Unfamiliar

dandala88 2022-04-04 05:11

The aesthetic is what drew me in to want to play. I am a sucker for grayscale and retro graphics, especially when done well. The music and sounds were solid. It's an accomplishment to get sfx and music into a Ludum Dare compo entry and these were quality. The amount of story you were able to fit into to an extremly short game is pretty great. Able to set a mood in such a world is good work.

My constructive criticism, if you decide to continue development, would be that although the echolocation mechanic was cool, it was hard to not just spam it and fly away from the creeps as fast as you can. A more forgiving aggro effect with a harsher punishment might balance the game a bit more.

Solid entry!

iguanana 2022-04-05 00:48

This game is so lovely to play. I love the echolocation sound, and the graphics are great. Well done!

torcado 2022-04-05 04:58

Another super stylish entry, as usual! I *love* the echo effect, it's such a neat contrast with the pixel art visuals. The movement is a little awkward in my opinion, but I think it serves the mechanic well (creating a sort of stop and go effect, checking for enemies then finding the best path forward) Sound effects and music are really nice, and I think the story is cute! Nice job :)

100th-coin 2022-04-05 14:35

I'm always a huge fan of your work! I love the little letters that are written at the houses. The 3 color Greyscale art style was also really well done! All the details of the mountain-looking walls, the particles your bird leaves behind as they fly, and the *really cool* shockwave during the echolocation were fantastic!

This is a bit of a silly note to comment on, but I really liked how one of the houses was buried under spikes. It came by surprise, and was pretty amusing.

Adding on to what Dandala88 said, perhaps limiting the number of echoes between houses could balance the spam strategy. I didn't even consider spamming the echolocate button when I played, but I can see how that makes the threat a lot easier.

All around another remarkable entry! Great game as always.

mateusboga 2022-04-05 18:55

Very cute game, I enjoyed playing it!

I was a bit confused about when I could and couldn't clear the spiked. Maybe I'm just dumb.

mutuware 2022-04-06 16:47

Like the EGA style graphics!

cogcomp 2022-04-06 16:58

Nice graphics and a nice idea with the echo location. If you make more levels I think a nice idea would be surfaces that the echolocation bounces away from.

aeveis 2022-04-07 04:55

@dandala88 Thanks, appreciate your praise! I do think I had a thought on some more puzzly bits where you could only use echolocation a few times, otherwise the creeps would basically kill you. I kind of ran of time to explore that more as that has a lot more timing elements, though maybe I really could have just done this by making Toilbird much more weak. Than sure you can spam echolocation... but if you get hit by anything and you're not careful you'll definitely die. For the jam though I usually lean on being more forgiving than punishing. I also didn't want to limit the echolocation spam, at least not input wise - it's fun to spam it! So I would have to think about the design a bit more for where there's instances where you should spam it, and instances where you don't want to spam it (revealing Lizz was sort of an experiment there).

@iguanana thanks! glad you had fun!

@torcado Thanks thanks! Can say the same for you haha. The echo effect is done on a screen-sized background sprite on a shader using SDFs (draw a circle by using a distance function). The movement was probably a bit more awkward than I had intended, but I really liked the short flap/hop animations you could kind of do when you inch forward so I just left it as is.

@100th-coin Thanks!! I like your games too, especially the humor. For the mountain looking walls, that was interesting because I basically made a very normal rounded tile set, but I guess because of some of the dithering and the shapes I could make with the tiles it started feeling pretty mountain-like. The art part there was less in the tiles themselves and more in how I placed them. Thanks for enjoying the level design!

@mateusboga Thanks! I think clearing the spikes is probably the most unclear thing in the game, so it's good you called it out. Essentially the spikes are doors that can only be opened after you reach a birdhouse that will unlock it/enable it to be destroyed by echolocation. Saying that now, that means I probably needed to add a "locked" state to the spikes so the player knows when it is destroyable.

@mutuware Thank you! I would say the color limitation is mostly because it made it easier to make the art while keeping it pretty readable - thanks for the callback!

@cogcomp thanks! Ooo, so I did think about have the waves bounce... as it currently works the waves work on a totally separate layer that is just the game screen (so I measure the offset from the world position) and basically is just circles. I would need to figure out how to add walls and so to the shader and figure out how that would reflect? Off the top of my head I think I would need it to be raytraced instead of just SDFs so that would be a bit more complicated for me.

jonah-srg 2022-04-08 15:44

Very stunning game. The visuals and sound come together really nicely here. A ton of polish here and it absolutely sings: the echolocation effect, the flapping effect, animation, typewriter text, it's all very impressive. I like the controls, they reinforce the feeling of flying with a bit of sliding and momentum gaining.

I think either the echolocation could be a bit more generous in the way it illuminates the enemy birds, or the hordes of enemy birds could be lessened to make dodging feel more natural. I was never quite sure when an enemy started and stopped moving, and I was usually too late once I had spotted them. I'm taking the inevitable occurrence here to mean death in the harsh conditions for a wild animal, and winning the game is successfully delaying it happening. I do like the internal monologue bits, they add a lot of personality. Really well done.

lesinvisible 2022-04-10 19:21

Very nice visuals and effects, I liked the overall feel of the game. The only problem for me was that it takes some time to adapt with the main game's mechanic. And, as was said previously, hordes or critters are a little too big.

luis-felipe-patrocinio 2022-04-11 23:09

I liked the look and feel you created. I found the controls a little too rigid. Wouldn't it be better to make it more fluid? But anyway, congratulations on the submission! It looks great!

almost 2022-04-13 01:07

Pretty unique mechanic. The invisible birds that move towards me were very spooky. There is a lot of tension about whether or not I should risk using the echolocation ability or whether or not I remember the safe path.

The visual effect to indicate that echolocation found a bird house was really subtle. I often missed it and found the birdhouses on accident while avoiding the birds. Also on my first attempt I reached the exit before finding the birdhouses above it, which I assume is unintended. I'm not sure if this is because I had missed some previous birdhouse or if this is just meant to be possible.

lereveur 2022-04-16 22:20

I'm not sure I understood all the story, but even if I had a little doubt seeing the black and white, it was as poetic and cute as always, good job and well done!

hmightypirate 2022-04-17 18:27

Loved the monochrome art!

I took the bird to its home after I understood the mechanic of the echo.

lmb 2022-04-17 22:03

The game looks and sounds great, and plays well also. I find it a bit awkward to use echolocation to fins other birds that I think needed to avoid, but other than that it was a smooth experience.