brainles-etertainment 2023-10-02 19:14
Game looks as pretty finished. The graphics is neat and the idea is nice and fit the theme. But some elements are counter-intuitive, thus it took some time to learn the game rules.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Less is Moore
By aurailus
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2 | 4.51 | 30 | |
| Fun | 4 | 4.35 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 25 | 4.21 | 30 | |
| Theme | 2 | 4.67 | 30 | |
| Graphics | 2 | 4.67 | 30 | |
| Audio | ||||
| Humor | 3 | 4.51 | 30 | |
| Mood | 29 | 3.96 | 30 |
Game looks as pretty finished. The graphics is neat and the idea is nice and fit the theme. But some elements are counter-intuitive, thus it took some time to learn the game rules.
This was extremely humorous, very fun to play, tho the timer did spike my cortison levels a bit, dialogue was charming and the ending was hilarious overall a very nice game!
Ok, what the hell, this was even better than the previous one from LD 53!
This asks for soo much bigger space than a jam game — even with current mechanics you could play with different starting setups and other restrictions (money, new parts, manager requirements, etc.), and this could turn in a super addicting game (preferably MOBILE game, haha, get it?). There are already dozens of "fit tetraminos in square" type of games, but this just adds so much depth and meaning to all of it.
But for now — only lack of sounds and music stopped me from giving 5 starts in all categories. Rock on!
It's impressive how much you were able to fit into this tiny little game in such a 'limited' amount of time (hehe) my only real gripe is the complete lack of sound but besides that id say this was really well done! I was able to learn and complete the game relatively easily and it was really fun rushing through menus while the timer counted down. I will say that the money aspect didn't really affect me much while playing. great game !
I love designing my own phones so much! It's a cute puzzle to try and get all the best bits in and make the best phone. Very well done!
Really love the art style on this one. Is the entire game made in HTML/JS/CSS? Really cool, well done!
One of my favorite entries so far! The idea is basic but the different phone parts add a lot to it. The story is very engaging, I especially enjoyed the animated dialogue lines. My only complaint is that there is no audio at all, but given the amount of content and polish, it's already quite impressive for a compo game!
This game is really good! Too bad I really suck at it :sob:.
not a surprise - this game is super fun! nice mix of challenging, and still easy to understand. The dialogue being hilarious is a huge plus. And the graphics - wow!
back at it with a killer game.
brb while I find out where I can buy a DogPhone(tm)
The concept and its execution are solid and the pixel art is gorgeous. The difficulty level is great too, it holds your hand only enough to get you started and then it's truly challenging, especially with that timer. Great work.
Very nice concept, and great polish!
This was so much fun! All those funny quips of your senior colleague and all the corporate talk! It really added to the experience!
Well done! 😄
Actually a really engaging puzzle game. Wish it had more levels. Wish I could make my own DogPhone™.
This is only the third game I've played, but I'm calling it, this is going to be my favorite of the jam. Your last game was my second favorite (my favorite being the one that got first place in JAM), and that team hasn't participated this time 'round, so unless something crazy comes outta nowhere... you've got this in the bag!!
The game looks and feels fantastic, the puzzles are insanely well done, if not a little ill-explained: the dialogue was hilarious, just everything, it's all so polished for a compo submission. I do wish there had been music or sound effects, but honestly I barely noticed the lack of them.
My BIGGEST problem, is just how counter-intuitive the mechanics can be. I found myself ready to leave on the second level and give this a remarkablely lower score, until I learned that the only requirement is that every outlet needs to connect to a wire, and those can pass through other parts. Specifically when it introduced the BAT 5000, and I had to pass a current through another disconnected piece on the board to power it. I really wish you had time to explain it better, the difficulty was *perfect* after learning how to play the game, but the learning curve just took a 90° turn upwards when the timer was introduced. Seriously, such a fantastic entry, I just wish you had a little more tutorialization, for silly people like me who don't know how phones work. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
AMAZING AMAZING entry, 5/5 stars -- I'm excited to see what you come out with the next time because so far, you've blown me away. See you next jam! :beers:
Really a very nice project with good gameplay potential, congratulations to you
It was good! Perfect length for a jam game and had an intense moment with 2 seconds left, had to put the camera in the middle of the phone lol
I enjoyed the humor of my coworker fumbling around making some phones with outrageous extensions! The writing is fantastic, and the puzzles are satisfying.
