phlip45 2023-05-01 07:22
Very satisfying. Killed all the enemies and returned them, though nothing happened when I did. I feel like 100 enemies was a bit much, but very solid overall!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Cerberus
By veralos
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 111 | 3.79 | 43 | |
| Fun | 98 | 3.76 | 43 | |
| Innovation | 153 | 3.51 | 43 | |
| Theme | 245 | 3.70 | 43 | |
| Graphics | 213 | 3.52 | 43 | |
| Audio | 213 | 3.20 | 42 | |
| Humor | 224 | 2.75 | 38 | |
| Mood | 143 | 3.50 | 41 |
Very satisfying. Killed all the enemies and returned them, though nothing happened when I did. I feel like 100 enemies was a bit much, but very solid overall!
Straight-forward, fun little game! I think with more time, you could have something great on your hands here.
@phlip45 Thanks for playing.
Yeah, there isn't much reward for returning all the souls outside of a "you did it" message. I unfortunately ran out of time to add a proper ending.
Really fun game, like the graphics. Not sure how strong the link to the theme was, but I enjoyed it. nice one :)
Very polished! The bite attack animation + sound effect was really satisfying :) The variety in enemies was really cool too!
All souls returned! Thank you for game
+ I feel like it was a bit too punishing, I liked to collect a lot of souls for the bonus xp (and not to waste time walking back and forth all the time) but losing them all and have them return of the map to their original location felt like a little bit too much. I feel like only dropping a few souls (like 3), or making the souls stay on the location they were dropped and only respawn the monsters there, wouldn't feel as punishing and a minor inconvenience to have to chase them a little bit. + Sometimes I found it hard to notice a single enemy when I had a lot of souls, I thought I killed them all or one of them managed to sneakily respawn, and was really frustrating getting hit at that point. Thinking "I did well", and the n all the progress gets wiped, stronger signaling of alive enemies would help. + I think the claw attack could have a bigger hitbox towards the player so that you can hit close by enemies, and a more generous hitbox for colecting souls would be nice. + I enjoyed the game outside the few frustrations I mentioned
Cool graphics and suitably crunchy sound effects. Really liked that everything felt like it had weight - especially when I'd get hit and the souls I'd collected were thrown all over the place. Also liked having to frantically run around and pick up souls I'd lost.
Cool enemy variety it was fun having to tackle different groupings.
Would have loved some music.
Good game, atmospheric. Still would have added with the leveling pumping some abilities and it would have been awesome, but what you did is a great job in such a limited time!
Probably my favorite compo game so far. Has a good risk/reward thing going on with the XP bonuses and the gameplay itself is super satisfying.
@ellaris Thanks for the feedback. The punishing nature is somewhat by design. The idea is that you're forced to choose whether it's worth the risk of hoarding a bunch of souls knowing you could easily lose them. I'll have to think about if there's a way to make it less punishing without removing the risk-vs-reward element.
@thaprofesional Glad you enjoyed it. Would have liked to add music but I didn't prioritise it highly enough and ran out of time to make it.
@alisher-fazilov Thanks. Using xp to unlock new abilities sounds like a cool idea!
@veralos I understand that it's a risk vs reward thing, I was just voicing my opinion of how I felt, if that's the kind of game you want to have, that's fine. I just found it frustrating when I cleared 4 rooms and was like, "ok, I clear this room and cash it in" and then get hit by one of the mobs (it would be better if I felt like it was my fault, but usually I couldn't notice the last guy or thought he was dead) to invalidate all my work and the ghosts seemed to immediately go in a wall and wander of to respawn. Maybe have the ghosts linger 1-2 more seconds on the map they got released on, because I usually was able to recapture like 2-3 of the 14 ghosts I captured before they respawned.
Gave me Jeff Minter vibes. Very satisfying gameplay and sound effects.
Good entry, this. Controls are nice and precise, the combat feels nice and chunky. Love the screenshake when you kill a monster, really hammers home the fact your are hitting HARD. The risk-reward ratio of pressing on or going back to the pool to drop of your souls is nice, decently balanced as well.
Really like the fact the numbers go up, because I'm one of the fiends who lives for that shit - wish there were upgrades to buy!
Controls really well, the attacks and collection felt good once I got used to it. Good level design too. It felt like a real 2D souls game. I think apart from music maybe some more visual cues for getting stronger would be cool? The variety of enemies is great as well. Nice work!
Very polished controls. The attack mechanic was very satisfying to use. Had fun playing it.
@teddyreid When in doubt, add screenshake.
@kierogi Could you elaborate on what kind of visual cues you were thinking of?
@veralos I saw the bar at the bottom? But I was thinking character changes or getting bigger. Maybe your teeth get red/darker? If this sounds like nonsense or I missed something apologies, I have been providing feedback at the end of each day so may have not noticed something!
