dhim 2022-10-03 09:40
Hello, I can't open the mac version... But I feel like it's more a case of my mac not wanting to open unregistred app... However I have no message other than
Screen Shot 2022-10-03 at 11.39.38.png
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → Maudits Fantômes / Cursed Ghosts
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 397 | 3.04 | 50 | |
| Fun | 386 | 2.89 | 50 | |
| Innovation | 160 | 3.50 | 50 | |
| Theme | 319 | 3.37 | 50 | |
| Graphics | 343 | 3.09 | 50 | |
| Audio | 342 | 2.68 | 47 | |
| Humor | 210 | 2.70 | 46 | |
| Mood | 389 | 2.72 | 48 |
Hello, I can't open the mac version... But I feel like it's more a case of my mac not wanting to open unregistred app... However I have no message other than
Screen Shot 2022-10-03 at 11.39.38.png
@dhim Thank you a lot for trying out! I really hope this is not caused by my file… ._. I wonder if the spaces in the filename could cause problems; do you have any working .app files that have spaces in their names, by any chance?
(And working very soon back on the navigator version!)
It's not the spaces...
Yes some other games have worked fine. Hit me if the navigator version run
@dhim [The (smaller resolution-wise) navigator version works on itch.io!](https://mossieur-patate.itch.io/maudits-fantomes) :slight_smile: Although not here directly.
Stay tuned for version v1.1! Which will be out of the Compo for fairness reasons, but could be ready for the Jam deadline; I could have worked on it since last night and this morning, but I prioritised taking a look at other people’s reactions, and getting the navigator version working. I really could have made it for the Compo by being a bit faster, or by having the concept settled a bit sooner! And I could have made it shortly after the deadline, but I am sportsmanly. ;)
@mossieur-patate thank you, the itch.io game freeze sometimes... I could play a couple of level though
@dhim Thank you for warning me: I have just tried, and it looks like this is worse than that: it freezes **every single time you press Return to try again**!!! <:o
I might know why: the Love2D function for stopping sounds (love.audio.stop) may cause a fatal error for navigator versions; it had happened to me when testing love.js with another game. Checking the navigator console, there is indeed an error. I will try solving this and get back to you, thanks a lot!!
Good luck
@dhim There, I think it is fixed! :smiley:
(I hope I will not have to stack any more comments about these issues… Hey, it is a bit like a dynamic devlog!)
PS: I want to stress how your bug report was super useful to quickly solve this big issue. Have my thankfulness, and a cookie! :cookie:
Your welcome, check my game when you have time
Ok playing a bit more round made me think of the following : - The day cycle is fun while you are focusing on one guys the others move and you lose track of them (challenge=fun) - the night cycle is long and slow : the fantômes don't move around that much and there is not much to do. - I pressed enter accidentally in the middle of a level to the same level, I was sad too lose my sacrifice - losing will also restart you to the same level
Nice concept though!
Wow, a very nice concept well executed. I really like the memory game on steroids concept - you had to keep an eye on all the moving elements, and there was some strategy involved to get similar kind of colors in one group which is close enough to the release point. So I appreciated this strategical element as a player who has very bad memory and have difficulty focus on multiple things :smile: Graphics was clean and with simplicity helped me to understand what needs to be done. Audio matched the game style, although the night alarm was a bit annoying to listen for too long. I think the night cycle was too long - it could have been 25% night, 75% day. Would have made the game a bit more challenging. I think level 1 was OK difficulty, but by level 5 it got a bit too easy. Altogether a great submission, with a very nice idea done nicely. Very well done!
So... Pac-Man on a fishing rod.
It's an interesting idea. But it's weird that Press Up is going to Upper-Right and press Down is going to Lower-Left.
I love the concept and the visuals, but I can't quite figure out how to play :/ I pick up ghosts and put em down, but I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do with them. Maybe more detailed instructions on the site would help? (in lieu of just putting them in the game itself)
i feel like Pac-Chad when i dunk 4 in a single day. how many levels are there btw
You catched my eye because, like yours, my entry is also pacman themed :D I like the idea, love the graphic, had a few problems with the controls, but as soon as i got into it you game was cool. Well done, i enjoyed my time with this game :3
@slimefriend you have to remember the color of the ghosts then catch them and put them into the hole with the right color.
I actually played the web version but after seeing the first comment, I had to try if it runs on mac. And yeah it does but does need execution rights first...
Screenshot 2022-10-04 at 19.50.03.png
I stopped playing at level 14. It really doesn't get any harder and gets quite repetitive fast. The huge wait times don't really help either. You always have enough lives to just do two at a time and that is very easy to do. Sometimes you can even push for three or four if lucky.
And the wait time gets even more annoying as you really can't practically do anything but wait until the last second where you make up your mind what to target as due the ghosts moving around. The theme take here kinda fights against the actual game design, it would play much better if there was no night phase really and it changed when you first pick something up.
Pretty much hated the control scheme how the vertical movements moved diagonally too. It really screwed with my head. The grid isn't really isometric looking enough for that to make sense.
The ghosts looked nice and dynamic enough with their quirky eye animations. I don't think this was the best possible way to display the lives though...
Screenshot 2022-10-04 at 20.06.08.png
Good job, neat take on a classic! 👍
This was pretty cool haha :D.
