theviraldragon 2021-10-04 05:35
What a charming little game. Nice layer mechanics.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Dream Dog Dilemma
By potatolain
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 45 | 4.00 | 36 | |
| Fun | 153 | 3.67 | 36 | |
| Innovation | 135 | 3.73 | 36 | |
| Theme | 153 | 3.91 | 36 | |
| Graphics | 92 | 3.95 | 36 | |
| Audio | 112 | 3.61 | 36 | |
| Humor | 108 | 3.38 | 33 | |
| Mood | 79 | 3.75 | 35 |
What a charming little game. Nice layer mechanics.
Great little game, I had a blast! While the game looks very similar to your previous entry in Ludum Dare 48, I think such a concept works much better for the theme in this one. A very creative way of using the theme with the NES's trademark "unstabilities", hah!
As for audiovisuals, while I think you nailed the audio aspect, I had a little trouble discerning what tiles were solid or not, but it's not that big a deal. Also, the game once respawned me on a crumbling tile which resulted in death while I was still processing where I reappeared.
Either way, another solid compo entry from ya. Pretty sure you could beat me this time, hah!
You beautiful bastard, you actually made a NES game for LD.
Works great on OpenEmu (Nestopia). I played with the CRT filter for that genuine 1989 feel.
Screenshot 2021-10-04 at 17.51.18.png
Random observations: - Good music, and nice trick messing with it to get more mileage out of the one track - Good layer system. Was originally confused when I thought there were just 2, and I also wasn't sure what each radio would do, or if their colours had a system or meant anything. - Game crashed when I walked off the right side of the island after the 3-key door; not sure if that's the end or not. You can never tell with a theme like this! - The "tiny bushes" blocking my path early in the game made me think other similarly tiny things later on were solid, but they weren't. Not a big deal though, I figured it out easy enough.
Great entry.
Thank you for all the kind words and reviews! I really appreciate it.
@vectrex28, good find on that death-on-spawn issue - thank you! I just issued a bugfix version to correct it. The "idea" was to nudge the player to go back to the desert layer before going to the next screen, but that kind of falls apart with how I do checkpoints :face_palm:
@rogual, that was definitely not meant to be the en - thank you for reporting this! (There's a real ending, with credits and story and stuff.)
There was a bug where if a corruption triggered at the exact moment you move between screens, the game would crash. (For the curious, it had to do with obstructing sprite 0, so the scroll split did not work) I just released a new version that fixes the bug.
(And yeah, telling solid tiles apart is a problem - for some reason I struggle with this more than any other aspect of game creation.)
Thank you again! I'm really glad people are enjoying this.
This is my favourite entry I've played so far! Really impressive making a full authentic NES game for LD. Also really enjoyed the music changing on the different layers.
I did notice strange whole screen flickers on Layer 4 - is this intentional? I died on the layer and haven't tried again yet, so don't know if any other layers have it.
13 deaths! awesome game! love the idea the art and the style. Everything really came together with this one. Would actually play a full version of this exploring the idea more :)
Great game! It worked well for me on the web emulator!
The music is great, it's a great touch to have changed it when switching layers. The puzzles are great and you really pushed the concept quite far.
I love to see NES games made, I'd really like to make one one day, just to see how it works x) I played a game (Exapunks) in which there was a minigame, they then actually printed copies of the same minigame for NES consoles x)
Anyway the game is really well done! :clap: :clap:
Got as far as Layer 5! Works great on my friend's web emulator: https://rusticnes.reploid.cafe/wasm/?cartridge=https://cpprograms-nes-games-https.s3.amazonaws.com/ld49/master/ld49.latest.nes
Thank you so much for the kind comments everyone!
@python-b5 yep, that's intentional. Things get more obvious on layer 5 - it's meant to be slightly disruptive. (and is also why I added the epilepsy warning)
@mathiouza You should! There's a pretty big community around it these days, and the tools around making NES games are better than ever. You can work with either assembly, C, or visual tools like NESMaker. (Though personally, I find NESMaker a bit more daunting than just writing code) If you like Gameboy games, there is also a fantastic tool called GBStudio that is super user friendly.
No pressure of course, I'm just always happy to see more excitement for older consoles.
Also about RusticNES from Zachery's comment, it definitely has my attention - I am glad to see more web-based emulators coming around, and that seems like a solid one. I really like that you can just pass a rom in the URL like that!
