thegamearchitect 2022-10-03 14:56
Plays fine, nice responsive controls, gravity feel right. High rate of fire, a well put together game, some nice audio too.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → Stellar Sauce
By wheffle
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 246 | 3.40 | 39 | |
| Fun | 206 | 3.40 | 39 | |
| Innovation | 370 | 2.93 | 39 | |
| Theme | 249 | 3.55 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 312 | 3.23 | 39 | |
| Audio | 121 | 3.56 | 38 | |
| Humor | 149 | 3.05 | 37 | |
| Mood | 203 | 3.33 | 39 |
Plays fine, nice responsive controls, gravity feel right. High rate of fire, a well put together game, some nice audio too.
Fun game with a good gimmick, though the web build is stuttery. Jumps could have been better because right now they're pretty unresponsive, and mobs shouldn't be able to shoot offscreen
I could not figure out the ketchup puzzle. I moved the ball up and down for 10 minutes and nothing happened
@alaah This was my first time making a side-scroller, so I definitely have room to improve. I have noticed the HTML5 version has some issues. The red orb shouldn't move up and down infinitely, so if it was doing that without any progress then there was an issue :/
Really enjoyed this! The jumps were a little float-ey so I struggled a little to get through some seconds but there was always places to hide from the beam while I was struggling so I never really felt punished for it. I loved the music and the art was great too. I did end up leaning a slightly cheaty strategy in the final couple of levels of just always shooting in the direction I was running to take care of enemies in a shelter before I can even see it, so maybe some kind of ammo counting or need to reload to nerf that a little? Before I started doing that, I really liked the forcing function the laser provided of needing to push into a place full of enemies, its a cool idea. Great work as always.
@aevek Thanks for the feedback! I've never actually done a proper 2D platformer before. Tuning the movement is harder than I thought it would be! I did realize shooting offscreen was a pretty effective cheese, but I didn't manage my time well this jam and wasn't able to polish some of the rough edges. As usual, the "test weapon" ended up being the only weapon. I think some clever level design would have mitigated that, like adding more obstacles and verticality.
Cool little game! The stand out features for me are the music and sound effects and the amazing pixel explosion that happens when you destroy an enemy. the death ray kept me on my toes and made it a bit of a challenge. Controls worked pretty well although sometimes the character can get stuck on the sides of platforms. Great entry overall!
A nice game overall, the player controller felt slightly unpolished and jump took a little while to get used to, but other than that it's a good entry, there was a good number of enemies and the death ray added a nice additional challenge.
That's an interesting gameplay mechanic - just a deadly ray every ten seconds. I was unsure about that long path where you must take one hit, but in the end I completed to destroy the ketchup. The movement control is a bit wanky, the friction of surfaces especially on corners cause you to stop and give up, because pushing against the cliff is not building enough force to overcome it but to postpone jump-defeat-admit. I would like to see how it would have worked with a rectangular collision shape for the player instead of a capsule. Well done for 48 hours!
@bredera @emmatw @fis Thanks for playing guys, and the feedback! The movement is definitely janked up and I think that holds the game back quite a bit, but I learned a ton about platformer movement for next time. The choice to go with a genre I had never developed before was risky and I paid the price :P Again, thanks!
Cool idea for the theme! Made the otherwise regular side-scrolling shooter feel unique. I like the beam and particles! :) As others and yourself mentioned above, the platforming could've been smoother which would make it feel a lot better. Fitting music and sound effects too, nice job!
Good graphics, **amazing** music, really good sound effects and cool particle effects. The way it all came together made me really enjoy shooting the bad dudes there was great feedback. Part of it was how fast the gun fired that was great.
I did spend most of the game shooting them off screen which probably wasn't how I was meant to play it, but the death sound effects meant it was still fun (please don't judge me).
Liked how creative the ending was but kind of felt personally attacked come on ketchup and mayo living in harmony should be the real winner. Great story and humour.
Neat platformer, music and graphics made me feel nostalgic which is a good thing. Sound effects were satisfying and the music was great. I'm not sure if it was deliberate, but the music matched with the pace of the game which feels really good. A little loud perhaps overall. I know you're aware that in terms of a platformer, it's really floaty and imprecise which can be frustrating. But making responsive platformers in 48 hours if you haven't done it before is insanely difficult, so kudos.
Greeeat game! had a blast playing it through! Some issues with the end boss(you had an end boss! amazing!) with html5 version, but got it working somehow in the end. Good idea with the laserbeam, great music, very playable! good job!
Movement jank aside, the beam mechanic was quite fun. You also did a nice job with the level design in communicating what areas were safe or not.
The ending puzzle felt a bit obtuse and took a while to figure out; I think a bit of additional communication here would have helped a lot; perhaps a special hit sound for the bulb that tells the player "bullets don't hurt this thing" while giving it a distinct behavior over walls and other unimportant objects. Similarly, I'd like to have seen a targeting laser for the ketchup gun since it's hard to know what's going on when it's off screen (and the position it landed after the second shot required me to do some tricky alignment).
