FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD54 → Penguin Waddle

Penguin Waddle

By flightless

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2573.3222
Fun2653.1423
Innovation1913.3523
Theme914.0423
Graphics1483.6423
Audio1013.5723
Humor1043.1821
Mood983.6522

Comments

manderdander 2023-10-02 04:25

Fun! A bit of a shock when an orca gets one of your little buddies :cry: :penguin:

leparlon 2023-10-02 12:38

Cute game, cute sound, I enjoy how the little guys follow me around. Also cool how the.......NOOOOOOO

mdotedot 2023-10-02 12:55

Ahhhh that was an adorable game. Too bad that the top most screen isn't tellable if an orca is comming. I had a GOOD ending :D ha ha .. very nice. Well Done.

mahalis 2023-10-03 04:24

This is adorable. The orcas-visiting-the-edges-of-the-ice mechanic is well doneβ€”it keeps you on your toes. I audibly gasped the first time one of the babies got eaten. Made it out with 12 of them; that should be enough to start a new colony somewhere safer, right? :sweat_smile: Great work!

powerofsin 2023-10-05 08:00

A nice little game that reminds us how harsh penguin life is xD

It gets tense when we really start running out of space and the penguins keep getting stuck around the map, causing worry an orca will chomp a bunch of them off the edge while I am away getting a new one.

As others said, having a bit more of a telegraph when they are off screen would be nice. Especially when I come to grab a new penguin and it gets gobbled along with me due to it being too close to the edge of the screen.

katanajellyfish 2023-10-12 17:56

🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧 love the idea, and love this cute penguins

nougato 2023-10-12 18:35

Free Willy! Oops, no, I meant to say Free Penguin 🐧!!! (I hope you've got the reference πŸ˜‚)

What a funny concept, thank you for this game πŸ˜‰

ellaris 2023-10-12 18:48

- I liked the art and enjoyed the babies follow me around - The one thing which I didn't like is that the orcas could spawn behind the penguins, and eat the new penguin and some old ones when you tried to pick it up, maybe you could have an indicator to let the player know where the baby is going to come, or not have orcas spawn there for like 2 seconds. - The orcas didn't seem very threatening, maybe you could have the ice melt, or the orcas could damage it, or maybe the babies would occasionally wander off and you would have to chase them down.

flightless 2023-10-12 19:15

@ellaris Thank you for the feedback! The ice does shrink, each bite takes a piece away from the ice sheet. The challenge lies in how long you dare stay before leaving.

antoniothereis 2023-10-12 19:29

Definitely an interesting idea, and I really enjoyed the game's aesthetic. I do wish that there was more variety though, maybe through a bit of rng with the ice sheet generation? The game was also pretty choppy with fps on the web player. Overall though I'm really happy I played this, extremely cute.

thaprofesional 2023-10-18 10:11

Playing this on stream, and someone playing games with me asked for "a cute game." I felt like this hit the spec. exactly until a penguin got eaten then I felt bad. It was pretty horrific.

Liked the music, enjoyed running around chasing the tiny penguins. Felt responsive, but a bit.. random - like it was mostly bad luck when they got eaten. It mostly happened when a penguin and orca spawned right next to each other other side of the map.

I would have said my favorite part was the escape whale - but I really loved the ending screens.

fabula-rasa 2023-10-18 21:33

Nice aesthetics and very cute tiny penguin sounds :smile:

There are some things that could be polished. The gameplay felt a bit random - orcas could spawn right behind the tiny penguin and there was zero chance to save him. Maybe they should not be allowed to do that to prevent the player from feeling helpless. It was also a bit too easy to get stuck on the corners of the textures, making movement less smooth than it could be. In my game, two orcas just got stuck in the corner and never left.

Screenshot_2.jpg

Overall, it works fine for a small casual game and overwhelms with cuteness :smile_cat:

ty-victorson 2023-10-18 22:16

I only managed to save 4 because the orcas kept spawning behind me when I went to save the babies ;( Other than that I felt that maybe the orcas could have taken bigger portions of the ice but overall, it was a fun little game!

patbgames 2023-10-18 22:21

Very fun and cute entry. Controls could be improved, I would like to see the penguin continuously follow the mouse if the button stay down. And the reduction of the island size seems too slow for me. Even after 4 minutes, I don't really feel a big difference.

ivan-b 2023-10-18 22:35

I dunno whats up with the left corner, lots of orcas getting stuck there lol.

Overall pretty fun game, I spent a good bit just trying to make do for as long as I could and accidentaly extracted on the whale in the middle.

It'd be nice to have a button to confirm your extraction, that is the only change I recommend.

aucguy 2023-10-18 23:03

The penguins were adorable. What sold their adorableness was their sound effects. I felt like this fit the casual category of games. One thing I couldn't figure out how to get on the escape whale.

defrag 2023-10-19 01:13

Cute, complete game. I was surprised by the blood-splosion when my first baby penguin was gulped. Later, I lost about a dozen to an ill-time orca arrival. The fun-meter dropped for me a little bit after I felt like I understood the whole extent of the game. I like the push-your-luck aspect of the escape whale, but I would have liked to see a new challenge arrive once I'd gone through a bit of gameplay. Maybe some polar bears arrive? Do polar bears eat penguins?

spica 2023-10-19 16:29

Nice compo entry! Here are my observations:

Pros

- good implementation of "limited space" theme - gorgeous penguins - cute sound effects

Cons

I notice in this work the same problem we've faced in our Jam entry and everyone was complaining about that. It's the "unfair random" issue. In your case, there are quite often cases when baby penguin will appear and no matter how good my reaction time is, some stray orca will already be on it's way to kill the poor baby and there is no counterplay to that! That made me really sad because I tried really hard to save everyone. On the other hand, you made the act of saving so engaging that feeling sad about a failure is the indicator that your idea is going in the right direction, all that it needs is some fair challenge.

Thank you!

hawx 2023-10-19 16:42

I really like it! Maybe I'm biased cause penguins are my favorite animal, but I really liked this game! My only minor nitpick is that the controls feel a little bit awkward since you can't click and hold. Also, watching the penguins die and seeing the blood kinda killed the cute vibe of the game for me. But overall, congrats!