maxi1324 2023-05-01 14:11
Great Game!
I really enjoyed playing it. It took me some time to understand it, but i eventually did. I like the graphic and the overall feel of the game
you did a great job.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Merge Barge
By ashashza
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 272 | 3.87 | 29 | |
| Fun | 256 | 3.79 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 294 | 3.70 | 29 | |
| Theme | 915 | 3.50 | 29 | |
| Graphics | 252 | 4.18 | 29 | |
| Mood | 450 | 3.68 | 29 |
Great Game!
I really enjoyed playing it. It took me some time to understand it, but i eventually did. I like the graphic and the overall feel of the game
you did a great job.
This game is great! There is a surprising amount of strategy required to manage the space and fuel. The audio fits the game really well too.
One small nitpick is that it is a little jarring and confusing at first when the game stops if the mouse hovers over a smog cloud. It would happen at random times as the smog went under my mouse, and for a split second I would think the game froze. Maybe you could just pause one time at the beginning to introduce the smog. This is a nitpick though. I really enjoyed the game.
Nice game, shame it's not getting reviewed very much so far. Graphics look very nice, and the gameplay feels good and polished
@maxi1324 Thanks! Yeah ... there's a few rules going on there and we were concerned it might require a proper tutorial ... but glad to hear you were able to understand it eventually. If there was a particular element you found confusing or took ages to understand, I'd love to hear so that I can try figure out better ways to handle that in future jams.
@csimpson Yay, glad you enjoyed the strategy and liked the audio. The aim was to create a relaxing mood while your brain is puzzling.
Great point on the hovering over clouds being jarring. I thought I was being smart by giving them a time-slow tooltip but as you pointed out it's probably more confusing than helpful. Thanks for the feedback.
@nuin Thanks for the kind words!
This was really fun. The combination of merging crates and preparing for smog collection was great, introducing a bit of small-scale variety in the gameplay loop. The strategy of thinking ahead with where you place your cargo became quickly apparent, and I enjoyed figuring out the puzzle. Though I made stupid mistakes a couple of times, so an undo button (just one step back) would have been cool.
I would have liked a clearer indication of what you're placing down. A couple of times, I accidentally put down a smog collector when I thought it was a crate, because I wasn't paying attention to the line-up at the bottom. Having a transparent version of the thing you're placing on your mouse cursor rather than just a generic block would have avoided that (or at least having the one you're placing in the line-up be normal size, and the others smaller?).
Also, as a side note, there were tooltips for the initial starting stuff, but not for the bigger crates, so it wasn't immediately obvious to me how many of the crates I needed to combine (e.g. I first thought that a 2 and a 1 would combine into a 3).
I couldn't finish the third mission, because I kept getting no-win scenarios (granted, I didn't do everything perfectly). The randomization (?) screwed me over a couple of times, unfortunately.
Overall, a pretty great game. It's fun and polished. Well done!
Had to play a second time to understand and also took me some placements before i knew that the line was in the bottom. Game and graphics are fun once understood tho :)
I am a little dumb and didnt realize that the line of objects at the bottom was what was coming next and I thought it was just completely random. I finally figured that part out and I had a lot of fun. I really like games where you can upgrade things (by merging or otherwise) So this type of game was right in my wheelhouse. It was fun, I wish the smog clouds were a little more predictable. Otherwise a great entry in the game! Congrats on finishing!
Fantastic work. It took me a couple tries to grasp the smog-to-fuel collection, but then I really got into it. Really great job in such a tight timeframe. I feel like the crates are almost a secondary feature and it's all about the fuel, and it would be nice if they were a bit more core.
The game was good although I got a bug in which the fuel never went down and the turns stoped going. So I could place things forever.
It's a good game. Music was great and the graphics were good too. Looks really neat.
I didn't understand at first what are the boxes for because the information was a little bit tucked away in the corner. I think the fuel info can be moved to a corner, add some barrels or colours so it's noticeable still. Then the object info can be center. Or vice versa.
Also the boxes are quite detached from the game, I barely used the 3 rows even, so the boxes doesn't even need to be there, except to provide less fan. Maybe you clear out boxes at level 3 or 4, otherwise the more boxes you have, the more fuel you waste each turn? That would add some consequences to the boxes.