Since giving feedback on puzzle games is difficult, I have provided a recording to show where I got stuck at times, and hopefully my feedback is useful!
A heads up on the visuals in my recording, **I have an extension that turns every page into dark mode**, so if the text boxes are unexpectedly in darkmode for the first half, that's why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qdvfrVfhUs
Very cool game! I liked the process very much, wish there were more levels!
I actually got a bit tired of the dialogues and I think that the timer is a bit redundant (I had to restart the level where 5000mAh battery appears many-many times). But overall I very much enjoyed it, thank you for the game!
ohhh I would have love to have some sounds around! Nice game tho ☺
Pros: * Game was very solidly built; in 3 days, the level of polish found in the UI, general art style, and gameplay is astonishing. * I enjoyed a lot of the humour you worked into the dialogue; at no point did it detract from the experience. * Requirements were clearly signalled, and I didn't feel overwhelmed at any point by what was asked of me. Tutorial sections felt like the appropriate amount of handholding.
Cons: * Game could've benefitted from sound design; even just little blips for scrolling dialogue. * This would've been outside the scope of the 48 hours you had, but some sort of "endless mode" might've been nice to allow for the player to take on random puzzles after the campaign. * Personal preference, but I feel that remapping rotate to "R" would've been more intuitive.
Bugs: N/A
Overall a very solid package; the amount of stuff you were able to cram into this game is amazing, without any noticeable bugs at that.
This was so polished! The UI had so much pizazz and clearly communicated everything. I especially appreciated the emphasis you were able to put on certain parts of dialogue, like wiggling the important words. And the tutorial speaker was too funny! It got pretty hard when I had to consider heatsinks ... fortunately, your site remembers the state, so I can return to try more later!
All this in a compo entry, I can see how sounds were the last thing. Still impressive!
Also, great pun in the title!
Hey all, thank you all for your kind words! I'll reply to each of you individually, but I just wanted to apologize for taking so long to actually look at this page. I had a bunch of exams before and after this competition, and by the time I was done I was *super* burnt out, and I've kind of just avoided Ludum Dare since then. But I'm feeling a lot better now, and I'd like to review at least a few games before the timer runs out, so I'll be doing that now. Thank you!
@brainles-etertainment thank you! Yeah, I definitely could have explained a bit more, I had very little time to playtest because of the time limit. I actually made all the levels in the last hour.
@stmate03 Thank you!! I'm glad you liked the dialogue, I had a lot of fun writing it. :) After all this time I still don't know if the timer was actually a good addition. It makes the game more hectic, but the gameplay loop doesn't really allow it to do anything meaningful (since it effectively just makes all your parts go away). I think I'm more happy with it than not overall though.
@nozomu57 Thank you so much!! I'm not sure if I personally like this one more than my last one, but I definitely am proud of it either way. I just think there was some lack of polish that's stopping me from thinking it's wholly better. Sound definitely factors into that. I agree, I think this game could be something more than a Jam game, I had a lot of fun making it and it felt very extensible while I was putting it all together. I had all sorts of things I wanted to do, including: - Odd phone shapes (flip phone, T shaped phone, etc) - Parts with more placement restrictions (adjacent to a part, directly connected to a part, less than some distance away from a part) - Tighter restrictions on budget, and more parts to work through. - Actually R&Ding new parts outside of the main gameplay loop. - A reviewing system, where during the game different things would be prioritized (headphone jack, screen brightness, etc), and your final score would be influenced by those factors, so you'd have to watch the news to get an idea of what's important (which would hopefully have some humorous dialogue in it as well).
