hobbito89 2023-05-02 09:51
Game to make your mouse navigation faster! I would make bigger the extraction point, so the player can just easily drop the box down, like all cath depot. GJ.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Loading Zone
By coda-highland and drazil100
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 503 | 3.65 | 58 | |
| Fun | 343 | 3.68 | 59 | |
| Innovation | 302 | 3.68 | 58 | |
| Theme | 102 | 4.38 | 59 | |
| Graphics | 1006 | 2.75 | 59 | |
| Humor | 968 | 2.34 | 48 | |
| Mood | 1082 | 2.79 | 52 |
Game to make your mouse navigation faster! I would make bigger the extraction point, so the player can just easily drop the box down, like all cath depot. GJ.
What a fun game! Really enjoyed playing, might be improved by allowing the player to send off trucks early. All in all great job!
Took me while to figure out the controls, sould've got them more explicit. That said, when I figured it out, I really enjoyed the game. Well done!
@niclee That was actually on my roadmap but due to only getting my game idea with 24 hours left in the jam I ran out of time.
The more I think about it ... us game developers are always trying to make some cool game mechanics, but often time just a simple idea if more fun than complex game system. Really enjoyed the game. My main grip was the controls were difficult to grasp (some sort of tutorial tips would help into game description atleast) and lack of music. I got 269 points!
I like the idea, but it feels a bit luck heavy. Maybe you could make a code that tells which colors you have the most of and weight which truck spawns based on that?
I also sort of agree with Hobbito on the drop off points, they should be a bit bigger.
@wolfier I thought about that however I was concerned it would make the game too easy and didn't want to have to re-balance the game last minute. What I did do was make it so that it always gives you a truck for a box color you have. This way you can always get rid of at least one box.
The gameplay loop was really fun! Had me choosing to fill up the rows vs giving me wiggle room! Only real compliant would be the click was a tiny eensy bit finnicky 4 me
despite being incredibly simple visually, this game actually kept me hooked for longer than I would like to admit. You genuinely made a fun game here, the only thing I would add are some sound effects maybe.
that was actually super fun lol, great job!!! ❤️❤️
Interesting game concept with stacks, :D I liked it, I worked myself into a corner and couldn't progress. It is simple graphically but it's nice imo. I missed some sound as feedback but not badly. Decent entry overall, good job!
This was too addicting :) Simple game, but I still would have to force me to stop. Nice puzzle mechanics.
Always love a puzzle game. The first thing that I would add is adding logic to make sure you always had a chance at winning. I read your comment about always having a truck arrive of a box color you have after I played the game so that might've helped me out a bit! Other than that good clean fun game to play which tied in with the theme nicely.
Edit: tried again and ended with 164!
I like how this game got me thinking logically and planning ahead. I did paint myself into a corner by filling up my stations - might be nice to have the ability to destroy boxes, like maybe a garbage compactor or something.
Very fun! I actually enjoyed this one quite a bit!
@big-cow How could you >:( Those boxes are people’s personal belongings they paid us to ship to them. You want to do WHAT with them?!?!
Jokes aside I did think of a mechanic where if you get 5 in a row it automatically spawns that truck next.
This is a really simple but fun game! I could see myself playing this on my phone while waiting for an appointment or something. Great stuff.
Very cool mix of solitaire/colouredwaterbottlegame. I did feel the same coloured truck kept coming up though so could not really get rid of containers. Some ideas: doubleclick option for getting it in the truck and make them come quicker?
@the-wondering-vagabond I am glad you caught the solitaire inspiration. Also I am not entirely sure what you mean by "doubleclick option". I have some of my own ideas on how I would get trucks to spawn faster such as maybe they leave the moment you no longer have any packages for them?
This is a great entry. Really clever idea and you executed it very well. Great work!
Good game design and clever ideas
Funny game! It looks simple but is a bit challenger hehe
That was really intense. Brilliant game!
After a few runs, managed to land a decent 408 !
@thunderchief I haven't even hit 200 myself. At most I have probably hit around 120. Do you have a strategy?
This was a therapeutic sorting game. I think if you had some sort of clearer progression towards the game getting harder it would be more engaging. Something like having more lanes but slowly removing a lane and a time? Anyways cool game :D
wow, didnt know sorting boxes could be that much fun :D is there a way to remove packages except for the trucks?
