Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Imp Master
By owtuvammo
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 475 | 3.66 | 49 | |
| Fun | 357 | 3.69 | 49 | |
| Innovation | 343 | 3.63 | 48 | |
| Theme | 205 | 4.14 | 49 | |
| Graphics | 765 | 3.46 | 49 | |
| Audio | 684 | 2.93 | 46 | |
| Humor | 878 | 2.51 | 41 | |
| Mood | 769 | 3.39 | 48 |
Not going to lie, I found it really tricking at first to grasp the controls, but I'm very glad I stuck with it because this is actually the best game I've played so far. The puzzles are really clever. The controls need some fenessing but otherwise I would love to play a more polished version of this. Well done.
Had a bit of difficulty figuring out the controls at first, but once the game clicked for me it was really cool! The puzzle design is really good and clever. I personally could have done without the darkness in the last level.
These were some interesting puzzles! It did take a bit to actually figure out what does what. At first I thought you had to try to carefully preserve your imps and try to avoid burning them.
Not sure if I'm the only one, but I can't seem to play the game, the window size is much larger than my screen, and so I can't see the bottom of the window.
I unfortunately couldn't play since the resolution cut off the game :(
@zoranac @byazzle
I was a bit worried about that. I can try uploading a half resolution version on itch later tonight or tomorrow morning.
Guess I'm not sure what the rules on that are. Sorry for the inconveniences though!
The itch link should now be at 640x640 instead of 1280x1280.
Others have already pointed out the controls are confusing. I like the idea of showing how to call the imp by having you be stuck until you do, but I did it on impulse when I saw the instructions but didn't understand what it is I did. I had to restart to understand.
I also ran into a bug on the first level -- it seems my imp got stuck in the wall? I finally got him out but he wouldn't come. See picture.
Another bug - the number of imps was way on the right side of my screen but said "# of imps you can summon ->". Need to anchor that counter to the text.
But once I got through the first level I was amazed at how much you built and how good the levels are. Thoughts:
Level 2: * Really like the introduction of mirrors. Only thing not obvious was how to rotate I think because the placement of that text was off.
Level 3: * Loved the new mechanic and how it fit with the dragons. Ended up over thinking it and taking more time to solve it than I needed.
bug.png
The tutorial text in the first level didn't really help me that much, I had to figure out what to do through trial an error - in particular I wasn't aware I had a character that I could control with WASD. Once I realised that, it took a couple minutes of messing around to figure out what it meant to recall and call imps.
Once I got into the swing of things I really enjoyed the puzzles. I liked that there were new mechanics added each level, really kept me engaged even though my small brain usually gets impatient with puzzle games. Very inventive central mechanic inspired by the theme is the highlight of the game.
Nice pixel art and I thought the game fit the theme really well.
I absolutely love the pixel art and character designs. Super charming. Really interesting mechanic interactions as well with lots of variety and layers to the puzzle design! I think the imps were sometimes misbehaving with my clicks though. I found it hard to get them to go directly to the lever when I spawned them, so I often felt like i had to "trick" their pathfinding by recalling them while standing awkwardly on the other side. Since I wasn't trying to do anything clever and just get them to hold the lever, it felt a bit cumbersome. But when you have to intentionally recall them into the forcefields, that was really cool! Nice work! :)
I got stuck right away unfortunately :( I could not get the imps to take the lever. But I really liked the graphics on this one
The zip file you have for download is still the 1280x1280 one and was too large for my monitor. The web build worked fine though.
Very nice puzzle game. I liked the amount of mechanics you included in particular. Must have been difficult making sure the player doesn't trap themselves on accident haha!
Very nice! I'm just echoing what everyone else said, but the controls took a bit to sync in. Nearly gave up in the first level as I kept trying to summon the imps ON the lever, but then I re-read the instructions and got it.
Really fun game! Puzzles got me thinking but weren't overly hard. Nice work!
This is a nice puzzle game. I'd wish for a couple more levels to enjoy! :) Of course, for a compo game it is impressive with this many levels already. Well done!
Very nice game! Feels like a classic flash puzzle game in the best way. Very impressed at the amount of mechanics you got working together in such a short time. Good job :D
Not very hard nor easy, after understanding how to properly set the imps it gets fun, good job :)
Really great job on this! It was a good take on using the theme in a puzzle game. It was a bit tricky understanding how to get imps to interact with levers at first, but it wasn't all that difficult once I understood. I had a lot of fun playing this, and you did a good job of increasing level difficulty. Good work!
Interesting mechanics. The graphics are great, they reminds me of some of those old msdos puzzle adventure games like chips challenge and stuff. Really great puzzle design for such a short jam too, interesting but not frustrating and with clear mechanics that I was able to understand easily.
My only issue is that imps/switch bug, just a tad annoying.
Would totally play more levels.
I don't think a darkness level works great for this type of puzzle game, it mostly meant I just had to blindly guess what looks like the intended solution is instead of actually knowing why I want to pull a specific lever. Other than that it was pretty good for a short puzzle game. I found the first two levels gave you more imps than necessary at the end since you can move the imps between levers from across the wall, but maybe that is intentional to make it easier.
