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Gnomon
Gnomon
By jonathan-fischer
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 633 | 3.56 | 31 | |
| Fun | 1120 | 2.94 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 1125 | 2.78 | 30 | |
| Theme | 975 | 3.39 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 35 | 4.63 | 31 | |
| Audio | 106 | 4.07 | 30 | |
| Mood | 189 | 4.00 | 30 | |
Comments
The controls were a bit hard to get used to. I had a hard time pressing the middle mouse button while trying to do anything else. The aiming of the balls was hard because of that, too. If you made the graphics and animations by yourself, then you did a really good job, I like the happy atmosphere at the beginning and the dangerous one in the boss fight :). I couldnt beat the boss and Im not sure if that was an intention, or just my lack of skills. The audio was nice, too.
@terylangosh, Thank you so much for trying out the game! I did do the graphics myself. Somebody else messaged me that they had to click to move the camera; it was supposed to just move without clicking. That bug has been fixed now, so hopefully it should be a little easier to play. :) You can beat the boss, but it does involve a bit of running. (and distance.) Thanks again!
onezerox
2022-04-05 16:41
Graphics is awesome
The level of quality visuals you could achieve in just a weekend is unbeliveable, Jonathan. Very well done. At first I was thinking of suggesting making the bridges a bit shorter because you spend so much time running back and forth, but really that's just more time to appreciate the fantastic view.
@onezerox, Thanks for the feedback!
@leolferraz, Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment and play my game. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
There's a lot of work on the graphics side, especially for a jam. The player may seem a little lost at first, but the boss battle is quite cool!
thekimeo
2022-04-05 19:27
Love the art style! I think it is worth failing at least once just to see the cool ending
myazuid
2022-04-05 19:39
couldn't download as I'm on MacOS, but watched the video and it looks great. Lovely art. good job.
@nyanpierre, Thanks! Graphics are really fun for me, and I've been learning a lot lately. Honestly I spent most of my time trying to make it look nice :smile:
@thekimeo, Thank you! I know not everyone may see that ending, but I threw it in as something fun. I'm glad you liked it! For those who are wondering, if you fail to get all the obelisks in time, you'll get an alternate (bad) ending.
@myazuid, Thanks for checking it out! Someday I hope to be able to port future games properly for MacOS and Linux.
This game looks so good! I wish I could play it, since there is no Macbook download :(
julienmc
2022-04-05 21:43
Definitely one of the coolest games from this jam I have played so far. All things considered, I'm really impressed that you made this entire thing in 72 hours. Really awesome job!
@bananaguybob, thanks for taking the time to check it out anyway! :smile:
@julienmc, You're too kind! I wish I could have made it bigger, but had to a decent part of my original idea to keep the scope small enough to finish. Thanks for playing!
Beautiful visuals. The scale of the boss was awesome, and the whole palette shift that went with it. Had some trouble getting the character to cross any brown bits on mountainsides, but nothing gamebreaking. Well done!
hawkin
2022-04-06 01:29
I really enjoyed this! It was so pretty, giving me real BOTW vibes. I wish I could have relaxed more walking through the grasses.
The music was great too!
@hawkin, I'm so glad you liked it! Thanks for trying it out!
narffy
2022-04-06 07:59
nice art !
The lack of sound feedback when casting orbs, activating pillars, etc. was a bit frustrating. I found myself confused if I was doing anything. I got stuck on a lot of level geometry, and felt like even if it was unnecessary there should have been a jump. Lastly, the text at the beginning scrolled very slowly and I accidentally disabled the text by clicking, so I was unsure what I was doing on my first go.
I was very impressed with the bad ending. I liked the djinn, and it was well done.
Overall, I was impressed with what you got done by yourself especially if you did the art and animations solo. I felt that there could have been more attention to a few details that would have made the game a lot more immersive with little overall needed additionally, but still! :)
That was really cool, although I did have to check your video walkthrough to complete it. Visually the best I've played here so far. Finally, the boss was a very welcome surprise. Good job!
@narffy, Thank you!
