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Space Hourglass
Space Hourglass
By pattedecanaard
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 14 | 4.18 | 38 | |
| Fun | 41 | 3.98 | 37 | |
| Innovation | 6 | 4.38 | 37 | |
| Theme | 11 | 4.41 | 37 | |
| Graphics | 14 | 4.37 | 37 | |
| Audio | 11 | 4.32 | 37 | |
| Mood | 16 | 4.18 | 37 | |
Comments
I really like the audio, it really fits with the whole style/theme! It took me a second to understand the movement and character selections system, but after learning it the game is very smooth and fun to play. I think my only feedback is that maybe some keyboard input could help with speeding up character switching and other functionalities, not unlike the optional hotkeys in FTL.
mstrp
2022-10-03 06:36
I enjoyed this. Sound and music is great, game play is good especially when you get up to 30+ beats and things get more hectic. Sometimes it feels like the character that you are controlling doesn't respond properly to input, takes the wrong way around the circle or interpolates very slowly to it's destination. Overall very well done!
akkara
2022-10-04 20:32
Really great game! A little hard to get around at first but soon enough, you get all the mechanics. I really enjoy all of it, from the sound design to the art (I love the pixelated look) and what a concept of a game! It's Awesome! Everything hits me right where it should, an endless game with some puzzling to balance resources. I love that everything is based around time, all the upgrades make your men do things faster that allows you to gain time to do more thing before the hourglass flip over.
I ended up to 74 beats on my second try, when all the men I spec into defense decided not to war anymore ^^
This is probably the best game I have played in this jam so far! The art, the gameplay, the sound, everything is just a total blast! This game ROCKS! AMAZNG WORK!
Really fun game, and very pretty too! Super impressed that this is a compo game, great job :tada:
I'm a little confused on the objectives, because I could obtain resources and destroy the enemies, but I wasn't sure when it would end, or if I was going for a high score, stuff like that. Still, I had fun!
itooh
2022-10-06 18:30
Really clean design! There's a lot of cool visual ideas, and putting the hourglass at the very center is both neat in term of UI and use of the theme.
It took me some time to really understand what I could do. The introduction text mix narration and tutorial, it can be hard to clearly understand what it means. Also the effect of the job are not visible immediately, and I didn't notice at first the icon on top of the characters. When there was more than three of them, it was hard to read how many were doing which task. I never used Speed Up in the end, and managed to survive for 38 beats. While progression was pleasant, I felt like there was some lack of significant choices to make. Most of the time I was reacting to the moment, switching character without remembering very well each one specialty, forgetting to grab rocks, and wondering why a character on Defend was just walking slowly ignoring all enemies. :P The game could either be less chaotic to allow player to plan more, or automatize more actions so that the player focus mostly on resources management.
Still, it's overall an impressive entry, with a great core mechanic and a fantastic look. Great job!
deprecat
2022-10-06 22:27
Man I love the color choices and bits of animation you fit into this. The animation especially does a great job expressing exactly what is happening with the hourglass and how it's impacting the world. Really good stuff.
The job functions did take me a moment to understand, simply because it wasn't as responsive. It feels more like telling your sims to eat food and hoping they actually do it. I don't find anything wrong with that mechanic but a future build of this would hopefully invest some time in explaining that piece further to players. I never really had to change the jobs until the first enemy showed up so by the time the threat had arrived I wasn't sure what to do right away. I could have sped stuff up of course but that just makes me feel ill prepared haha.
Really solid work here! Would love to see this expanded.
arkinrev
2022-10-06 22:28
This was really well made, and reminds me of Castle Panic with an added time constraint driving your actions. The visuals were great, the upgrades gave a cool progression, and it was just plain fun overall. Fantastic work!
I didnnt even played it yet ,but I already don't get how it's so underated. The art immediatly catched my attention.
rexagon
2022-10-06 22:35
This game is fun! Survived 40 beats, everything started to turn into a mess. Maybe it would be better to replace the "speed up" job with "repair" or something like that. But I love this style, music and how they manage their clock, it's amazing!
Sure I liked it ,honestly didn't mamanged it from the 1st try). The idea surely is interesting and unique ,very good job!
kler
2022-10-06 23:09
Really fun and addictive game! I love both the concept and execution. The art is great, sound design fits well with the mood. Nice use of the theme. I really like the idea of slowing time by adding back sand into the hourglass. I'll definitely add this one to my library. Great job!
Amazing game! A lot of fun and really good music! Managed to get to beat 38.
score.PNG
oolimry
2022-10-07 01:03
This is great! The core mechanic is really really interesting and deep once I got the hang of it, and prompted me to start experimenting with many different strategies to see what works the best. It took me a while to fully understand what was going on with the people and the hourglass, but once I understood it really hit me like magic!
It's also really really well polished, gameplay is smooth and I didn't find anything particularly annoying. I love the art style and look of the game, and the music is great too!