@kaliuresis Nice catch! That was actually a trick I left in for my own playtesting. Could have swapped the order of the levers, but I decided I would leave it in to see if anyone else caught on.
I see what you mean about the darkness level and I don't honestly disagree. I just wanted an excuse to use the light effects on all the different elements, but maybe I should have used a grey shader instead of pitch black.
Really cool game! Graphics are nice, sound is nice, cool puzzles. Minor thing is that the reviously mentioned trickyness of levers in corners, but i got used to that pretty quickly, so not much of a problem. The other thing is that on my resolution, the game only showed on a quarter of the frame size. I fixed that by adjusting my browser zoom so the frame matches the game, and then used the screen magnifier
Other than that, great! :tada:
Really fun game! I almost missed out on it because I didn't understand the controls initially :( Specifically, I missed the fact that you needed to **hold** right click to summon instead of just clicking so I couldn't get it to work.
Once I figured the hold right click part out the game was super fun and I spent a bunch of time getting all the way to the end! The puzzles were a good difficulty, not too hard but not too easy (which is rare for jam games!). Others have mentioned having issues with the levers in the corners and/or levers in general but I didn't run into anything that frustrating with those.
Great gameplay, feels like a lot of work went into the puzzles which is great. The artstyle and sounds take me back in time which is awesome.
the mechanics is a bit hard to get at first, but once you know them the puzzles feel really nice
Very cool game and idea overall, like this game
Nice little puzzle game
Very nice! The puzzles were challenging, which is good. I also liked the way you used text in the levels to introduce new mechanics. tutorials are often overlooked. I love the retro style of the game. The window was a bit small tho. Maybe thats something to look into.
Great job on your Ludum Dare game! The gameplay felt really fresh, art style is awesome. First time user experience feels very natural without any dialogs, love this.
Puzzles were fun, and that's not so common in puzzle games, great job. You can make games resize to the game window size in godot, it will solve the dynamic size problems. It would compromise some pixel art fidelity... but I would say it is worth unless you get into absolutely detailed and elaborated pixel art.
Great idea summoning/unsummoning the imps. It's a fun puzzle game. Nice and polished.
I found level 3 to be really challenging. It took me some time to realize that the bullets were firing even though I couldn't see them in the dark. I think the tutorial was enough though (I like the way it was integrated into the level). I just didn't see it. Maybe if there was a little bit of light, enough to see a bullet fly from the gun to give this hint?
I see why other say the controls were confusing. I right-clicked a lot accidentally, which moved imps when I didn't want to. On level 3, I locked myself between the doors and couldn't get out. Aside from this, I thought the controls were intuitive and felt good.
After picking up the controls, I started to really like the game. The possibility of different interesting puzzles you were able to make with such a simple mechanic makes it a really solid base for a game.
The stone floor texture is giving me huge nostalgia vibes for the DOS games I played as a kid.
The thing that hurt the game the most is the resolution - it was really tiny and didn't scale on my screen. I had to put my face really close to the screen, and that made the third level incredibly difficult. Fixing that would go a long way towards making the game a more enjoyable experience.
Great work!
Love the aesthetic, love the mechanic. The darkness is evil! That level took me a while. I had fun though, nice job!
chrome_nFrt3Nwwj7.png interesting implementation. I was stuck here and couldn’t get out. Did I do something wrong?
@semenov huh, I'm not sure how you got there!
It seems to me like the mirror glitched on you. Hitting E might rotate the mirror and knock you free?
This is a really fun little game, simply and clearly explained mechanics, nice graphics, for a Compo game this is really good, and as a jam game (unfortunate page glitched) it's also a really good game!
Very nice game and interesting mechanisms! But the resolution seems weird. Can bare see what's going on in the game.
I have to say that the mechanics are simple, but interesting. It was a little difficult for me to understand the puzzle, some more feedback would have been great
I had a bit of trouble understanding how to play the game at first, especially that I had to long press and had to use the fires to light the torches and open doors haha But then I understood and it was super cool, kind of reminded me of The Talos Principle at some times with the riddles :) Really like the mood as well, good job!
Back to the roots of NES times! It was nostalgic, especially the fire sound was awesome. Sometimes I had trouble flipping the switches, but I always managed to do it in the end. A solid game, congratulations on your submission!
Nice game! Cool puzzles with an interesting gimmick. Great job!
Nice Puzzle game the dark level was mean :)
Great idea with this puzzle game. Like it)
I really liked the first two levels, both were predictable and had very minimal trial and error. But I feel the third level shouldn’t have had the lighting mechanic, as this made it very difficult to tell what a particular lever did. It’d open a door somewhere, but there’d often be no way to know where since the door wasn’t lit. Otherwise though the game was fun! :heart:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2130698362
@pov @owtuvammo I think there's an issue with the ranking of this game. It looks like it's ranked in the jam category but is considered to be compo. Compo don't go as high as 475 in overall, 765 in graphics, etc. Can it be fixed? I have a tool that creates my stats automatically and it kinda fucks up all numbers :smile: Thanks!