Good news: I have made a colourblind version! I will upload it soon; this is merely for accessibility reasons, so I do not think this counts as a game feature. (And I still have to make v1.1 make its way, but took too much rest… I shall give you a heads-up when this happens! Hopefully soon enough, but since I am trying to alternate with reviewing other games and I am so **slow** a reviewer, I am not announcing any date. :sweat_smile: My good friend Pomodoro might save my life once again, it just did wonders for the colourblind version.)
Surprised with the amount of reviewers, thanks for anyone passing by! Responding now. And thanking everyone here right now for the useful feedback and encouragement.
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@dhim
> The day cycle is fun while you are focusing on one guys the others move and you lose track of them (challenge=fun)
The very same thing happened to me while playtesting, and I thought I was not focused enough. X) This may vary on people, but I am glad this phenomenon occurred for someone else too!
> the night cycle is long and slow : the fantômes don’t move around that much and there is not much to do.
Agreed; the worst thing is, I had thought about it, and wondered whether I should rather reduce the share of the night in the whole cycle. On the other hand, I was afraid this might make the game too difficult (because you would have too little time to check the colours); it ended up being too easy. X)
> I pressed enter accidentally in the middle of a level to the same level, I was sad too lose my sacrifice
Maybe some other key would be better, then… I was unsure which one to choose, sorry about this mishap! ._.
> losing will also restart you to the same level
This is on purpose! Sending the player back to the very beginning is literally an arcade game trick used to have you put more coins in the machine; I am no sadist. ;)
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@hotaloca
> So I appreciated this strategical element as a player who has very bad memory and have difficulty focus on multiple things smile
Great; a conscious point I had in mine when thinking up the concept was that the two phases needed to have an advantage and a drawback each. The catch was that you either observe or grab/release, but not both at the same time.
> Graphics was clean and with simplicity helped me to understand what needs to be done.
I went all geometric (funny anecdote: the only non-programmed image is the game icon! Which is rarely seen because of fullscreen mode, although I realize you can see it at least by toggling applications on the desktop version), I’m glad my literal programmer art (!) was not repellent to you. I also aimed the game at being clear/straightforward, since I was unsure about getting the time to make progressive ‘tutorially’ levels (and indeed, this is saved for the next version), and I have figured out for some time now that having long instructions, or even explicit instructions at all, is often a taxing intake for the player.
> Audio matched the game style, although the night alarm was a bit annoying to listen for too long.
I also went all retro, with the cheeky arcade context as a lifesaving excuse for me. :p I was worried the looping sound could be annoying, so I put the volume quite low, and hoped the alternation between day and night would make none of the two too much; amusingly, I thought the day sound was more bothering, since it has more of a thumping quality! I find the classic ‘ghost’ somewhat soothing, but maybe this is my nerdy side speaking. XD I could add an option for disabling/lowering some sounds. Noting this down!
> I think the night cycle was too long - it could have been 25% night, 75% day.
As I answered above to dhim, I felt about the same way during development, but was unsure on which side of ‘too easy’ or ‘too difficult’ the coin would end up falling. I was worried about it, and rightly so. X) As I said on the game ‘form’, playtesting was really minimal; and towards the end, I was in such a rush that I made quick broad (non-)decisions.
(1/4)
> I think level 1 was OK difficulty, but by level 5 it got a bit too easy.
Having tested a bit since then, I agree. You know, ironically, the parameters for the levels are only dictated by a one-line formula each, so I could tweak it to get something more reasonable; talk about the flap of the programmer’s butterfly causing a tornado in Player Land! X)
There were even more cycles before I corrected that as a last-minute fix! I wish I could change the formulae right now, but I am unsure if this would count as legitimate or not. I might put up a slightly corrected alternative version for those that want to try out something more balanced. Please tell me, people, whether parameter-tweaking counts as legitimate or not for fixing the game jam version. (I had the same question about Honey Pony’s [*Far.*](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/far) game, which can take around an hour to beat! XD Devoured my time!)
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@mantou
> But it’s weird that Press Up is going to Upper-Right and press Down is going to Lower-Left.
I think one-point perspective is better here, because a top view would align Pac-Man with the ghosts right below him, preventing you from seeing them (and I also would have had more trouble getting my point across that the setting is similar to a claw crane). As for isometric 3D, I have seen people sometimes complain that it is not intuitive/natural to know which direction left-up-right-down will lead them. (More on the appearance of the grid in my answer to Antti Haavikko further below!)
I must confess I also tend to love pseudo-3D, so I indulged in it, but with a good rationale for it. X)
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@slimefriend
> I can’t quite figure out how to play :/ […] Maybe more detailed instructions on the site would help?
Blast, I had thought about it, and then did not do it!! :S My bad, there is now a ‘How to play’ section which I hope is clear enough . :) (Instead of the elliptical tiny story-oriented blurb of the beginning; I should have known, already made the same mistake in a previous game jam!!)
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> how many levels are there btw
The levels are generated procedurally through some parameters, so there is *theoretically* an infinite number. Nevertheless, as I have written in the presentation, there should be a fatal bug in level 49 (an infinite loop, because the game will not be able to find enough space to generate all the required ghosts).
This randomised mode is intended to be played for some levels, but there is no upward goal; although I like games that do set one… For the record, I intended on having pre-designed levels (with stacking ghosts, so you have to deal with layers of ghosts!), possibly in addition to a random mode, but I ran short on time, and this is saved for v1.1!
