tntube 2023-10-02 18:26
Fun, pretty and good music. Also W dad
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Critical Core
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 95 | 4.12 | 84 | |
| Fun | 68 | 4.13 | 84 | |
| Innovation | 203 | 3.83 | 84 | |
| Theme | 65 | 4.41 | 84 | |
| Graphics | 419 | 3.86 | 84 | |
| Audio | 14 | 4.36 | 84 | |
| Mood | 172 | 4.01 | 81 |
Fun, pretty and good music. Also W dad
I was stressed out but in good way I guess utz utz
Very very very fun. I have some complaints but they are more nitpicks that I feel would enhance the amazing experience you made.
The music never felt repetitive and always had me on edge, the stage dynamically changing size got me to think about how to get the most points in the fastest time possible. The visuals are a treat even if they are pretty simple shapes you use them well and make them go far. Being a reverse bullet hell in a tight space is something I never even thought I wanted.
I have an issue with the early game difficulty, for the first 5-7 rounds you are able to just stay still and wait and you will get enough score *and* you wont die. I'm not too sure how to fix this without breaking the late game but I want to point it out.
I also found round 12 to make the game much harder due to the shrinking of the stage being so much more excessive. It starts to make the rounds less about dodging and more about planning and luck. This difficulty jump while making the game much more intense feels very sudden as all thre previous rounds lacked this time issue. Again I don't know how to fix this as all my ideas would make it worse but I would just like you to be aware.
The hiscore showing as the global highscore feels misleading and I thought something was bugged until I saw the final score screen. Yes there is text saying pb but I feel as if naming the pb as hiscore and hiscore as leaderboard. Thats a nitpick though (they all are really) so you didnt really make a mistake.
Overall very fun and extremely good job!
dude, this was so fun! i really loved the idea and the simple concept you had. W for you and ur dad. Seriously, the music is amazing, the mechanics are amazing, and the controller gameplay is incredible. congrats!
@normality Thanks for your feedback. I totally agree with you on the balancing, I was trying to get the right balance but seems like it could still be improved. I am glad you had fun though!
My dream is to one day create a simple, objective and fun game like this. And with such engaging music.
2nd in the world rankings so far.
Congratulations!
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@euler-moises congrats and thanks for the kind words!
That was amazing, art is simple but effective, bloom creates a great atmosphere, and the audio is retro but banging. The shrink/grow mechanic is so simple, but works so well, sick game!
Amazing visuals and sound! (Dad is popping off)
Super simple, super clean but thematic and solid. The balance is far off though. Stage 11, 8 lives and I can still idle half the time and be fine. Playing until death felt like a chore at that point, let alone restarting after game over. Maybe different stages, shapes etc. could help.
@raaph I agree
A really good game, simple but well execute. At first I thought "you can just stay in place and win", but I noticed the center was getting bigger, such a good insentive to move. I like how you have to get the score as fast as you can while not getting too mig and sometimes trying to avoid balls to shrink a bit. Really well though out. I managed to go to the 13 round, it became too hard for me :D
Really dug this game! I found it hard, but in a satisfying way. Took me a second to understand the gameplay, but picked up on it super quick, it was very intuitive one I "got it." Really liked the arcade-y feel of the graphics and music. Really kickass game! :)
Cool game! Fun and arcade-y!
Fun idea with opposing objectives :D Screenshot 2023-10-03 202214.png
Very nice! Addicting gameplay. Well fitting arcade graphics, music is nicely done and it even evolves.
I wonder how you implemented global highscores, is it on private database or a is there a public service for that use? I think there is one I've seen but don't remember the name of it. EDIT: ok yeah I guess you use firebase, thats always an option to a some point.
I kinda wish this was longer :smile: EDIT2: ok it is longer if you just get further :laughing:
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i know the leaderboard has been reset but let's still enjoy this small victory hehe
i saw a streamer play your game and i wanted to try it myself. what a good idea:i loved playing it! the game has a lot of juice and feels really polished. the tones of the balls you absorb work really well with the music (which is very good btw, congrats to your dad) and both audio and art (simple but cool, you don't need more visual information in this kind of game) are very pleasant.
great job!
I really like this game, it seems to be the best-fitting in the theme category :) I'm rather shocked by how well the balance is, it is not boring either when it's easy or hard. Awesome work!
Got to 8th! It was really good.
The music is really good and the gameplay too!
One small criticism is that at some point it felt like I just had to stay still for a while and just eventually win the level.
Fun and challenging. Perfect execution !
Yup, this one's good! Hoping I can score a bit better in the future. Gameplay, music, visuals are on-point. Congrats!