Cool game! I like the concept of being Death and delivering souls (reminds me of games like Death's Door and Have a nice death). Pixel art is cool and combat feels juicy. GG!
Very simple yet fun gameplay, 100 enemies did feel like a long time though. Still, I had a bit of fun! The sound effects really made the combat satisfying, well done for something made in 2 days!
@kierogi No worries, it doesn't sound like nonsense. I'm just fishing for ideas on how to improve the game.
So simple, but so cool and addictive. Thanks, I had a lot of fun!
Sadly lacking background audio - other than that, a very good entry.
I really did feel like I was in hell! I love the look of this one and playing as a three headed dog is my favorite thing
Very fun game! I like the idea of making player to get greedy and try to collect a lot of souls at a time (because I did, and losing a lot of them too😅). Mad respect for completing this in 48 hours! Awesome work!
I like that this is filled with mechanics I am familiar with, but combined in a way that feels completely novel. I played the whole game. Fun stuff!
Nice game ! An ending screen would have been nice. After returning all the souls i was expecting to go through the door. Dropping all the souls on any hit was a good idea ! Great work !
Nice little game, with quite a rich gameplay for a compo. My only issue was that the keyboard keys only work well with QWERTY, so it's quite annoying to use other layouts like AZERTY But other than that, nice entry.
@fabonacci Glad you liked it. Going through the door at the end was the original plan before time limitations got in the way.
@hakro Thanks for pointing that issue out. I've now added some alternate key bindings for AZERTY in the post-jam build I'm working on.
These heckin' souls! I love how there's a risk/reward mechanic, where you can make it harder for yourself by trying to collect more souls before going back. I really want to see a run where someone gets all the souls in one try, but I did enjoy delivering some and getting more stamina, to make it easier.
All souls returned! Nice little game! Cool idea, Great job!
The risk reward mechanic of collecting more souls for extra XP was smart and pushed me to play harder! The crunchy effects of biting, the kills, and the juicy level ups were all very effective and punchy.
I had a couple issues though. 100 souls is a pretty big goal, perhaps a 25% too big in my opinion. Cerberus himself could have had some better animations, as he's the star- I though all the enemies pixel art was pretty darn good though.
My biggest issue was that on the web, holding right click to move fast was a poor choice as it seems that on Firefox it interacts with some other keypress (WASD or left click, not sure) to open contextual menus. I also had an issue where when I entered a new screen, if I was holding left click, I would bite once and then stop, which was a small hiccup in the flow of the game, but led to me losing all my souls multiple times as the enemies made it through my chomp-wall during the lapse.
The other issue was that enemies immediately do contact damage after returning to their bodies. So my last second dashes to pick up their souls were 50/50 chances that I would lose all my souls again trying to stop them. I think they should have flashed or played an audio cue as they were regenerating, and perhaps come back partially transparent for 1 second or something during which they can't damage the player to add a small buffer.
I enjoyed crunching on enemies and I liked your take on delivery. At first, I thought it wasn't very on-theme, but as I played, it became obvious that I was playing fetch with the souls and the "delivery" portion of the game was strong! I almost wish holding more souls gave you an additional benefit like greater speed or attack speed to further encourage the icarus-flight of risk/vs reward.
@thesmellofoxygen Wow, thanks for the detailed feedback!
Yeah... sort of locked myself into a dog protagonist early on before realizing later that animating one was harder than I expected. Probably why the more humanoid enemies tend to look better.
After some testing on Firefox, it seems like your control issues were probably caused by moving the mouse outside the game region. I'm not sure how much I can do to fix that, but I'll look into it. At the very least I can add alternate buttons to help alleviate the issue.
Fair points about respawning enemies. Could definitely add more feedback to make it clear when they're respawning. Having them deal no damage for a short time after coming back sounds like a good idea too.
Very interesting concept, and great depth from the risk vs reward mechanic of taking more souls at once. The back and forth between the starting location became a little taxing as I needed to get increasingly further away from it each time, and losing all the current souls from getting hit felt a little too punishing in my opinion, as the hits where sometimes quite difficult to avoid. Besides that, a really interesting and unique take on the theme, and a very enjoyable game in general. Good work!
Loved the risk vs reward mechanic and the crunchiness of the gameplay. Losing all souls felt too punishing, but overall a unique and enjoyable game. Great work!
Very good game, liked having to juggle bringing the souls back while also wanting to carry more to earn more xp. The souls being dropped rather than health was less frustrating than having a regular health bar, and the enemies coming back to life adds a lot to the gameplay loop if the player gets too greedy. Overall very good, well executed game!
This felt really good to play. I enjoyed it and wanted to play greedy and keep as many souls with me as possible
98th in fun and 111th overall. Not too shabby.
Thanks to everyone who rated and commented!