nick-barrash 2021-10-03 23:11
Gorgeous! Reminds me a bit of "Remember, Apollo" but with more of a story
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Trauma
By adamcyounis
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 6 | 4.26 | 161 | |
| Fun | 80 | 3.84 | 160 | |
| Innovation | 25 | 4.18 | 161 | |
| Theme | 159 | 3.89 | 160 | |
| Graphics | 7 | 4.58 | 161 | |
| Audio | 53 | 3.89 | 158 | |
| Mood | 10 | 4.32 | 160 |
Gorgeous! Reminds me a bit of "Remember, Apollo" but with more of a story
Amazing gameplay, amazing mechanics, and amazing art!
I really love the color choices you did for the art, it is consistant and fitting.
I also really love the gameplay and mechanics the fact you have to collect cards to do moves other than move left and right is really nice. You can re-arrange the cards giving it that strategic feel even though it is not.
Really nice mechanic and visuals.
The art is amazing! Gameplay is simple and I really enjoy the fact that movement is just with one button. Atmosphere is calm. Aside from wanting the feature of being able to go back to the main menu from the middle of a level and maybe adding some background music (as well as fixing the misplaced dialogue), the only thing I would want is more levels!
It was a really neat experience, with original mechanics!
I liked the fact that cards become unlocked as we are questioning player's feelings: it's both gameplay & narrative progression.
A lot of inspirations took from this! Congrats again! :smile:
I really loved everything! Great art, music, writing and a very inovative gameplay. Congrats!
Such a good game.. I really liked the story with fitting aesthetics, I was eager to learn more. The mechanic is very unique and it would be interesting to see more levels with more complexity. I kind of miss the first melody in the game. Is it supposed to play only once? It's so quiet for the rest of the game...
Also, after completion and dropping down again from the title screen, the menu selection was centered with text "New text" (or similar).
Everything about this felt so unique. The beautiful story was amazing and the unique card mechanic felt really smooth and easy to understand. Amazing submission!
Incredible game - i saw you making it in your twitch channel (you were really 22h streaming ?!) keep on the good work.
The best game I have played this LD so far. Incredible job. Only critique, I wish there was a quicker way to move the motion cards around. I would mess up a puzzle half way through then have to rearrange the cards to get back through the first part, then rearrange again to do the next part. If I am going to rearrange that often (all be it due to my poor play) I wish there was a quicker smoother way to do so. That minor critique aside, I will be surprised if this isn't top 10 overall. Great Job!
Cool game, and really interesting and innovative mechanic. I had the same issue as @zackavelli - a couple of times I arranged the cards correctly, executed the move and fluffed it up by not moving correctly at the end. Then I had to un-arrange the cards to get back to the launch pad. I wonder if assigning the sequences to the pads would be better? :thinking: A relatively minor annoyance in an otherwise great game, though. Congrats!
Amazing masterpiece of its genre! I'd like if you use theme of jam in the gameplay mechanics, but still very good!
Great mechanic! Can't believe this was made in 48 hrs. Would love to see a post jam expansion.
This was fun! I feel like I've really dealt with my traumas!
I'm usually not a huge fan of card games, but this had a nice spin on it. Also love the animations of the character!
What else to expect from Adam than a great game? Visuals are perfect as always (only the special platforms look kinda weird to me). The sound effects are enjoyable but sometimes they seem a bit off at least on my machine (HTML5 version). Music is great. Mechanics feel original and I like how carefully planned are the levels so that the story is in the correct order. The story is quite touching. I was trying to not spoil myself too much while watching you make the game on stream and it turned out great.
Great game, great theme, nice level design and game mechanics in place. the puzzle using the cards is a great thing :) The game froze at a certain point of the 4th session :( will resume later :)
Damn, beautiful.
Absolutely stunning graphics. The mechanics are also cool and really unique!
love how this game looks, very well made and polished, well done!
