briceprs 2022-10-03 21:38
Really nice game ! Love the mood and the sound.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → Heartbeat
By shess, yanrishatum and Elvendan
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 60 | 4.15 | 21 | |
| Fun | 173 | 3.89 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 42 | 4.18 | 21 | |
| Theme | 55 | 4.31 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 250 | 4.10 | 21 | |
| Audio | 43 | 4.23 | 21 | |
| Mood | 15 | 4.52 | 21 |
Really nice game ! Love the mood and the sound.
Really fun! Some things were a tad hard to get used to, and I don't think some things were implemented.
But this is incredible!
It's a bit complicated but the art is really nice!
I think I beat it? I was holding the brakes and it flashed and restarted (maybe because I instinctively pressed space?). Very cool, like the ramp up of doodads to manage and the reassuring text. I liked the variation in the different controls. Nice job!
I like the multitasking gameplay. It is fun and challenging.
Very cool concept! Love the audio and aesthetic. Good variations of things to do. Pretty tough too. Well done!!
Art style is really nice, and gameplay is fun, I encountered a multitude of audio bugs where things would cut off though and sometimes the audio would just turnoff altogether, and if I accidently pressed two buttons at the same time, it wouldn't pickup the input. I did manage to beat the game though and aside from those small issues it was a fun experience and cool atmosphere!
This was quite fun! the graphics look nice and sound and mood work very well. You could add some kind of indication that draws the players attention to the newly introduced systems. All in all great work!
A very fun and addicting game. I love how simple all the controls are until it starts to pile up. Really great sound effects and visual feedback. Sometimes it felt like the space bar wasn't being responsive. I wish the end game and the restart needed a specific button to click because I would restart the game immediately after dying and when I finally landed I accidentally skipped past the win screen because I was still trying to play the game. Very hard towards the end but still enjoyed it thoroughly. Great art and music. Amazing job!
Really good game! Definitely felt the stress as more systems started to fail. If there was no red flashing light upon my heart failing it probably would've taken me a lot more tries to get it right. Perhaps the music could've been more tense, but the current soundtrack also has its place as the character calming themselves. Good job!
Ok I was sooooo stressed until I landed ! The mood is very nice, well done !
This is a very polished game. The audio and visuals are top-notch! The gameplay was very hectic and there was an almost panic-like urgency to flick switches and push buttons.
That said, the keyboard bindings could use some improvement. Since the game is running in browser Alt and Ctrl are dangerous buttons due to the browser's own shortcuts. For example, in my Chrome Alt moves focus to the browser settings and Ctrl+1/2/3 switches tabs. I had to be really careful not to press too many buttons at once and after pressing Alt I always had to bring focus back to the game with a mouse click. Needless to say, in such a stressful game this added some unnecessary frustration. :sweat_smile:
Also, I had very little time to read the text prompts after all of the ship's "features" came online. My eyes were too busy scanning the dashboard for things to fix. :grin:
Overall this was still one of the best entries I've played in this LD!
This was so cool ! Best Game I played for this edition so far. It was addictive and I couldn't stop until I won (which took a couple of tries, since it was pretty hard). This was very stressful (in a good way). The gameplay, which seemed simple at first glance, was very well thought. The music was also very cool. I loved it, well done !
@stmatn > You could add some kind of indication that draws the players attention to the newly introduced systems
Yeah, I did experiment with the idea a bit at some point, but it looked quite yikes, frankly. I do think that some elements need better visual indicators of their interaction state. (The small LEDs on some of them actually were added mainly to better indicate the state).
@paul-avallone > Sometimes it felt like the space bar wasn’t being responsive.
That's definitely an oversight with the graphic assets on the timer circle as it's not properly aligned with the time where you can and can't press space yet. The red vignette starting to appear is an accurate presentation of the timing, however.
> I wish the end game and the restart needed a specific button to click because I would restart the game immediately after dying and when I finally landed I accidentally skipped past the win screen because I was still trying to play the game.
