided and do not provide any major threat. Enemies could definitely be more aggressive or something else could be there to incentivise fight. * There is only one way to funnel energy to keep on fighting and this is to funnel it to dead nature. It feels more like a recharge / reload mechanism rather than something that adds to the gameplay. There could be enemies that are week to funnelling for example.
Summary ---
A super nice concept that I really liked, combined with great art and music. It's drawback is its limited gameplay. I feel this game could be extended and expanded upon, using the core mechanic of the life-chaos bar that also doubles as a lifebar at its core. I really like this idea of rebalancing energy and I think this game has a lot of potential. I honestly wished there was more of it cause the vibe and the setting look very cool.
Good job on the game and keep up the good work!
I honestly love the entry and it's quite fantastic!!
I would go on and on about that, but that just echoes what everyone has said before.
On my end on the feedback however, I do have a few on my end: - The life and chaos bar doesn't really need to be separate since it's only one function? It could be just one bar, with life starting to overtake from the left and chaos taking from the right - The zooming does not help when you're infusing life or chaos. The effect is too great and it does made my head hurt a bit - The cutscene's color palette doesn't really show very well what you're trying to depict and it's hard to make out details unless you move further from the monitor. I say you should increase the contrast on that.
I really want to see this flourish, honestly because the way it's presented it's already getting there to be a full game soon!
nice game, short experience. nevertheless, enjoyable once you get how the balancing act works.
The core mecanics are both original and clever, and can definitively be the basis of a full game.
Arts, sound and music are excellent too.
Fights however weren't that interesting. Ennemies are too slow and don't pose a threat.
Also it's a good idea to enable movement with arrow keys, not everyone uses a qwerty keyboard.
The concept is great and so is the execution! Art, music and sounds are high quality and the game feels really polished.
My main criticism is that the enemies seem kind of pointless, if you fight them you'll soon have to avoid them in order to not die and running past them feels too easy. It would have been great if there were undead enemies that you defeat by funneling (maybe they turn into harmless animals/plants?), possibly this would fix having to avoid normal enemies too.
I really liked this game, it makes me feel like a powerful dark spirit! Wish there was more, great job!
Very great game! short but on point! a very nice mechanic and a few puzzles that play with it.
I love the feeling of being an all powerful Lich, that can drain the literal lifeforce from my enemies!!!! but also have to restore tiny little flowers around me to feel more balanced. OH MY GOD, YOU KILLLED HIM!, yes.. but!.. I also grew a tomato, so it's okay That's probably how Jeff Bezos feels after meditating
But I also liked how fast the enemies were, even though it still wasn't challenging, at least I felt a little bit like I had to run away, or think a bit. I just wished to stay a little longer in that game, its pretty nice, and the sound / graphics / title screens are all on point
Sorry this post took so long to come about! I played the game a while back but life caught up to me, so to remind myself of how it all works I played it again just now! So let's go.
First off, that's a really cool mechanic you've put together. The duality system is freaking cool and it's made all the cooler by the litany of UX that has gone into it. From the visible effects and the particles to the way your character changes dependent on the level of your chaos and life,. And the sound effects were just magnificent, that looping sound that still somehow sounds like a flock of doves taking flight as you give life is probably my favourite sound effect in the game.
A lot of my constructive criticisms have already been echoed here, but really I just wish I got to make more use of the mechanics in a more nuanced way. I liked that you had to drain life from the enemy to give it to the pillars, but garnering too much chaos could mean you have to buff your enemies. That's clever, but I think the only benefit of giving life being to be able to open the gate is not quite as satisfying as the way draining it very obviously makes you safer. My other constructive criticism is on the lack of utilisation of the environment, and here I think I could probably tie both of these issues with one solution - what if you could - on select tiles - give life to bushes and buds that form walls or slowed terrain - both for you and the enemy? It'd allow you to be able to gain control of the terrain, and perhaps they'd slowly wilt. I'd as a result probably try and modify the actual forward objective in that scneario however, perhaps to collect something or survive for a certain amount of time.
Anyways. Enough with the cc! The ending was great, I love the little twist and I noticee upon playing the second time that the dude is the same state as you too, as I was in the skeleton-y Gravelord Nito-y form, and so was he! Really nice touch. We have cast ourselves into that first flame and all is right with the world again. Overall, a really solid entry, as I've come to expect from you guys! Well done.
I liked the main mechanic. Using it to balance out other objects in the world was a really good idea. I also liked the evolution/devolution aspect of how you could alter the enemies in the game. My main criticism really is that it was fairly easy. It was hard to get to a point where you were even close to going fully one side because you could always prepare by giving some life to flowers and then having a lot of chaos to work with. Besides that little balance thing though I feel like there's a lot you can do with this game so well done!
Awesome, beautiful, loved it! :heart: Though it's fairly short and not much of a challenge, I'm rating it as a proof of concept, and it was great fun to play with. The transformation effect is so mind-blowingly effective, despite it being so simple. If you don't mind too much, I'm going to add it to my repertoire. It looked and sounded great - as is standard with your work. I'm not taking the menu/intro/outro into the account, since the game itself looked absolutely amazing. Great job you people!
Really nice game!
It's an interesting mechanic, and while the game looks easy, I died multiple times because I wasn't paying attention to my health bar. I like how you can give life to the plants as well, and the puzzle with the rock was clever.
Love the art. The character and monster designs are really cool, and you make good use of the glow effect. The music set the tone very well. My only complaint would be that it's a bit short, but because I died multiple times it still took me like 15 minutes to beat.
Great job as always!