Wow this game is legendary, thought it would go on forever considering most compo games you see the whole game in 3 minutes, just every aspect was great, graphically amazing, music fit the game, gameplay was challenging but not frustrating and I didnt give up like with most puzzle games on ludum dare, found the dog. And of course this fits the theme like a glove. Played on browser didnt encounter issues. Great work.
Impressive for a compo. How many layers are there, 4? First game with more than one layer I play. Cool. A bit unclear some times what the layer impacts (deadly enemies, passable tiles). I felt like some times the zombie (blinking humans) did not kill me.
An excellent game! I've messed with NES development and it's certainly not easy, and I would be impressed even if you made the same game in a modern engine! This is really awesome!
A very cool game! I really liked the art and the music, the glitch effects on the fourth layer were also very cool. Good job!
Thanks for the kind comments everyone!
itzemii, there are 5 layers. Also, the out-of-phase/blinking humans pose no threat to you. (You can actually still talk to them - though they won't tell you much useful) The only enemies that can actually harm you are the weird blob enemies. The world has holes that you can fall down too, but otherwise the game tries to focus more on puzzles than enemy avoidance.
Had fun with this! The music changing per layer and being able to see parts of the other layers was a really neat effect. I really enjoyed the stories of all the other people trapped in the dream, though it's a bit concerning that the scientist keeps trapping people. Someone ought to look into that. Very puzzle-y and not too challenging.
Great game!
2021-10-07 17.14.39.jpg
I accidentally hit my Famicom while playing and game got really unstable due bad cartridge connection. :D
Jokes aside. Great entry, good beats and I liked the subtle glitching when I was not kicking my console. Happy to see more homebrew devs at LD.
@samuli Oh no, that was pretty late in the game, too!
Really cool to see someone else playing it on console, on a CRT no less! (I don't have space for one right now, though once I move I'll have to get one) Thanks for playing, and appreciate the kind feedback!
I gotta say... This is absolutely the best game I've played this LD. Tremendous job. You could 100% make this longer and sell this. Super game!
Wow, I'm really impressed with what you were able to accomplish in the jam. Feels very complete and I feel like I get the tone you were going for. The music does really drive home what layer you're on.
Good note for "Innovation", while devolopping for NES... Lol But yes, it's really good job, Great game!
Great game, I had a great time with the puzzles and the experience of NES, i'm actually impressed that is possible to run on the real machine, that's amazing
Excellent work; reminds me of Eversion!
My one minor complaint is that it was a little easy to forget which machines did what? Usually what I wanted to know when looking at a machine was "will this take me up or down?", and I couldn't tell that without memorizing which colour machine was for which layer pair.
Otherwise, game was strong across the board and pretty fun to puzzle out.
Thank you for kind the feedback everyone! It is always appreciated.
I agree with you on knowing which machines/radios go where; I actually had the thought during the jam but couldn't come up with any way to show it that could implement quickly. That said, I wasn't thinking of it like up and down - your question actually suggests a way I could have done it, with arrows pointing up and down. Thank you for the idea, and really appreciate the kind comments.
I like how the game used those NES PPU glitches as instability effects :)
This is really really good. Even if it wasnt an NES game its good. Its a great forgiving but difficult puzzle game with great puzzles and a great world/layer switching mechanic that keeps it fresh and interesting. I feel like a full long game could be made out fo this with dialogue and everything and new music (since if the song were longer it would be better) since there was a text cutscene at the beginning. its so RAD!
So cool to see an actual NES game, wish I could've played it on the proper hardware!
The layers really made things interesting, and the music was great. Amazing job with this, you should be proud! I'm constantly amazed by the games this community produces!
Coooool! :v:
You made a real NES game for a game jam. Mind blown.
Wow, this hits the theme in a abstract and interesting meta way. The art is really nice, I like how each layer pops with different colors. The sprites shifting between layers was always clear, I didn't find myself lost or questioning what the tiles were supposed to be. Kudos for making it as a proper NES game, I imagine these sorts of interactions, even just the changing layers, are really challenging to program without modern tools. I am reminded of a game like Anodyne that displays a colorful dystopia, there's a more naturalistic feel here but the shifting, colorful landscapes brought me there. Really well done.
:wave: Hi there! Just wanted to let you know that Dream Dog Dilemma is featured on the GitHub Blog: [A peek inside some of the top games from Ludum Dare 49](https://github.blog/2021-10-25-a-peek-inside-some-of-the-top-games-from-ludum-dare-49/). Thanks for providing such a NES-tatic game _and_ sharing the source code :smiley:
@lee-reilly Thank you so much! I appreciate the kind words, and I'm glad to see a few of the other really fun games I played on the same list.
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