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@thoastbot
> You catched my eye because, like yours, my entry is also pacman themed :D
Funny coincidence, I caught a glimpse earlier today of another *Pac-Man*-themed game! Which is called [*Fruits Frenzy*](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/fruits-frenzy). I may check both yours and this one (although I shall try favouring the coolness/karma orderings). :)
> had a few problems with the controls,
If you are referring to the four directions, I was worried about this. More on this in my answer to Antti Haavikko! If you are referring to some ‘meta-controls’ (such as Return both for going to the next level *and* restarting), they may not be ideal, but I was really in too much of a rush to come up with something clever without risking to break something. (If anyone has a smart suggestion about this point, I am all ears!)
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@antti-haavikko
Thank you very much for trying out the Mac version; now, I know my Mac versions (for **all** previous Love2D games) should work! :D About time!
(2/4)
> I stopped playing at level 14. It really doesn’t get any harder
As others have noticed, the game falls a bit on the easier side; I thought about making it harder, but then, I was afraid that people would get stuck, and I was also a bit biased by how some game jam testers tend not to give that much time to games and stop when things get too hard.
> and gets quite repetitive fast.
In addition to the ‘overlinearness’ of the parameter formulae, my full idea was to have designed levels which introduce you to the game (first, you get only one colour, then two, then more), and have **layers** of ghosts, so that you have to make some fast digging to get the right colour from the bottom. I also thought of having bonuses, such as the classic cherries© (possibly for score?), or for example invincibility, so that you can take out some daylight ghosts. Or combo bonuses if you get a one-coloured series of ghosts, getting you one more cycle, for example.
I see the current state of the game as a prototype that can demonstrate some potential, but it is certainly unfinished and unbalanced.
> The huge wait times don’t really help either. You always have enough lives to just do two at a time and that is very easy to do. Sometimes you can even push for three or four if lucky.
Also agreed; as said in previous answers, I was thinking of having a shorter night. I also balanced the cycle parameter to be near half of the number of required ghosts, but this ends up only getting levels playable, not have a nice steeper difficulty curve (I should really have changed this formula… :().
> The theme take here kinda fights against the actual game design, it would play much better if there was no night phase really and it changed when you first pick something up.
This is an interesting suggestion for a variation on the game (possibly another mode?)! :) Still, I think the night **is** workable with the theme: the trick would be to consider the whole night-day cycle as being ten seconds, and you can put a 2- or 3-second share for the night in it. This is my plan, but I think I will integrate your idea (with due credit!), if this is fine. :)
> Pretty much hated the control scheme how the vertical movements moved diagonally too. It really screwed with my head. The grid isn’t really isometric looking enough for that to make sense.
Ah, I was wondering if this would be troublesome… XD Sorry about it; story time: I intended to have properly displayed pseudo-3D tiles, so I wanted to use the ‘shear’ factor (a fancy geometric transform), but it ended up messing with the coordinates. I also thought about drawing a tile quickly, but it somehow did not cope well, and it was unsatisfying not to have everything generated. Not having much time, I thought I would solve this later; as the ring of the bell came closer, I wondered whether to let this aside, and I wondered whether having these face-looking (rounded) rectangles could make the game feel even more retro, so… I lazily and shamefully kept them. Which, seeing what happened to you and some others (including a bit for myself XD), was a bad conclusion. (Thinking about it, I could have sacrificed the rounded edges and drawn isosceles trapezium using the polygon-drawing function, but… I wanted my fancy rounded edges. XD I know, this is overly silly!)
By the way, the coordinate system for displaying here is one-point perspective / cavalier perspective rather than isometric. ;) See my answer to ManTou as to why. (By the way, there are other fancy names for this projection. And I remember hearing from a recording of Timothy Cain from GDC 2012 that the projection for *Fallout* has quite a fancy name too. X))
(3/4)
> The ghosts looked nice and dynamic enough with their quirky eye animations.
Thanks! This is one of the first early graphical elements I was alluding to; I put some love into this, with smooth eye movement, and rotating eyes when in ‘still’ direction. :) Anecdote: when the claw gets a ghost, I had his direction get set to ‘still’ just out of precaution; only when testing did it luckily dawn on me that this caused the falling ghosts (when you have one while the night comes back) to have twirly eyes, which I thought was super cool. X)
> I don’t think this was the best possible way to display the lives though…
I was worried this was not explicit enough, but I was also worried about having too much explicit text instead of a more intuitive display. I was wondering if the Power Pellet would be clear enough… Then I thought the player would figure it out by himself; this comes down to my not having the time to any tutorial or full-blown in-game indications.
> Good job, neat take on a classic! 👍
Wow, I am happy you still think it is worthy! :) Your comment was both the longest *and* the most critical — I must say I agree with your criticisms… I felt somewhat the same way!
Just as a reminder to everyone: please bear in mind the 48-hour time limit, and the fact that my brainstorming took a **massive** share of it. To be more specific: I started with some graphical themed-elements because I thought of *Pac-Man* very early, but I had the full concept in… early afternoon (about 13:30) of the last day! XD So, if you dismiss the brainstorming phase, this is really more of a **10-hour-made game** than a proper 48-hour one. I tend to invest much time in having a worthy idea, and if I feel it is not, I will get back to the metaphorical blackboard.