Nice work though!
This was excactly what I needed after a day at work, Thanks! I could just grab something to drink, listen to the calming music and puzzle away. I'll have to admit this was my very first merger game ever, but it was easy enough to pick up, after some tinkering.
For me the difficulty shifted a bit throughout the missions. The first one is an easy introduction for the smoke stacks, but I didn't really get what the boxes are for. Only later I realized that they are just there to be managed and I struggeled a bit, while fuel was not so much of an issue, except for the beginning of the missions :thinking:
Very nicely done!
Seems hard at the beginning but after like 1 minute you get used to it and enjoy. Reminds me "plants vs zombies" + "2048" + "raft". Nice job!
@jaco-van-hemert Thanks for playing, great feedback. You raise a really good point on an undo button... we defn don't want to punish players for making an unintentional move, so undo is a nice idea. I wonder if making the "next up" object clearer if that would mean less mistakes.
Excellent suggestion on "see what you're about to place". It's something we wanted to do but didn't find time for.
I'm thrilled you had enough fun to play until the 3rd mission. I think it is winnable but it's tough as nails.
Thanks again for such thoughtful feedback and taking the time to write it up.
@hoeleboele Thanks! Good to hear it was intuitive enough to figure out on your 2nd go.
@cole-hutson Hells yeah, so good to hear that you enjoy this type of game and that our little jam hit the right notes for you.
@rjdrag Tx, that's a good insight. The crates do play a larger role in the later missions, where if you don't pack 'em neatly you'll run out of space. But agreed that it would be nice to make the feel more central earlier on.
@skitefall Hey, that's a real interesting idea with the boxes... making them influence fuel usage. Agreed with your points on the UI layout, we didn't find time to address those. Thanks for writing up your comment!
@archaeognathus Aw yeah! "calming music and puzzle away" was just the kind of vibe we were aiming for... so good to hear it hit those marks for you. Thanks for sharing that.
Good insight on the difficulty. When balancing (I'm very amateur at it) I tried to have fuel build some kind of tension and then release... something like "oh I need to focus on fuel now" and a few moves later "oh dang, I need to manage boxes better". It sounds like I partially managed that but wasn't quite as rewarding for you as I'd hope. Anyway, great feedback, thx!
@harami “plants vs zombies” + “2048” + “raft”... not only is that flattering and insightful... but you clearly have great taste :wink: Thanks for sharing.
Nice. I like the merge strategy and figuring out the gameplay enough to establish my own strategy was fun. I was a bit confused at first what the smog was doing. Also was confused as to the purpose of the different blocks. Maybe to simplify the beginning, just starting with one possible object and placing it down would help. Great game
Cool little game, simple and fun! It feels very satisfying and relaxing to play. It was a bit confusing initially, but I quickly realized what's going on. Nice one!
I had fun with the game, the mechanics where weird to understand originally but I love the 2048 feel it has :p. Nice graphics and ambience !
@wadlo Thanks Wadlo. A few folks have said they felt a bit lost in the beginning, so that defn something we'd need to work on.
@smeljey Yay, glad to hear it felt relaxing for you. Relaxing puzzle games are a personal favourite, so hearing it felt that was for you is great :smile:
@z0rg Thanks for the kind words. You know ... now that you mention 2048, it might be interesting to have a level / mode where you slide the boxes around and try smash / merge them into each other. Maybe that's a stormy level :wink:
A nice and calming game, though no clear feedback on if I was doing had any impact or not. Besides that, very good
Quality entry!
Level of polish is such that you don't even notice the sounds/art/animations, which is a good thing. Everything just feels right. (A nice satisfying "squish" or "clunk" sound on merge would be cool though!)
I found the rules quite intuitive to pick up, took me about 2 rounds to grasp it. I've played an unhealthy amount of Triple Town in the past, so I found this a bit easy. One could probably scale the difficulty quite easily though, by adjusting the relative frequency of crates to smoke stacks, being more brutal with fuel, etc.
