FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD53 → Before the Storm

Before the Storm

By dusho

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3053.1626
Fun2833.0626
Innovation3022.9726
Theme524.2726
Graphics2193.4726
Audio3202.3925
Humor2012.8424
Mood2992.9126

Comments

zenbreaker 2023-05-01 10:50

Nice game, I love the graphics and hate the sounds. The boost sometimes doesnt get reapplied after stoppping one before. If that is intended a boost meter of some sort would be nice. The game is theoretically not hard, but you quickly miss a thunderbolt, maybe some additional graphics under the clouds or a sound would be nice to make it more predictable. Other than that, I really liked your game, but gave up after several tries in the 2 baby level.

nekowei 2023-05-01 11:55

Good theme and funny graphics. It's a little hard to control, because the boost is kind of unstable. Maybe use another key instead of double tap would be easier.

pauvictor 2023-05-01 13:08

I could not figure out how to boost, so the thunder bolt killed me quite often :D.

It looks nice, and I like the animations for the bird. Good work.

devez 2023-05-01 21:35

Well the clouds did deliver thousands of bolts into my body so on theme :stuck_out_tongue: . I couldn't get past that level, I think if the double tap wasn't buggy it would be easier though. Nice art!

phlip45 2023-05-02 22:44

Not only was it on theme, it was double on theme! Graphics were great and gameplay was fun. I think the sound effects fell a little flat. With the cartoony nature of the graphics I think some "mouth sound" sound effects would have fit a bit better.

Also it could have used some music. I see you used sfxr for the sound effects. In the same vein I would recommend beepbox.co for the music for us less tonally inclined. You can make something that sounds 'good enough' fairly quickly.

The fact that the baby flies up into heaven when the stork dies instead of falling had me laughing.

Great stuff, had a blast. Definitely higher up on the compo entries I've played thus far.

baknik 2023-05-04 17:50

I felt pretty bad when I failed :D Nice smooth animations and controls.

alpalcalad 2023-05-04 17:56

I'm so bad at this game haha. Great job on finishing this in compo. It was sometimes hard to pre-empt the lightening when the clouds are higher up than the screen

fargred 2023-05-04 21:58

I liked it! The sounds were a bit too loud and the boost control felt a bit wonky (I mostly just managed to do it by accident), but I really liked the good amount of varied levels, the obstacles (especially the thunderclouds) and that a lot of things were animated!

automatonvx 2023-05-04 22:20

Decent entry, the art style was kind of charming in its own way (would have liked a fullscreen button to better appreciate it) , and good enough to convey what was going on. Made it to the end, but never felt much of a challenge even though I struggled to pull off the boost intentionally, died once, just because i was lazy about waiting for the lightning strike. Maybe playing around with the physics to make the flight a little less easy to control and perhaps increasing the movement speed (the pacing all felt a bit slow) would go along way to improving the fun factor. Appreciated having at least some basic SFX. Nice work, liked the theme choice, although a little surprised to be droppping babies down chimneys, that can't be safe ;). EDIT - after playing on the LD embedded version i realised i could have played on itch and had the fullscreen option (although you should disable itch.io's own one since they overlap and the itch one doesn't actually work to make it genuinely full screen)

snakemuho 2023-05-04 23:16

I've played a few games where you shoot babies this LD, but for some reason this poor birb's death animation feels more brutal than any of those.

Good job!

the3rdhunter 2023-05-05 17:53

Good job. Solid game. The art and animations are great. The arrows on the map were a much appreciated addition as otherwise it would be easy to get lost.

Like others, I had issues getting the boost to consistently trigger, which lead to some frustrating moments trying to avoid lightning bolts. I also agree that some feedback under the clouds where the lightning bolt is going to hit would be nice as if you're not high enough to see the clouds, there's no warning. I think another nice thing to add would be a timer. Could either be a countdown timer if you want to add some pressure, or just a timer that tracks how long it takes to beat the level in order to give some replay-ability so I can try and beat my previous score. Great work!

firespike33 2023-05-06 08:51

The huge lightning hitboxes and the boost not working were making me rage

nazorus 2023-05-08 18:43

The game looks pretty nice and the animations and movement feel very smooth. The difficulty felt well calibrated too, not too easy and not too frustrating. The biggest problem for me was that double tap did not work correctly most of the time, so I wasn't able to boost consistently (especially problematic for lightning).

Overall this is a very solid compo game, good job on making this in 48h!

f1krazy 2023-05-10 17:17

I was wondering why this was called *Before The Storm* until I got to the third level, and then it made sense.

Anyway, this is a pretty solid entry. It's simple, but it works, and the arrows are very helpful for guiding you through the level. My main complaint is something that I see has been brought up a few times already: it's hard to trigger the dash consistently. Sometimes I'd trigger it without meaning to, while other times it would take me several tries to trigger it on purpose. I'm guessing there's an invisible timer that isn't shown to the player, which isn't great. It would also be helpful to have a clearer indicator of when a lightning bolt is about to hit, so you don't get sniped by one from off-screen. This is especially bad in the final level, where one of the houses has a thunder cloud directly above it, that's impossible to see while you're actually in the process of delivering the baby.

This is a good game, and you did well to get it finished in 48 hours, but it just needs that little bit of polish and bug-fixing to make it perfect.

dusho 2023-05-10 19:18

Thanks all for amazing feedback.. as usual, plans for game features were much much bigger, but due to lack of time I got happy to at least have something functional.. was more of a 20h challenge for me.. but that is no excuse.. will get better next time..

Thanks again

flightless 2023-05-17 12:41

Good job with the animations! I liked that the clouds got darker until they struck.