jesper-fyhr-knudsen 2021-10-05 15:30
Looks good and gets the message across. A longer game would have been nice ofcourse, but good submission nonetheless.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → 2nd Law
By hawkin
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 980 | 3.34 | 45 | |
| Fun | 1357 | 2.76 | 45 | |
| Innovation | 790 | 3.26 | 45 | |
| Theme | 967 | 3.30 | 45 | |
| Graphics | 488 | 3.88 | 45 | |
| Audio | 176 | 3.92 | 46 | |
| Mood | 122 | 4.10 | 45 |
Looks good and gets the message across. A longer game would have been nice ofcourse, but good submission nonetheless.
I can't stress this enough, I love the atmosphere in this game, I just wanna be there. Amazing job! If there's one thing I would add to it, is something to make it more obvious that the player character does something that causes the rock to fall, that would've been nice.
@jesper-fyhr-knudsen You don't know how strongly I agree with you XD You should see my initial planning, but when the hours are counting down, scope cutting is the name of the game ;)
Thanks for playing!
@shores I appreciate the kind words!
@shores seeing the work you did for Captain Peggles, I can't help to wonder how beautiful 2nd Law would have looked with your artwork :D
Nice game, I like the music and the gameplay.
Sounds really interesting, sadly it doesn't seem to load for me on Firefox (I've left it a few minutes but still just a grey screen).
This is a really cool game, very artistic. I like the art, and the audio is awesome. It's definitely an interesting message, however some parts of the game confused it a bit. For instance, it wasn't clear why interacting with the lake caused it to later dry up, or why interacting with the tree caused it to fall down.
loved it! is there any way to get 0 entropy? any way to make the person in the house open up? i even dunno if i saved the rabbit because maybe the stone crushed him! BTW: AWESOME game. Loved the mood, music and art!!!
@destroyertech so sorry about that :( The thing is, it loads on my Firefox, so I can't imagine what the issue is. I did see someone else have the same issue, though, so clearly something can go wrong. I assume you tried refreshing the entire page?
@destroyertech I just uploaded a windows build, so feel free to give that a try if your Web version did not work!
@tubadude99 I totally get it! It would have definitely been more satisfying if the interactions and consequences made sense, rather than my claiming it as a "butterfly effect". The overall "puzzle" design was definitely a challenge that I wish I could have spent more time on, rather than the artwork and coding.
@big-play-ben Thank you for the kind words! I really enjoy the mood-creation process, which is why I probably lean more heavily into that than other aspects :)
@dante2001 Thanks for the kind words! I definitely wish I had more time to add more complex links to the elements, or add people in the house. Trust me, I had a whole grand story in mind when I started XD
And no, much like in life, we can't completely eliminate entropy :P
Incredibly strong vibe in this game. The mood and music are fantastic.
Nice game! the art and music is really good, but the gameplay is a little slow and i don't found the "Ustable" theme.
@tomasaquistapace Thank you for playing! I appreciate your comments.
In case you're interested, the theme was central to the design of the game (unintended consequences create "unstable" situations), but I agree that it was buried a little deeply. It would have come through more strongly if I had the time to add more items to interact with.
Interesting game! I like how you use this rough pixel art style which I don't see often. I hope I'm not missing anything, because my complaint would be lack of content. I never reached either full entropy or no entropy so I'm not sure if I missed anything. The music was nice, as well as the overall mood. Great job!
Weirdly enough this worked for me on my Windows Firefox... who knows what's going on there :laughing:
But seriously, this is great. I see how you had to cut down the scope of it a lot but hey, it still ended up pretty well. Your art and music really work for this. Sometimes the collisions are a little weird (I'm one to talk haha), mostly around the house, but apart from that the gameplay is smooth. A measure of entropy was a good idea too, to bring the point home.
@sheepolution Thanks for the kind words! I can't claim the rough style was as much intent as it was lack of experience (my first time really getting heavy into pixel art). Or maybe it was just reflecting the kinds of games I had in my mind (older adventure games). Either way, I'm glad you think it worked!
I'm curious on your opinion: would highlighting the objects been a bad thing for the experience? It may have made the content more obvious, but also taken away from the "discovery". (There was a way to get full entropy, but never no entropy ;) )
Thanks again for playing!
Loved it, I was quite intrigued by the outcome of my interactions with the world, and being fascinated about the concept of entropy myself made the experience much more interesting :D Congratz! I'd love to see where you was planning to push the idea
That's my kind of game, That transport you to another world. I'm in the work right now and here there is a lot of noise, but even so, I am feeling amazed by the art and the sounds. I read the other feedback and they comment on almost anything I was thinking about. My only tip may reduce the sprite scale when the player goes to back and rescale when the player comes to front.
