Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Haymaker
By bobbo
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 398 | 3.51 | 28 | |
| Fun | 365 | 3.42 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 230 | 3.57 | 28 | |
| Theme | 758 | 2.76 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 471 | 3.46 | 28 | |
| Humor | 241 | 3.30 | 28 | |
| Mood | 436 | 3.40 | 28 |
I'm impressed how well you made moving an object in 3d space feel to control, it took a little getting used to but not nearly as much as other games have been. I'm not big brained enough to solve these kinds of puzzles, normally, but I really like the little hint that you can do it perfectly with enough effort. Great work!
I went looking for this game immediately as soon as the jam ended because I remembered seeing your blog post showing off the adorable tractor robot... it's such a lovely game! It didn't take too long to get used to moving the pieces around, and the tutorial certainly helped with that (a lot of entries to game jams in general don't have tutorials!). I own a few physical puzzles that are similar to this; not being able to see all of the pieces at the same time makes it more difficult, but there's something about the relaxed atmosphere of the game (cute robot, gentle music, farm scenery) that made me want to stick with it; even though you didn't have time to turn the blocks to hay bales, the game still has strong aesthetic legs to stand on that make it a more enjoyable experience. Really nice work!
Mr. Tractor man offers you a very fun 3d puzzle that hurts my brain but in a good way. I'm surprised how well I can grasp the space despite it being 3d, even if my little pea brain cannot comprehend how to fill the space perfectly. Great job!
Wow, I love this one! Your control scheme works really well, and the grid is chunky enough that it doesn't feel too overwhelming. I also really like your design choice to allow the player to place blocks partially outside the grid. Great overall presentation and audio design, too. This is a great idea for larger puzzle game, and I'd love to see what you do with it after the jam!
This is really well done, but tough! The controls feel intuitive, though I wish I could rotate the camera completely around, as sometimes it was tricky to tell if a block could slot in from above or below. I got to almost the end of the 3rd section, before all of my previous questionable placements became too much for me to contend with. :sweat_smile:
Nice entry. This deserves way more ratings!
Interesting game idea! Sometimes it was difficult to orientate in the 3D space. Maybe grid can help. Overall good and nice game.
Cool idea, but controls feel pretty bad. Maybe if it always was showing a hint it would help. Also it's a terrible feeling when you have to undo 10 pieces just to move one of them.
Impressive game that moves 3D objects quite well ! My brain isn't make for that stuff (even for 2D stuff... nevermind 😂)
Cool concept but difficult to play efficiently... I wonder if a single and locked isometric-like view would have helped (though you'd probably need to redesign the levels around it) Also, it didn't work in firefox for me, I had to switch to a chromium browser (ew)
Thanks everyone for your great comments and feedback :)
@lucdeligne - I think that's just the case for the Unity WebGL player, nothing I can do about it as far as I know.
Also I'm not sure how an isometric view would help? since you need to see the structure from all angles including low down at times, but thanks, I'll keep thinking how I could have improved.
This is a very well crafted piece! I had a little bit hard time with the controls, but not because they were bad or it had a bad tutorial, but simply because I didn't spend enough time to master it. So the design is great, it just takes longer to learn the craft. Which means it's complex and fun in the long run! I will definitely get back to your game later, and honestly would love to see this game to become a full release with some campaign or something like that.
Loved the audio, the art was amazing the narrator tractor (hehe I made a joke) was cute!
Overall, very polished and fun game. One of the most innovative games I've played so far.
Great game feel and visuals it's super polished! There's a learning curve with controls because of the information overload but you get used to it after a while.
cool game, didnt manage to solve it tho D: loved the character
Very very cool. I love the art, the character is great and the 3d style is simple but effective. I'm impressed by how solid and polished the 3D movement controls are. The "hold to rotate" controls worked really well. I did have to tweak my camera controls a bit to feel comfortable, but I love so much that you included camera sensitivity and inversion of both camera axes. That helped SO much in getting the controls feeling good.
The puzzle itself is incredibly hard for me, though I was able to solve at least one layer without _too_ much mess. I'm actually quite curious how it would look for someone to solve the whole thing proper. It seems like it would be very satisfying. The first time I toggled the "preview entire volume" I had a bit of a panic attack at how much thought would have to go into solving it entirely, but it's cool to think that it's possible to solve it exactly!
Nice work on this one, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
A simple game, but nicely presented! Fun character design, a little humor to boot. Definitely not an easy type of puzzle to solve, I ended up giving up on the perfect, but getting that perfect is definitely worth some bragging rights.
happy to give this little tractor its 20th rating!
the idea was good, controls were a bit tricky at first but you get used to it fast. the camera controls were opposite to the one i'm used to, but that's because i was playing with keyboard+mouse and not with a gamepad.