(4/4)
@mossieur-patate, I think its cool to have a hard mode that resets you to 0, but to also have a mitigation solution for review mode: - Have a way to skip levels so a reviewer can see the extent of your game design. (let's say higher levels are really interesting, you may want to showcase them anyway) - Have an easy mode, that prevents hard reset for a more relaxed play-through
@dhim Thanks for the suggestions; actually, I have a debugging option that allows you to skip levels! I did not activate it here, because the levels are generated instead of pre-designed, but I had hesitated… Maybe I will. Once again, I wonder if I can in the game jam version, as this is merely about letting a part of the code do its job and just add a written indication about the key.
I really wonder what is legitimate and what is not, since the [rules](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules) are somewhat interpretable.
> Certain **Bug Fixes** are allowed. You **can’t** add new features, but if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline. You are asked to **highlight the changes you make** in your submission (a short change log). You probably wont get a 2nd chance with some players, but at least it wont be a problem for future players.
I guess I will put as a complement an intermediate version with better parameters and level-skipping, notifying people which is which; the problem is, I can only have one navigator version at a time (except if I use another platform, but this would make things complicated…), so some people will not be able to try it.
I know tweaking parameters would greatly enhance the game, and those are super fast adjustments. I am just worried some testers may overlook how easy this would be to tackle. ._.
Oh of course, I didn't try to be overly critical. I just give feedback that I'd find useful myself. So pretty much where to improve. Of course compliments are nice too but not that helpful really.
And yeah with proper visual representation the diagonal movement would have made more sense surely. Really just screwed with my brain at least to see a flat 2d grid where movement wasn't really as expected.
For the health UI the pellet is fine I think. Kinda looks like a coin though so having the mouth slit would help it come across even clearer. My problem with it really wasn't that but the number representation. Just having what is left would have been better. Ie. instead of 3/8, it would show 5. Or even better yet, just repeat the graphic 5 times so 😶😶😶😶😶.
@antti-haavikko
> I didn’t try to be overly critical.
The only occurrence of *overly* in my comment referred to my own silliness, no worries. ;)
> I just give feedback that I’d find useful myself. So pretty much where to improve.
I also thought this was your intent seeing your conclusion! And it was useful; I also provide constructive criticisms when I review games.
> Of course compliments are nice too but not that helpful really.
They may be less helpful, *but* not always: it is good to know what clicked. For example, it was not obvious anyone really noticed the ghosty eyes that much, so I feel putting this level of detail was worth it. :) (I had also planned on having their lower ‘fringes’ have a sideway cyclic translation movement, but left this in store.)
So, when I list things I observed about a game in my (cringingly long) comments/reviews, I talk about both the positive and the negative, and how I perceived it. I agree that enhancement suggestions tend to be more useful, but pinpointing what is right helps identifying current strong points, and gives some confidence. You may not realize this and I may be guilty of it too sometimes, but listing mainly negative points can lead some people to believe their work was shoddy and have quite a let-down. (This did not happen here! XD Although I did think at first you really had an awful time with the game, so I felt sorry.)
> And yeah with proper visual representation the diagonal movement would have made more sense surely.
By the way, version 1.0.2 is just out and solves this! (Without round edges… I swear I will have them back in!) It still needs playtesting to adjust the difficulty curve, but this one is definitely more challenging. (And I only made minimal additions, so that it looks fairly like ‘true first version done right’ if I had spent just some more time on it on that cursed night. Wait, this is not *Castlevania II*. XD)
> Kinda looks like a coin though so having the mouth slit would help it come across even clearer.
Oh, actually, it is *not* a Pac-Man, but a Power Pellet! I wanted to make both the one from the timer and the icon blink, but this was also cancelled for v1.0.
> Just having what is left would have been better. Ie. instead of 3/8, it would show 5.
You may be right, pithier information is often a good sign for player cues’ efficiency! ~~Stealing~~ Noting this down.
> Or even better yet, just repeat the graphic 5 times so 😶😶😶😶😶.
I had thought of it, but since I intended the parameters to get potentially big, I figured this might cause overflowing problems, or even simply be somewhat complicated to parse (for the player) when the number is high. Although it turns it would be workable in the current version. No, wait, a quick calculation leads me to twenty cycles (for level 48) even with the lesser numbers of current v1.0.2, so it is already somewhat big… Or is it, since Link can entertain twenty displayed hearts?
It may be reasonable in the current version, but risky if the game is extended into having potentially super long super challenging levels in some mode. Or the pellets could get gathered into groups of twenty or tens or something, and then the units properly displayed, as in a numeration system! Having the idea as I write, thank you for triggering the beneficial reaction. :)
Thank you a lot for the feedback! I am still wondering whether I should get v1.1 once and for all and then really get to the testing, or alternate between the two… I may pass by (although I intend on favouring coolness orderings and possibly helping out some ‘deserted’ games). :)
I finally managed to play your game :smile:
I found it really hard at first, even though I read the instructions. Second round went better and I feel like the vertical movement is somewhat playing against the player or at least it messes up with my brain :smile:
It might be me but I don't feel like it is getting much harder as you progress. It's more like a matter of getting the hang of it and then you can keep going on for a long time. I actually dropped out at some point mainly because of the long cycle where you can't practically do anything while you wait to be able to claw the ghosts up.
There is room for improvement. Actually I am quite impressed of what you achieved to come up with, considering the lack of time you had. With more time at hand and some play testing you would have probably spotted the weak spots. Anyway grats for getting the game done!
