FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD50 → Unladen Penguin

Unladen Penguin

By comicsans, kapitstick, digitalwizard, Embedder72, onedozenbagels and Wodensfang

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall9773.3043
Fun6543.4143
Innovation10862.8542
Theme10133.3643
Graphics10643.0943
Audio9042.5039
Humor2673.7443
Mood11453.0042

Comments

arihan10 2022-04-05 02:27

Despite it's flaws (notably a lack of music, control and sense of urgency), I had fun playing the game. Good job!

tryston 2022-04-05 02:27

Can't believe this was done in javascript, couldn't get past 80 but what I played was really cool!

spladug 2022-04-05 02:29

Cool idea. I love the sound effects and art style. It would be nice to see a bit further ahead so you could prepare to dodge. It got really hard when the bombs arrived. I really liked the checkpoint system; it kept me going. Nice work.

therealmoebius 2022-04-05 02:29

Super interesting game, I really enjoyed it! I would have loved some sound effects though.

bigdylann 2022-04-05 02:31

I though it was super fun and a cool take on a simple mechanic. Very unique. I do think that the camrea could be zoomed out a bit further to give a bit more time to react for the player. Also I really want to know if you can eventually hit the ground?

fromage 2022-04-05 02:35

This was really cool! The hot air balloons are my new best friends.

comicsans 2022-04-05 03:23

Thanks, all!

@arihan10 @therealmoebius there is music and sound effects. Sometimes the browser auto-mutes and you need to click the little speaker icon in the top left. If that doesn't work, please let us know what OS/browser you're in so we can debug!

@bigdylann Yes, you can reach the ground! We made it challenging to do so, but it doesn't require *too* much luck!

@fromage :heart: :balloon:

raphiell 2022-04-05 03:43

I only got to the bombs, but the altimeter showed I wasn't even half way... It didn't really fell like I was controlling the bird, and the air rushing sound reminded me of an airplane toilet. But I had lots of fun!

eggshelldog 2022-04-05 10:49

Hi another penguin game! I agree with @bigdylann, I think the reaction time is a bit too less, turns out it require a lot of deaths to remember the patterns, er, or lucks. I managed to hit the ground, thanks for those save points, glad you set them up. just want to know is there any good ending? :joy: just asking, I know always die ending fit the theme better Overall it is a cool entry. a mini-game that feel completed!

nash 2022-04-05 11:24

This was a fun and solid jam entry! I really liked the graphics and the basic gameplay loop is solid.

For some reason, I got some motion sickness from this game. It has something to do with how the camera moves in sudden motions and how the perspective slightly keeps changing.

Another small note, it took me a while to understand you need to press Space to start the game after a respawn. It could you some kind of hint.

Overall, a solid jam game!

comicsans 2022-04-05 13:42

@eggshelldog Yeah, there's no "good" ending. I'm impressed you reached the ground, though!

@nash Sorry about the motion sickness! I also got that during initial development of the camera behavior. We tweaked things to reduce it, but I guess not enough.

jzucc12 2022-04-05 14:13

Really cool idea! It was super silly which I loved. It was one of those games where when I saw the title, I thought "I must play this!" I was pleased with my experience with it. The folding up and down of the fins to change how you fall was clever as well. Good game!

bottled-up-dark-peace 2022-04-05 16:56

That game was BRUTAL. The physic is well done. I thought it was an endless game but I read it actually has an ending. Maybe I'll retry later.

bhughes 2022-04-05 19:24

sat down to play this for 10 min, 30 minutes ago, it would be cool if the obstacles were more on a cohesive theme. but really impressive! well done.

comicsans 2022-04-05 19:30

@bottled-up-dark-peace Thanks! FWIW, the physics uses real wind resistance drag calculations, and that's what determines your terminal (haha) velocity. Of course we fudged some constants for fun, like the surface area of a penguin's arms, but the formulas hold up. :penguin:

swen 2022-04-05 19:49

Haha, I love how 'over the top' this game is. Sometimes I felt like I wasn't in control. Other than that I had great fun while playing it. Penguins can indeed fly!

idontgetit1 2022-04-05 19:52

It seems to me that this game is mostly luck based and it was pretty hard to get through the lower checkpoints. Controls are nice and although it is luck based i had some fun. Overall nice game.

proxy-games 2022-04-06 03:02

This game is pretty rough...but I *love* it. It has a sort of chaotic factor to it that works really, really well. The graphics are nicely done, and while the sound is lacking, what's there is pretty good. The very loose controls, however, do result in a game that feels more like an experience where I suggest what to do next rather than something I'm actively controlling. Luckily, that experience is a very entertaining one, and the first time I got a game over got a laugh out of me from the sudden brutality of it.

Overall, really nice game!

comicsans 2022-04-06 17:37

> got a laugh out of me from the sudden brutality

@proxy-games This comment made my day! That was the vibe we were going for. There was a lot of swearing during playtests. :grin:

jasontherand 2022-04-07 20:23

I really loved this! The balloons were such a blessing and a curse. I bought a lot of time with them, but then the bombs falling on them would really ruin my day lol. The planes felt like the right amount of difficulty, and it was nice to have the checkpoints. The sounds I found fittingly funny, and the movement of the penguin was really cool. I appreciated that you could stall out when you fell too fast, and have no control over your movement. It is really impressive that there seems to be actual physics, not just move left move right.

comicsans 2022-04-07 22:54

Wow, thanks @jasontherand! :heart:

kidabra 2022-04-08 02:23

This is surprisingly fun! I think the art and specifically the sound and lack of music could use work, but it is inherently a fun game. I hope to see you build it out further.

stalemeat 2022-04-10 03:15

Nice survival level jam game. The game was complete and the control was very smooth. Bouncing on the planes was a nice touch. Nice entry.

aeveis 2022-04-10 04:18

I got to the ground! but I still exploded. I wonder if there's a way to survive somehow. There were sooo many bombs, I would've liked to have a bit more air control even when my wings were spread out, but there is a sort of hilarious futility that results where you hope you don't hit a plane to fast or get hit by a bomb. nice job!

comicsans 2022-04-10 17:34

Thanks, @aeveis! There is no way to survive. The intention was to have a leaderboard of longest survival times per day, so you could "win" by lasting the longest. But we ran out of time before that got finished.

satacat 2022-04-13 23:28

not gonna lie this game was so addictive, i couldn't stop playing until i reached the end. level design is great indeed, gameplay was really smooth and i LOVED IT. thank you so much for this entry, i had a lot of fun

2022-04-22 20:20

A Great Game, love the premise and style, only a few issues - had a slight glitch of the game over screen not going away, only happened once tho - The adding sound could make this even more fun - Screen could be bigger to anticipate or strategize; bombs are random so a quick reaction is harder to do, making a little frustrating

embedder72 2022-04-23 01:17

@cb-225-6763 We're glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the feedback. When you mentioned adding sound to make if more fun did you not hear the sounds? If not, perhaps your audio was muted in the browser? We've seen that sometimes chrome will auto-mute. Yes, we struggled a bit to get the right amount of real estate and detail. We'd hoped to have the camera zoom change based on factors such as speed and level but ran out of time. Again thanks for the feedback.