Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Sortcery
By theg
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1067 | 3.02 | 22 | |
| Fun | 1158 | 2.57 | 22 | |
| Innovation | 560 | 3.37 | 22 | |
| Theme | 446 | 4.05 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 858 | 3.22 | 22 | |
| Audio | 749 | 2.17 | 22 | |
| Humor | 764 | 2.78 | 21 | |
| Mood | 1068 | 2.81 | 21 |
I think that postal work combined with something like "Papers, please" concept is interesting idea. The real problem that it's totally unclear how game works, paper hint isn't really clarifies it. As well as it's unclear what top left shows, tho it seems as interesting metric of player efficiency. I guess you need to write less concise description on game page, this will help.
As with the poster above it was really hard to figure out how the game works, plus the paper itself constantly pops up when trying to drag stuff to the bottom right. Once I kinda figured out what was going on it was more a fight to click the correct controls in time as the physics went haywire, which honestly was pretty amusing. I like it as a concept but would have been better if it was more visual/audio than just the meter at the top.
I kind of like the idea, but it's pretty fast. I think giving the player more time to think and investigate, like in "Papers Please" might improve it. Nice work though.
Needs some music imo. Also maybe a bit slower ramp up. I didn't feel like I had any time to get my bearings. Like others have mentioned figuring out the rules is a little complex so maybe giving some really basic ones right at first and explaining what stamps to give them would help to get the player going. The scoring system would be good to explain as well, maybe just have a more basic count of correctly delivered packages and a demerit system for mistakes with a threshold of some kind. From there you have a really solid concept with legs.
Illiefog Greybeard that dirty old wizard ordered werewolf's stool thats somehow still alive... I guess due to lack of chewing :D The tutorial poster looks very nice, but is a bit hard to understand and did not fully prepare me for the stuff I sorted. I picked it up eventually, but a more direct feedback on the sorting would help, like already suggested by the others above. The very big packages did not fit into the teleporter and sometimes started flying around, but that could amost be a feature and not a bug. Was fun though :)
Very interesting concept! It was pretty tough to understand what information I was looking for in order to apply the correct stamps to the boxes, and I felt pretty rushed trying to figure it out, but it's a really well crafted jam game, and I think that it could be excellent if fleshed out a little bit more!
I really liked the idea! However, the fact that packages are physics-based brought a lot of issues (they often got stuck at the end because they were a bit hard to manipulate.
As it said, physics-based items have issues but the idea is great it just need to be polished. I really think physics-based items is a way to go if you'd make it more sustainable
Fun idea, that makes me want to make this kind of "check the details" game.
Though that teleporter man... I'm going to have to bring it back and play the warranty card ! It's : - too small, all the big boxes have to glitch through the top to get to it - kinda buggy, very often I would have boxes sitting in the teleporter for up to several minutes on end without teleporting, during this time I'd have a huge pile up of boxes I could not send anywhere. - too slow, even when it doesn't pout I constantly have a queue of packages to send waiting for it.
Physics based packages on its own is already challenging, as you accumulate delays it gets increasingly difficult to manipulate them, but with that whimsical teleporter it's frustrating.
Stamps would not always show when placed, which could make it confusing to know if a box was done correctly.
There also seemed to be next to no consequence of doing your job super poorly, the only thing I noticed was a special sound playing when throwing a non cursed item in the pit. I'm guessing you didn't have time to implement a bigger consequence but once you realize it as a player it takes the charm away.
I have no idea what the number at the top right corner is, if it's meant to be a score then it just kept increasing whatever I was doing.
There didn't seem to be an end, neither losing or winning, so I eventually just closed the game, at that point the top right number read 49700, or close to that.
Overall I think using physics could be ok, but the boxes felt too big in general, even with no queue or buggy teleporters it was difficult to make the box go where you wanted them to, I feel like this might be intended but it makes it disappointing when you correctly label everything and still can't do it right because the boxes just won't fit or block each other across the different conveyors.
It looks like the stamps were made using decals, I think in this case, where packages are basic cubes, it would make sense to have a textured quad placed instead, it would be more performant, wouldn't display through/on other boxes. Though you would have to clamp the stamp to be fully inside a face, otherwise it will poke out in the air haha.
I think the stamps that don't show up are based on the sides of the boxes they are placed on, maybe the sides pointing in the box's local negative axes ? If that helps.
Anyway, making this kind of games during a jam is quite a challenge as they work best when they have a good amount of content, so I feel like you did a pretty good job in spite of the issues.
I liked the concept but give more time for the player to check each package. It was really frustrating when packages started piling up and it quickly became a mess of boxes pushing each other. The instructions are also a bit confusing at first. The stamping felt really nice though.
Cool idea for a game! The physics-based element is a nice addition that I haven't seen before in these types of games. It would be great if there was more depth to using the physics system than "sometimes boxes fall off the conveyor belt and it's annoying to get them back on". Also, I didn't understand why the volatile containers were marked on the label but the cursed ones weren't. It seems there's no reason to check whether a box is in the yellow zone because it will already have said on the label. I really like the basic concept here, and with more complexity and polish this would be something I could see myself playing for a long session.
Nice game! Only problem is that i went through a hard time trying to disable the antivirus to download the game.
We had a similar idea we didn't do in the end, so I'm glad someone did it!! :D The stamping and posting categories are really coherent to the universe! Even tho the graphism are a little less coherent, but you had three days to make it happen by yourself, so big gj! It's pretty fun having to stamp but you can't clearly see them on the packages which makes this game less accessible to color blind people :/
The tutorial icons on the introduction page give me a feeling of warning signs in a high-tech research institute. It's really cool, and I like it a lot.:heart:
Nice Game! I like the idea, the only thing I miss is a reset button :smirk: With a litle more time for polishing it would have been a truly great little game