greynovembergames 2023-10-02 02:58
Nice! It looks good and it's got juice.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Whack-a-Soul
By javasaurus
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 101 | 3.84 | 83 | |
| Fun | 84 | 3.83 | 83 | |
| Innovation | 82 | 3.82 | 83 | |
| Theme | 63 | 4.15 | 83 | |
| Graphics | 113 | 3.79 | 83 | |
| Audio | 47 | 3.88 | 82 | |
| Humor | 74 | 3.39 | 79 | |
| Mood | 103 | 3.62 | 78 |
Nice! It looks good and it's got juice.
pretty nice game that fits the theme well. I did get stuck after a while with out being able to press anything :( The music and sound effects fit the aesthetic well. After a few goes I decided to just build a large tower and got tp ~30 000 score
Not sure if this is intented gameplay - but I definively can say: Theme fullfilled in many ways (limited move space, limited sight and limited monitor space xD):
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In the beginning the arrows confused me a little bit (I didn't got why the want to keep me away from the chests) - well, after ignoring them and getting killed things became clear. But I think thats something the player has to learn. You need a symbol catching the attention and it got the job done.
Art and Music are really good and I also like that you can switch art-style-modes.
Good job =)
@tomate-salat Oh dear lord... euhm... would this be considered game breaking? XD CodeExample.PNG
**UPDATE**
I decided to fix both errors as they were in fact game breaking (the stacking now is tied to what I intended to). The renderer also needed fixing as it caused crashes in some cases (I don't know why, I simply realigned the camera)
Fun puzzle-y game!
Had fun playing this! Game is a bit broken, but that doesn't matter because I had fun!
Had a lot of fun playing the game and enjoyed the take on the theme!
This is very pretty and polished. I enjoyed it and also got on the leaderboard!
@kairuma @arvis @shmi @madr Thank you guys! Glad you enjoyed it :)
I love the art style , and the way it's done in small shells. Skeleton cute btw <3
Ended up getting 14070 for my first run, and I enjoyed it a lot. Very fun and polished game, love the sfx!
I like the fast pace of the game, the animations, sounds, and music all add up to a nice sense of urgency. Nice job!
This is simply a good game and fitting the theme. Well done.
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Bested with pure talent and skill. Kneel before me ye peasants.
I just want Arthur to see this so I can trash talk him further.
Fun game!
The sound, graphics, and animation gave the whole thing a "gameboy color" vibe to me, very neat!
I seem to be able to cheese it by hammering in a little three-tile circle, but I'm not sure how you'd fix that. Maybe you could have the chests spawn randomly in the whole space rather than only within tiled portions (so a larger island gets you more chests), or maybe the tiles could have an "angle of repose" where a stack that's too tall automatically spreads into a wider area (sort of like the sand or liquid physics in those 2-d pixel sandbox games).
@henk that is a great suggestion ! I'll be honest, I've spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to make the end-game more challenging... I tried to fix it with the "lava" rising faster, but it might have missed the point in the end. I guess people (looking at you @spacey3d !!!!) who show the most dedication can get the highest scores this way :D
Yes, I used the small & tall stack strategy as well. Maybe you can also spawn stuff based on remaining tile count so they don't all get conveniently clustered together? It was still a bit challenging when my stack was too high for the screen, lol. Balancing is really hard! We always struggle with it!!
Really cool! I had a lot of fun playing, the graphics were also really good.
I'm a big fan of puns so I really appreciate your title. I like that this game felt like something I would play in an arcade as a kid. The chip-tune music was also great!
This was fun! I liked the tile-management aspect. Music and art are awesome.
One suggestion is to make the water a bit more visible. First run I had no idea what was going on, and had to read the instructions to figure out that tiles were slowly sinking into water.
2nd place :)
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This is terrific! Gets really enjoyably frantic after a while. I loved the cover illustration and the character animations. Don’t think I quite understood what the arrow mounds were for—I thought they might replenish the islands or something but I couldn’t tell what happened when I hit them. Regardless: had a great time. Nice work!
Nice arcade game, managed to get a decent score without even using rotation of the camera x)
I like how I could just jump on this without reading any rules, and then I slowly learned the rules while failing. The game was full of surprised. When the ground started falling I panicked briefly, but then I realized that the hammer also worked on ground, not only on chests. This seems really complicated game codewise too, I'm jealous of everyone who know how to create hex-based games
A fun little game and a great compo entry!
Looks like the highscore system broke. Couldn't see or submit any scores. highscore.png
PS: The UI didn't work on ultrawide screens (3440x1440), so I had to play in the little window.
The high-score board is awesome! I'd love to see how you accomplished that.
2nd on the leaderboard! @spacey3d is just on another level.
Lovely little game, easy to understand but frantic at times. I feel like the difficult could increase faster, because at one point I was beginning to question whether I could loose at all. Nice take on the theme. I hope to catch your stream tomorrow.
Reminds me of a board game whose name I forgot. Very cool.