Amazing game :)
This one is in my top list! Took a while to understand some of the mechanics, but the game feels amazing. Everything is extremely polished, the music and art mix together well. Nicely done! 10/10
I had a lot of fun playing this! The game loop was really satisfying, and while more of a tutorial might've been nice, the controls were pretty easy to figure out, and after a couple beats I had a strategy down. My only suggestion would be to make the UI a separate "panel", as it was a little frustrating when objects spawned behind buttons, and I had to wait for the beat to end to collect them. Other than that, really nice and I loved the artwork!
I have a doubt about the interface on the game but it's not very important (It's just annoying sometimes when you don't want to click on a grab thing). But the design is very clean and appropriate. Very harmonious.
The time changes makes we go away from the "10s", but I really prefer when you play with the theme than if you just follow it. It's the price to pay ! But... I think it's not enough balanced. You shouldn't be able to slow down time so much. The strategy becomes "Slow, kill, speed, slow, kill, speed...". And the main problem is you are stuck with your "10s hourglass". We upgrade and the hourglass not, so we have a full control on it very fast. And we can't lose, forced to sabotate our game to finish.
You know my score. ;)
But it's the only real problem I see. It's maybe difficult to understand the concept, but I mostly misunderstood because of the speed change of the characters. Now I understand it depends of the distance between the character and the grab thing, but I firstly though that was about the sand.
OK now the qualities : The idea, the look, the gameplay (But the previous points), the details (Characters' names, the mini-tuto/story), the fact that it's enjoyable to just wait and look at all the guys working.
Good concept, enjoyable to play. I didn't tryhard for nothing ! ;)
kerdelos
2022-10-07 12:27
I like the concept and the game is quite fun. Graphics and music are nice and fits well with the music. I did find the UI getting kind of in the way of the game though. I would have liked to have an auto grab option so I wouldn't have to micro manage my grabbing chracter. I also had a lot of trouble finding the character I wanted when I was circling in the UI. And I didn't get why you would ever want to speed up the hourglas ahaha. Anyway, UIs are notoriously hard to make and your did a pretty good job for a game jam, so, congrats !
asue
2022-10-07 18:02
Le jeu est incroyable. L'ambiance sonore, l'atmosphère générale, les graphismes, les effets sonores, l'UI, tout est super bien maîtrisé. Le concept est original et addictif ; je pense que tu pourrais clairement le transformer en jeu mobile, il y a énormément de potentiel. Le seul petit bémol est la difficulté, il suffit d'avoir un mec super rapide qui ralentit le sablier et les autres qui défendent, et tu peux tenir très longtemps facilement. Mais bon, je pense que ça peut se corriger rapidement et déjà en 48h tu as fait un excellent taf. Gros GG à toi !
alks
2022-10-07 18:56
Nice game! The graphics are really nice! Game is simple but really well made and feels great to play! Really good work!
Wow, amazing job! Great graphics and music, very polished and innovative use of the theme! Had a lot of fun with this! It would be great to have keyboard shortcuts to switch between the characters. And I think the screen shake is a bit too much. Also had a bug where non of my people were attacking enemies even though they were all on defense and I lost the run
SPOILER/bug alert: If you get 2 people with speed 4 you can stop time and farm infinite points
Screenshot 2022-10-07 204421.png
2022-10-08 10:23
Bravo il y a vraiment moyen de pousser le concept pour en faire un petit jeu bien complet de puzzle-management.
bqq
2022-10-08 12:50
Great game, had fun micromanaging the little guys! My strategy ended up being to have everyone else defending (and upgraded to be very good at defending, and a bit of speed), and then my first guy just max speed/grappling gathering upgrade points for everyone :D Music and graphics were really on point as well!
space_hourglass.png
substain
2022-10-09 11:38
Survived 38 Beats! Great concept, and you've got a nice soundtrack there :) The only issue I found was that its not clear why the workers move slowly sometimes. Is it something with the movement direction?
33 Beats here! The game is a bit difficult to understand, it took me a moment. After you understand how it works it's a lot more fun though, it's cool to control characters like this. I'm still not sure if i understand exactly all actions i was doing. The concept is pretty unique, and with some fixes (like the UI placement), it can turn into a really good game! Anyway this is one of the most complete entries i've seen in the compo, congrats!
f1krazy
2022-10-10 09:30
This is amazing, especially for a Compo entry. The graphics and sound are all on-point, and the gameplay loop is solid if a little complex. The difficult ramps up a little slowly at first, but after that it's perfect. You can keep up pretty easily at first, but somewhere around the 30 beats mark you gradually get completely overwhelmed (I lasted 37 beats in total). Great job!
vhalenn
2022-10-10 15:23
Almost perfect game ! It is really cool ! It is just hard to select moving characters and see enemies coming from above or below because the borders are really smaller than on the sides !
Great music, the graphics are so good. It's super fun. I agree with someone mentioning adding at least a shortcut to switch between the characters, I think that would make it easier to play without really making the gameplay become too easy. It also took me a bit to understand, but once I did it was super fun to see the lil dudes going around and doing things.
Honestly though, I've got the music in the background I love it.