Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → A Crowded Place
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1456 | 2.77 | 35 | |
| Fun | 1442 | 2.59 | 35 | |
| Innovation | 1131 | 2.93 | 33 | |
| Theme | 1239 | 2.95 | 33 | |
| Audio | 845 | 2.93 | 33 | |
| Mood | 1102 | 3.06 | 33 |
Thought it was a mouse and keyboard game based on the screenshot, but the aim control chosen is actually a pretty good choice.
At first it seems like a shooter? Or is it? Or was it depends on what the player want to play? Then it kinda become a "make your own challenge" game.
Really good for a first game ever.
Good game, I like the idea.
That popping sound gives me a peaceful feeling when I get kills and I don't know why. Overall it's pretty fun to play this game for a few minutes; popping bubbles is not that bad after all. the music seemed kinda nice and I liked it; Nice job :D
Great first game! Having multiple endings is a nice addition to increase playtime
That was actually pretty great for a first game! Keep on going :)
Hey, for a first game you got a lot done, _especially_ as a solo dev. Tilemaps, some game logic, collision detection, _and_ music? And you're absolutely right - a game jam usually isn't that great for making a game, _but_ it is great at making you get something far enough along to call it finished. Nice job on your first entry, and here's looking forward to the next jam!
A very unsettling game that matches the theme, with the music choice really adding to the experience. The multiple endings was a suprising layer of complexity, nice work there. The lack of a user interface was kind of confusing.
Pretty unexpected honestly. Very moody and simple idea made it not too engaging but really hit at the end.
For a first game this was really good!
Thanks very much everyone for the positive feedback so far :grin:
@tsfreddie You're right, it's pretty much a shooter in its conception, but the player can choose, well, what they want to shoot at (which varies the ending) :-)
@skyward4d True, I would have liked to add a UI if I had time to figure out how best to implement it - will definitely be prepared for next time!
@pious Yep, definitely agree the gameplay isn't so engaging, but glad you enjoyed the ending(s) :-)
Just as a general remark about the endings: #1 was my personal favourite, but is probably the one with the most boring associated playthrough (if you catch my drift) #2 and #3 will be the ones that people get on their first try
If anyone is/was in the mood for multiple playthroughs, it might be fun to compare the endings, all three combined give off a fuller impression of the backstory, so to speak :)
You should be really proud of your work given that this was your first game ever! I liked the idea and the general mechanics. The movement was smooth and responsive. It was a good idea to have multiple different endings, too. Nice work, I look forward to seeing more of your games in the future!
Haha, Funny. Reminds me of all the .io games you find on web. Great entry. For being your first game is huge huge achievement.
I would've made the storyTelling a bit faster, but overall was pretty good.
Interesting concept; TBH I was a bit concerned about its direction until the end, which was great!
I loved the multiple endings! At first I didn't know what to do, so I tried killing everything I could. Then I immediately saw that there were multiple endings and I knew I had to see every one. I wish the pacifist one was a bit more challenging, since all I had to do was stay in a corner with the gun facing to a wall. Great entry!
Your revelation about grand plans is very similar to mine! Funny how much we think we can get done in 3 days, until all the little things start to pile up. Anyway.
Great job for your first jam! "A finished product" is generally the sign of success, even if you have to change what "finished" means ;)
My biggest feedback is that the movement/aiming mechanic wasn't so easy for me. I would have preferred left/right to aim and up arrow to move forward. I feel like that would have been a little easier to control.
Some interesting choices on the tools that you used! Definitely ambitious jumping into a gam jam while also learning the tools.
By the way, I uploaded a Windows build of my game if you'd like to try again. Sorry Firefox didn't work!
@human-writes-code Thanks very much :-) Well, the movement is responsive but the smoothness is still glitchy at best haha. I had a hell of a time getting the camera movement to be smooth-ish despite the player and other entities having a weird sort of jerky movement.
Btw, I remember seeing your 'Stupid game ideas' post before the jam started, looks like quite a few people adopted your suggestion for this one ;)
@stroe-andrew True, I definitely didn't intend it that way originally but it is giving off that kind of .io vibe in a way!
@tobold-h Glad you enjoyed the end!
@pink-shard-games Thanks for playing all of the endings, that's really great :) I agree the pacifist one should have been more challenging (and my original plan would have made it so), but oh well, just didn't get to it I guess
@hawkin Exactly right, I had very grand plans indeed compared to what I finished with (and I definitely had to alter the definition of 'finished' haha). Thanks for your feedback on the mechanic, I'll definitely consider it for the future. Yes, bit of a variety of tools there; the only one I really knew well coming into this is BandLab (which I use when I have a good music idea and I want to put it down quickly). For your game, yes it's quite odd Firefox worked for you and not me. I'll definitely boot up my Windows machine tomorrow and try it out though [ Linux user ;) ]!