@dhim @hotaloca @chillertyp @mantou @slimefriend @haotian-chen @thoastbot @antti-haavikko @eugenik @tanis
**HEADS-UP:**
Version 1.1 is out! :smiley: It is still not the absolute final version, but in my view, I consider it as the unofficial Jam-format version (although with more debugging, granted, but the game would have been playable even with shadow and collision bugs; after all, even 1.0.2 has the collision bugs!).
You can now stack ghosts (3D!) and encounter variously sized grids, nicer scenery and sounds, get the nasty claw-crane feeling of having trouble to get a deep ghost, and run into harsher/steeper difficulty (or so I hope!). And enjoy helpful features such as highlighting of ghost under scope, real-time shadows, twilight blinking… or difficult-life-making features, such as no-cheating-in-pause-mode. X)
Give priority to games that have not been tested, but if you want to take a look at a version that is closer to what I had in mind and does more justice to the concept, help yourself. :)
--- @tanis Thank you for the test! I do not know if you noticed, but when you played (or at least, when you commented), version 1.0.2 was out, and it does sort both problems out. (Several commenters also noticed these shortcomings.) And both problems are really silly can-be-solved-in-some-minutes matters, by just changing a few parameters. What was I thinking putting a 2 instead of a 3 for the ghost-per-cycle ratio and everything linear?! ._. I advise you to try v1.0.2, it should already feel way more reasonable! It is almost a legitimate Compo version, I was wondering if such last-minute parameter tweaking was fair game or not, and it tortured me not to replace the previous one(s) with this. I am still wondering how Ludum Dare and folks around here stand on this issue! As a tester, I am inclined not to chastise a shortly-made game for parameters unbalance and even consider fixing it all right, but I guess this is not consensual. :/
I am looking forward to version 1.2 which could start looking like a varied game with several problem-solving types depending on the subgame (some reasoning for predesigned-level mode, sheer speed for Panic mode…). :slight_smile: I have a lot of testing to do now (I mean, other games around here!! X)), but I may alternate and slowly build v1.2 so that it happens shortly enough (I do not promise it!). Version 1.1 already does the very heavy, heavy lifting; a careless player may not see it, but if you compare and scrutinise v1.0.2 and v1.1, you should notice the big leap. (The shadow system was somewhat **evil** to properly settle, but I made it! :laughing:) Gameplay is already subtly richer.
> considering the lack of time you had
I tend to invest heavily on having a proper original and promising concept. If I find it quickly (and it did happen sometimes), great; if I do not… oh my. :smile: Well, this happens: a 2 instead of a 3 and square cavalier tiles. XD
So right when I was going to start writing my reply, I saw your comment about the new version of the game. As such, I have now played both versions. Some of my thoughts on the compo version of the game mirrored some other players, so perhaps I can give a sort of perspective on how those have changed with the new version...
Perhaps the first thing I noticed in the compo game was the somewhat unintuitive movement. I would often try to move straight up or straight down, and then end up too far left or right -- in particular, I would sometimes, e.g., intend to move up-right, so I would move right and then up... and then of course I would have gone exactly two times two far to the right. As I continued to play the compo version, the strategy I ended up using for movement was essentially to only move in broad strokes... I would know, for example, that I needed to move to the bottom-left corner, so I would hold down and left, and just sort of not think about it beyond that. To narrow in on a single ghost somewhere on the map, I would tend to sort of move in this same broad pattern, and then try to get more precise as I got closer... and here I would still usually run into trouble. I do think I got somewhat better at intuiting the pattern, by the end--and I do think learning that movement pattern is kind of an interesting learning curve!--but it did remain relatively hard.
In the new version of the game, moving precisely on the grid is easy. Like, it really is so much easier. If I had to guess, it has something to do with video game players being wired to think of parallel lines as the directions along which they move... the original compo game has parallel lines moving up and down, so it feels like the arrow keys should move us up and down, while in the updated game, the parallel lines are diagonal, so it feels like up and down should move us diagonally. (Also interesting: after playing the post-compo version, the compo version seems easier to control... or maybe I had already gotten better at it, who knows?)
The next thing I wanted to talk about from the compo version is the memory puzzles. I think these are really quite fun. My absolute favorite thing to do in the compo game was to just relax and let my intuition tell me where to go... to try to use my vague memory of what I saw in the corner of my eye to just guess and grab a ghost. This strategy, unfortunately, failed almost universally. But it was a good time. I suppose the easy difficulty of the compo version made trying this possible.
Of course, the main strategy I would use would be to track down one big group of ghosts of the same color, and to pick them off during the day phase. More particularly, I would basically try to track one of those ghosts as I was leaving the night phase, and then visually track with my eyes where one of them was walking to during the day phase. After capturing those two ghosts is when I would try to use my failed corner-of-the-eye strategy.
One interesting mechanic related to that is that most of the Pac-Mans are in the corners of the map. This means that, once I have picked up a ghost, I do not need to look where I'm going to drop it off, generally--I can spend most of my visual focus tracking that one other ghost. Although, when I was moving, e.g., down-left, once I hit the bottom wall, it seemed like I needed to stop holding down in order to actually move left and get to the pink Pac-Man. Either way, this is I think why I tended not to go for orange ghosts... they would require more visual focus on the player character in order to drop them off.
[continued...]