@very-bad-bunny-studio I'm so happy the mood came across well.
And that's a great suggestion on the scale! It did cross my mind. I bet you it would have really sold the integration of the player into the world. I'll have to give it a try and see how it looks :)
Great Job! Love the art and the audio! Interesting take on the theme. The concept kinda reminded me of a cross between "The sound of thunder" by Ray Bradbury and "The Last Question" by Issac Asimov(Of course these are 2 of my favorite short stories!). Congratulations!
@whenyoucantfindafriend Thanks for the kind words! I will have to look for Bradbury's story--always a fan. The Last Question is a favorite of mine as well! I wish I had had more time for the storytelling in this jam.
Very interesting take on the theme unstable, I feel like the objective of the game was a bit confusing at first and I didn't really know what I was supposed to do, and the perspective made movement a bit weird because the player didn't get smaller with distance. However, I did really like the graphics - they set the tone very well.
I am wildly impressed with what you've done in the three days alone. The game really made me feel very nostalgic for some reason. It was nice.
I really love the hand drawn looking art style and it really works. Im too young for games like kings quest, but i imagine they would have the same vibes as this game. The music changing between the sections and with the interaction with the rock is absolutely rad too. With more time it couldve been super duper sick. As it stands its still sick.
The intention of the game is very obvious and well communicated. I especially like the change of music when you push the rock to fall. It's very impressive.
@zhenda-hu I agree on the objective, that is definitely an area I need to improve upon. Thank you for the kind critique!
@playerdeer Thank you, I definitely wanted to do more but I appreciate your kind words.
@figueroass27 @youk I'm glad you noticed the music changes! That was really important to me to achieve.
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1172137556?t=02h56m42s)
I get some serious DOS vibes from this one, which I really dig. It's just a nice peaceful experience overall. :slight_smile: I love how the music slightly changes as things get impacted in the world. Would love to see how you expand this if you ever decide to!
One of the deeper games among others!
Really beautiful backgrounds and atmosphere! Definitely top marks for graphics. Were there more endings to the game besides making the sinkhole appear? I was only ever able to get that haha.
I like the idea of the game but i think they could have been implemented better (always hard under the jam time pressure). The player will first do things if possible and in a random order and then in the next playthroughs slowly get thoughtful about his actions. I think it wouldnt even be necessary to show the entropy meter - just the impacts on the scenes like the sinkhole or the bunny could be enough.
Its just a bit short right now but with a few more options and events this can be a nice open ended puzzle game. The collision detection is a bit annoying though.
Anyway im a fan of something a little bit different and the mood is also quite nice
@coleslaughter Thank you for the play! The rabbit will be avenged.
@lerg Thank you!
@essarrgee I'm glad you could enjoy it. There was just the one ending -- I never thought about giving the player multiple routes to the end screen, but to be honest I had to cut scope and was worried about giving the player _any_ end screen that made sense.
@willoxs I agree with your insights and really appreciate your honest feedback. I agree that the impacts alone could be enough, but with the limited content I was worried about leaving it too open without any kind of resolution like an end screen. If I had more items added, I definitely could have implemented a bigger narrative that would have encouraged the player to explore.
Definitely ambitious for a game jam, and I agree it came out a bit short. Thanks again for the review!
Like the unique art style, reminded me a bit of the old Flashback / Another World style art. I think I found 2/5 interactions, good stuff!
Heya! I appreciated the deeper interpretation of the theme and the commitment to a more peaceful mood overall, with the player impacting the world rather than the other way around. I did feel, however, that the experience came across too shallow to really feel a sense of agency. I think if the game allowed me to achieve a number of activities that had locally constructive consequences but broadly more entropic / chaotic, the concept would have carried a lot further. There just didn't seem to be a lot to do, so I wasn't sure what my goals ought to have been.
Beyond this, an overall much stronger sense of feedback would also have helped a lot. I really couldn't tell what was interactive, where the bounds of the game were, or what the results of my actions would be (except for the rock, which seemed to be the centrepiece of the game). This made me feel less confident that I was having an experience within the intended scope. With more time, I could definitely see this concept developing into something that carries your concept further.
Thanks for the entry, best of luck with future development.
Thank you @adamcyounis ! As always, your feedback is insightful and thoughtfully constructed. I appreciate you rating so many games, including my own!
The art style is interesting and beautiful. The music adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game. Interesting game concept. Great job!