Overall a solid attempt for your first platformer! You probably already learned this lesson; but physics engines shouldn't be used for player movement (Write a static or kinematic character controller and use the physics engine just for collision). It's a very common thing to get wrong especially in LD, so don't sweat it too much.
Nice work!
Love it! Very good. The post jam version fixed the controls and made it perfect. Music is great. Well done!
Impressive entry! The graphics are great, as is the music. The solar beam was a cool take on the theme. I know you're aware of this but the controls were quite frustrating sometimes, especially at the part where you had to jump on 2 single blocks, took me some time to get past that and even then I got hit by the beam lmao. The humour is great. Awesome job!
shame about the movement but i really liked you use of the theme with the laser effect scrolling past, and the audio was a nice touch. well done!
This was a cool little game. The graphics were really nice. I player in a loud environment, so I couldn't hear/rate audio. All in all, you did a good job.
Tbh I didn't mind the controls being a bit loose. If it were tight like say, Megaman, it probably would've been trivial to complete. This added a bit of execution requirements to things, especially when you had to climb the tower.
Speaking of Megaman, this mechanic reminded me a bit of some stages from Megaman X5 and 6. There are stages with global mechanics where something happens every few secs, and you might need to dodge or hide behind something or die. The way to make this work and not feel random is to have it properly themed such as this: https://youtu.be/HgMX3v3D4Z0?t=75
And I think you did that perfectly! Having a beam come down from the sky is immediately understandable and tied in with the world the player was in. I knew what to do next and execute on that plan. A very good choice.
I didn't have any trouble with the ketchup cannon. There were only so many elements on screen and you gave it away in the text that you would have to beat it in an unconventional way. Still, more hints generally isn't a bad thing in jams where player investment is lower.
Kudos for try new things and new genres. I know it's tough and I often feel like I get held back trying to do new stuff all the time. But hey, what better place to do it than LD?
@soultie thanks for playing! But it's a shame you couldn't enjoy the audio, a large part of the effort was put into that and I feel it adds a lot overall!
@peachtreeoath wow, that is a good find! I didn't play a lot of Mega Man beyond the first couple, but I'm sure I played other platformers as a kid that had similar mechanics that maybe subconsciously guided my ideas. I feel you on the 'trying new stuff for LD' struggle, sometimes I just can't help it since it's a good opportunity to actually *finish* something. Having a bank of play-tested working prototypes for new ideas later on is super nice! Speaking of doing something different, I feel I need to gush a little more over how good your team's entry was.
I was wondering how to fit a platformer into the theme but you did it! It's kinda hard to get on the 1 by 1 platform. It's nice that you have some story and dialogs
I really liked this game, could totally see a bunch more levels being made. My only critique is that the gun doesn't flip when it rotates to the left. Other then that, good fun, great audio, and some nice art!
@mcnuttys Oh no, I was hoping no one would notice :sweat_smile: That was on the backlog and ended up getting sacrificed
@wheffle haha I appreciate it. I always look forward to trying your games as well!
Very strong entry. Love the art and sound, so it's quite polished. From my point of view, it would be cool if headshot will make more damge then other shots. Anyway it's cool game.
This game is super fun! I really like the graphics and gameplay.
It's a nice entry. It could benefit from some better control of the character when moving and especially when jumping around. The arcade physics doesn't feel very arcade-y :smile: I also find that the enemies are pretty unforgiving once they spot you. Overall it is a solid entry. BTW that meteor thingie effect is super cool
Very juicy and fun to play! Tight spaces are a bit difficult to navigate and the in air movement feels like it has too much inertia and is difficult to control. The ten seconds blue ray / meteor thing is somewhat unfair, often I didn't seem to have any way to avoid it. Loved shooting those guys up, can't believe what they do with ketchup!
Too bad that you didn't have time to tweak the movement. Good game overall. Great music and sounds. I like the art. I think enemies shoot too early and you can kill them too early. You end up just shooting outside the screen pretty much all the time. The 10 second beam is really great! (Also fun that it kills the enemies :). Great job!
Really strong compo! The art/music/sound effects all work really well together. Love the addition of dialog too. Great work!
End Screen Nice.
Man the music in this slaps so hard. As others, I kinda wish the controls were a bit less floaty. Also for next time I suggest allowing for jumps a brief moment after the player character is no longer on ground. Something like 200-300ms. Can help make jumping a lot more forgiving.
Good entry and a lot of fun with the 10 second beam mechanic! It think it would've been fine to have the beam be an instant death since the enemies were a bit too much on the easy side. Also maybe gradually introduce the ketchup thing a bit earlier since it seemed like a lot more intricate than the other mechanics.
Hello. Good use of the theme of the game. It keeps you in suspense. Good background music. The only thing that caused me to die so often was jumping.
Having played the original version just now, i guess I can only repeat what others have said (i understand it may not be useful now) The player character has a certain friction with the level that makes it really easy to get caught on edges/slow down. Precision jumping with floaty gravity and little to no mid-air control is a bad combo.
I really enjoyed watching the big group of baddies at the start of one scene get toasted by the beam! There's a fun game underneath all that.
Very good for a compo game. Completed every level of it