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NAP GUARDIAN
NAP GUARDIAN
By nethead
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 21 | 4.15 | 44 | |
| Fun | 16 | 4.16 | 44 | |
| Innovation | 277 | 3.36 | 44 | |
| Theme | 416 | 3.39 | 44 | |
| Graphics | 17 | 4.46 | 45 | |
| Audio | 13 | 4.26 | 45 | |
| Humor | 19 | 4.28 | 44 | |
| Mood | 39 | 4.04 | 43 | |
Comments
Wow this one is hella cool ! The execution is VERY clean and the story is great and funny, nice addition. The dash mechanism is pretty weird to handle at first but after a while it comes naturally, so good job on the controls. I do wish there were no end to the game though, so we could play until a fan inevitably reaches the dude, instead of having the dude inevitably wake up and it's game over :) cool music, cool graphics... This is definitely one of the best entries I've played so far :thumbsup:
nethead
2022-04-04 13:29
@forgin-bits Thanks for the feedback :D I might try adding an endless mode like you described, that was actually the plan initially but I wasn't sure how to balance making it fair to play without having it potentially go on forever lol.
lanalux
2022-04-04 14:10
Great game. I love the dialogue. It was really satisfying as well. Great music. I would be happy to play many levels of this, especially if the story kept going!
eli-haun
2022-04-04 14:11
Love it! The jumping was a little hard to get used to, but I figured it out. Love the dialogue. it was fun and quirky
quill18
2022-04-04 14:14
Holy cow, I wish I could art like that! Loved the humor too.
defrag
2022-04-04 14:15
Edit: My problem with the tutorial was entirely me - I wasn't perceiving the prices on the background as the actual shop. I thought the dummy on top was the shopkeeper.
The humour was amazing! I had some issues with the controls, the dash mechanics takes a bit of time to get used to at first. It feels pretty satisfying to get all those coins and get upgrades :D Really a great game. The level of polish is pretty nice too !
benskca
2022-04-04 14:22
Super polished! The dialogue, graphics, and sound are all great and give the game a really nice mood. I agree an endless mode would be fun and I think the combat could maybe use a little bit more weight behind it, but it's fun as it is anyways - great job!
nethead
2022-04-04 14:26
@defrag oh no, were you able to press down or S to buy something from the shop? maybe one of the dialogues didn't show up, but you should be able to upgrade your attack (the first upgrade) and then go kill the dummy (Z/SPACE).
nethead
2022-04-04 14:31
@lanalux thanks for playing! I might end up doing a post-jam update with a few extra clients/levels :D
@eli-haun Thanks for the feedback, glad you were able to get used to the jump/dash mechanic even though it's a bit unusual ^^
@quill18 really glad you like the art! I've been practicing a lot lol
@castitatis thanks for playing! it gets pretty crazy when you start maxing out the upgrades lol.
@benskca thanks for the feedback, I agree the combat mechanics are a little bare right now. was hoping to be able to put a bit more time into refining them but alas, turns out that's hard in 48h!
Neat game and great concept! I was surprised I survived...I figured the fans would overwhelm me and wake the client. I liked the how the fans got harder to kill as it progressed but I never felt overwhelmed because I was able to keep upgrading...so maybe better balancing? Additional powerups (as well as tougher skills for fans) would be fun.
defrag
2022-04-04 14:55
Really impressive jam entry. I liked the sound, graphics, and gameplay. Nice work!
nethead
2022-04-04 14:58
@claytonrumley yeah, i've never made a game like this before so I wasn't really sure how to balance wave difficulty lol. I didn't know if it would be fun to have the waves get so crazy that you can't win or if that would just frustrate people. thanks for the feedback :D more powerups was a stretch goal that i didn't quite meet ;~;
nethead
2022-04-04 15:00
@defrag Appreciate it, super glad you enjoyed it!!