Agree with comments saying that the clouds freezing on mouseover (mouseunder?) was a bit distracting, and that it would be cool if the sea scrolled as well so that it felt like the barge was moving.
Unfortunately I didn't finish it, I ran into a bug on the 3rd level where things wouldn't merge anymore? And I could place things on top of occupied spaces?
All in all a cool idea and well executed, and lots of room to tweak/extend. Well done :)
Great work! It took a little tinkering to understand but I enjoyed my time playing :smile:
I thought the merge-to-harvest was a fun mechanic for the smoke collectors, it was a great way to get me to try managing my space efficiently. I was confused at first about what the boxes were for, but I figure their point was to get me to manage them so they wouldn't clog up too much space? I wish their purpose would've been told through the textbox like the collectors and lanes but I think it was clever nonetheless.
I did stumble upon this weird bug (In the downloadable windows version) where the game would just... stop? I could still place and merge elements but the turns would not progress and smoke clouds would not spawn. While I messed around in this state I also managed to stack two smoke collectors on top of each other and put a smoke collector inside of another. Here's a screenshot, if that helps: StoppedState.PNG
Either way, that did not ruin my experience (don't worry :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:), I just couldn't complete the final mission as it also happened the second time I tried to play it. Artwork was cute and audio was soothing. I liked the concept and think it can built upon. Nice work! :thumbsup:
@peachtreemcgee Thanks. By "no clear feedback" do you mean that you weren't able to see if you were making progress? Or that it wasn't clear when things merged?
@japes Aw thanks, that's great feedback. Yeah, good insight on the difficulty scaling, there's a few levels to pull. Oh no, sorry you bumped into that bug! I saw it once during the jam and wasn't able to squash it. Thanks again.
@virtualman52 Hey, merge-to-harvest is a good way to put it. Initially we had the collectors auto-collect fuel but it just felt sooo much better once we changed to merge-to-harvest. Good point, we could have info for the boxes too to help give players context.
Oh no, I'm sorry you bumped into that bug too. I _think_ it's happening when folks play quickly and make a move before a previous animation is complete. Thanks for posting the image and sorry it wrecked your run.
Again, thanks for the useful input and taking the time to write it up. :heart:
I was confused for a second when the game froze because the cloud stopped under my cursor (in order to give me the tooltip), until i moved my mouse. And I'm dumb because that kept confusing me many times 😅
It takes a bit to grasp but it's understandable that in a jam game you can't expect the same kind of hand-holding that a proper game would have for the first time you play. I have the same issue when I make jam games, especially puzzles, that it's hard to make it easy for people to pick up, you barely have time to finish making the game as is!
Overall I'm pretty impressed with how smooth the experience is, the polish isn't the easiest thing to prioritize in a jam, but this was very well-rounded! :smile:
I was a bit confused at first but it ended up being pretty fun. I didn't want to stop until I finished and I feel like I would have kept going if there were more missions. I think an endless mode could be interesting. It was a nice level of planning and challenge.
I finally got a chance to play this and I really liked it! If you mix in some more mechanics in the next levels I would play this for a long time!
I think the only things missing is some more sound effects when things merge and when you place them, and I think highlighting the next block more would also help. I sometimes got them mixed up trying to think a few moves ahead and not concentrating!
This was a really creative combination of tile-based mechanics! I did run into an issue where the game would not progress after this point in Mission 1: Screenshot 2023-05-12 234154.png
I managed to some how double stack the tower and it glitched :(image.jpg
It took a while but I managed to crack the formula!
It makes so much more sense now lol
The biggest thing I was missing was the row of items at the bottom. I figured it was RANDOMLY spawned but its not. you have a heads up!
It was great fun.
The music, the clouds, everything is really well made.
Nice job! :)
Very nice entry! The use of the theme was very tasteful, just a background motive that sort-of explains the mechanics. And those mechanics were simple and fresh - made for a very relaxing puzzle.
The visuals were very pleasant too, clear yet pretty. The clouds slowing down massively on mouse hover (?) was a bit confusing (I thought it is some intentional bullet time effect to show them being collected, but it didn't consistently happen around my collectors), but it wasn't too distracting.
This was a very unique idea. Liked the combining idea of it