Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → Dog Days of Summer
By incobalt
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 250 | 3.54 | 25 | |
| Fun | 427 | 3.06 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 56 | 4.00 | 25 | |
| Theme | 26 | 4.26 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 494 | 2.95 | 25 | |
| Audio | 236 | 3.37 | 25 | |
| Humor | 329 | 2.68 | 24 | |
| Mood | 85 | 3.78 | 25 |
This was cool, from the first screenshot I thought it was going to be a difficult to figure out game but it ended up being pretty intuitive. The audio really fit the concept. My one complaint is that there were so many symbols that I felt a lot of information overload.
Awesome! I love the concept too and the theme is perfect. I didn't realise I could make everyone happy and was just focusing on my partner. So Al doesn't care that I left, Al doesn't like all the things me and my partner enjoy, we see that as Als problem not ours :')
@wren-erickson The gameplay was *very* simple on purpose, because I knew I couldn't make it more complicated. Case in point, originally I had intended for friends to, maybe, not like outdoor activities, but I shelved it. It was late Saturday when I finally got the game loop working. I spent too much time on effects and icons! Also, I know that there's a lot of icons on screen. It's a game of information in that way, but it's a lot to take in at first. I think this could be solved by maybe having fewer traits on actions, maybe just having a love and hate trait for the friends, and showing less of the calendar at once.
@mook You know, Al is probably only there for the free food on taco nights. It's not always possible to make everyone happy, but the goal is put out there for you. It's probably a bit of information overload getting in the way (see above). Glad you enjoyed it!
Reaally interesting game you got here! I was surprised at the sheer amounts of systems in play here, and also the fact that each play is very different with incredible replayability! The game is very polished! And I got to specially mention the music cause damn that was some good ost!
Keep up the amazing work!
I spent a long time trying to make my virtual friends happy and in the end it just taught me that some people shouldn't hang out together. Fun game! Thanks for the upload
@danashrulez Thanks! I think it's a really simple game that could be made more complex and interesting. I've stared at it all weekend, though! There's so much I'd like to do with it, but time is a fickle thing. I'm glad you liked the music! I threw it together in a few hours just before the deadline. I wasn't sure I was going to make it. I really wanted it to be a cover of "Dog Days are Over", but Florence Welch's vocals are too much for LMMS to handle. I took a variation of the base beat and the clap rhythm and added some clarinet to even it out. It came out ok, and better than some of my past entries' attempts!
@darandin Yeah, sometimes the algorithm makes friends who just can't stand the things that others like. It tries to even out the likes and dislikes, I think, but that might just be the deck building. I can't remember anymore :sweat_smile:
Thanks for this great game! It has a very interesting mechanic of balancing between likes and dislikes of your friends and teaches you to be considerate of other people :) I managed to get everyone to 95-100% mood first try and had a rewarding ending! My only criticism as of now is that interface is a bit cluttered, it would probably be better if icons were appearing in special "status" window or tool tips. But anyway, really good game, thanks!
Very original concept and idea. From screenshots, I thought that this would be some sort of card game, which I am not a big fan, but I was surprised it was nothing but! The interface felt a little bit busy, but otherwise this was a very interesting, bittersweet game. I think this would be a great game if you continued with it after Ludum Dare, definitely a lot of potential. :)
@dzejpi @orangedragon Thanks! There's a lot that can go into making this a much less cluttered game. I had so much trouble with getting tooltips to work because Unity is... set in its ways when it comes to size fitting. I could also imagine this as a kind of desktop interface game where the information is in different spots and such. Then it becomes even more about planning ahead and such.
@dzejpi It's interesting that you mention card games, because the concept, at base, is a card game. I generate a "deck" of activity "cards" and that's what you use. I just kindof took all the card game terms out of the game, so it was a little more natural to the setting.
I like the idea a lot, very original and intuitive gameplay! Though I was definitely a little confused and wondering what was going on at first, it made sense very quickly when I just clicked on the cards. I like that you put a little tooltip when you hover over some of the icons. Overall, very nice!
@pkzinpo Thanks! I wanted to have that tooltip to help with the screen clutter. It was frustrating to put together, though!
Really solid entry. The first half I was trying super hard to perfect everyone's schedule, but after a few weeks I realized it's not the end of the world if some people don't like everything we do. It all turned out good in the end. Immersive game, despite its simplicity. Great work!
Cool game - I really like the concept, and there was a lot of thought that I had to put into trying not to annoy everybody! If I had a suggestion, it would be to highlight or tint the people who were "active" on the current day, so I don't need to look back and forth every time and figure out whose likes/dislikes I should be worrying about.
@mrevilguy Thanks! I really wanted a simple game to drive home the mood I was going for.
@adam-gould That is a great idea that I wish I had thought of when I worked on it. It would have been really easy to implement that too, maybe only five minutes since I could just reuse what I'm doing on the calendar to highlight. Next time, I suppose!
The music was very jarring when opening the game up(i was a bit spooked) u-u like I assumed I clicked out of it and it was glitching but then the chord progression came and I realized ah yes. I didn't notice it was a cover until I double checked the description. The game is perfectly fine! I just didn't have a good experience with the music (It could /just/ be me because the instruments felt piercing; softer instruments or some kind of mastering would be nice but I assume this is just one person doing the whole thing)
But still a good job on making something emotional and very complete all around!
