Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → The Heap
By profugo-barbatus and Lyssa
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 800 | 3.31 | 24 | |
| Fun | 781 | 3.16 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 483 | 3.45 | 23 | |
| Theme | 601 | 3.59 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 301 | 4.06 | 25 | |
| Humor | 359 | 3.31 | 21 | |
| Mood | 291 | 3.83 | 20 |
Hi Score: 141 Trying to manage all the tasks coming in was pretty fun! Often when playing I'd end up dragging something to a spot but it not getting registered, but aside from that it was nice! I'm glad you were able to get a tutorial into the game in time too! Ah and i love the art! Congrats!!
Lots of impressive details here - great art, and it all scaled correctly to my screen, big props there. I also really appreciated the tutorial, I definitely would've been a bit confused without it! The game itself was quite challenging, but once I got the hang of it, I was making interesting decisions every second or so - a great density. It also hit the theme really well. All around a strong submission, great work!
I love the graphics and the lil memory character, but unfortunately the game felt a bit too difficult to me and I couldn't get past the tutorial (maybe this is a skill issue, but I feel like the timing was a bit too strict).
@xry @floppynub I'm glad you liked it! We really tried to push the polish and quality, even if a few bugs slipped through. Knew the tutorial would be essential when the game throws so much at you.
@smoe Sorry to hear that! I struggled nailing down the balance, but perhaps if you and other folks would be interested, I can throw together a post-LD difficult selector patch, adjust some of the timing and escalation in the players favor with an easier mode.
High score of 396. The inputs were about 90% consistent with the other 10% getting dropped, and keys for moving the tasks would definitely make things more fair, but I had fun with it.
It's fun and adorable! I'm curious about what ideas you might have had that were left out, that might add some extra strategy. The upgrades system in particular seems like it has potential for a lot of depth and flavor.
Actually I can really see where this could go were the balancing issues fixed, because as of right now it feels really impossible at times, but it feels so close to being really fun and varied!!!! I could also see that there were a lot of upgrades that I couldn't get to (I got 298 high score)
@monochromesquid Did they happen to only drop with some Wireless packets? That was the fallback in case the spawner asked for gibberish, but I never had a chance to test it was falling back correctly. Might be they displayed one icon but wanted to be in a different slot.
@orangeoceans Glad you liked it! There's actually most of the code in place for an entire category of ugprades that was going to glue into an adversarial background progression - Mandatory software updates slowing down the processing nodes, or a user application biasing one kind of traffic over another - So upgrades would always feel like just being ahead of the curve, rather than eventually becoming unstoppable. Codes even in place for the input queue penalty to be lessened, or the starting spawn timers to be buffed. I didn't have time to finish implementing most of it, mostly because of balance, but partially the overhead to communicate its existence to the player. The tutorial was already getting uncomfortably long.
@cronch Glad you like it! Do you feel that the difficult was from keeping track of all the packets at once, or was it more not being able to move them out of the input queue and dealing with that malus?
The game is fun, but getting the inputs to the right place in time is pretty hard. Sometimes the time an input has is too short to do anything with. The memory only takes 1 input at a time. So if I just put something into memory while processing something else and a short time input appears I can't really do anything. I don't know if the time freezes when its being added to memory. The fades should be faster and the game over screen should be skippable, that made me not want to play for long. But the game is still good.
@profugo-barbatus yeaaah it was more about not being able to move them out of the input queue and then way too many come out at once before i have any ability to upgrade anything
quite challenging, but cute art
Cute art! It could really benefit from some more sound effects when moving stuff around
A nice concept that can definitely go places :D
I will assume the intended game is the first run game, because after replaying once, simultaneous processing is on at the start and upgrades don't work, seems commands timeout faster too (I may be wrong about the last one though).
I like the design of Malloc and wish she would communicate when we try to do something bad (like more tasks at once, or drop wrong command into the wrong slot). I didn't figure out where the upgrade button was at first either (I expected it's the whole UI there, but it was just the little thing at the top). So in general, a bit more clarity to the UI would be good.
As others mentioned, balance is pretty nuts, starting menagable, transitoning to nothing happening and then getting 8 commands at once. Highest I got was around 600 points and that was a very lucky run. It does feel very satisfying when you manage to clean everything up and wait for the next wave.
Music is pumping too, gotta say xD
The art is cute, the music is fitting and the idea for the game is great! I wish the game provided more feedback to the player: a small screenshake on damage or a warning sound when something will expire in the queue soon. The ticking mechanism wasn't very clear to me, and sometimes the game could feel unfair. You can get a bunch of red requests at the start, leading to inevitable damage, which can be frustrating. But the core of the game is fun, it just needs more refining.
Nice effort! It would benefit a lot from bits of feedback when you do specific things imo, like sounds when a slot becomes ready or a new item appears. I also agree the difficulty curve was a little wonky (I was wondering if something broke due to the large gaps of nothing near the beginning, but then things got super busy very quickly)
really unique concept. the artwork is very well, too. sometime i drag item onto correct spot but the game doesnt recognise. also the scene changing is too slow for me and when i open the credits window by pressing the credits button i cant start the game by pressing play button. there is pretty much room for improvement. i think having a timer to tell when the time tick and how much the number will be reduce is a good idea. also adding more sound effect will make the game more fun to play. finally adding a fast way to put items into memory like right click on it is better than dragging it. overall good job!
Cool concept, I love it
Nice game. I enjoyed the sound effects and the game play was easy. The artwork was great and the tutorial was very helpful. The concept was really interesting. Good job.