Your dad makes fukken top tier music my guy. Holy shit. Holy fucking moly. https://youtu.be/xESOR3h6Pek
You ever play a game and think to yourself, "Whoever made this thing took a peek into my brain and designed it specifically tailored to my tastes and needs as a gamer"? Yeah this thing rips
holy moly the music is insane! the game pretty addictive and fun too. great job!
Very cool game! The visuals and the audio interacting in the way that they did was really really :cool:.
those trumpets are crazy i need that vst or something :sob:
Amazing entry, addictive as heck! The audio is perfection :) I'll bookmark this one to get that highscore later on ;) Well done.
The game is just great! I like everything about it! I suspect it will land in top 10 in few categories :fingers_crossed:
Incredible work (and to your dad too!) The game is a ton of fun, super juicy gameplay. Great design, and a great execution to back it up!
Probably my favorite entry thus far. :)
It has a great risk and reward payoff and great simplistic graphics! :)
This game is awesome! From the bright, cycling color palette, the light bloom to the flashing of the level to the beat of the music. Everything feels very juicy, and there are small details like the player leaves trails behind them or there being an explosion when you die. There is so much going on, but everything is perfectly readable.
The music and sound effects are also amazing.
But what really nails it, is the tight game loop. You play game after game and then you realize that hours passed.
Here's the prove that I played this far too long, but I enjoyed every minute of it:
Critical Core.jpg
Here are some tips.
1) Some levels feel harder than others. I think the main reason is, that those levels only spawn 2 orbs in the center at once, while others do more. Level 7 for example. In this level you need to play a lot more aggressive to be able to finish it before the play area gets to small. Other levels, where more orbs spawn, are more forgiving.
2) Use a controller. It's a lot easier to make micro adjustments on it. There's a general flaw though: you can't easily control velocity in an analogue way. It's either full velocity or none. I think the skill ceiling would increase even more if finegrained velocity control was possible.
3) You can't have more than 3 lifes and regain a life each level. Because of that, you can cheese some points in the earlier levels by killing yourself 2 times right before the level finishes. It's not much, but sometimes every point counts.
4) I think it's possible to reach level 12 and beat my highscore. But you need to be VERY lucky and have a lot of patience. Good luck!
this game is AMAZING! oh my god I could not pull myself away. It was just so fun. From the music to the bouncing neon colors and perfectly balanced gameplay... It was just so much fun to play! I really appreciated things like how you have to move to start the level, and how it reminds you if you sometimes forget and just stare at the screen.. hehh.. But it was so good! Easy to learn, hard to master, snappy and polished and just fantastic. You rock!
Man, I'm really very impressed and personally, for me, it's the best I've played so far, which is more in line with the theme and more fun. The audio is exciting, the space completely limited. I didn't find it difficult, but I know it's not easy, but it's perfectly balanced. The minimalist graphics were the only part that I didn't give maximum marks. But the graphics really are as they should be. Perfect. Ah, at the moment I was in 25th place.
Music and FX were top of the line in this one. Controls were straightforward. It wasn't obvious from the start that I needed to collect the orbs maybe because they were purple which feels like a color to avoid (think like poison). I really liked how the music went in line with the arena too. It felt like there was a weird balancing act between having to avoid collecting things and waiting to grow smaller so you can collect more and just trying to stay alive since there were a ton of spikes being kicked out at you. These two contrasting gameplay didn't feel like they meshed 100%. Would be interesting to see the game progress by having new maps as you level up to spice things up.
awesome vibes! you guys really captured the arcade vibe well, something we were trying to do with our game as well haha, but you guys did it better imo. really felt the constraint of limited space here, which was the main source of difficulty, so huge points to theme there. Overall fun idea, and amazing execution! Goes without saying that art and music are great too!
Those wall keep getting me. Really fun game. Alot of polish went in. I like the detail that the highscore list shows one below me and up. Nice done. One of the best games I have plays this year on LD.
really cool game, well done!
Terrific game! It's really hard :D. I managed to get to round 8. Really loved how the sfx tied in with the soundtrack. Also most often I got through a level by letting a big ball form on the other side and then I would collect it once it got big enough.
Really pretty game! I made it to round 10 on stream. I think the biggest issue for me overall playing it was the bit of inconsistency in the colliders because of the dynamism in the graphics.
Really addictive game :D I think others mentioned this, but the main thing that stood out to me was seeming inconsistency between level difficulty. There felt like a difficulty spike on round 4, followed by another set of relatively easy rounds, into another spike. They seemed related to the specific distribution of spawning circles vs hazards, and the rate the center expands. Was still really satisfying nevertheless. :D
@nardandas Collision should be fixed now.
