Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → The Flower of Marasca
By f1krazy
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 293 | 3.47 | 44 | |
| Fun | 294 | 3.38 | 44 | |
| Innovation | 543 | 2.65 | 44 | |
| Theme | 525 | 3.05 | 45 | |
| Graphics | 214 | 3.69 | 45 | |
| Audio | 375 | 2.95 | 45 | |
| Mood | 99 | 3.73 | 45 |
Really Neat Game!! I like the various powers
I noticed a couple bugs: * The first time I played when I got the fire, but it didn't pick up for some reason so I was trapped unable to proceed, had to reset the game (maybe because I used the switch powers keys before picking ii up). * The 2nd time I played, I actually jumped through some walls near the end of the game (Made it really easy to get to the flower, probably skipped a good portion of the game)
@cary-stanley I knew there were collision detection issues (which I'm fixing as we speak) but I wasn't aware of any bugs with the powers. I'll take a look and see if I can replicate it.
@f1krazy so i played it again to see if I could figure out the issue. I think the issue with the powers was that I used the change key before I picked it up. I think because the power slots exist before the powers are acquired you don't realize you have it. Also, since the powers selection does not cycle, if you keep hitting the same button it wont update making you think you don't have the power.
Might be better if:
1. Don't have a slot till you have acquired the power 2. Cycle the powers list when you hit the end or the beginning
Cool Game! the confusion was probably just me
Great visuals and very nice game feel, very good Job for 48h !
Very interesting take on the theme, very heavy and emotional. Like the game in its simplicity, but allowing for a lot of depth. Graphics and audio really well done in its style. Impressive and great job!
Really cute game, and the level design is really good! It seems like you can get stuck at a few points if you die after hitting a switch or run out of ammo, but I might just have been missing something.
I really like the visuals but i found the game quite hard to understand and the music is very high pitched, so it got annoying after abit. Good effort though!
The graphics are really pretty, and I love the intro sequence. After I got the firepower and I think I may have gotten stuck, or maybe I just couldn't figure out what to do so I feel like I can't really judge your game on all aspects sadly. Good effort though!
The simple graphics made for a good mood. The music was ok. A little simple and repetitive but didn't get in the way and was spooky-ish enough to add to the experience.
I think there are some difficulties with the level design. There seem to be a couple ways to get stuck and just be unable to proceed. The limited fire could make things difficult. I got trapped because I was trying to save a fire so I flipped a switch and died. When I reappeared at the fire I couldn't get back to where I was so I missed a key powerup. stuck.png
@nethead @minibobbo I knew it would be possible to get stuck in certain circumstances, but it seems there are more of those circumstances than I was expecting. I'll have to think about how best to deal with that particular problem.
If you like fireworks, try to go left at the beginning ;-)
Too bad the game is plagued by collision issues ... being able to go through most walls is a real showstopper for an exploration game :-/
I liked the music, reminded me of the very first metroid game on NES !
@ace17 Did I forget to patch the bug that let you walk off the left-hand side of the map? Whoops. It's late where I am but let me take a look at that tomorrow. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Men this is the best game of the Ludum Dare #50 I've played so far. No so easy, not so hard. A bit of enigmas, a lot of action. I love the simple, yet clear, art. Congrats!
@ace17 Haha, I see what you mean by fireworks now! There's more to that particular bug than just being able to walk off the map, but I understand what's happening and I'll get it fixed. (That *is* one of the funniest bugs I've ever encountered in one of my games, though!)
@sdelay Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it so much!
Very nice graphics, but this pitch sound every 3 seconds is just too high for my ears. Can't play much with sound :<
@yogurtthehorse I've had a few comments complaining about the music at this point, so I think I'm going to have to lower either the pitch or the volume. Glad you at least liked the graphics, though!
Nice mini-metroidvania you have here! The gameplay was pretty polished except I did fall through the world once in the area near the flower. Other than that, my minor feedback would be similar to other people; item selection system is a little tricky, seems possible to get stuck and be unable to finish (even though it didn't happen to me).
On the plus side, The art and sounds/music are simple and lo-fi, but they all work well together to form a coherent aesthetic. I thought the level design was a real strength here, the difficulty was just right and the challenges were just different enough to be interesting. I enjoyed playing through it and getting what I guess is the good ending? Cool game!
Great example of a compo game keeping to scope and providing a polished experience! I'm not usually a fan of "spooky" or depressing themed games but this has it's own charm. I'm not sure why others found the music annoying - it was very nostalgic of the Atari games I played as a kid. My husband asked me to make a list of my favorite games for him to try later, and you've made the list! :)
Nice little metroidvania! I think at one point I ran out of fireballs and couldn't progress, unless I missed something there. Also, it sometimes wasn't totally clear what object I needed to interact with and how to progress (took me a while to realize the little brazier thing could be set on fire.) I really like the graphics and the story! And the particle effects are really well-realized. Well done!