Love the concept of the different endings! For your first game ever, it's really impressive that you were able to get that in as well as create a functional game complete with a huge, detailed map and some ominous background music to boot. Others have given you lots of good feedback already (the only thing I might suggest is the addition of a visual timer to help players focus on whatever they're trying to achieve), so all I'll say here is that I admire your ambition and vision, and can't wait to see where you go from here.
I got all three endings. This was very involved for a first game. Nice job!
@destroyertech lol Linux too! I can't win XD it's all good, I appreciate it.
Hey, welcome to the club of strange people who publish weird games for no rational reason, and congrats on managing to publish your first entry. Despite being rough around edges, what you made here is an atmospheric peace that manages to accomplish plenty with simple graphics so you should score decently well in mood I assume. The scenery is absolute beaut if you ask me. The ending is funny, even though I could sort of see it coming. Congrats again and hope to see more of you!
Congratulations on finishing your first game, and for a timed jam at that! You did a good job of setting a disturbing theme, and having three endings is impressive for your first game.
Really great work for a first game!
Firstly, congratulations on your first game. I am also quite new to the gamedev scene and I remember my first game. Some feedback about the gameplay would be to have the aim using the mouse as I personally felt the A-D turning mechanism was kind of slow. Keep up the good work! Looking forward to playing more games from you.
I taught this might be a trick where you shouldn't actually be shooting people, but its hard to do anything else. I did try and hide in a corner for a while but it gets boring just doing nothing :D
@lunacyecho Thanks haha, I definitely had plenty of ambition for this one [and I definitely would have implemented a visual timer along with kill counter in a UI if I could]. Next time I'll make sure I have more of a skillset to back it up ;)
@joerenglish Thanks for playing through all three :)
@kr4ft3r Happy to be a member ;) Thanks for your compliments!
@tony-li @andresbochi Thanks!
@aymarx Thanks for the feedback! I will certainly think about something like that for future games. I guess there are two reasons why I didn't do that for this one: (a) mouse input is a tad harder to work out than keyboard input, at least for this engine, and (b) the idea for this game specifically isn't necessarily to shoot everything you can or to be able to turn to shoot precisely where you need to (although I guess it could work as well).
@barrier True, true, given more time and know-how I would definitely have tried to make it less boring/more challenging *not* to shoot people. Thanks for playing!
Not a bad attempt for your first time! A couple things would have made this much more fun, kill counter sticking on the screen, mouse aiming, and some juice when things happen (screen shake, particles, etc.)
@stefanie-leitch Thanks for the suggestions! Will definitely bear in mind for future games :)
Nice first game, of course a lot of things could have been added to improve the experience but its surprisingly still quite fun as is
Great job for your first time! It wasn't such a crowded city after my first run :eyes: It was really cool that you added multiple endings, though I wish the end text was slower or I had to click through it like at the start. The pedestrian ai was pretty cool, though I think they were biased towards the bottom left as a crowd ended up there :) The shooting sound / kill sound was a bit glitchy. Nice job though!
@tomer-cool Thanks!
@weirdybeardyman :laughing:
Sorry about the end text, had to make a bit of a last minute decision because I wanted it to have the same duration as the title music; I guess I'm a bit of a quick/skim reader haha. I did notice the pedestrians ended up down there, that was a little weird since they're supposed to just run around randomly, didn't get time to fix it so I just had to hope that didn't affect gameplay too much. I didn't come across any bugs with sound (or thought I ironed out any) in playtesting, what kind of glitchiness did you hear? Thanks for trying out my game anyway :)
Congrats on your first game! The concept was interesting with the theme, I was intrigued enough to get all three endings. My only real comments would be: 1) I think the game doesn't need to last as long, 3 minutes or so is actually quite a long time - on my 2nd+3rd playthroughs I left it to do something else while the timer counted down 2) It's easy to get the 'good' endings if you can just make it to a wall and face outwards - you could avoid this by having some kind of barriers that you can't pass but the NPCs can, so there's always a risk of there being people in front of you and you can't just leave the game running - but maybe it's nice to be able to solve it by facing a wall.
@destroyertech it was just that the shoot/death sound was a bit intense and crackly, and then if I shot multiple people at once it seemed to stack and become more crackly. So when I got to the bottom and shot like 10 in a row it was a bit much for my ears :D but honestly these are all only minor complaints!
@ceetjeuhh Thanks! You're probably right, three minutes was more appropriate for the original concept I had in mind and not so much for how it turned out haha. Likewise I meant to make Ending 1 a bit more challenging/less boring but it kind of didn't end up going in that direction haha. The idea of barriers is a really good one, though, I didn't think of that!
@weirdybeardyman ahahaha, I see - yes, I can imagine that happening. I definitely could have fine-tuned the volume levels to be more consistent across the whole game. Something I'll remember for future!