Fantastic premise. Love the art, sound, story, gameplay concept, all of it. I was half-watching your stream while working on my own game so I have to admit I was so distracted I didn't fully understand what you were going for until I finally played the game. But that just made it better when I got to be surprised by the gameplay. Super interesting to combine a movement command game like the board game Mechs Vs Minions with a story-driven puzzler/Metroidvania--I never would have thought of that. I have to dig really deep to find any criticisms at all, but I did have one game-breaking bug that forced me to start over near the beginning of Session 2. The only other thing I would say for a full/final version, if you do one, is I would consider putting some thought into making the card-switching a little less cumbersome. It was fine with only a few near the beginning of the game, but when you started to get a big stack of cards, I was wishing I could use the mouse or that there was some faster way to re-arrange them. (I suppose it will work much better on touchscreen devices if you can drag them around, though.) In any case, amazing work and thanks for slamming yourself with so little sleep to give us all this awesome experience!
Obviously the pixel art is on point, story is great, sounds are satisfying and the simple mechanics are easy to understand. There was a part on the last level where I was like, how am I going to do that, then once I got 5 cards I unlocked the super combo power. Could see this becoming a fully fledged game if you had other cards in the mix too, attack or defence cards? Flying or floating cards? Anyway, great game :) Am a big fan of your channel.
Great idea with amazing graphics
Really liked the idea and mechanics of a "card game", puzzle and platformer together. Great job =D
As many have said, this game is beautiful. I am astounded at how much you were able to do in terms of sound in the time allocated. Like several others, your stream kept me going for this jam, and I'm so happy for the end product. I was there with you in the small hours where it felt like it wasn't coming together, and you singlehandedly turned it around. Great work as always, Adam!
Love the pixel art, as always, and the idea came together really well with what you worked with. Loved tuning in on the stream to watch it be made!
Lovely little game.
It's polished I'll give ya that.
Cool art great mood, and I like the idea of the back story. I which there would have been another button to choose and to trigger the powers it was sometimes confusing when trying to choose a power standing on a mark. Also I got a crash after accidentally choosing level 1 after 3rd level and trying to change level with escape (which I think you can't ?)
Amazing and really polished! I really liked the graphics and the animations! Well done :)
Another beautiful game; really liked the graphics and the mechanics. Well done!
i really liked how it came out. was watching a bit of your stream while doing my entry ;) satisfying controls and sounds. good job on that one. at level four i got stuck on the far left where you fall down that gorge. and you have to fields ..one on the left up and one dstraight right down..i couldnt get up to the right with only one up card. will try it again :)
Very nice and well polished entry.. nice idea with the "cards"... for some reason I thought I could jump from the start ... took me a couple of seconds to figure that out :smile:
Stumpled upon this from the search... and noticed the "Ratings given" versus the received... Then noticed your profile name (so thank you very much for you YT content) I really hope that you will do some ratings aswell.
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
This is an amazing game! I really love it. It's so beautiful, so deep and touchy. Sometimes we are all unstable...
You hit the nail on the head in the theme and graphics department.
The idea of using traumatic experiences to go through the levels is a really nice thematic idea. I find them gained a little too easy. I think a mini game around processing memories would make a good addition, make it a challenge to work off those traumatic experiences and then use them.
Great spin on the theme and clever mechanics. What got my attention the most was the atmosphere of it. Very good entry! How did you the background effect?
Lovely game! I was engaged throughout. This seems like the beginning of a great game. And that is my one gripe with this in it's current state, it feels like just a prologue. No doubt due to the short nature of the jam. This fact doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the game I played however. I loved the story, and how it conveyed so much in spite of, or maybe due to it's short length. I would have like an easier, quicker way to switch cards with fewer clicks, I think that would have improved the user experience for me. Other than that, great game, with great graphics and great atmosphere. Kudos!