Thanks for submitting the game to the stream! If you wanted to watch it again in the future heres the vod timestamped to your game
https://youtu.be/OMFzVKOU-1I?si=BGTvE67UVQbH5tqe&t=12055
Really cool game, it got me hooked, and the music was great too ☺ I made it to 44th in the ranking, it's not much but It's honest work hahah
I'm glad that I can at least beat Nujank for now. :3 The music is FIRE. Everyone should play this game and download the music.
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**EDIT**
I finally got to 20th! Exactly at 20 too!! xD
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Thanks for letting me play this! Excellent job!
Here's the VOD on YouTube to watch the gameplay, just skip to your chapter on the video! https://youtu.be/-eCnQ8GAhN8
Very cool arcade game, I love these super stylistic score attack submissions, there's some real depth to getting further in too which shows it was well playtested and thought through, different strategies have different strengths and weaknesses and it's definitely skill testing in the best way.
The music is great and the fact it's integrated with the game is awesome. Super fun entry, might play some more and try and get that top ten position I wanted so bad.
Hey! Thanks for sharing. Your game is really well produced, with excellent music and visually striking effects. I liked the simplicity of it, and the way you tackled the theme.
I do have a few nitpicks mostly around the core balancing factors of the game. I felt like with both the ball and the core growing, as well as the food balls, and the shuriken thrown into the mix, it was a little bit overwhelming to try and manage those factors outside of the frantic moment-to-moment repositioning. I did come up with a few strategies to survive longer and got to round 8 in my playthrough, but I would have enjoyed my time a bit more if it felt like there were incentives to play with particular strategies to manage the chaos a bit better. Often times, games like this include a dodge mechanic with i-frames, or some other resource the player can use to mitigate the times when the RNG is being unkind.
Outside of that concern, I really enjoyed the attention to detail with things like particle systems and the pulsing elements, as well as the high score system of course. You scoped the game really well for the jam as well, which is always worth commending.
Great job!
Really fun and innovative!
I don't know to be constructive with a critism, it's really a good jam game. Perfect gamedesign, the theme is over than respected. I'm am a bit frustrated about the fact i can't even reach the top 10 leaderboard, but meh, it's not e-sport yet
nicely executed, really fun and good looking ! Well done :)
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1945057375?t=02h26m12s)
This game gives me major Miniclip vibes. I could totally see myself playing this in middle school to waste time in class. :smile: It's also ridiculously polished and well-executed. Awesome job!
Super freaking cool game. Love the push and pull dynamic of getting larger and then letting yourself shrink. Was almost impossible for me to play with arrowkeys, had to switch to a controller - this made it a lot more fun! Very nice work, super polished, and great leaderboard implementation
Thanks for stopping by my stream today! Unfortunately it seems like vods are not saved on my channel at the moment. Unfortunately the game kept crashing on my best runs :(
@ausstein should be fixed now!
Finally got around to playing this beauty of a game! At this point it goes without saying that you did an amazing job with all aspects of the game. I do agree with @adamcyounis and his feedback , but that didnt stop me from getting sucked in and getting 8th on the leaderboard! I'll be back for more! :fork_and_knife:
Well, i wanted to reach the top 10 leaderboard, that wasn't planned Critical Core by Benjamin Halko Mozilla Firefox.jpg
The fact you gain score even when you lose a life at the end of a lvl, is a bit unfair (and a strategy to win more point), if u fix this don't forget to add a bit more score to balance it (something like 11000 point instead of 10000). I understood the shape very late, i know i'm slow (it's for diagonal) Sometimes, circles teleports when they hit a wall not where they were.
Again, good job for this jam
@netarion Thank you for your feedback (and congrats on 1st place)! The both the scoring and circle teleport issues has been fixed.
Screenshot 2023-10-10 231532.png Don't know if related to my username, but my leaderboard position is reset every run lol (even with worse score).
@markais Very sorry about. I think I fixed the issue and I updated your score. (The end of level bonus was also accidentally doubled so your score has been converted to 168073)
Again, sorry about that.
I BEAT RINCS!!! Loved the game. tricky yet fun. Sucks when you grow into a wall lol. Solid entry!
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I found the Vod! I thought it was lost but turns out it was just not published!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1946756082?t=0h39m25s
Also as you saw in the score chaser discord. I'm going for that WR :)
Apparently you can tell me every aspect of the mechanics at play and i'll still do better when i just kinda zone out and play xD
The faster movement along diagonals is a interesting design choice that strangely works very well with shape of the arena. Had a lot of fun trying to get into top 10!
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I felt like I was in the 1980’s again in a video game arcade! Great game with fun, simple gameplay. The sound and graphics go together well and you certainly nailed the theme. Well done my friend.
Really nice and polished entry! On my first try I successfully dodged all of the blue balls aaand then I realized that was not the goal :) Really good difficulty curve as well, each level got so much more difficult, great job!