This was fun and pretty addictive. I only meant to play 1 or 2 runs but probably ended up playing 10 or more. It feels like it could be an old arcade game. I wasn't too sure what the different color tiles meant at first which was a little confusing, but easy enough to figure out quickly.
Loved this, even got like 8th on the leaderboard, everything about this was really goood, great entry!
So tight! I always forget how clunky wasd arrow keys is in so many games until a play a juicy click-to-move game. so much juice in this, good work
Really fun game here, everything felt nice and polished. The music + sfx were on point, it felt great to smash the hammer every time. I wish the camera rotation had more of a function in the gameplay, it seemed to be more for fun since as far as I can tell I can see the full board state from any angle. Nice one!
Definitely excellent on all aspects for me. Very fun, great looking and sounding game!
took an while to understand the way you can interact with the game after collecting chests and "quests". I think hitting yellow tiles makes the tiles grow up instead of smashing them? not sure if red did that. a bit more of an explanation of that would help players, as all of a sudden all the tiles change colour and your first thought it "danger".
looks cool though, pixel shader used works well with the skelly aesthetic. Things piece together nicely setting a good mood. Was engaging to play
Onboarding is a little awkward, once I figured out what to do it wasn't so bad though. Pretty fun little masher. I love the animations on the character and he feels great to move around which is great, the basic idea is pretty sick but the game feels like it needs a bit of tuning as the optimal strategy seems pretty simple and braindead but also nothing can really go wrong after a point.
Great stuff, good job making compo!!!
It's a little bit strange but I like it, was funny mechanic and the music and SFX are really good!
Well done! Take a candy! :candy:
Ok finally getting to replies :D
@spacey3d You are forever the queen of the leaderboard. I reset it to hide the exploit but I acknowledge your endless powers !
@ljg @alec Thank you so much !
@sudocoffee Yes, you are completely right. I was using the yellow and red colors to notify players the tiles were in a danger zone, but it didn't really work out as I wanted to.
@mahalis Thank you so much ! The arrow mounds are bulging up and when they explode they destroy the tiles surrounding them. They have tiny spooks that escape :D
@enderswype Thank you so much for playing :)
@minjutin That means a lot to me ! There's indeed some cleverness involved, but it all boils down to a simple flood fill / BFS algorithm ^-^ the trick with hexagons is that getting the neighbours depends on your row, it's different between even and uneven. I had a blast developing this !
@Heremeus I'm sorry to hear, it seems the server hosting the leaderboard is down every now and then...
@apg Without specifying how I did it (so people cant hack into it), try searching itch for "leaderboard" ;)
@bauke-regnerus You're a hero :D Thank you for playing.
@fatemperor @siberpunk01 @kylazaur @miller @bradjste @akulove Thank you so much ! :)
@honest-dan You're absolutely right, I should have made it more clear. The yellow tiles are "in danger" but not urgent, the red ones will disappear soon. To be very honest, this wasn't a design decision, it was my debug way of testing and I just left it in :) I didn't have time to make a better "lava" shader. As always, thank you so much for the feedback, means a lot to me !
@3mpty Thank you, had lots of fun seeing you play it ^-^
@hagamosvideojuegos Strange is exactly what I was going for, thank you for playing and YAY candy !!!!
Very nice game. Juicy, and interesting. You don't need any tutorial to dive and and have a couple of rounds, and have fun in the way.
Great entry overall. GG.
I had me at cute skeleton, also a fun little game. The concept is really cool but it seems its much easier to keep a small island high and to not bother trying to get the whole playing field up. Maybe it would work better if there a things you can pop to get more land again, while treasures also spawn in the air. Retro style and feel is also really cool!
Nice game!
I really enjoyed the graphics of this game! The music was also pretty good! I did really struggle to get very far in the game, but it was still fun to fail and try again a bunch of times.
Incredibly fun and energetic game with a lot of room for replay. Great work!
AAAH! I was already so impressed by the game and then I discover there is a leaderboard too?!?! this is an immense achievement in the 48 hours. Lovely stuff. Played this for a LOT longer than I should have! I have other games to rate but I feel like I will come back to this one many times.
Interesting gameplay! the result of limited space is my own doing! I love the concept of tasting your own medicine! Good job!
I'm not sure how I'm first :grin:
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The gameplay is cool. You play fast, you die fast, you try again... and again :grin: It really draws you in! The graphics and music go well together and create a cohesive impression. Very nice compo entry.
Nice Game! The graphics and sounds are well polished and the game brings a sense of nostalgia. Good job!
Oups EZ GG
Screenshot 2023-10-09 210057.png
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1945057375?t=03h41m08s)
The look and feel of this one is undeniably charming, and it pairs so well with the sound effects and audio design. On top of that, the gameplay is nice and crunchy, and encourages me to start up another round. :smile: Great work!