An excellent little game, really lovely simple graphics, and the different powers gives the game a nice feeling of progression! All in all an amazing compo submission! Great work!
Yay, a fellow TIC-80 dev! I really like the theme with the metroidvania dungeon exploration and the execution is great! I played the tic.com version of the game (not sure if there's any difference) and I wasn't sure what to do after I got the flower and used it. Pretty sure I am stuck at that point, so I modify the code to execute the ending :) There are also a few clipping issue when I use the feather but that's not too big of a deal. There's a point where I used up all my fire power and died before getting the check point, so it makes replaying the stage without the fire a little difficult. A suggestion would be to have a minimum cap of the number of power ups when the player dies? Overall, it's a great game and I have fun playing it!
Keep it simple rule works perfectly on your game. The graphics and atmosphere are very good. Well done! :smile:
Looks like a good platformer but I got stuck really early, I don't know how to use the fire to proceed (except for killing the enemy).
Great job! So cute! In the beginning, i had some trouble with the inventory. I think it would work better if it didn't show the 'empty' slots.
Your game is very well layed out! Piece by piece you learn about the mechanics, which is very nicely done! The graphics are cute and the music is catchy and not really repetitive-sounding. I see that you developed it on tic80, it reminds me a lot of PICO-8, is it from the same developers? And if so, what makes this one better? It looks a bit more feature-packed ^^
I like your game, I played for a good 15 minutes. Although, I suck at platformers ^^"
Love the game. The atmosphere is nice. It really reminds me of some incredibly old games and that gives me some nostalgia. The fact that your powers are limited and used for both enemy-killing and puzzle-solving is great, it means I have to make a choice to evade enemies or to kill them, but risk making puzzles harder
Neat game ! Music is a bit ear piercing though ! Great difficulty curve and nice pixel art, but a bit of performance issues on my pc. GOod work overall !
Cool game! I really like the style! Also having different powerups is really nice. Maybe you could add a few more visual cues or ingame hints for the player to better understand what to do. Also, for me, using a german keyboard where the keys z and y are flipped, it was kind of hard to control the player but I guess that's my problem. :D Good job!
Great game both visually and audio wise. Im a simple man, I hear bitcrushed sfx and I love. You did a good job with some of the puzzles utilizing multiple powers, my only really issue with gameplay is that sometimes you can softlock yourself if you run out of a power you need to complete a puzzle. Maybe have a slow cooldown on the abilities might be better and let you make some longer puzzles without having to worry about players having enough skill charges. All in all though this is a great game and a solid LD50 entry, glad I got to play it, Thank you <3
Pretty good. I got the flower, but I'm not sure what I was supposed to do next. I like the graphics style. The music is alright, but a little too "ring-y" for me (idk how else to describe it). I experienced a few collision bugs, but I saw you were working on fixing them. One other thing: I think the movement speed is dependent on the framerate. Sometimes it would seem like I was walking slower or faster than normal. Nice little platformer game.
Fun game. I got to the end, although I feel like cheesed a bit (I just went through the wall that was guarding the flower, not sure if there was a trigger on the right side).
Some deaths felt a bit cheap... nothing major but, for example, on some platforming sections you have spikes in the bottom that you can't see immediatly, while in others you have enemies. Also, I'm not really a fan of being able to be soft-locked, but I don't have any good suggestions on how to fix that...
Other than that, it felt like a really solid entry.
Really fun game! Its a bit unintuitive to learn the controls. A simple tutorial level would help. Also maybe making the interact a key like "E" and making the power select the up/down keys, since I occasionally pressed "X" instead of "S" when trying to switch powers. Other than that it is a great concept!
Difficult but an excellent game. Very well made in 40 hours. Loved the CRT monitor option :smiley: Both graphics and sound awesome! Nice job!
@brusi Some doors can only be opened by shooting a fireball at a nearby brazier. I didn't do a very good job of signposting that, I don't think you're the only person who got stuck there. Sorry about that!
@glayson There's definitely a better way to handle the inventory system than what I have at present, it's something I'll look at in the post-jam version.
@wouter52 TIC-80 is its own thing, though it's definitely inspired by PICO-8. While PICO-8 styles itself as a "fantasy console", TIC-80 styles itself as a "fantasy computer", so its specs are a bit higher: it can handle more sprites, more code, a larger map, and so on. I prefer it over PICO-8 for that reason, though I know a lot of devs enjoy PICO-8's tighter constraints. TIC-80 also has a free version, so I'd recommend checking it out and seeing for yourself whether you prefer it to PICO-8.
@brandsma Yep, that balance between solving puzzles or killing enemies is exactly what I was hoping to achieve. Judging from the number of people who ran out of fireballs, I don't think I got it quite right, but I'm glad you noticed!