I love sorting and I like this game ^^ A mobile adaptation would be nice I think ^^ I feel like it needs a little more feedback when you add a box in the car.
@substain the only way would be to destroy them. Seeing as we are a shipping company though and not a product manufacturer that would land us a ton of lawsuits :P
Interestingly I only got mostly purple packages at the first run at the start and got confused, very interesting idea, sorting for the win~ I agree with a previous comment that some clearer progression would help and having a better pacing and perhaps some accidents happen in the warehouse that you need to clean up fast with the mouse too haha. Very well done though, can't do it all in the ld timeframe and what you did is great~!
@svenerik Oooh! I hadn't considered having accidents or some other form of task you had to do while doing your main task. More multitasking would definitely be a good progression for the game's difficulty.
I would have liked to see an option to send the truck away faster, but overall I enjoyed the simple nature of the game. It would have also been beneficial that the parcels on the line would have stopped in a place where they would have all been visible on the screen so that you could have always known what the next parcel is going to be.
@xedur They actually are all visible though the next up is only half visible. I originally had it fully visible however the boxes coming in horizontally would get caught on a corner and it looked funky. The solution would be to move the entire conveyor line down however I hard coded the positions so it would have been a huge pain in the butt to adjust mid jam. If I do a post jam version this is something I hope to fix.
In hindsight I should have just accepted the funky corner collision and favored playability but I honestly don’t have the brain speed to watch the line while managing everything else so I didn’t consider it in time.
I like the sorting mechanic a lot. You should consider making the game endless. By this I mean something like tetris, endless if you are a computer. Really engaging I played for more than an hour. I like how the perception keeps switching between "I need this truck", "I need to clear the conveyor", and "I need to organize this mess". I think the biggest, easiest to implement improvement would be audio. not necessarily music but just sound feedback when you pick up/drop off a box. Overall really interesting mechanic and pretty good game feel. Thank you for making it!
@drazil100 I just try to have three sorted columns and the last one all the colors that can't fit (not in sufficient numbers to be worth it). Then I would say I happily sacrifice some space on the conveyor in order to wait and see what truck i got next. sometimes rushing to get the box out can block your nit 4 boxes column. Lastly... Sheer luck I guess ?
@blank-3d i think it is technically endless for a computer aside from luck based factors which I already have several suggestions/ personal ideas on how to improve.
very funny but maybe it's too random, the truck consume too much time while the there are many colors. So if I got 2 or 3 trucks that can only load 1 box, I defenitely lose the game. e.j.I just finished a game in which I got only 2 black boxes amoung more than 30 total.
Thank you to everyone who gave me feedback on this. I don't normally do post jam updates but I liked this game enough and there were enough things wrong about this game that I felt I had to revisit it.
@wolfier @the-wondering-vagabond @xedur @wompus @qin-bugong First and most commonly mentioned issue with the game is that it was too easy to lose due to the truck either by it taking to long to leave or getting bad truck RNG. I tried setting it up so that the truck would leave the moment you cleared all of it's colored boxes but without some sort of delay that made the game WAY too easy. Instead I massively reduced the delay between trucks driving off screen and the next one spawning. As for the RNG, in the jam release I had it so that every color had an equal chance. If you had 3 red boxes and 1 blue box it would be 50/50 on whether the next truck was red or blue. Now it matches your percentage of box colors so 3 red 1 blue will give you a 75% chance at a red truck and a 25% chance at a blue truck. This should massively reduce the likelihood of getting a consistent chain of single box trucks.
@wolfier @teejio I made the decision to double the hitbox size on the boxes. This should not only make it easier to grab on PC but also help with mobile play (though in practice the grab point next to the conveyor is too high and I end up swiping down my notification panel). When dropping a box it now checks whether the box's hitbox is over the drop zone rather than whether the mouse is over the drop zone. Combined with the larger hitboxes it should be significantly harder to miss on the drop. Finally I made it so you can grab boxes straight off the forklift as soon as it comes on screen. Now you no longer have to awkwardly wait for the forklift to bottom out to grab the box and there is pretty much no chance of grabbing too early.