I've dropped a small update to add a 3 second delay before you can restart the game to ensure players won't skip it by accident.
@juutis > That said, the keyboard bindings could use some improvement
I agree with that, however I'm not sure which keys to use alternatively, plus the keybindings are baked into the textures in the first place. (Also Cltr+Alt+1/2/3 is a global hotkey for me as well, so I feel the pain)
@yanrishatum , the LEDs are in fact a good addition and work well if you know what they mean / what to do :) I would just change the white explanatory text to something that transports more urgency and is faster to read. I think of a flashing bright red warning sign next to "O2 broken! Pump manually!" or "Pressure leaking! Turn wheel!". But that's just an idea ;)
Finally managed to clear it! I'm bad at these kinds of games.
There's a lot to do here; I appreciate the use of keyboard shortcuts for most of the actions. I was a bit confused at first on what was killing me; I wish the death screen pointed out your mistake. I lost several lives to not knowing how the o2 pump worked (and a few more after when I was only reading the LED instead of looking at the gauge). A lot of this probably just comes to being introduced to mechanics in a high stress environment.
A few more audio cues could be useful. The red screen flash on the space bar one was super helpful, but many others lacked any real big "Pay attention to me" states beyond just being red; the switch board got me a lot since I tended to not focus on it. Perhaps a pulsing or flashing state would help? there's already a lot of red on the screen so a LED turning red doesn't stand out much when you're in a panic. Honestly though these are all minor annoyances mostly coming back to my lack of skill in this class of game. Other than the O2 pump, everything else was easy to understand in the heat of things and worked as expected. The theme is well represented as well.
Music is comfy.
Nice work!
Really polished on all fronts but also really a LOT to deal with! I kept dying right after the wipers came online. I thought I was doing everything right, but the danger meter kept going deeper and deeper into the red.
Been thinking of something like this as well. Nicely done and well built. Music is good too!
I just don't understand the losing conditions. Sometimes I press everything right, everything is green but I am ending up dead anyway. Do you have to press space only in the red zone? Or do it more often?
@nicekot > Do you have to press space only in the red zone? Or do it more often?
Rather as soon as red vignette starts to appear, i.e. once every 10 seconds. The bottom-left circle is not accurate to the timing.
Well, for people who wanted easier gameplay MASSIVE SPOILERS on mechanics:
1. As soon as red vignette appears - it signals that you're clear to press space with a 1s reaction time. Afterwards you take damage every second (indicated by quite heavy vignette + sound que) 2. You'd want to keep your oxygen in yellow bar area on a high side, but not orange. Pump too much - you start to take damage (LED turns orange on low damage and red on high). 2. Pressure you just need to keep low, however pressure chambers (aka switched below the wheel) accelerate pressure build up by 20%. 3. Wipers literally do nothing other than unfog the window. 4. 1-2-3 switches also only control the distance screen display (cut mechanic with you having to press and hold break button at specific altitude instead of as soon as cover opens up) 5. Alt-Shift-Ctrl switches cause ship to move, in theory making shooting asteroids harder. Otherwise do nothing. 6. Asteroids do a bunch of damage if they reach the ship + create window cracks. Just click 'em. Cracks, unless taped - accelerate oxygen leak by 20%. 7. As soon as button opens you should just abandon everything else and hold it. In fact, when button is held I blatantly cheat and disable player taking any damage in order to ensure he doesn't die, however he still dies if he took more than 70HP damage (not gonna say how much damage things do, but asteroids deal a ton, and overpumped oxygen is a sure way to early grave)
Also game split up in roughly 3 stages: First minute is "learning", where you get mechanics unlocking one by one. Second minute is ramp up stage. And last 20 seconds is chaos stage. Game duration was decided on quite early and everything was designed with that in mind.
tl;dr: Just keep oxygen in high yellow bar, keep pressure low, press space every 10 seconds, shoot asteroids, hold the break button and you're set.
oh my goodness that was intense. I really liked how the keyboard was explored here, it felt really organic Screenshot_1.jpg