@starr-fighter05 I wanted to include some little pop-up messages that appear when you get close to something, to give you a better idea of what to do, but I ran out of time to implement them. It's on my list of planned post-jam features.
@unbugged I wish I could take credit for the CRT filter but sadly I can't, it's a built-in feature of the TIC-80 engine that I honestly forgot about until now :sweat_smile: Glad you liked it so much, though!
Good to see another TIC-80 game on here besides mine. Like the design and the controls are good. The sound could use some love, it doesn't match very well with a pickup and the music gets grating with the constant high pitch ding. Overall good entry though.
Roses: definitely brought me back to playing 80's and early 90's games which I think was the main goal so good job there, nailed it!
Buds: the overall puzzle styles were good but they suffered from some basic information/context that the player just doesn't have without a tutorial or solid UX. Really what the game needed was more feedback to the player to draw them into your game. I'm talking UX stuff like making the lever intuitively tell me that it IS A LEVER. (I embarrassingly spent two minutes at the first gate before I realized that the first lever was actually a lever and not a part of the foreground) to stick with the art style it could have flashed as you got within range... or something similar.
Thorns: You clearly were interested in making the game controls configurable (four different configurations on a 10 minute one player game! WOW I'm impressed... but why?) in my humble opinion I feel like we missed out on other things you could have done. I really suggest using that time on something else and just make the default controls stick to modern conventions. (I expected wasd with e/r/shift/space actions then tried game pad, for this style I expected to use the D-pad but that is minor). Further more, I'd suggest that the left and right face buttons (or d-pad or select button) control the power-up selection. Never-the-less I did eventually get the flow of it then it was like I was back in the early 90s with my Commodore64!
I don't want to forget to say that you got to be careful when adding a powerup that increases speed as that can mess with your collision checks (I fell through the wall at the top of my feather jump and landed at the end... and got trapped there)
I hope I've been constructive, there is promise here, just don't forget about the player! :) GoodLuck!
Very well made old school game! Yea, there are some problems with collisions, but overall that's a really good game!
Wow! Great game to be Compo! I liked it a lot and it fits very well with the theme. Maybe the music at the beginning is a bit shrill with that sound, but it's a very personal opinion of mine. I insist, great game and I congratulate you, really.
I really liked this, it's reminiscent of 80's games not only in graphics and sound but in game design as well. That could lead to a frustrating experience but the game is short enough for that to not be a problem. I had a lot of fun playing this, so thank you!
Simple and effective! It shows that you have worked a lot! Art and sound are truly a pleasure. On the other hand, there is no way out if you misuse your powers...You have to restart the whole game, it's a bit confusing! Nice mood, neat game! Congratulation =)
I got stuck after retrieving the flower because I died and didn't have any more of a few powerups. Also I think I used the flower right when I got it because it seems like it works like other powerups but then I just had zero of it. Not sure if that was going to matter later on. But in general, the level design was alright, just need to design away places where the player can be softlocked.
Having said all that, this is a pretty good LD50 entry! There's a lot of content in this game and everything is pretty well fleshed out! Nicely done!
There was quite a lot of missing collision, and I'm *fairly* sure you can softlock yourself in almost any area just by expending all of your abilities, but I liked the style of the game and I definitely get what you were going for.
The exploration aspect was not what I'd been expecting and, between that and the music, you managed to create a good, eerie mood, which isn't always all that easy within the limitations of the sorts of retro games you were clearly trying to emulate! :grin:
Well done! :smile:
@thedevduellist The different control configurations are a built-in part of the game engine, that's not something I spent any time on. Same with the CRT filter that you can enable. I didn't think the feather jump gave you enough momentum for you to clip through the ceiling, so that's something I'll have to check.
@diego-escalante Oooh, that's a serious issue. The flower isn't a powerup, I just put it in the inventory to show that you had it, but if it can be consumed like a powerup, then doing that makes the game unwinnable. I'll have to fix that. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Fun platformer! I got stuck in the beginning not realizing what I needed the fireball for before I ran out. Some more hints and removing the limited nr of uses might make it all a bit easier.
@joror What I'm planning to do is increase the number of fireballs you get from each pickup, which will give you a bit more breathing space, especially in later areas where there are more enemies. I have to admit, I underestimated how many would actually be needed. I'll also add hints, as I wanted those in the game originally but ran out of time to add them.
Really cool game - finished in about 3:10 on my best play, with ample death abuse! I also echo the concerns about the way things can run out, but overall it wasn't a big deal - I made it though on my first try. I think a bigger thing is the way you sometimes die to enemies you can't really see, with blind jumps and falls. I think a little more friendliness here would be super appreciated. I really liked the tiny game aesthetic and the sounds!