Another important point about ghosts: the red ones stick out a lot. I almost always went for red ghosts first, because it was so much easier to build a mental image with these red hot spots than with pink or blue or orange hot spots... those colors all tended to blend together into one mass of duller color, while the red stood out in my mind quite sharply. It was pretty easy to build a mental picture of basically where all the red ghosts were before switching to day cycle, while this didn't really work for the other colors. And of course, this is where my "corner-of-the-eye" strategy comes from... I would have this mental picture of all of the red ghosts, exactly where they were during the night cycle, and I would just head to those general locations after I grabbed the two I had located precisely. This didn't really work so well for the pink or blue ghosts... I could only build a reasonably good mental map if there was a really large chunk of them, and then I could sort of think that "oh, that part of the map is mostly pink ghosts."
All of these different mental mechanics are pretty interesting, I think. There are definitely other memory games I've played, and of course there's puzzle games, and all, but I can't recall trying to describe this particular mode of interaction before. It is almost like the game you wrote runs not only on my computer but in my brain... it gets me to "mentally picture" things in a way that is, I guess, kind of like a "memory" card game but also meaningfully different and novel. In particular, the vividness of the red being so important to the gameplay and to my mental picture is not something I can recall describing before.
Okay, now for some a couple thoughts on the updated version.
First, wow, this is much harder. I think this is probably generally a good thing--as others have discussed, the compo version does get pretty easy, as all you really need to do is capture two ghosts per round.
However, there are a couple aspects of the difficulty that I think are somewhat questionable. First, there's a strange latency sometimes when trying to drop a ghost onto a Pac-Man. I think it has something to do with pushing space too soon after moving. But it basically results in my key press being eaten, which is frustrating.
Second, picking up ghosts is really slippery. If a ghost is moving between tiles, it seems almost impossible to pick it up. What I end up doing is failing to pick up a ghost because it moves, so I follow it and hit space, and then I fail again because it moves, repeat. I'm not sure what the intended balance is here--are moving ghosts intended to be very low-priority targets? Is the intended strategy to always go after ghosts that are sitting still? That would make some sense, but it makes the memory aspect much harder as then I cannot merely keep a list of a few ghosts of the same color, but I instead have to have a general idea of the color of basically every ghost. This is because, when choosing which ghost to go after, I have to choose based on whether they are moving or not rather than by their color, and so I will need a way to know which Pac-Man to go to afterwards.
There are a number of changes I do like, however. As previously mentioned, the movement became much much more intuitive in this version. Another thing I really like: the new day/night cycle. I went back to the compo version and I was shocked at how long the night seemed in comparison. The only weird thing--whenever I get caught with a ghost during the night, I end up sitting there processing the "you got stunned" animation for a second, and once I finally move on to start looking at the ghosts, literally that very second is when it turns to day. That always feels weird.
[continued...]
One last thing--wow are the graphics slick in the new version. I booted it up and I was immediately having a good time. The ghost selector is great, the ghost blinking is great, if I'm not mistaken the shadows are also great... it feels really polished graphically. It's cool that the graphics are done procedurally--they really do feel good.
And, on the same note, the sound effects for picking up and depositing ghosts feel great too. Overall it just has really good game feel, I guess.
Okay, so, to summarize--I have lots of similar thoughts on the compo version as other players, with respect to the controls and to the difficulty level. Good use of the theme, insofar as a memory game is a really neat genre of game, and this one is a novel memory game in my opinion. And, good use of procedural graphics, especially in the post-compo version. Great job! :smile:
@tanis About ‘what [I] achieved’: I forgot to say that I reused some utility code from my own personal ‘codebase’, especially for UI. But the core of the game was really fresh. :)
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@honey-pony
Hey, thank you for passing by and the interesting detailed comparative review! :) I am glad I published an update in time, I thought it was somewhat important, especially to highlight what could be solved as opposed to being an intrinsic concept-related problem. (I mentally did the same for your game, imagining the length was something like a tenth. ;))
> Perhaps the first thing I noticed in the compo game was the somewhat unintuitive movement.
This goes miles to show how **implicit** cues are paramount in video games. And how a silly rushed design overlook (‘Hey, I cannot make rounded perspective tiles, so I will keep those square rounded ones!’) can be detrimental.
> I do think learning that movement pattern is kind of an interesting learning curve! […] it has something to do with video game players being wired to think of parallel lines as the directions along which they move…
A thought that crossed my mind was that it could be possible to get voluntarily fuzzy/uncommon and varying movement controls, either here in some special mode or in another game, as a concept. Such as following curved trajectories.
> But it was a good time. I suppose the easy difficulty of the compo version made trying this possible.
Glad you found enjoyment in the (semi-broken?) first draft! :) You decided to use a relaxed way of playing which matched it, but a good design objective is not to let a player have a so-called ‘dominant strategy’; here, the dominant strategy is clearly to single out two ghosts (which is workable memory-wise), and then collect them.
> Either way, this is I think why I tended not to go for orange ghosts… they would require more visual focus on the player character in order to drop them off.
Very interesting! Actually, I had thought of having all receivers in the corners originally, but since I rushed programming and placing them, I lazily added two special row and column to the grid, instead of also having proper 0-ones, or even simply putting the receivers in the original corners. X) I think I will change the orange receiver’s position.
> pink or blue or orange hot spots… those colors all tended to blend together into one mass of duller color
Super interesting, as I think this did not happen to me! (And I wonder how colourblind people feel about it, since they also perceive contrast…) It may depend on people, because I thought orange was also garish. For the record, I took the original *Pac-Man*’s colours as a homage, using the following picture (and straight colour picker tool :p).
