Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Bad News Inc.
By frogravity
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 82 | 3.88 | 23 | |
| Fun | 168 | 3.50 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 50 | 3.95 | 23 | |
| Theme | 48 | 4.28 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 121 | 3.85 | 23 | |
| Audio | 12 | 4.30 | 23 | |
| Humor | 6 | 4.35 | 23 | |
| Mood | 121 | 3.59 | 23 |
Absolutely fantastic entry. The humour was great and it looked good. My only gripes would be the lack of variety in the messengers and that the dialogue exchanges could perhaps be a tad shorter, as I ended up skipping quite a bit by the end. All in all really solid!
Voice impressions were really funny, and good thing I didn't need to play earlier days on game over :) Sometimes it was not so obvious who I need to send with the delivery, but if you wanted for player to listen to every of your voice actings, it might be even a good thing. But I would prefer it to be more obvious :)
Nice submission. I liked the dialog and look of the game. However, I could not really tell which person I had to send to deliver the message.
It's a clever take on the theme, and the writing backs it up well, but I think the voice acting hurts it. Some games aren't improved by voice acting on the best of days, and your deliveries (ha!) are quite slow - I found myself using the fast forward button quite a bit. Still, I had fun with it!
Somehow anticipated the last letter XD
Nice game! Really great to see there're others also making narrative works in a 48h rush!
Expected some kind of connection between the levels to make the 3 messangers more game roles than game items.
The character selecting page had too many different sections of information, which kind of exacerbated the too-long-to-read syndromes.
@emily-ttg - Thank you! I'm glad you liked it! The lack of messenger variety is a good point, and yes, the letters ended up being a bit too long.
@justslavic - Thank you! I'm happy you liked the voice acting! I originally added a preview feature so you could gauge how good a fit the messenger was for the letter, but removed it as it made the game even longer.
@randompickle13 - Thanks! Yeah, I should've made it more obvious.
@john-gabriel - Thank you! I actually agree with you about the voice acting - I thought it was essential for the delivery part of the idea, but didn't realize how much slower it made the game until it was too late. Oh well, I'm glad you still had fun with it!
@xlores-liang - Thanks for the feedback! Making story-based games in Ludum Dare is certainly a challenge, but I think it's worth it :) And this theme really lends itself well to such ideas - the second game I played this jam was also a narrative work. Adding a connection between the levels and giving the messengers actual roles are excellent ideas, I didn't think about that. And the character select page was too cluttered indeed.
Absolutely hilarious. The characters are well written (and marvelously voiced), the jokes are great, the animated portraits are well drawn- Everything is great!
I recorded myself playing to deliver some extra feedback. The game volume might be a bit too low though. my bad!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYROQpwO9PQ
Your voice acting really fit the game. The writing was great and the character art very good as well. Solid entry!
possible THE BEST i have played yet, I felt so bad for the guy who lost his house :cry:
all the voice acting is amazing, and having to read through then pick who would be best to deliver the letters was such a good mechanic.
My dearest Frogman,
I would like to thank you for your submission. It contains really pleasant narration and humor, and has fantastic replay value. Furthermore, the voice acting is a nice touch; it must have taken a lot of time during the compo.
Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that as others said, the elocution speed is lower than what I am comfortable with. That is the main reason behind my choice to select a less-than-perfect rating in the "Fun" category.
I wish you the best for your future endeavours in game making.
Sincerely, a fellow participant.
(read this using any messenger you like)
Awesome writing! Was constantly laughing at the funny deliveries by Palla, Luke and Flake. I had a lucky streak and picked all the right messengers on my first attempt, but I loved the writing so much I went through all the routes and listened to the death/alternate messengers as well. Super awesome how much writing and voicing you managed to put in here. Loved the art and the portraits too, all the characters had such unique designs to go along with their personalities and expressive emotions for when they got angry. Creative and hilarious take on the theme, great game!
