FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD54 → Hazel & Hector

Hazel & Hector

By cassowary

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall164.2164
Fun434.0464
Innovation663.9164
Theme1213.9164
Graphics174.3464
Audio134.1363
Humor713.4057
Mood84.1962

Comments

amarokczukay 2023-10-02 01:26

your game is super relaxing, cute and challenging as always! i hope i'll never have to make a rabbit nervous anymore!

puzzles are well thought and the difficulty curve is good. sprites are nice and hare's animations are great!

i thought the click and drag felt a little bit strange from time to time but i don't know what exactly (don't worry: the annoyance was minimal, i still finished and enjoyed the game).

(edit: oops i didn't see i wasn't able to vote yet, i'll come back tomorrow!)

cassowary 2023-10-02 02:23

@amarokczukay Yes, the click and drag is a little awkward. I know exactly what the issue is but I didn't have time to fix it, lol. Basically, if you move your mouse so fast that it moves over two tiles at once while dragging, it won't count it properly. So, moving your mouse slightly slower while dragging should help.

mao 2023-10-02 14:55

Neat puzzle! I love the use of the theme. The animations are adorable.

The undo and restart buttons sometimes wouldn't click for some reason. The dragging was fine, though.

paroxysmal 2023-10-02 16:32

Always great to see your games. Graphics are on point. Sound and music is good. As others have said the dragging is a little weird and needs to be precise. Great entry.

lcstark 2023-10-02 19:38

A really well-made puzzle game! The puzzles aren't very difficult, since I was able to solve them all, but they do provide a pretty good challenge.

hnh.png

Though I must admit I found myself - once or twice - thinking that a level is deliberately leading you into a trap you can't get out of without restarting. Thankfully, both the Undo and Restart options are available.

The controls are pretty polished. I especially liked that you can drag over multiple tiles in one go, even when pushing another hare, rather than forcing you to go one step at a time. The pushing also worked pretty good, although I found one possible bug - when one hare pushes another into a grass tuft, sometimes the pushed hare will eat the grass, and sometimes it won't. Here you can see the white hare on a tile with grass still present, but they won't eat it.

hnh2.png

Overall it's an amazingly polished compo entry. The graphics are great, and the hare animations are very cute. The music is pretty chill, allowing you to relax while solving the puzzles. Great work!

notinatal 2023-10-02 22:21

Had a lot of fun playing this! The controls feel very natural and I enjoyed the puzzles, which weren't so easy but weren't so hard either. I especially liked level 9, which intentionally leads you into a trap, just so you can realize you have to go the other way first.

@lcstark has already mentioned the only bug I encountered (only once I think), so I'll leave it be - who would expect a game without bugs, made in two days, right?

jeremy-ryan 2023-10-03 00:20

As usual, you've made an extremely clean and satisfying puzzle game!

This was a really nice relaxing experience. I appreciate the real-world inspiration behind the mechanic and the cute character art. And I can't stress enough how nice the undo button was from a quality of life standpoint --- there were a few times I made one wrong move very deep into a level, and it would have been painful to start over completely.

I will say I feel like I "got" the mechanic fairly early on, after which the puzzles weren't very difficult. While the one mechanic is really interesting and clean, I feel like it may have needed *just a little something extra* to get a satisfying ten levels out of it. But obviously time is a very scarce resource for Compo and the game is very complete and impressive as-is.

Thanks for making this!

cassowary 2023-10-03 00:47

@lcstark whoops! there are def a few minor bugs left in the game as well as some other things I'd like to tweak, I might make a quick post-jam-fix version

@jeremy-ryan I know what you mean -- I think adding another "standard" mechanic like sokoban boxes or one-way doors or breakable ground or something might help. As it is, it suffers a little bit due to the "if a character can get from point A to point B, they can always go back from point B to point A" effect, which is something I usually try to avoid in my puzzle rule sets. (both characters together don't have this issue, which is probably good enough for tiny short game, but I think if I expand it it'll need like 1-2 more mechanics.)

oznarox 2023-10-03 01:36

This is also a good game. I wouldn't have thought from the first glance at the image that it would be such a creative game. I can't say anything bad. Maybe the only thing missing is volume control."

jebouin 2023-10-03 03:31

I love the cute graphics and the audio fits the game well! I especially liked the unique sound effects. The puzzles are great and well balanced, though they started to feel a bit repetitive by the end of the game. Overall a very polished entry, great job!

t-c 2023-10-03 04:22

As always, great seeing what you make! This game is no exception. Very well drawn, music very relaxing, puzzles very well build. All around great job!

fenbisher 2023-10-03 06:59

I cast this up to my TV and had fun solving the puzzles with my wife, very relaxing and clever

knightgames 2023-10-03 09:34

Very cute game, not very hard and fun to play. Rabbits are so cute, well done!

wolderado 2023-10-03 09:48

It's so cute! Such a relaxing and wholesome puzzle game

crylica 2023-10-03 10:23

the animations are so cute! This is incredibly polished for a 48hr jam, and the mechanics/puzzles are really well thought out! Congrats

nonigirl 2023-10-03 13:33

Really nice animations and sound design :) We enjoyed the level design!

kepsert 2023-10-03 14:21

Yooo always happy to play your games every jam!