When our team was doing brainstorming we considered going in the same direction in terms of the theme, I'm glad you were able to make something so cool with it! The mechanics are really interesting and once they clicked with me they were really fun use, especially the final "combo" is really satisfying to pull of! Great level design and clean dialogue system for such a short time too, only thing I wish was that you could somehow replay the last dialogue, as I accidentally skipped one or two and missed them. Overall very cool concept and great execution!
Absolutely amazing, the story in particular is really well done! I have no idea how you managed to make something so fleshed out in a weekend. Also I really love the art in general, but the main character animation just looks phenomenal.
Honestly don't know what else to say, loved it :thumbsup:
incredible entry! interesting puzzle mechanic, and i thought the writing was very good.
Hi Adam! Just wanna say, my wife is a big fan, your videos are her favorite for improving her pixel art skills :)
I was positively surprised by the mechanics. I thought i had a standard metroidvania coming up, but the sorting of the movement cards was really cool. The story was intriguing and well paced, much more so since it was well connected to the gameplay.
What could be improved is UI feedback. It took me some time to figure out the card mechanics, i think mainly because the bottom button wasn't showing well that it is focussed. The "hot spots" on the ground could also display that they are active, especially since this is gameplay relevant with switching the cards. Sometimes you want them to be not active, but still need to be close, or contrary, want to start the jump but open the cards by accident.
On ultra wide it also has some unintended graphics, i think 333.png
Pixel art is of course great and the levels very moody. Only the pointy edges stood out a bit, that could be nicer. Congrats on the entry, it was a really good experience and i happily player through it all, while being engaged all the time. That is top league for jam games, much more so considering you did this for compo :)
PS: i really appreciated the elegant control intro, of having to start the level by applying the displayed controls!
Great Game! Would be cool to have a different button to change the cards.
Super cool idea! Shame that at least for me I would know what actions to do but executing them was sometimes a bit fiddly.
It's so cool! I love the idea used for game mechanics. Also, the use of cards are nice too.
I don't have any problems about your game, potentially to be a one of the best that I've played.
It was quite amazing how much you managed to get done in under 48 hours. The art and effects are great, and the mechanic is interesting and fun. There were a few small issues with text flashing or arrow placement after picking up a card, but minor things like that are inevitable during a jam. Overall it was a very pretty and otherwise well rounded game.
Oh man this is such a beautiful game!! The moment I saw it on stream I knew I wanted to play it! You did a really great with this submission! 👍
A great game! The idea of using cards for special moves is cool, and the graphics and sound are awesome!
Great, interesting main mechanic - felt very satisfying to chain the moves together as you got more of them. Fantastic art direction and sound design, great writing and really solid mood throughout.
Only found one incredibly minor nitpick in that the text would flash the full string before animating, but that didn't even really distract from how awesome this turned out.
Beautiful game, really well achieved. Amazing mechanics. Really impressive compo entry. Congrats!
Really nice looking game with interesting mechanics. I feel like mechanic of swapping cards could be improved (like by holding certain button you dragging your card instead of "press to select -> move card -> press to release"). But game is super polished as-is, so that only minor suggestion :) Really great job on this one
I really loved this! Really beautiful art and story. I wish it wouldn't end so quickly. If I may say something, it would be cool to add some music to set in more in the mood.
A very beautiful and interesting game. The animations and graphics are simply beautiful. I really liked the plot and the problem raised. A very unusual mechanic with rollers, this is an interesting puzzle. But it seems to me that there is not enough music. She would add a lot of points to the atmosphere.
Amazing work, beautiful art and story, and invoative mechanics
Neat game, really enjoyed swipping card mechanic. Also it's impressive you have put a narrative into the game.
Your art is always on point!! Really original idea for a game mechanic, and an really interesting way to tell a meaningful story. Excellent entry!
Too handsome! I won't even talk about art... the script is very well done. It has an exceptional delicacy. Gameplay is also very good (with a few hitbox issues). To be an A+ game only lacked music during gameplay. It could even be the same as the title screen. The ear is crying out for something at the level of what the eyes are seeing.
Congratulations!
