merrow 2023-05-02 13:41
Good game, a bit challenging to control the ship and where to find the boxes, but well done
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → LittleOV
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 572 | 3.59 | 24 | |
| Fun | 515 | 3.52 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 202 | 3.81 | 24 | |
| Theme | 819 | 3.65 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 781 | 3.36 | 24 | |
| Mood | 802 | 3.29 | 24 |
Good game, a bit challenging to control the ship and where to find the boxes, but well done
The controls/navigating is much to difficult, but I love the premise/concept! Make how the game feels to play your top priority and you'd be swimming great reviews!
I really like the controls! Could use a little more lenience when clicking on the anchors. But overall really fun to use.
@merrow Yeah, controlling the ship does take some getting used too and it's way too easy to get stuck on objects so that would definitely need some polish. Would have also liked to implement more visual feedback to help with playing, like indicators for where items are. Really appreciate the feedback and thanks for playing!
@cyboi Thanks for the feedback and generous praise! :smiley: Can definitely agree. Would have liked to put a lot more time into refining the controls to make moving around feel better
Maybe it's better to extend the range of selecting hook anchor？
@aschab Glad you liked it! :smile: It's not that clear but you don't need to click immediately on the anchors. You can hold left mouse button and sweep past them; the hook will shoot out and attach as soon as you pass. But I agree that the area to hit is a bit too small.
Grappling hook is my favorite video game genre lmao
As much fun as I had, I have to mention a couple of issues that I've spotted. Firstly, some actions, like button pressing, extract zone delivery and, level transition happen too suddenly and with no indication - they would certainly use some animation and sound to better communicate the event in question with the player. Additionally, I'm not sure if it was luck or a clever design that allowed me to collect all of the items without having to go around the entire map again, so it's hard for me to say if having something like a directional HUD or some sort of a primitive map would be a good idea. Still, something worth considering.
With that out of the way, movement was genuinely fun! I was afraid that dashing would completely render the grappling hook mechanics obsolete, but somehow I naturally found myself using them both simultaneously, and flying around obstacles was really enjoyable. I think the camera tilting you've done adds to the effect, so props for that. One problem I encountered is that I had to realize you can actually hold the mouse button and it will continuously attempt to grab a pole... I feel like that should be communicated somehow through the user interface, by some kind of a trace or something like that. In any case, I think it would be very cool to speed-run through carefully crafted obstacle course with this movement mechanics! You might wanna mess with this :)
Graphics are pretty nice. I wanna say that fuel rods and crew pods aren't clear enough for what's basically your main goal, but I don't remember having problems noticing them, so maybe it's just my taste. The rest looks clear enough. SFX is basic, but it does the job.
In summary, very fun concept. Congratulations on your first Ludum Dare!
@foraland Hmm, will have a look at tweaking it and see if I can find a more appropriate range. Think it would make a significant difference if I added some visual indication too that shows how far the hook can reach. I appreciate the feedback!
Great job!
Just a (perhaps interesting) nitpick from my play experience:
It took me a while to realize that you have to hold wasd while dashing for it to do anything. I assumed it was just a very very small dash and the game idea was to move around using only the grapple hook.
Defaulting the dash to forwards if no wasd-key is pressed, would be good I think :) I know you wrote it in the start screen, but I dunno, I just skimmed it to know what buttons do stuff.
I beat level 1 almost entirely with no dash lol xD
@krzyhau Thank you so much for the in depth feedback! A lot of the things you mention are things we actually had planned but just did not have time to implement. Stuff like visual indications for actions, more refined transitions between scenes and particle effects on certain events.
As for not having to backtrack, it's probably a bit of both. We absolutely placed the collectables somewhat intentionally in places that made sense with the flow of the level, but there are still times where you might miss one and have to go look for it. We have already started looking into adding some form of waypoint to guide the player in the right direction.
Awesome that you liked the movement! I did try to balance it so the dash and hook would complement each other without either being dominant and it sounds like I may have done an ok job. Still needs some more feedback to guide the player towards it because it seems many gravitate towards using mostly one or the other which definitely cripples the movement.
I can't take any credit for the graphics, that was all done by Spudsef, but I'll make sure to relay your feedback to him.
As for SFX, that's one of the few things in the game we didn't have the skills to make ourselves and instead used store assets which made it harder to find sounds that fit with the game.
Again, thank you so much for the feedback. Diligently taking notes on what to change as we continue refining the game.
Cool game, very unique. I had a good time playing it. I especially liked managing coordinated swings with the grappler. Well done!
I liked the hook mechanic a lot! i would just want to see bigger grapple range! Also note to dash... maybe it's just my personal preference but i would like it to work in the direction we are facing instead of WSAD, i think it would be also helpfull if dash had bigger cooldown (2/3 sec) because now it's often more optimal and reliable to just use dash and that just feels like a big waste when hook was so cool!
Nice art too : D
cool game with nice mechanics.. it takes some time to understand the movement, but after while it's fun and challenging.. graphics and music fits nicely. well done
really awesome game, good job guys, i like the physics behind the grabbling hook
Good job! IMHO, it would probably be more convenient if the dashes were relative to the rotation. The box counter is a bit lacking. Thanks for your game!
This game has a great atmostphere amd style, the controls definitely take a while to get to grips with, but feel like they have the potential to be very satisfying to master (with some more polish). Personally I feel like there could be a better indication of when I can dash again.
Nice game!!
It took me a while to realize that the area below was part of the map, I didn't understand what to extract xD. From that moment it is non-stop, very funny. The mechanics of the hook with the yellow sticks is very satisfactory :)
@zapelangelo Visual indicators are definitely something I wanted to add more of but just didn't have time. Both the dash cooldown as well as direction are not as clear as I'd like them. Having the dash default to the direction of the mouse is a great idea, thanks for the suggestion!
@demuss The range is definitely something that could do with more tweaking as well as something to show the player what the range actually is. I've actually had several people say they'd like the dash to be in the same direction as you are facing so that is definitely something I will be adding as an alternative. As for increasing the dash cooldown I don't want to increase it too much since I want the player to have very agile movement but I'll look into if I can make any changes to make it less dominant.
Thanks for the great feedback!
Hey guys!
As a big fan of making space games (and playing them as well) I didn't pass by and played your creation through. My opinion - it's a solid take on delivery theme, it's curious to explore locations listening to pretty neutral sound theme, puffing back and forth fighting with physics (but we all know that it's not an easy topic to manage).
A thing which confused be a bit is the way how the bot is controlled. I would say that some FX will make the user experience way better, because a player will receive a feedback, what direction the burst came to. As well it's not absolutely clear why you need to use WASD, when actually the direction can be set by mouse cursor.
But aside of that I do like it and if you'll be about to create and release a post-jam version - let me know, I'll be happy to play it :smile:
Cheers!
Very cool game, well done!
@erlioniel Visual feedback is definitely the area we want to improve the most. There's plenty of areas in the game currently where the player gets no indication on what is going on, like the example you gave with burst direction or how there is no clear way of knowing how far the grapple can reach. These are things we will absolutely work on improving.
The reason I chose WASD for dashing is so that you can dash in a different direction to where you are hooking. This helps you get better swings and makes the dash a tool for adjustments rather than just a speed increase. I have however heard from multiple people who, like you, want to dash in the cursors direction so will add an alternative input method that lets you do just that.
Thanks for taking the time to play our game and providing us with valuable feedback on how to improve!
I really liked this game. Fun game mechanics!
Nice concept for a mobile game
That's a good game. I like it! Very nice and challenging at the beginning. Thank you!