lantto
2022-04-04 15:02
Amazing graphics, sound and general feeling. Took a while to get used to the dashing mechanic but now I feel like a ninja. I like the stress of having the money but no time to go shop because you're busy fighting, and when you finally find a gap you go on a shopping spree just spamming down. Very satisfactory. :)
rhewid
2022-04-04 15:33
Great game. The dash is kind of hard to master. Yes I agree with @forgin-bits, an endless mode would be really. It was also very satisfying to kill the enemies thanks to the shop I could upgrade the character to be very powerful. Cool entry!
nap.png
nethead
2022-04-04 15:46
@lantto hehehe glad you were able to achieve ninja state :D
@rhewid thanks for the feedback and congrats on finishing it!!
damn i love the music, art and game. i like that you made an easy mode and hard mode so its accessible for everyone. best game i've played so far - ever.
loueee
2022-04-04 16:30
This is so good. Love the mood of the pixels and the music. The dash attack was super fun to use too.
nethead
2022-04-04 16:52
@shellofagirl @loueee thanks for playing :D
This game just oozes quality! The amount of polish is insane, the SFX and soundtrack are great, and the more powerups I got the more satisfying it got to kill the enemies in one hit and watch the coins fly out. Only thing I would say is it took me a good minute to figure out I had to press the enter key to advance the dialogue at the start. Amazing work!
nethead
2022-04-04 20:31
@james-7777 thanks for the kind feedback :D I'll have to try to make the dialogue advancement more clear in the future!
LOVE the art style. So much in this game. Nice job.
tano
2022-04-05 01:42
Dame I love the dash thing so much. It is much efficient to dash aroud rather than walking The shop mechanism is also great.The Dialog is deifnitely a nice end touch to the game. REally want to see this come in full.
Yo this is awesome! the art is incredible and the particles when dashing as so damn satisfying
The game is well balanced and polished. Art is great, having a tutorial is nice, only real complain I have is the controls are a bit hard to get used to. Overall 5/5
That was pretty phenomenal. Super polished and great art. I would be terrified of doing a dialog system, even a simple one, in a jam so bravo.
Really fun game the controls feel really nice, the art style and humor really tie the experience together I loved it great job!
What an incredible clean game! I love the artstyle, I love the UI, the movement is fluid (dash was a pretty hard grasp like the other comments mentioned as well). But yeah wow! this one of the best compo games I have come across! Crazy to think you pulled this off in 48 hours! Congrats!
haztro
2022-04-05 10:01
That was awesome. Such a polished entry, I was disappointed when it finished! - Art was amazing and the music/sound was great for the atmosphere - attack mechanic felt really nice so did the dash - would have been great if there was a dash charge up sound effect. - Loved that you included a tutorial in the beginning too.
Great work :)
lawrence
2022-04-05 13:29
Yeah the story, dialogue the characters are amazing. The game itself, I mean the combat, platforming, etc is good too, just the dash felt a bit unusual it took a while to get used to simple things like jumping up when you have to charge the dash first. But again, characters are amazing, I would play this more just for the story and dialogue :smile:
Good job!
Fantastic game, the play testing really payed off. The main character felt great, I especially liked the hold to dash/jump combo - this added a nice learning curve. For constructive feedback, I didn't like that the game ended. I was hoping it would continue until I couldn't handle the waves. Great work!
This is pretty great, took me a couple tries to get it as I kept skipping the tutorial text (oops). Looks and sounds really good. Dash mechanic is nice. Good job
Wow, great job!
joscco
2022-04-05 15:13
Really great art and a smooth game play! The problem with including an introduction tutorial is nicely solver by this funny dialogue. Bravo!
I found mastering the key strokes to dash up quite hard thought.
m11
2022-04-05 15:35
Brilliant game! Incredible pixel art, and the dialogue/characters were great!
f1krazy
2022-04-05 17:58
The tutorial made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions, the writing is honestly the best I've seen in a Ludum Dare entry in quite some time. The graphics, audio, and core gameplay loop are really polished as well, especially for a Compo game.