Damn, almost first place! Really unique idea, I haven't seen something like this before. Also very polished and fits the theme very well. Great entry!! 😁
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Thanks so much for dropping by my stream. I really had some fun with this one :) Unfortunately the Vod seems to be gone...
@ausstein No problem whatsoever, it was awesome to see you play it ! I was there so I don't need the VOD :D
Love the skeleton. Controls feel tight and it had a lot of juice! Love that you feel you can do better so play an other round. Then another ok one more. Now really the last one :)
Great game java ^^ suuuper fun hehe
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A neat little game! Special shoutout for juicy effects, the explosions made my day. 5/5 ~~would~~ will take top score again!
What a great game :D SUPER clever game loop. I love when simplicity is executed so well and with so much attention to detail and polish. I definitely found it easier when the "island" got much smaller since it was easier to manage. Though, I did notice it seemed like souls stopped spawning when the playing field got small enough? Amazing submission!
Cute little game. Love the animations! Well done!
3rd place pog
Screenshot 2023-10-10 211844.png
Found the VOD afterall if you want to see it again :)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1946756082?t=2h48m40s
Very cool graphics and sounds. I read the comments but I had a little trouble understanding how to progress much, but I know it's me
Oh Geez, this is so much feedback. I'm sorry it took a while for me to answer, but :
@Hakro Thanks for playing and the kind words ! @davision Those are very valuable suggestions, I might implement that in the post-jam ! @marcel-1 Thank you very much :) @queenofsquiggles Thank you very much for playing ! @christian-witt-martin High energy is what I was aiming for, I'm glad it came across ! @designernap I love doing Compo, but it does put a lot of strain on your mental wellbeing, I'm very proud that I've gotten all of this functionality in :) @robert-li Thank you ! @fabula-rasa You got first because you owned the game :p @psv-games-studio Thank you so much for playing ! @togis A new king was born ! @coleslaughter no, thank YOU for playing, was a joy catching the stream :) @kankje Thank you :) Glad you've enjoyed it ! @senso This made me smile so hard, thank you ! @rickylee Heck yeah ! Thanks for playing :D @dragonayzer I really wanted to go for the crunchy feels, it means a lot to read this ! @pen-island-games Thank you for playing ! The mounds indeed stop spawning when there's not enough room left, but I'm not sure why I made that decision, I think in my fatigue I accidently swapped mounds and chests in my head ^-^ Got to love duct-tape code :D @digital-bacon thank you so much ! @burchyn let's goooo buuuuuuu @ausstein oh jeez thanks ! Will give it a watch ^-^ @lincolnsalles Thanks for playing :) There's really not much to it, don't overthink it ^-^ I'm already very glad you tried <3
I had already seen this game on your live, I've seen it on other live shows and now I had the pleasure of playing it. Your game is very good, good art, good music, unique and fun mechanics. I added the list of addictive games that make me try to increase my highscore. Everything is very fluid and feels like a game that took a long time to make, remembering that it was made in 3 days only makes the game more admirable. Congratulations!^^
@natano thank you so much :D but it was made in 2 days (it's compo) :D
@javasaurus Oh my god, I'm sorry, I didn't see that detail! Congratulations, what an incredible job, in 2 days I would be panicking :0 congratulations
No worries :D I only say so people would be kind for the bugs :up:
Great entry! It would be cool if you could change your path after clicking on a tile.
Wow really charming and very addicting to play. Love the crunchy pixel art and the animations! The sound effects really made me feel the impact when Skelly hit a tile. I was not really good at it but it was fun to play!
Great job!
Good juicy graphics, within the theme, with cool music. What more could one ask for? Good job!
Really interesting entry, had good feel to it and was presented really well. Keeps you coming back for more, great jam!
the sounds you chose for the skeletons jump animations are so great, he has such a bouncy attitude! really love seeing hex-based grid games, and incorporating a leaderboard is always awesome to see in an LD entry. great job!
Great game! i love the way the guy hops around and bonks the tiles xD most my feedback on stream i think was just unifying to UI stuff a bit, but it also took me a while to understand what was going on with the water and when it rises etc
woo i was #3 at one point hehehe >:D
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@jvdwijk It was like that during development but at that time the game seemed too easy so I removed it. Great suggestion though ! @bredera Thanks for the review ! Means the world :D I love that it did feel crunchy and impactful. @najjaman thank you so much ! @wisstopher Thanks so much :) @gentoogames Thank you ! The jumping sound was made with jfxr and the pitch shifts every jump :) Small details but big impact ! @itsboats was a pleasure to see you play it :) Next LD I might try my hands at Jam instead of compo, so I can spend a bit more time on UI... Or practice it so I can do it properly fast enough :p
@EVERYONE Thank you so much for your review. I really enjoyed this LD and I needed it more than any of you realizes. Keep crafting, keep deving, every single one of you is talented beyond and above. Follow those dreams, make your games , and I'll see you at LD 55 !
Nice little fun game, It took me a minute to realize that the "Limited Space" idea was kicking in. Nice entry!