I am definitely tempted to make this more of a thing, I might put a more concerted focus into that if this game scores well (and if I get the motivation). I'll have to wait and see! Thanks again!
@wook Thank you so much! I was definitely frustrated that I didn't have time for Audio. I ran down to the wire though, time wise. (I had to publish the game in a very buggy state just to get it in for the deadline, and then spend another 15 minutes patching the bugs I created to get it to be playable :skull:)
As for the money aspect, there were initially going to be a lot more parts to force you to make choices as to what is most important given the budget, as well as shifting priorities for reviewers that would influence what you should focus on. Unfortunately I didn't have time to implement those features, which left the budget feeling a little vestigial. I retooled it last minute to act more as an indicator of how well you're doing at getting the maximum score, setting the max budget to the optimal layout for the level, but that wasn't explained super well.
@medow Thank you so much!
@anciententity Thank you!! Yep, this whole game just uses Preact, which is a web UI framework. It's a kinda cursed strategy, but I'm really fast with the framework, and it worked well for my last jam, so I figured I'd try it again. I think it paid off! It works really well for certain types of games.
@jebouin Thank you so much!! Every passing moment I feel more disappointed that I couldn't get audio in, but it basically came down to that or having any levels, so I think I made the right choice :P Glad you liked the dialogue!
@grace-schorno Thank you!! Practice makes perfect :P
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@rena Thank you so much!! I really liked your entry as well, the penguin pixel art was super cute and well animated!
@livinamuk Thank you!! I'm glad that you enjoyed the game :)
@kinami Thanks!! I'm glad you enjoyed the dialogue :)
@koboldskeep Wish I could've had more levels too :P All of them were made in 1 hour. Maybe the DogPhone will come out in free DLC one day in the farrrr farrr future. Thank you!
@sephowepho Damn, thank you so much for your kind words and comprehensive breakdown. I'm flattered that you like my games so much, it's cool to know that they've had an impact :heart:
Definitely some of the mechanics were a bit ill-explained. I kind of assumed people would grasp certain things which weren't that intuitive, in retrospect. Mainly, that the outlined parts could not be moved, and that the charging ports / anything with a blue portion of the sprite had to borders of the phone. Definitely they could have used more explaining, and possibly a dedicated level introducing their finer workings, if I had the time to implement it.
I do think the tutorial section had you link a part through another one, but it was also a wire part, so I get how that could be something that people might not connect to any part being chainable. Just a single line like 'connect the part to any exposed wire, as long as there's a path back to the CPU it'll work just fine!' would have helped with that. I think that I did pretty good with the tutorialization on my last jam, and this time I focused a bit too much on making silly dialogue and not enough on making the dialogue helpful (it's possible to do both, I just have to be better at it :P)
Thank you so so much, though. Hearing these pain points helps me know what I should do better next time / if I continue the making the game. I'm really happy you enjoyed it, and I'll see you next jam!! :sparkles:
@tasakasama Thank you!!
@nuin Thank you! Initially, I wanted to have a section when you completed the level where you could see what your horrible creation looked like on the outside, with all the cameras and buttons and fingerprint sensors in weird spots. Unfortunately that didn't make it in, but I feel like the spirit is still there with people thinking about what the phone would look like for themselves.
@100th-coin Thank you so much! It's really cool to see a complete playthrough from start to finish like this. Very helpful for me to see what the sticking points are. I definitely could have explained the charging port thing explicitly, it seems like a lot of people got stuck there. If I continue this game, I'll definitely be more clear about that sort of thing. Maybe providing a specification booklet or something with more descriptions about how each of the parts work or something. Thanks!!
@yerkwell Thanks!! I think that it definitely would have helped if the dialogue was skippable on repeat attempts, I didn't have time to implement that in the jam unfortunately. I've definitely received mixed feedback on the timer. I'm leaning slightly towards thinking it improves the game rather than harms it, since it provides a bit more of a feeling of hectic-ness. However, I think it would be better if there were more meaningful consequences to failure. Not in a punishing sense but just to make it different than just "your pieces go back into the drawer and you read the dialogue again." Fodder for post jam updates I suppose!