Some of the gameplay mechanics feel like they need some work, however. Your horizontal dash travels such a short distance that it's basically useless, while the vertical dash feels rather clunky to use considering it's the only way you can jump. The one and only time I tried using a bomb, I didn't realise you'd throw them instead of just placing them down, so I ended up yeeting it into a corner where it detonated harmlessly.
As a few other people have already said, this feels way too short. I think part of that is down to just how much I was enjoying it - I was starting to really get into it, and then suddenly it was over. I understand why you didn't want to make it an endless game, though: I've played more than enough Ludum Dare entries where I eventually had to stop out of boredom (though I don't think this would have been one of them).
If you ever want to flesh this out into a full game, my suggestion would be to have a series of finite levels, with what you have now being Level 1. It would avoid the issue you mentioned about the game potentially being endless, and it would allow you to include more of those hilarious cutscenes (perhaps with the client changing from level to level)? Either way, this is a very good game and I want to see more of it.
m11
2022-04-05 18:48
[Slightly off-topic, but I had a look at your twitter and OMG your water shader / wavy plant shader / bleepy speech noises are absolutely incredible!]
Really polished game with great art and music. Took me a bit to get used to the dash controls and I wish it was endless!
nethead
2022-04-05 19:40
@f1krazy Thanks for the detailed feedback, super super appreciated! 100% agree on the dash mechanics needing work. If I flesh this out into a longer game I'll focus a lot on reworking the dash to serve more purpose and be more rewarding. I have a few ideas floating around :D I also would like to add the bombs to the tutorial, and add more variety to the consumables (ie. not just the bomb).
I'll take the fact that it felt too short as a compliment ;D I had a stretch goal to make more levels (different layouts + NPCs, potentially with recurring NPCs and a plot progression?) so that is likely the direction I'll go if I expand on this! I could definitely see myself writing something like a ~10 level story.
nethead
2022-04-05 19:41
@m11 Really appreciate the feedback on the shaders and speech noises :3 I've been putting a lot of work into those details so I'm happy to hear that you like them.
svemir
2022-04-05 20:34
All around incredibly done game! Really digging the music, but everything is so well done. If I had to nitpick, the shop didn't seem accessible from the bottom when starting the tutorial. I wanted to keep playing more levels!
Really great game! The tutorial is absolutely hilarious and the music is amazing! Well done! It just feels a bit too easy for me, but balancing a jam game is pretty much impossible.
nethead
2022-04-06 20:50
@svemir thanks for the feedback, the shop could definitely use a different design. I'll try to come up with something clearer ^^
@stefan-laimer glad you liked the tutorial and music :D i appreciate the feedback on the difficulty, i usually get comments that people find my jam games too hard so i probably overcompensated a bit this time.
squidly
2022-04-07 06:08
Fun game concept, but really did feel like I got cut out right when it was getting juicy. Really good audio/art, and a pretty unique mechanic with the dashes as your only upwards mobility!
Fantastic job with this one!
Gameplay was great. Took a moment to get used to using the dash as a jump (main from the moment of charging needed), but getting a chance to play around with it in the tutorial let me get comfortable with it before getting thrown into the action and I rarely missed any jumps after that practice time. Also, being able to just hold down attack the entire time was great because it let me focus solely on where I needed to be, which was often really important, particularly in Hard mode (and especially when that new Hard mode enemy type dropped in from all spawn points simultaneously).
The game's aesthetics are fantastic and have a great style. It's really obvious what's going on in the world at all times and the enemies are really easily distinguished between, which really helped me to know where I needed to focus my attention. Also, I really adore the little character portraits that accompany the dialogue, they were a great touch. The music was great too (I have the game up in the background while typing up this review so that I can keep listening to it).
Speaking of the dialogue, it was pretty humorous which was great. I had a few chuckles during the tutorial, which is always a nice to have, and the characters' personalities really came out.
Honestly, my only "criticism" is that I wish there were more! More characters, more levels, more enemies... more everything! So basically what I'm saying is that I hope you decide to do something more with this project after LD, because this feels like the kind of game that I could really lose myself in playing.