Once again a very fun, little, enjoyable puzzle game. The hare animations were cute, the audio was nice and cozy. Controls were easy to use, however I do wish it would've been possible to move both hares at once (while waiting for the first one to move) but this might just be the speedrunner tendencies in me and I can imagine it'd mess with both the "pushing" mechanic but also the undo. I'm surprised by how you manage to come up with entertaining puzzle ideas every jam! Keep it up <3

recursor 2023-10-03 16:11

The little rabbits are very cute, and the introduction of the various mechanics is very well done. Congratulations on creating a nice little puzzle game!

nondev 2023-10-03 17:31

Really lovely little puzzle game with very calming music!

knexator 2023-10-03 19:53

Wouldn't be Ludum Dare without a banger puzzle by cassowary :)

joymagine 2023-10-03 23:08

Excellent!! its really good!! really cool concept, really nice presentation thanks!

valentinwb 2023-10-04 00:10

Sweet puzzle game ! levels are cleverly done, cool entry !

rainssong 2023-10-04 08:27

talent design

haydads 2023-10-04 10:31

Cool interesting puzzles. Had a few times where I moved a rabbit too far by accident, but had to reset and complete. Was very fun. Great submission

100th-coin 2023-10-04 16:29

This was adorable, and the puzzles were nice! I mention it in my recorded video, but I wish there was some form of a new feature in the final few levels. Perhaps having puddles/ice that only one of the hares could stand in, while it acts as a wall for the other? Perhaps limiting the number of moves on a stage? I think there's a lot more that could be done with this game's concept. "I wish there was more" is a compliment, right?

I haven't made any puzzles like this, so perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, but once the player learns how to effectively use the mixed tiles, it feels like every puzzle has the same solution. The most interesting situation this game puts you in is trapping you in a corner if you get the grass in the wrong order, which I really enjoyed. Finding some more interesting ways to get the player to really examine a level's design could make this a masterpiece.

Anyway, giving feedback on a puzzle game is difficult, so here's a video of myself playing the game. I hope it can help out and show you where other players might get stuck!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_00qyxDjpT4

yorsh 2023-10-04 19:02

Fantastic game! It's super chill and puzzles are interesting. Graphics are great, the animation+sound of stressed rabbits are especially good.

The only detail that could have been improved imo is that sometimes it's a bit tedious to move them around. Tho the few solutions I have in mind can quiclky become time consumming, so you may have been wise to just keep things simple for compo.

Anyway, very nice job!

blazejmg917 2023-10-04 22:12

This game is so good! I am IN LOVE with the visuals and the idea of this game, it is adorable. I originally had a problem where I thought the game moved slowly, then lo and behold I realized I'm a dummy and should have been clicking and dragging their whole movement path the whole time! Great attention to detail there as it makes the game much better. I liked the puzzle design as they were hard but not impossible, and I think this game is well polished. I did have one note about something that could either have been a bug or a design choice, but when you push one rabbit onto grass, they don't eat it and then they have to exit the tile and return to eat the grass. Since you don't have a turn count limit, this wasn't causing me any issues, but I figured it would be worth bringing up in case it ever factored into level design. Great job!

kultuk 2023-10-05 06:51

This was so wholesome and fun. Loved the animation/sounds when you get the hare to its wrong tile.

Great entry.

lupercalia 2023-10-05 09:20

Thank you for this game. It's so cute. <3 I like your pixel art much and i like the sounds of eating grass and when the hare relaxes after being pushed to its natural surroundings. So well done. And for the puzzle aspect itself: A great idea to help out by pushing. This makes some interesting puzzle-y knots in my brain, which i enjoyed to untangle.

kairuma 2023-10-05 23:43

Very solid puzzle game. I would play commercial version of this.

anotherlorena 2023-10-06 02:00

I'm living for this game!! And I loved the music ♥

chii 2023-10-06 15:45

Great puzzle game!! It was really enjoyable and as a COMPO entry it's quite amazing.

finish.png

suvi 2023-10-07 05:32

The animations are cute and the game was fun to play! I liked the pathfinding solution and appreciated that I could do multiple "push" moves in a single path command. I wish I could queue the second hare's move while the first one was part way through the animation (with that queued move hopefully speeding up the running animation). I completed all levels and in the same vain as your comment above, I can see this being a good base to explor sokoban mechanics. The level with the L shaped lake initially made me think it requered using one of the hares as a bridge. XD

alexascher 2023-10-07 21:36

Adorable bunnies. I liked the level design.

lereveur 2023-10-07 22:26

Cute, fun, and nice puzzle game! I don't know what to suggest, as I didn't feel that the game need anything more (except levels, as this is a LD entry and 10 is already a lot for a LD). Well done!

lukuluk 2023-10-08 22:44

As usual, an awesome puzzle game! Well done for this one. I wonder how you come with such spotless mechanics

jimbly 2023-10-10 00:21

The difficulty ramp was a little slow for me, it wasn't until level 6 that I had to stop to think at all, but the last 5 levels were all really satisfying! My only complaint is that I sometimes started my drag (presumably) before the animation finished and then it didn't register - it would be nice if a drag during the last step of the animation would register, or if the mouse was already down when it entered the state of allowing a drag that it registered it, or something along those lines. The bunnies are adorable!

chybby 2023-10-11 08:11

You always come up with such interesting puzzle concepts. I liked that you could input multiple steps at a time. Big fan of the animations when a hare is nervous and relieved.

minjutin 2023-10-11 13:15

Okay but I really like how you took the "push things around" concept and made it like this. Would've loved to see this as a 2 player game where each player controls one bunny. Bunnies are cute, atmosphere is cute

jared-weinstein 2023-10-13 06:14

Super cozy and fun puzzle mechanics!

shigor 2023-10-14 13:07

gameplay is classical puzzle, but I like the setting you used for it. eat all the grass!

greytyphoon 2023-10-20 20:35

So relaxing! The music is great. <3