I like that there are no perfect solutions, but at the same time that even with a bad week with only TV you can still salvage things into something positive over time. Overall I liked it and it's an interesting twist on the theme.
The music is a bit, I don't know the word, harsh?
Oh, and it would be nice to maybe highlight the friends that are active that day. Right now it took some effort to keep track of who is participating.
Other than those two minor points I don't have anything else to say, except that it's a nice game!
Lovely idea for the theme. I agree about the screen being pretty cluttered but given that you made it in 48 hours that understandable. I would show less of the calendar and then make it big enough that you could write people's names on instead of the symbols. If you wanted you could build this out into a pretty cool text adventure type thing.
Very innovative in my opinion, feeld unique. UI looks good, storytelling fits overall game feeling. At some point was missing some events or anything to spice things up, as it was getting repetative. Ofc some indication of friends that affected this day and affected by selected activity would be nice, but obviusly would make game much easier) Overall - very nice entry)
Love how you tackle more narrative aspects of the theme. I still remember enjoying a past game of yours about a stowaway and some distressing mathematics.
This one was a cool exploration of juggling varied preferences, and how much effort it can take to plan to suit exactly everyone all the time. This is a fairly complex setup with a great many icons that have critical meanings. It would have been easy to lose me, but your interface design was very strong and made everything very clear. The tooltips were super helpful, but all of the info was well laid out on the screen. A lot of thought and analysis went into just one click of action! An interesting potency.
If I could grant the player a single boon, it would be to highlight the humans involved in the current day's activity that I am choosing. I feel this, but I also doubt it. I feel it because it was a chore to repeatedly and constantly cross-index the icons. I don't even remember my boyfriend's nam- oh wait it was Evan, but really to me he was just HEART_ICON. So highlighting the portraits could have saved me a LOT of work. The reason I doubt this suggest is that I am not sure how much of the effort you want to automate away. The game should not play itself completely, right? And the effort was the experience.
The music and shifting hue of the selection zone were important because they kept the game feeling alive while I did so much of the cross-indexing work.
I never got everyone to 100% but I did have most of them there or extremely close for a lot of the game. I believe everyone was doing well when I threw my party.
Interesting well-done entry! Congrats!
@rowlna @frib Apologies about the music! I'm not a talented musician, and I had very little time to throw it together. I *wanted* it to be a cover, but I just couldn't do the vocals, so I did some tritones to back it. I'm really bad at melodies >.>
@frib @angelicad @corporation I would definitely have loved to have highlighted the people on the days. If I could make a more reactive, uncluttered UI.
@pkenney This is very kind of you to say! My Cold Equations entry from LD43 was the game I most enjoyed making in the Dare. I'm always looking to bring a narrative to my games. They don't always work out. This one just hit me like lightning and I ran with it. I do think that highlighting the profiles would help, but there's a lot of UI that would help *and* reinforce the work of balancing schedules.
A really clever and unexpected take on the theme!
Pretty fun to play as well once you learn which friends like what and what activity icons means. It takes a while to learn it though and the player gets bombarded with information when the game starts.
It's pretty cool that there's quite a lot of humor in this game that's hidden in the game mechanics and not dialog. Well done!
I was streaming my playthrough of your game, here's a recording in case you'd like to see it https://youtu.be/1s0mnrLO_ak
@incobalt don't get me wrong, it's not that the music is bad so there's no reason to apologize! I think that if the instrument used for the main melody was a bit more gentle and not as sharp and continuous, it would sound a bit better, especially during the higher tones.
Music will always be very subjective so don't read too much into it :D it still adds a lot to the game and it's something to keep in mind for future games
@caudatecoder This was so fun to watch! Thank you so much for sticking with it to the end! I love that you shared the playing experience with your wife. You puzzled through the information really well. There were some clear rough spots, and some things I noticed that I'd change now. I thought the group of friends you got were a funny set, and I kept laughing at how much they just didn't go together sometimes. I hope when you get back from your vague, unspecified job, Brent will be there to welcome you (and clearly something is going right between you, so maybe Staci isn't the one, after all!).
@frib I compared mine to the song, and there is a softness to the backbeat that I'm not capturing with the instrument, you're right. I think the tempo is also off, so that probably doesn't help. It's honestly one of the best bits of music I've probably ever made with more than one instrument in it, which probably says a lot about my music skills 😂
I'm really sad that game is over. Great concept and touching theme.
@gandelianna You're going to do great things! The summer may have ended, but the rest of your life is in front of you!
It's interesting. I wouldn't say it's particularly fun, but it's a chill game with a nice ending and the use of the theme is great. I like that the game doesn't really have a bad ending :)
@suchista Thanks! Theme and mood are my categories. I have a tendency to go for the less fun but more thoughtful games. There's a melancholy to the ending, but there's this thin line of hope there.
Really simple touching idea that once you play a round or two, you get how to play and start really getting into it. Nice work!
@twistedhawk Thanks! It was a fun thing to make!
Really neat game! I included it in my Ludum Dare compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/QO-q-Xmgol0