@orionhart, I totally understand, I ended up rushing to get sounds in at the end, and I definitely think it would have made the game a lot better. Thank you for bringing getting stuck; I'm looking into that further to see what I can do. I'll also take the text speed into account. I'm glad you liked the game, and I'm grateful for your feedback!
@ferociter, Thank you! If you have any suggestions as to how I could have made it better, please let me know!
The graphics were amazing and I really like how you used a story interpretation of the theme! The audio was also very good, and the general atmosphere created was amazing! I would have liked some story parts spread through the gameplay to break it up, like maybe some story revealed at each obelisk, but I understand its a jam and what you managed to achieve in the time space is very impressive! Overall, this is a great game with outstanding visuals!
@black-flag, Thank you so much for taking the time to play! I would have loved to expand the game a lot more, but I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway!
apostle
2022-04-07 09:47
looks breathtaking, graphics are awsome, interesting idea, the world seems a bit empty, still nice job!
@apostle, thanks for the feedback!
It is super impressive that you pull all this together alone in 72 hours. The visuals, the sounds, the mood, are all very much at the top. That's why this is probably the most frustrating experience I've had in LD50.
***Un-dodgeable attacks are almost always a bad idea***, unless you are going for the whole "it can't be defeated" narrative. The lighting attack is practically undodgeable, and I don't see a reason for that. You can make it only hits you for 2 ticks if you run, but that's the best you are gonna get. If you stay out of the outer ring, the boss seems to just give up on the more reliable lighting and start spamming fire, which is easily dodgeable. If the lighting is a close range deter, it would probably make more sense to just do an AOE around the boss rather than auto aim hit scan.
What I'm saying here is, if you want the player to stay away from the boss (which IS the meta btw), convey the idea clearly. I was trying to make the orb easier to connect by standing just far enough from the boss to not get burned alive, and whether the boss decide to do the lighting attack or the fire attack seems to be random. So I assumed that you have to simply just out damage him by avoiding the avoidable fire and tanking the lighting, and leave the rest to chance, which is clearly not the intended gameplay here.
This is frustrating not because the combat is mediocre, but because the other aspects are splendidly done that it really throws you off. I'm still giving it a high score for the work put into the visual and level design and actually programming a working boss, but I saw potential in it I don't see in some other games and it is so unfortunate the boss fight lacks proper polish.
@shadowcast, I really appreciate the in-depth review, as well as your honesty. I made a lot of mistakes in how I went about things; I could blame it on time, but that's entirely on me. Your feedback is incredibly valuable though, as I really would like to improve. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts! :smile:
ldp
2022-04-08 17:24
I couldn't finish the game unfortunately. At the opposite of the Shadowcast's comment above, I had real trouble avoiding fire when it was really easy to avoid lightning. After 6 trials, I just gave up.
But overall, amazing work on the art and the mood, the small effects are very polished and improve a lot the quality.
Some suggestions to make the game more dynamic and enjoyable: shoot the orb to the direction of the camera and not from the character direction, do not block the player movement for so long when shooting, ideally do not block it at all (but require to separate the animations of the upper and lower body, so that's a bit of work), add a roll/phase mechanic to specifically avoid incoming attacks.
But overall, for a solo-dev, it's an incredible work to produce with gameplay, art, sounds, music, level design. I'll keep an eye on you for future jams!
@ldp, Thanks for giving it a shot! And thank you for the suggestions, I truly appreciate it! :slight_smile:
rogsound
2022-04-09 16:38
Visual super! Ambient is awesome!
The game looks beautiful but I agree with the others that the gameplay needs work. The fight just feels tedious and awkward. You got some pretty good recommendations from others already and I think you could use them to make a cool game if you decide to continue working on it.
@rogsound, thanks!
@skleembof, Thanks for the feedback! :smile:
The game was really cinematic. It looked greatr and felt really polished because of all the animations. The orb throwing felt really hard to control though because it locked your character so if you made a mistake you can't do anything for quite a long time. I also really liked that you managed to get a decent boss battle in at the end, nice work!
@sleepystudios, Thank you for your comment! :smile: