jp-design 2023-05-03 04:51
Can't play it, sorry :/ Untitled.png
By looking at the assets, it look like a nice little game
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Astacus Mechanicus
By deadlyfugu, Boris the Computer Pig and Chris Chen
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 527 | 3.62 | 22 | |
| Fun | 379 | 3.64 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 189 | 3.83 | 23 | |
| Theme | 829 | 3.64 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 822 | 3.28 | 23 | |
| Humor | 249 | 3.69 | 23 | |
| Mood | 778 | 3.31 | 24 |
Can't play it, sorry :/ Untitled.png
By looking at the assets, it look like a nice little game
Really cool concept! I like the idea of building onto previous levels to increase the difficulty. Having new mechanics introduced in every level was also fun. The game is definitely very hard in its current form but I imagine that's a symptom of the short development time. With a longer game, I would expect the difficulty curve to be be less steep. Maybe not though if that's what you're going for! The only thing I thought was a bit frustrating was that I was struggling to come up with a technique to solve the puzzles. It did feel a bit like there were so many options, I had to resort to trial and error. However maybe if I spent more time with it, I would be able to find a couple of strategies. Nice work!
I'm getting the error that "VCRUNTIME140D.dll" is not installed. I believe that is a debug library and I don't have Visual Studio installed on this machine. I think you need to build in "Release" mode so it depends on the normal dll versions.
I can't play due VCRUNTIME140D.dll is missing!
Interesting concept for a puzzle game where you continue to build upon the previous level. However, because of the pace at which more pieces were added it quickly got overwhelming and I didn't feel like I could approach the problem in any strategic manner other than trying a bunch of things and seeing what works. Maybe cut down on the number of pieces that have dual purpose in the early levels to let players first get comfortable with the rules and mechanics of the game, then over time introduce them more and more. After a while you also had so many pieces that it was hard to manage them all.
If difficulty is increased more gradually, I can imagine this being a quite fun challenge.
Some minor issues I had: - The sound when placing a piece is quite sharp. Consider lowering it's volume or replacing it with something softer. - It's possible to place pieces outside the grid. Don't know if this is intentional or not. - Picking up a piece made it displace, sometimes quite a lot, which made it tedious to move pieces single steps.
In summary: fun concept that would greatly benefit from a more lenient difficulty curve.
Thanks for the error reports everyone, should be fixed now with the 230504a version.
Thanks for the fix, very cool game
Agree with ski11az on the difficulty curve being a bit too steep - I got stuck on day 2. I wasn't sure how to power the cooling mechanism (does it need to be attached to the yellow lines?). Otherwise, seems fairly well executed, and a cool idea overall. As far as graphics, the board itself looked nice, but out of place next to the hand-drawn tools and realistic background/papers (not to mention the cutscenes :P )
Cool concept and good implementation. I think the dreams are the highlight and I'm just to dumb for the puzzles :)
Version 502 doesn't run, version 504 does. Cool concept would be nice if we could somehow drag piece arragenments, sometimes i started to close to the edge realizing I had to recreate all my thing just a tile or 2 to the right, aside from that nice little puzzle game, may just have been me but I feel there was only 1 solution would have been nice to have multiples.
Fun, but pretty difficult. Maybe I'm just smoothbrained though, caveman gamedev brain hurty.
Very cool puzzle concept and a pretty unique interpretation of the theme! The execution could use some work to be more user-friendly. Some dedicated space on the side to organize your growing pieces collection would be nice. As would some explanation about different pieces (although no explanation brings on more tinkering, which is also fun :grin:).
Music is pleasant and the dreams of lobsters are just hilarious. Graphics could use work. They are kind of an inconsistent jumble of styles :wink:
Overall, I think this concept has potential to be a great puzzle game. Just needs a heap of polish.
This game was great! The graphics looked good and sfx were fitting. Especially the music was great, since it conveyed a relaxed mood, which was perfect for puzzling.
However, what bothered me was the difficulty curve. The first levels were really easy, but then it started to get really tricky. I was about to give up multiple times, but pushed through. It would be nice if you could make the steps a bit easier. Maybe by providing only the parts that are needed for the current stage.
I started to notice, how some parts came together really nicely, which was really rewarding. I was hoping that in the end all of the parts would come together into one complete design, but was diappointed when I solved the second last level with rather messy wiring and quite a lot of spare parts. That's just too bad, since I really like the concept of incremental additions to the machine. I would love to see an extended version where you build a machine (or rather multiple machines) that uses all parts that get delivered. It would be fun if the player needs to use the parts in different spots throughout the stages. However, what I want to see the most is that in the end all parts come together and nothing is left over.
This is one of my favorite games this LD and I would love to see it being developed into something bigger :) Provided that *HE* approves of it.
!> :crab::crab::crab: Hail to the almighty lobster! :crab::crab::crab: May he pinch those who did not enable the lobster emoji in the comment section :crab::crab::crab:
Absolutely fantastic. This is fantastically executed, and I spent about an hour getting to the 'Friday' level before I had to restart my computer and lost my progress. Super charming, fun art, and super fun gameplay. This kind of game is exactly my kind of thing.
I was super proud of getting through Friday and took a screenshot of my machine -> Screenshot 2023-05-06 172045.png
Excellent game! After a lot of thinking (and the help of @untitled-studios's solution) I finally finished the assembly. Here it is :grin: : Capture.PNG
Thanks everyone for playing and leaving feedback! I agree that the difficulty curve is a bit steep, we would have definitely liked to put more time into polishing up the puzzles but in the end we weren't able to. This was the first experience with game dev for two of us so there are lots of things to learn for next time! Thanks again and i'm glad you enjoyed!
Wow, This is my favorite game in the game jam so far. Really fun to play, spent a lot of time on the last puzzle, but managed to solve it.Capture.PNG
Very fun puzzle game. Feels like one of those 90s games
Very cool game idea! I unfortunately did not get further at some point and then gave up. :( I missed a few "comfort features" like marking an area and move the entire area or, in my special case, the possibility to get a little help when you get stuck. :smile: Nevertheless, the game was really entertaining and fun and the game idea very unique! I would certainly play the game if there is a post-jam version :D
Edit: Now I see the solutions in the comments here - I should have looked here earlier. :sweat_smile: