Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Final Harvest
By lizelive
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 626 | 3.15 | 25 | |
| Fun | 619 | 2.95 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 238 | 3.56 | 27 | |
| Theme | 674 | 3.15 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 605 | 3.07 | 21 | |
| Audio | 2.66 | 5 | ||
| Humor | 1 | |||
| Mood | 1 |
Interesting entry! It's a bit ballsy to go for a live Minetest game since many people don't have the client and it's hard to get enough players online at once.
From speaking with the author (?) it sounds like there will be a big "event" at 6pm CST on Friday.
This is a really interesting idea for a LD entry, so I'll definitely be adding this to my calendar.
note to players: the android build on the play store is too out of date to play this game. use desktop version. fixed - i downgraded the server so now it works with play store version.
Minecraft will never die ))
I am not a big fan of Minecraft, but why not :)
@geckoo1337 make sure to connect to our server to play our game. its very much not minecraft.
An interesting idea, but very difficult to do a pvp style game for a game jam since you need a lot of people to play. Also the web client was super laggy. Like... several minutes of lag. I don't really play minecraft or minetest, so it's difficult to say how much was original vs. what you changed. Also really difficult to tell what's going on without being walked through.
thanks for feedback @jitspoe, yeah the gameplay is not evident right away and without walking friends through playing it on discord i don't think ive seen anyone actually play it properly. it need a lot of tutorial and guide. and honestly making pvp multiplayer game that takes 3 weeks to play for a gamejam was not a great decsion. to say what we made: if not in minecraft we made it. alien stuff and such.
Man, I don't even know how to judge this game. Because it's an obligate multiplayer game that apparently takes place over several weeks, I don't feel I got the full experience. In fact, I still don't understand all of the game's mechanics. I'll start by describing what happened in my time playing.
I first tried out the game on the web client. It took a very long time to load in. In fact, I got up to grab a snack while it was loading and came back to see I had been killed. After a few more minutes of playing, I switched to the desktop client since the web client felt sluggish and unresponsive.
I didn't see any other players around, so I just played the game as I would Minecraft. I crafted my stone tools, found a cave, and explored it, finding some iron to craft some tools and armor. I was basically just playing off-brand Minecraft. I was still unsure of what exactly my goal was. I was told by the game page that I was supposed to be fighting aliens, but nobody else seemed to be on the server. I really didn't know what the spreading corruption was for either.
Then you and a couple other people joined the server. It was only then that I found out I was an alien, since you told me to press C to examine my player model. (It was like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie; *I* was the alien the whole time!) I wandered around corrupting forest land. Then I stumbled upon a human player, killed him pretty easily, and then...well I didn't know what to do after that. All the humans were alien-ified so there was nothing left to do.
This game is a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat. It's built into an existing game, it's multiplayer, it takes more than a single sitting to fully experience, and it has very confusing and ill-explained mechanics. And if one hasn't played Minecraft before (I have, but not everyone has), then it becomes even *more* confusing!
Here is what advice I can give (keeping in mind that I don't know what is possible with Minetest): - Remove anything that isn't absolutely critical to your game. For example, one of the crafting recipes was for a screwdriver for rotating decorative blocks. This is not necessary to have in your game about fighting aliens. - Make it very clear whether or not you are an alien. It should be obvious just from looking at your first-person view which side you're on. - Create some sort of singleplayer mode that lets the player get to grips with the mechanics. Multiplayer pvp can be a stressful environment, especially when you have no room for failure if you want to remain a human. - Create some sort of tutorial or quest system so the player can understand how to play. At one point, the game told me through console that I was full and I should build a new heart to spend my biomass. But I could never figure out how to actually do that. (And a side note, the heart's menu text was cut off. All of the options said "00 biomass", so I couldn't see what anything cost.) - Create an ultimate goal for the players on each team to work toward. When we harvested all the humans, I would expect there to be a celebratory "Aliens win!" followed by a map reset for the next match. But nothing happened. I just ran around exploring the terrain until I got bored and logged off. - Don't make a multiplayer game that relies on there being multiple people on the server at a time. It makes it very hard to judge your game. I didn't find out about this game until after your gameday had passed.