Thanks for the wonderful game!
nethead
2022-04-09 00:43
@the-great-gallus Very much appreciate the feedback! Knowing which parts you enjoyed really helps me understand when I'm actually executing things the way I intended to, which can be really hard to tell on my own. It's also great knowing you (and other people) are actually interested in more content, since without that I probably wouldn't be motivated to expand on the project. Now I almost feel obligated to ;D
jackaljk
2022-04-10 13:01
The game is fun, polished and looks really good! The hard mode is quite challenging, thanks for adding that. As fun as it is, the theme isn't really well integrated here. But no matter, good job!
evedoll
2022-04-11 11:56
This was such a nice little game! As others have mentioned it took me awhile to get used to vertical dash for jumping – I kept on trying to use up for jump and do midair dashes but got the hang of it after a while and really enjoyed dashing through enemies as I powered up. I appreciated having options for the game controls. That’s one of those small details that is nice & unexpected in a game jam game. I was doing ZXC for most of the game, but my finger got fatigued using Z so eventually switched over to space for attack :P
I thought the pacing of the game was pretty good. There was plenty of time in the beginning to get used to jumping around the map and finding a good position. The waves came steadily too with just enough ramping difficulty that when I felt comfortable a new challenge appeared. In hard mode I was so certain I was in the clear and then the boars came in! With the larger enemies I appreciated having the bombs since as I mentioned was getting some finger fatigue at the end there & would have loved to be able to upgrade those as well.
I thought it was smart having the shop be just slightly difficult enough to get to that I had to make plans around when would be a good shop time. If it was in an easy to reach area I would have probably just ran over constantly and spammed buy, but since it was out of way of the target, enemies, and was high enough that I had to charge dash I only went when I felt like I had enough money to buy something I needed or had good breathing time between waves.
The tutorial was also a nice touch – it’s rare to get a tutorial in a game jam game so one with that much polish was unexpected! The game in general had a lot of polish and it wasn’t until I got the “thanks for playing” that I even remembered I was playing a game jam game! The art & music really contributed to a bodyguard at night vibe. Actually, it reminded me of heist & thief movies. The simple character designs completely worked. All the characters had a lot of personality and the colors you picked helped draw my eyes to what I needed to pay attention to.
nethead
2022-04-12 00:37
@evedoll thanks for the super thoughtful review :D I think being able to upgrade the bombs is a really good idea, and I definitely want to expand on the consumable mechanics as a whole in the post-jam version.
Awesome game, it was so well put together! I loved how polished the game felt, particularly with the graphics, and the game felt fun to play with generally, especially with that movement - with a bit of work, it'd be a really interesting dashing system to use in a combat game! It was great that you could attack whilst moving, attack by dashing, attack by throwing things too, I loved the choice there. The shop was also a great addition, particularly with upgrading attack speed; it looked like it gave the most tangible benefit over the other two upgrades, so it'd be great to see more feedback for upgrading them, even if it's jsut visual. I could still tell they made a difference in game though, so they still worked! Really fun game, and it was especially well designed - great work!
nethead
2022-04-13 13:36
@cakestorm thanks for all the feedback! I agree about the upgrades not providing much feedback, and that's something i'm working on improving right now :D
doot
2022-04-19 12:41
Wow, such a cool game!
The pixel art is incredible, the controls are smooth (even if as other said I'm not a big fan of the dash, I used it only for jumping), the tutorial is insanely good for a jam game, the feedback are all very clear.
I loved that just at the moment I thought "ok now I'm overpowered I hope it doesn't get boring", they awoke and the game was over ✨ Great timing.
Thanks for the game I had fun!
torcado
2022-04-21 19:33
this was super cute! really really nice art, everything is so stylistic, i love it. gameplay is nice, reminiscent of super crate box which i love. There's a cool inherent risk/reward interaction with the shop, trying to find or making a good time to get away to buy upgrades adds a whole layer of strategy over the simple hack and slash. The controls are ok, I didn't even realize I could hold the attack button until way later, definitely would've failed the huge boar enemies if I hadn't haha. Music is really nice too. Great stuff!!