Ghostly ancestors.
(1/2)
(continued: 2/2)
> I can’t recall trying to describe this particular mode of interaction before. […] it gets me to “mentally picture” things in a way that is, I guess, kind of like a “memory” card game but also meaningfully different and novel.
I am super happy, because originality of concept is my absolute primary target. :) (And it has to work as a game, too, of course. XD) I spent about a day and a half coming up with the right idea, which is insane considering the two-day time limit. (Three quarters - one quarter is a nice coincidence with that game’s new day and night, by the way!)
> It is almost like the game you wrote runs not only on my computer but in my brain…
I had given some thought previously about what a game is, and I came to the conclusion that a game is not so much an external object as **the internal cognitive process the player experiences**. It is a good sign this happened to you. :)
> The only weird thing […]
I was also wondering about this! I think this is still a bit of a penalty, as you lose some time for repositioning to anticipate the next day phase. Nevertheless, I had thought of another harsher penalty, which would be to prevent or hinder the player from seeing the colours for a brief moment (for example, a close-up version of the ghost you held is flashed through the screen, or colour gets blurred).
> it feels really polished graphically.
Ah, am I glad this turns out so well to you! :) This may be the first time I get a positive reaction for my ‘programmer art’. XD Actually, I tend to separate graphical enhancement between *functional* ones and merely *decorative* ones; those I set up are almost exclusively functional (except maybe for the glass panes; and yet, even they have useful layer lines). I have realized for some time that concentrating on visual functionality can lead to fortunate enjoyable graphics: ‘just show as much as needed and not more’ seems to be a nice recipe to get a good result in reasonable time. I was myself surprised at how nice the shadows felt for the looks of the ghosts, it gives them more 3D perspective / less flatness!
Thank you very much for your review, your feedback on the new version is useful and will be put to use in the near future. :) And happy if you had a good time — debugging those shadows was hellish for me at some point, though ultimately not in vain. XD
> About ‘what [I] achieved’: I forgot to say that I reused some utility code from my own personal ‘codebase’, especially for UI. But the core of the game was really fresh. :)
Of course I did the same. I used my base code that I reuse for most projects like this... even though this time there was not much to be used as the base code is mostly about managing entities and movement code, platforming, animations, all that stuff that in the end I sacrificed to be sure to have the core of the game working :smile:
And from my point of view, tweaking a few parameters after the compo deadline would still be something sensible to allow. But I guess the main issue is that somebody could abuse that and it would not be fair.
I will try out the new versions and let you know then!
@tanis
> Of course I did the same.
[Some people](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/$301360/ludum-dare-hard-mode) are more hardcore. ;) Respect to them, by the way.
> tweaking a few parameters after the compo deadline would still be something sensible to allow. But I guess the main issue is that somebody could abuse that and it would not be fair.
I thought about letting people use their best judgments, which is why I have been transparent about which version is what, and what I thought I was able to create depending on the two deadlines. The only unfortunate thing is that I do not have a simple way to get several navigator versions running at the same time… Hopefully, all desktop files should be enough for all systems (the macOS one should run using Antti Haavikko’s tip, and getting Love2D — which is lightweight, really! — to have the .love file run on Linux should work too), and the navigator ZIP files are also available.
> I will try out the new versions and let you know then!
Do not feel forced to, as there are a lot of games awaiting testers. ;) But if you do: version 1.0.2 is pretty much ‘parameter-tweaking done-right Compo version’, while version 1.1 is ‘hard(er)-mode although-without-predesigned-levels-nor-Panic-mode-but-I-could-have {ambitious Compo} / Jam version’. I am motivated to extend the game, I am rather happy with how it turned out. :)
I think I will test your game too! Although I already have written down several to check, and have the Classic/Smart filters to use, and am… so slow. XD
Wow that's great! It is very clever to use pacman ghosts as we instantly understand when we can catch'em! Was very fun to play, well done!
That's a good game, love the PAC-Man feeling
:/ It wasn't clear what I was supposed to do. I think that sometimes dropping a ghost into one of the sideline pacmen feeds them? But it doesn't seem to work most of the time. And I'm confused about what's supposed to be happening at night? Assuming I'm just supposed to feed ghosts to sideline pacmen, what's the challenge? It seems like the winning strategy is to just feed one ghost per day (so I don't risk getting caught with one in my mouth at sunset), but that seems pretty slow and not very interesting. I didn't really like the diagonal up/down movement, it wasn't very intuitive for me.
This piu-piu-piu sound made me mad! Overall interesting concept, ha-ha!
Hey, thanks for making the game! I played through it and recorded my thoughts.
https://youtu.be/kGuwa-wG2-A
This is an interesting take on the classic PacMan with the night and day cycle triggered by time instead of eating something big. It reminds me of my game :smile:
The ghosts sure look better than mine :wink:
A minor downside is that there is not much to do during the night cycle.