Excellent as usual! Everything tied really well together. Level design and card/puzzle mechanics stood out for me (Other than the obviously excellent art).
Awesome work! The story was really beautiful, and the mechanics were unique and interesting. Really enjoyed the sprite work too, especially on the character idle animation.
Honestly, it's gorgeous, and works wonderfully to tell a story. The player's job is to press a few simple buttons and watch the story unfold.
The gameplay and puzzles were both simple, but I don't think that's a bad thing in this case. The game wasn't about solving puzzles or platforming per se, it was just to follow Amy around and experience her story.
That being said, I just wished there was a little bit more. Either more story, more dialog, more details about what happened; or go the other way and leave the story somewhat vague as it is, and introduce more puzzle elements. Though I think a deeper story would be the right call here. Either way, this is a small nitpick, I understand the game was made in 48h and there's only so much we can expect haha. I also think that choosing a story-based game to make in a jam is a very ballsy move.
Another small nitpick is that I wish opening up the menu was a different button from activating the trauma rhombi. Even though I totally get the minimalist vibe the game is going for.
Other than that, I think this is a near perfect jam game.
I did it to the end... very nice gameplay :)
Здесь удалось крепко связать историю и игровую механику. Я бы не хотел, чтобы игра продолжалась намного дольше - иначе она превратилась бы в обычную головоломку. Возможно, этого даже достаточно.
Спасибо за игру!
Amazing. Amazing mechanics. Amazing useful story. Would like to play more than 4 sessions.
Incredible game. I also want to be able to make such games.
The idea of collecting and chaining commands/moves/abilities like this to solve environmental puzzles is incredible on its own, but the way you connected it all to the theme and written it into the narrative (and a complicated one at that!) is the whole other level of profound design.
The one complaint I have is with the control scheme for rearranging the cards. Using any other key to initiate the shuffling would be an improvement, just to eliminate situations such as “damn, I just wanted to try this chain while standing a little bit further, I didn't want to rearrange the cards”. Kinda yanks you out. Maybe even tying left/right/select to Q/E/W so the player can edit the chain at any moment without a dedicated screen by just shifting their fingers one row of keys up? The card descriptions could show up in the corner, for example.
Overall, the game was beautiful. Thank you for this, it really struck a chord. Now I'm off to watch your recorded Twitch stream to see the process :)
After having played it and come to comment, I just realized that this game is within the compo section. The art and the fact that there is a lot of narrative and four levels I find it difficult to believe that a single person did it. It is a pity that due to the time of developing the jam games, the design idea could not be further developed, because when I got to the last level and had to mix my cards is where it entertained me the most, and it was only two screens. A more developed project of this would play it again. Great contribution!
Your games continue to impress, congrats :)
Trauma is beautiful and does a good job of handling the subject matter respectfully. I was worried that we'd see a lot of takes on 'unstable' that would make light of mental instability and wellness. So thank you.
I really appreciate the very simple controls for better and for worse. Only needing three keys feels like a smart choice for a jam game. It was a little unintuitive at first to be able to swap card positions while *not* on an action space. Needing to move off a space to be able to rearrange your cards felt weird. I'm not sure how else you could solve for that though without ruining the pacing of the game (choosing an order every time you use a space, for example). If you developed beyond the jam, you might be able to come up with something that keeps with the simplicity. Maybe holding space then pressing the arrow keys lets you move the first card to a new position? It would be fewer keystrokes than hitting space each time to open the menu and select a piece, but it might not be as intuitive.
I'm happy to see you continuing to improve and enter jams. Well done and keep up the good work!
Wow, just wow. I'm taking notes from this game on how to improve game feel, audio, just about everything for my games.
I've seen a couple of your YouTube videos here and there but this is the first game of yours that I've played. I can see why you're a professional, this is absolutely amazing. Really really well done and you deserve very high rankings for it.