I came here after Tutti Ankka linked me your post about confusing feedback. Was interested what game could get such a conflicting opinions.
What I gather from comments and by playing the game, you are on a right track and your idea works, it is just not yet polished enough. Take feedback more as that there is something you could improve, not as that critics know how to do it. There is absolutely no need to scrap that idea of rotating camera in favour of simpler locked camera. You could try few things to see what you think and what play testers think is best feeling option. So here are some ideas:
-Try press and drag style camera rotation. Now I'm constantly rotating camera, as my hand is twitching and stuff. It is relentless and makes playing bit dizzy, there is no calm state for camera. By clicking and moving mouse I don't have to take my hand off from mouse to calm down the camera.
-Try implementing snapping for camera. That is what most people prolly find easier to handle. If there is no need for unlocked camera, why ever have it. 45 degrees turns could be enough. It also most controller friendly option, lerp from position to other by press of shoulder button.
-Go for complete opposite and try unlocking vertical axis completely. Complete freedom without hard to understand and unnatural arbitary upper and lower limit. Optionally also get rid of reference objects (hay bales) when trying this option, to make it feel truly limitless. Like there is no up or down direction in your puzzle universe.
-Or put there more reference objects, ground, etc, and place them asymmetric way, so you can always know at what direction you are looking the volume.
-Send it to playtesters with different mouse sensitivities and axis inversions. Most people wont change default settings, so they are stuck with what you give them. From those playtesters reactions squeeze out most popular settings and make it default. For me personally Invert X and lower sensitivity was best option. -Experiment with different curves for that zoom when you look object from top. I see what you are trying to do here, to get closer look when looking down, but personally for me it feels little odd.
In the end only you know what game is supposed to be, so don't go out your way to implement things that are opposite of what you think game should be.
@jormarysky thanks for the input man, yeah definitely lots of room to experiment if I wanted to carry this on, which I am tempted to - but just the 3D movement/placement system :)
"-Or put there more reference objects, ground, etc, and place them asymmetric way, so you can always know at what direction you are looking the volume."
- I think this would definitely help. Populated the level was unfortunately the lowest down thing on my list that I actually got to, had big plans for a big farm setting :'(
"-Try implementing snapping for camera. That is what most people prolly find easier to handle. If there is no need for unlocked camera, why ever have it. 45 degrees turns could be enough. It also most controller friendly option, lerp from position to other by press of shoulder button."
- This could be good! It's sort of what Blender and other 3D editing programs do (except orthographic instead of perpendicular), so would be intuitive to some people. Having the ability to switch between free-mode and this would be best.
The negative/conflicting criticism is all good stuff, I just found it slightly funny how perfectly contradictory some of the comments were hehe
The camera/interacetion controls feel incredibly polished (though personally Q/E for up/down took some getting used to), and overall the way the game introduces the mechanics and how to play to you works so well, so I would say definitely do not entirely scrap this camera mode after you've made it work so well! (especially with just mouse, initially it felt confusing, but it didn't take many seconds to get used to it)
Was absolutely breaking my brain trying to fit these pieces together, but that seems just like maybe the game could have a gentler initial curve rather than anything fundamental, and everything felt so smooth that I didn't really mind feeling like an absolute idiot most of the time :)
Music is very cute and bouncy, which is funny and definitely a theme with games that look deceptively cute and simply but then are actually incredibly difficult :D
Great work!
I had some issue with the camera But the idea was cool even if I was stress buy the management of the cam Also the music sound so cute
Ha I love your character design :) I don't have the patience for this kind of puzzle, but it was so polished that I couldn't help but drive myself crazy trying to solve it. I preferred how it felt with a controller. It was really easy to get sucked into this difficult puzzle, I think it'd be satisfying if you could solve multiple simpler puzzles to ramp up to this one.
@kevin-barrios thanks so much! Wanting to play a game you wouldn't usually want to play - I'm thrilled to hear that!
And definitely I think you're right on the money, the difficulty definitely needs to be ramped up slowly :)
Thanks for the great feedback
I really think there should be a "design" category. Because things like the nice tutorial and good control scheme are really hard to add to any other category than "overall" which is a shame. The graphics especially the tractor/hayball-hybrid look good yet its pretty empty aside of those. Maybe add a texture to the ground? Music was really calming which is nice as it suits the gameplay.
On that end i have to say - i guess its fun. But my attention span for puzzle games is embarrassingly short, so i didnt actually manage to "beat" it.
Thanks for submitting your game on the stream! Here’s the start of your game if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts youtu.be/OTjgGbVpf7g?t=15908
Really interesting puzzle idea! Definitely coming back to this at some point to try to finish it!