@anotherlorena Sounds 🥲 I really wanted to have time for them but I went down to the last minute of the submission window with finishing the levels. Ah well, hope you still enjoyed it!
@nescre Thank you!! I had a lot of fun creating the assets and dialogue for the game. Definitely a high point in the jam for me. I'm glad that you were able to understand what was going on in the levels, although I definitely think I could have made some things more obvious, even if it was just a hint next attempt if you failed.
I definitely wanted to get sounds in, really badly, but I just ran out of time. Oh well. I managed to get sounds in my previous LD entry, which I think added a lot to the experience. A better rotation control scheme would have been nice, I saw that some people really struggled with it with touch pads. An endless mode would be super cool! But definitely out of the scope of the jam :P
Thank you so much!! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
@hawkin Thank you!! I had a lot of fun making the dialogue and text effects :) Yeah, the save system I think is important, as puzzle games can often take a very variable amount of time to complete from person to person. I should probably note somewhere that it does save, as some people might be too scared to check if they're already midway through.
Managed to catch parts of your stream during the Jam/Compo, the game looked really cool so I didn't let myself see too much of it before playing, then I nearly forgot to play it! But yes a really nice art style, a really fun game that fits the theme perfectly, and it feels for the most part very polished. A neat set of puzzles and I really liked the dialogue box/text design. I am sure this is already known to you but at the end when I got my EPIC rating the average rating and revenue were both 0. Could be a really fun mobile/web game with some sound added in! Really really great entry!
@danjoricey Thank you so much, I'm glad you liked it! Yeah, there was no average score computed over the game unfortunately. The "EPIC" screen is literally just the regular end screen with the grade overridden. Sorry about that! I'd love to expand on this game, I think a mobile version would be pretty fun!
Cool game. I'm impressed at you also producing the artwork for this game. Great job!
Super fun and charming game!! I absolutely LOVE puzzle games like this. The mechanics of fitting all the lil pieces into the phone is really well designed. It was kinda stressful getting them all in under the time limit, but that adds to the fun of it! The artwork is excellent too and the person on the phone adds SO much to the charm of the game; I laughed a few times from their dialogue ahah.
Overall great game! It'd be so cool if you expanded on this idea. I could see a full game made from this being really fun :smile:
Really interesting game! I would love to see a checklist with all of my requirements for the phone I am building! Also some music would really set the mood (even if its some basic stock music) Well polished entry, good job!
@jvdwijk thank you! The category icons on the left are highlighted gold if they are unfulfilled in your current phone design. Unfortunately, as it was a compo entry, it wasn't possible for me to add stock music, and I'm very much not a musician :)
@mina Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked it!! I would definitely like to expand on it.
@understudy Thank you!!!
When playing the web version I had no idea you could scroll on the tutorial, so I tried cramming in the first two assemblies without knowing that the third one was the answer, great game outside of that though!
Nice web game! I see components have been written from scratch too, that's an impressive job to animate text letters like this!
I think the tutorial said RAM was required but it turned out to be SSD drives?
It took me a while to find all the hints about invalid building (missing component type shown in orange in the left panel, orange highlight on overlap, half transparency on disconnected component) but even with that I would have liked to get a proper message on what's wrong with a given building as it can be stressful when counter is close to zero, everything *seems* okay but the Deliver button cannot be pressed and you're not sure why.
Otherwise I like that you can go on with a minimal design and get some ranking, then try again to cram more components and get a better ranking next time.
It would be nice if you could: - skip the dialogue as it fully plays after each retry - disable timer for experimentation mode (to find the best designs) - a level select / time attack to try missions again with better ranking
Anyway, I'm playing this as part of studying Ludum Dare submissions with good ranking to get hints on how to make minimal, successful games, so that is really instructing!