@mintbreak @svenerik @blank-3d Due to above improvements my score went from below 150 to almost 400 and given that players like @thunderchief were already getting that when the game was hard I knew I had to make some adjustments. Now every point you get is 5 less milliseconds between box spawns. That might not sound like much but when your score is 200 it means that boxes are spawning a full second quicker than at the start of the game. I hope these changes add some difficulty for those more accurate with a mouse than I am. I would be really interested in feedback on this if anyone who was good at the old version wants to give the new version a try.
Thanks again to everyone who left feedback. Hope you all enjoy the new update!
Simple idea, but well implemented, good job! And wow, that`s a lot of comments with pretty much all the feedback I could think of. Instead of repeating stuff, I'll leave this other game from this jam that is a lot similar to yours.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/train-sort#/
Not saying that one is better than the other! Just that maybe you can get some ideas by playing a game with the same base concept, but made by someone else :)
GGs your adjustments definitely made the game feel fairer and more engaging.
My first round I thought I was going to have to use the keyboard to control the truck, lol. Nice game.
I have finished the Post Jam version:
loading zone.png
A great concept for the theme! In some ways this game feels like playing tetris, which is a good thing. Had a lot of fun! The only thing which is a bit annoying is all that dragging stuff around, because it feels like work. But I guess, that's intended.. :) Here's my high score:
LoadingZoneHighscore.png
Nice I guess the 5ms less for each point do add in difficulty ! Here is my last try of a few runs: Screenshot 2023-05-07 000039.png
The game is really fun albeit its simple setting. Great for logistics fan. What I would suggest is some 8-bit audio, that would suit the theme nicely!
first 30 seconds I thought this was the dumbest thing and then I was like "I'll be god damned if I let this delivery truck beat me" very fun, nice job!
Actually a pretty fun game, like a strange version of solitare. It's a shame that you can easily lose to RNG though, I had a ton of black boxes but a black lorry never came.
Simple yet it works! I liked it very much, quite addictive and somewhat original. Nice job. Simple graphics ,but does the job. Controls were fine. Some sounds would have been great, but I understand everyone has to make decisions.
Wow this is so cool! It's a simple core idea that leads to some interesting juggling, both physical and mental. There is a cool multi-tasking between moving the boxes into the truck from my stacks, while also keeping the forklift active. Then I have to think about what to do to move things around during my downtime to set up cleanly to open myself up to opportunities.
Few times I felt like I was heading for losing, and suddenly I'd get the truck I needed to clear a full stack or more.
Very cool entry, well done.
Pretty fun little sorting puzzle game! Nicely done!
Cool game idea! Stacking and shifting the boxes back and forth was fun! The timer on the trucks is also great, so you can plan your moves better. Nice game!
The game was very fun! I really liked this take on the sorting packages game style!
As others have mentioned, some forced balance would be a great addition. When I played, I never once got a blue truck and eventually the blue boxes just clogged everything. Overall though, I enjoyed this Tower of Hanoi-ish game
@voidraizer While the post-jam version is significantly better I did consider additional RNG optimizations. Like perhaps if the conveyor is 3/4 full it gives you a higher chance to get a truck you have more boxes of or something like that.
Super fun game! I only played the jam version but I found the box organizing super satisfying and the game an appropriate level of challenging (save the improvements that other commenters mentioned re: RNG and hit box size). I'd play a full version of this.
Simple and fun, I really like it. The game is intuitive to play, the art communicates really well, and your game just hit the delivery theme.
I didn't get as high a score as others, but with 162 I'm still pretty chuffed! I'd love to see this game expanded on with a mechanic to call specific colours of trucks. With a significant cooldown it could be a good risk/reward mechanic where I decide if I want to clear out all my white boxes even though I can see a line of greens coming up on the conveyor... A solid entry, great job!
Super great game! Played to the end and got 238, I must say I'm quite proud of it! With some progression systems it could be really fun :)
@nonimad You aren't the first to suggest a progression system. In the post jam version I made the box spawn rate on the conveyor belt increase by 5 ms for every point you have. I am curious what you think a "progression system" for this game could look like. Is there anything specific you were thinking of?