@100th-coin - Thank you so much for the recording! I'm glad you liked the voice acting and humour, and it was really nice to see someone else playing the game! Luke is indeed Lucas from Mother 3, and the other messengers are (much more loosely) based on Captain Falcon (the helmetless SNES version) and Palutena.
@jakeblake - Thanks! Glad you liked it!
@soloadventurergames - Thank you! I'm happy you liked it so much!
@cagibi - This letter really made my day :) I'm glad you lacked the narration and humour! Yeah, the voice acting ended up being too slow indeed. But I'm used to very low Fun scores :)
@captaindreamcast - Thank you so much! I'm really happy you liked so many parts of it, and checked out all the routes!
A very surprising and hilarious takeoff on the theme! I liked the way each character truly can or can't deliver the message. Unfortunately I killed them all :sob:
Great idea with the theme! Impressive that you voice acted the whole thing. I wouldn't have thought this is a compo entry. Great job!
awesome idea for the theme! Can't believe you managed to do all the voices, congratulations on this entry! It was a great experience.
Very clever that you're not only delivering the letters but also choose the delivery of their contents. The disclaimer at the beginning was very well done, and I felt the "It's 1am ðŸ˜". The game's short and sweet and being able to retry from the same day is a major boon!
Palla is the best! ^^
@ran-regev - Thanks! Getting the messengers killed is very easy indeed.
@cinterre - Thank you! The voice acting definitely took a ton of time, but it helped that most of it were first takes.
@barce - Thank you! I'm happy you liked it!
@zerfalex - Thank you! Yeah, staying up past 1 am is pretty much a Ludum Dare tradition I think :)
@yoanndeplo - Glad you liked her - she was indeed the most fun to write & act!
Haha. Awesome work! One of the funniest games I've played this jam. Your opening VO was awesome and set the tone for the game perfectly. The characters are great, from the writing to the animation of their emotions. The game is short, which I can't blame you since it's a compo game. But I would love to play a longer version with more letters to deliver and more delivery people. Great work! Amazing compo game!
Interesting game. Well done on all the voice acting (and the verbal instructions at the beginning :laughing:). Cute graphics, interesting premise. Good work!
Simply wow! Great game, even more impressive that done for a Compo. The voice acting was amazing. Art style was nice and whole idea was interesting. Great job!
Really good entry, and funny!
Always fun to see a game with voice acting. Lots of interesting variety in the characters as well. :smile:
One thing I really appreciate here is that each character gets to be the solution for one of the puzzles. This means that we at least get to see a pretty reasonable range of gameplay, despite the limited scope of the game.
Another thing I liked is that, I'm pretty sure I was able to solve all of the puzzles in no more than two guesses. So I think they are well designed in terms of giving enough information for the player to logically figure out the solution rather than just trying all the combinations.
I think the worst puzzle in terms of raw guessability is, however, puzzle 3. I did actually get it on the first try, mainly because I figured that the solution was going to be distinct from the last two. In terms of the actual descriptions given, however, I find that it is a little unintuitive that Finn, who's description says "do NOT mock him," has a correct solution of Flake, who "has zero tact." Moreover, before sending the letter, there's no real way to guess that his voice will be similar to Luke, and that Luke will therefore be perceived as mocking.
Of course, this is a bit of a silly complaint. For one, puzzle 3 is still the easiest simply due to the obvious idea of trying the character who hasn't been the correct answer yet. And for two... the game is not really meant to be purely about logical deduction. The whole idea is that it's actually pretty hard to guess which messenger won't be shot, and so it's actually pretty appropriate that puzzle 3, which is difficult to guess from pure logical deduction, comes right before your ultimate resignation.
So overall, I would say everything works pretty well. The puzzles work as logical puzzles, but they also work as illogical traps that are the worst job in the world. This is a nice combination of contradictory things. And, I would say that the music and graphics work pretty well to tie everything together.
Also, the characters are pretty great. I would say my favorite character is Palla. The voice acting really sells her well, in my opinion. :smile: