ludev 2023-05-01 06:23
Sounds are fantastic. Character controls and mood on point with the sounds.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Souls on Board: The Styx Delivery Service
By boon
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 336 | 3.06 | 24 | |
| Fun | 390 | 2.35 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 234 | 3.22 | 24 | |
| Theme | 118 | 4.09 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 350 | 2.81 | 23 | |
| Audio | 97 | 3.65 | 24 | |
| Humor | 234 | 2.70 | 22 | |
| Mood | 103 | 3.68 | 24 |
Sounds are fantastic. Character controls and mood on point with the sounds.
Really nice take on the theme! Super atmospheric and moody sounds, I especially liked the choir coming in after a delivery. Just like rowing a real boat it can get frustrating and sadly I always managed to get stuck against walls eventually with seemingly no way out since you can't really back up.
I really liked the way the controls made it sometimes a bit frustating but that just made it more fun! Great game!
Enjoyed the sounds. Was not really sure what to do and the controls were a little annoying but it did make me laugh.
The audio fits the game well.
I feel like the game itself could (and should) contain some playing instructions. I tend to start a game and if I can't figure it out, then I come back to read the instructions on this site. Even a single image showing the controls and the game's goal, or which is good and which is bad, would be a fantastic help and make the game more approachable.
Adding some sort of restart/replay mechanic would be great too so that the player could just try again instead of having to restart the entire app.
Cool game! Original idea for the theme. I found myself stuck on walls with no way out sometimes though, I think a row backwards button would have helped with controls.
A very interesting concept. Unfortunately, it was a little hard to control the boat and I very easily got stuck at the walls. The navigation markers getting hidden in the fog is something that I really like, but I also found out that you cannot really read what the soul has to say when you are in the fog, which resulted in difficulties delivering the soul; not sure if it is intentional.
Really cool idea. Controls are interesting and difficult, but wish the dialogue would be a bit more interesting. Nice game overall :)
Interesting concept. Love the atmosphere and theme. It's impressive how moody it is considering the simplicity of the graphics. As other have said, controls are a bit rough. The clouds/fog are really strong, can't see a thing. Did you do that so there the player would miss some of the text sometimes? That creates cool ambiguity, however, I think I got a game over because I took a person to the wrong destination (timer showed I still have time). That kind of sits wrong with me. If you're adding these ambigious elements (the fog, moral judgements), then it's kinda weird to hit the player with an arbitraty failstate. It might be more interesting to let the player decide where to send each person.
But again, the theme is so strong. It's so evocative to be rowing the boat and listening to the people's stories. Like I could see a bigger, atmospheric story game built on this idea. Cool entry.
The audio was well done and I found the stories the people told pretty entertaining! The controls took a while to get used to and even after I had figured out how to work around the beginning of stroke/end of stroke mechanic it felt awkward and I often ended up turning too far and smashing into things.
Really unique! The controls were difficult to master, but not too hard. I liked the water sound effects.
Great audio design and theme! The controls are a bit frustrating as has been mentioned, though I feel that it's sort of the point--I think you could lean into it further and make the controls/physics a bit more fair while still remaining janky/silly.
Thanks for all of the nice messages! The audio mostly came from my bathtub, desk, and water bottle, haha. I think over the weekend I got good at controlling the awkward boat physics so I decided to call it "gameplay," I'll try to aim for easier controls next time! The clouds obscuring everything was intentional so you'd need to avoid them to be able to read the messages, and I did want to be more generous with a misplaced soul but ran out of time and had to just call it game over.
Audio are really nice! But controls are a bit complicated)