I know, it's a three-day game jam so adding the stuff I mentioned would be a lot of work, but that's why you need to scope well. It's an admirable effort, but I think what you tried to make was just too ambitous and ill-fitting of a game jam like Ludum Dare.
@zungryware thank you so much for your feedback. i def did not have enough time to do everything and i quickly regretted building on using mine test game as base where the off-brand mine-craft features came from. it made things much more annoying to develop and made it unclear what to judge. i thought giving the humans the ability to ecape into the bowls of the earth to get good gear to fight the aliens who are trying to harvest the plannet would be cool. like underground resistance fighters. the screwdriver is actually really important because the hive building mechanics are orientation dependent, and totally opaque. aliens can build additional hive but the mechanism for doing so is also never told. the alien win by harvesting the planet. the victor will be declared at the end of the 3 weeks, but doingso is based on humans deciding the victor. so far we have just done regional skirmishes and those should have been the focus but for some reason i thought a game that would only get played once would be cool. but rn aliens are cleary winning they have harvested so much of the map and have many hive hearts whereas the humans have all been harvested. but yeah there is no winning for the humans. it is inevitable they will all be harvested given enough time and nobody has broken that rule. not a single nanoforge has been claimed or protected. i should have given humans bases to start with to make it clear you should defend this. also most aliens don't understand how to harvest biomass effecently ive seen them all each do only half. either just spreaading it using eggs or just using the consume ability to quick harvest (its the alien face looking thing you can make in hive). a few people figured out the unit spawning. next jam im dedicating half of my time to making it clear how to play the game. only one human in history of server built a rocket launcher. which is sad because its a lot of fun to use.
I agree with many of the other comments, It was a very unique and interesting game but it would definitely help if there was
1) More direction, it was difficult to understand what exactly the players need to do, even with the description. An in-game tutorial or help menu at least would help greatly.
2) More streamlining. As another commenter mentioned, there were many unused recipes and items from minetest that weren't really used in gameplay. It made it a bit confusing when using the inventory.
3) Faster gameplay. I believe you mentioned the cycles are 15 minutes long or so, but most players can only play each game for much less than 15 min (depending on interest). The cycles were very long and unless a lot was happening during them, it can get boring fast.
That being said, it's really cool to see a minetest based game, and a lot of the art and assets were pretty good. I look forward to your future projects :D
As I said on stream, I am a boomer, but you know what - that's a me problem, not a you problem, and you deserve to get your game rated since you've given so many ratings, so I've rated all your categories based on your innovation and I really hope you find your other 10
I would recommend updating the top of the page with ***bold letters*** on step by step instructions of how to get into your server and how it works, and then make a blog post. Because with your number of ratings you really deserve to have your game played and I feel bad that the LD rating system has failed you thus far, it isn't supposed to work like this
Hmmm... I can never seem to find a time to play this seriously, but I've payed attention to what there is while I'm solo, and like the person above, I'll mark it based on innovation for now (:thinking:). If I find a chance to play this seriously before rating games ends, I'll definitely re-rate this, but I don't want all your ratings from everyone else to be taken away because there weren't enough of them who were able to try it at the time. I've got a good idea of *how* things work based on the description, and a good enough idea of how things *actually work in game* from playing it singleplayer. So of course, I can't give a fully fair rating without doing actual PVP, but I'll try my best to help you up to 20 ratings by tomorrow afternoon! :handshake:
Edit: I've done my part and promoted your game! Hope this helps! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/worlds-best-soul-harvester/$323220
@sephowepho thank you so much for the help getting reviewers! we are quite close to 20. im hoping some people join up at 6pst to make a last push before the jam ends!
Hope your game gets the bump it needs, it was pretty fun to play it!
I hope you get enough ratings to qualify! Your game is really impressive for the time you had to develop it. I've reached out to a few other jam participants to see if I can get you a few more ratings. Good luck!
Got in and got some tree trying to kill me while everything was full of water, weird blocks and fire. Quite the surreal experience. Tried again later and still didn't get much, though reading other comments helped on it on the third try. Nevertheless interesting entry, though needs someone to explain it to a doofus like me, or it'll take forever to get hang of it~ :)
Nice game!