The game was nice, although a walkthrough would be nice as I got stuck (I know, I'm stupid). **In the pause menu you can un pause the music by pressing the arrow keys and the character can still dance around**. I'm not sure what's causing it as, but you should probably just pause player movement if Time.timeScale == 0;
I've read your blog about audio. In most games, there are different tracks that get faded in and out procedurally. Your solution of saving audio time and playing the next clip from that point isn't that great. I've battled with this before so here's my advice: **YOU CANNOT PLAY A CLIP FROM A POINT OF TIME EMIEDIETELY!** If you want to play one after another, you can setup a delay (make sure to use doubles not floats), but in your case it would be easier to just play all clips and simply mute and un mute them when changing scenes. **Even better, have a base track and scene specific melodies that you could fade in and out**. I've implemented that system once in one of my games (I don't exactly remember if it was working or not as I coded way to many Audio Managers in my time) and I hope to also add it to my [tools that I also used in jam](https://github.com/DockFrankenstein/qASIC/blob/main/Assets/qASIC/Audio%20manager/AudioManager.cs). Here's an example (please excuse bad code, I was bad): ```CS public class AudioController : MonoBehaviour { public List
public int CreateTrack(AudioClip audioClip) { AudioSource newSource = gameObject.AddComponent
newSource.clip = audioClip; newSource.loop = true; isBusy.Add(false);
tracks.Add(newSource); return tracks.Count - 1; }
public void Play(int trackIndex) { tracks[trackIndex].Play(); }
public void ChangeVolume(int index, float volume) { tracks[index].volume = volume; }
public void ChangeVolumeSlowly(int index, float volume, float lenght) { if (!isBusy[index]) { isBusy[index] = true; if (volume > tracks[index].volume) { StartCoroutine(InscreaseVolume(index, volume, lenght)); } else if (volume < tracks[index].volume) { StartCoroutine(DecreseVolume(index, volume, lenght)); } else { isBusy[index] = false; } } }
private IEnumerator DecreseVolume(int index, float volume, float lenght) { float currentVolume = tracks[index].volume; while (currentVolume > volume) { isBusy[index] = true; currentVolume -= Time.deltaTime / lenght; tracks[index].volume = currentVolume; yield return null; } isBusy[index] = false; }
private IEnumerator InscreaseVolume(int index, float volume, float lenght) { isBusy[index] = true; float currentVolume = tracks[index].volume; while (currentVolume < volume) { currentVolume += Time.deltaTime / lenght; tracks[index].volume = currentVolume;
yield return null; } isBusy[index] = false; } } ```
Anyways, I hope I didn't bore you (I should probably stop writing those big comments) and keep up the good work
@dock-frankenstein Thank you so much for some technical contribution! You know it's funny, I knew about the bugs you mentioned with the Pause (see my Trello board below haha), but I also knew I couldn't worry about fixing them for the jam.
trello.png
I don't know if many people realized there was a pause menu since I didn't call it out, and you might be the only person to have found these. When the pause event is triggered, I do a number of things, including setting the time scale and muting audio. Typically I register the player to the OnGamePause event in order to disable any input, but I definitely forgot that piece here -- hence the bug! Clearly there was something not quite working right in this instance.
setpause.png
The audio resume was definitely a new idea that I didn't spend much time thinking about, once it seemed to work. Without testing, I think you are probably right that there would be at least a tiny delay if I try to start at the same sample -- maybe I need to advance one? But it would hardly be noticeable, at least I think.
I've played with track layering in-game before (see my LD47 entry if you are curious). In that case, I did what you suggested: started them all at the same time and adjusted the mute when I needed to. That's probably the smartest way to do it for sure!
I've actually started a utility [cache](https://gitlab.com/hawkinberry/unity-utility/) of my own, including an Audio Manager that I drag with me from project to project (rather than re-developing it each time). I like the bits you have in yours, especially the coroutines to change the volume! Thanks for offering it :)
Again, thank you for the input!!
Edit: Oh and by the way, I saw your blog post on qASIC earlier on in the jam!!! I didn't check it out this time, but I want to for next time. You're doing good work!
You have created a pretty nice atmospheric game with a world that I wanted to explore, would be great to have more things to discover, but I understand that the constraints of the jam are harsh. Great job done!
@jin9310 Thank you, you are very kind!
Very chill and interesting game! The atmosphere and art style are great. Music and subtle audio effects add up to the mood quite much. Very well made!
Graphics are just beautiful, animation are really good and the trash humor work perfectly
This was a really pretty game! Nice job! I really enjoyed walking around and seeing what I could do, though I wish it was easier to tell what I could interact with and that I could move around fast in the game.