Great graphics and nice mood! Liked the idea of collecting cards and the simple puzzles created with them. At first I was disappointed when I lost my card from level one, but then noticed how the levels nicely build around finding them again. Wasn't really onboard with the story. Narrative based on psychological trauma is challenging and I felt there was no time getting to know the character and caring about them. Having the levels be therapy sessions is neat in a gamified sense, but comes across a bit cheap. A bigger narrative and more of Amy's story could perhaps work in kind of a Braid type of execution!
wow, what a beautiful little game! this is definitely one of the most creative entries I have played so far, especially the gameplay mechanics. I really appreaciate the themes you explored in the narrative, and I think you did a wonderful job at conveying complicated subject matters like this in such a short time frame :)
Great little game. Loved the play on words and muzzle mechanics.
it's a beautiful game, incredible mechanics.
@mhorth Thank you so much! I work really hard on my videos and games, and it's often difficult to think of my work as worthy of peoples' time. Especially in a jam context, making a game that represents what you're capable of is almost impossible so I always feel like I might be letting myself down.
All that said, I'm really happy with how this game turned out, and I'm confident I can do even better next time. The fact that others can appreciate what's here is really uplifting. I want to continue to impress and continue to improve, and to share everything I can about what I'm learning.
really really good! reminded me a lot of Braid. I also found the mechanic of changing your ONE Button really interesting, even if it was a little finicky. you should definitely develop that
I really liked this entry, it was short and sweet. To be honest, I kinda zoned out from the story after awhile, since the platforming and puzzles was so much fun that I just wanted to skip the story to get back to it. Good job!
Hey that was great and honestly touching. I appreciate you uploading this entry for me to enjoy. Thanks a lot. Pretty moving
It's interesting that you took up the subject of a mental problem in a very nice and balanced retro setting. Very polished experience! :star::star::star::star::star: it needs a raise. Grats!
The gameplay, pixel art and overall vibe of the game was really cool. I loved this entry, it was really fun to plan your movements almost like a turn based platformer, but still being on realtime. It's a really honest and cute concept! I really enjoyed it. Solid 5 star from me ^^
When you are trying to sort things out with therapist, it really sometimes feels that way. Great job.
Interesting movement mechanic! Story was missing something, but still great entry with a lot of potential :)
Amazing lovely game. The puzzle mechanics are tied into the narrative so well, a small masterpiece :)
What a neat concept, gameplay and otherwise. One small thing is that I wish I could have "rotated" my card loadout or something else, to help "reset" failed puzzles a little more easily. This game was an absolute treat to listen to and look at.
Great puzzle design and idea! I wish there was more, i'd love to see the heights this mechanic could reach, as well as more emotions/events that define the card powers. Great job!
Hi Adam, been watching your dev videos on YT for a while, glad I got to play one of your entries!
This was really interesting and well-executed. There were a couple of visual bugs here and there, but nothing that broke the game for me.
The main gameplay mechanic is super interesting, and I can definitely imagine it being fleshed out into a full experience.
I think it was brave to go with mental instability as the driving story element. There are many ways that could've gone wrong, but to me it was handled deftly.
Overall a really interesting entry. Nice work!
When I saw the cover I thought immediately that it could be your game and that's how it was, the art is beautiful. The story and the mechanics are incredible, it really is great to play your games and see your creative process, you learn a lot! Incredible work and thank you very much for your videos xD
The idea is really cool, I loved the overall mood and the graphics were great (obviously haha), I wish the card mechanic wasn't as annoying to use though. A few times I messed up a jump and had to redo all of the cards just to get back to try again, it started to get very tedious towards the end. I can't fault it too much though, it's a very unique mechanic that deserves praise.
I would have liked more music, I understand it may have been a design choice given the subject matter, but it felt very sparse and... sort of lacking energy?
A very good entry though, well done.
Love the game! Another of my favourites with this Jam. Love how you have told the story and fit that into the gameplay. Amazing job!
Such a great blend of story, graphics, and gameplay. A true gem. Thanks for your submission.
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