What a cute and clever idea! It's cool how you use the language of pacman to make this concept, it feels natural and intuitive without you having to do a lot of work to explain. Mark Rosewater calls this concept piggybacking {I'll link an article about it}. https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/piggybacking-2012-08-20
I like the split between the two phases: in one you can act but are have less information, and the other you have the information but can't act. I like the way this tests your memory and makes you interact with trying to remember the ghosts. Generally I'd pick two or three ghosts to actively remember per cycle. I wonder if there is any way to make you have to remember properties about the whole group instead of singling out ghosts to focus on. The cycles in this game are especially successful because of the overarching timer on reaching an amount of sacrifices. {this framing is so funny btw}
In the web version I played the grid perspective was completely ruined. I thought it was just some stupid movement rules I wasn't understanding, but looking at other comments it seems this might be unintentionial? I'll post what the grid looked like for me PacmanPerspective.PNG I didn't even notice that this was meant to be a specific isometric perspective, i just saw a jagged grid with varying rows and columns. For what it's worth I tried the 1.1 version, and that way of displaying is much better. I liked that a lot
Cool to see that you included a colorblind mode. I don't need it but I like to see game developers thinking about it.
the idea is a really good mix between genres, and is good for my memory haha
i found the controls to be a bit hard, the pellet was not always where i expected it to be. however, nice work on this game!
Nice take on the theme and game concept. I was confused about the objective, then I read the description :smile: Might be good to mention needing to match colors in-game. Once I read the manual, the game experience was great!
Mechanics and artwork are so beautifully designed.continue building games guys 🤗
When I first started the game, I was just confused. There was so much text on this page, the itch.io page, and then the additional readme that I just ignored everything and pressed play. Had no idea what I was doing, saw pac-men and ghosts, tried to move with WASD, tried to move with the mouse, and then gave up and came back to this page for another read.
Once I'd actually had a read and tried the game again, I found it to be a lot of fun. The core concept of swapping between knowing where the ghosts should go and actually being able to move them there was pleasantly challenging. It was also a great take on the "every 10 seconds" theme that I hadn't seen before. While the two games weren't particularly innovative on their own, mixing them together had a great result.
The only criticism I have with the game itself is that moving the claw is unintuitive. I understand that moving down a row puts you at the same index in that new row, but I could just not get used to it. When I press down, I want to go down, not down and left.
This is an interesting take on the theme. It's basically a memory game, like those chimpanzee experiments to test working memory. The Pac-Man theme was a nice touch, and worked well with what you are trying to achieve i.e. leave the ghosts alone when multi-coloured and grab when uniform, as that's exactly how Pac-Man works. Having Pac-Man as a grabber from a graber-machine was also inspired, great idea.
The two things I wasn't too keen on were the oblique grid with vertical tiles, as it made movement a little confusing. And the music started to get to me after a while.
I think my working memory is not that great though as I could only reach level 4. Not sure I can add any suggestions for improvements as everything seems tight in a mechanics sense. Great entry.
Good stuff :8ball:
Excellent work! It's a very fun take on Pac-Man, and I also like the take on the theme with having 5 seconds of day and 5 seconds of night instead of just one event that occurs every 10 seconds (and the little circular display was great!). I found the movement up and down kind of unintuitive and had a hard time wrapping my head around it. I liked the retro-style sound. This was definitely a worthwhile experiment!
I love the twist on Pac-Man. The integration of the theme was perfect. Great job including accessibility features. I only had time to play the compo version, but overall I found it to be very entertaining. Some feedback when the ghost is eaten would be nice. Sometimes it was not immediately obvious if it was the right match.
Super original and easy to understand! A general strategy I found myself using was to look out for the most abundant colour, make mental notes on the general position of the ghosts with that colour. I'm sure that wouldn't be as easy in later levels, but it worked for me :laughing:
Awesome work!
I'm sorry I won't return the favor because I'm pretty spartan with my comments. I played the web version, which is probably the older one. I understand your struggle as my game from last year had to be made in 24h
I might be mentally deficient, but the mechanics were not obvious at first. I thought each pacman was supposed to be fed at most once, but then I figured it out and it went on smoothly. Though this is a standard ludum dare "no time to make a proper tutorial", unlike my "have time to make a tutorial and screw it up"
Aiming is a bit ass because of isometric view. Good old top-down would have worked better. The newer version seems to use rectangular tiles, so you already figured that out.
The idea is pretty cool and definitely fits pacman, but also gets boring pretty fast. I had no incentive to play past the 10-th-or-something stage, because it only kept steadily increasing in scale and had nothing new to offer. Either introduce new wacky mechanics as the game progresses (I understand you only made it in half a day, this is just a hint), and make levels scale harder so they feel more impactful. There isn't much point to having 40 levels if each one is basically the same. The original pacman does it, but it isn't good design
Had a lot of fun playing the game
Wow there are a lot of commets here ! Your game is great, kinda hard to understand at first but making a memory game is good.
Really neat idea for an arcade game. Simple but elegant. I loved the pac-man skin.
Now for some more constructive comments.
Not sure if it is a bug or not, but what I played on the HTML build had an aisometric viewing angle, which made it hard to keep track of the ghosts and to pick them up. The top down view I see on your images makes a lot more sence, it is a lot clearer than the isometric angle, and I hope it was a bug and not a design choice. I also think that a huge portion of the screen was wasted that way by not really showing anything. The actual game should take up the whole screen.
Also, it was not clear enough to me when does the stage end. Like when do I lose and how many ghosts do I need to feed to win? Maybe the UI needs a little bit of work on that front.
Good job overall, perfect scope for a LD game. Also, I am really impressed by how consistently thorough you are with everything you do. Every review, every comment, even the game description are really verbose.