Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Poltergeist for Hire
By judjudson, eniggma, anonymousoyster, DMWkenton, GreatOT, dotflare and Tinker1175
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 890 | 3.29 | 64 | |
| Fun | 763 | 3.27 | 65 | |
| Innovation | 813 | 3.11 | 65 | |
| Theme | 1098 | 2.84 | 65 | |
| Graphics | 706 | 3.55 | 65 | |
| Humor | 245 | 3.65 | 65 | |
| Mood | 850 | 3.29 | 65 |
Our sound designer's wifi is currently dead! He has several assets created for sounds like the bowling ball's impacts or wood breaking, but he hasn't been able to get them to us for several hours. We'll patch them in the moment we get them!
EDIT: I have the assets and a build is in the works! Loyal fans, stay tuned! O7
SECOND EDIT: The build I uploaded this morning has the new sounds! I just forgor to update this comment again lol
I love the concept. I wish there were more tasks. Well done
Funny concept, and the execution was funny too. Were some minor bugs with things jerking about, but it added to the humor more than anything I'd say. The only bug that was annoying was that the camera would jerk sometimes. Not sure where that issue comes from, but it was a little disorienting. Like the other person said, wish there was more! Which clearly means what is there is fun. Thanks for making!
This is a fun twist on the theme, and I always love a physics sandbox! Got a good laugh out of me, especially before I realized it was possible to gently put things down.
I know this is always the hard part with jams, but I wish there were a couple more tasks, or maybe a second or third list with a few tasks on it!
So cute. I love throwing stuff around with physics. I've used the exact same mechanic as telekinesis for combat in a game but I was cracking up using the same method to try to open the microwave only to realize I was supposed to open the oven. Too much doordash for me I suppose. Anyway, great game! Keep it up!
Not bad, any kind of physics setup like this is tricky to do, let alone in 72 hours. Well done!
@bearcage hahaha, I considered tutorializing the "put down" button but then realized that forcing people to figure that out themselves would drastically increase rates of amusing messes. Same thing with telling the player how to check their objectives last - I wanted them to mess around first, and hopefully have fun/find something silly to do on the way. Super proud of how it turned out, and thanks for the feedback!
Oh wow, left me wishing it was longer! I loved cooking my grandma's secret poisonous bowling ball recipe!
long lost cousin @coffie ????
It was fun but I felt like I was fighting the physics
the path of a butler is a truly sisyphusean task. Not every soul is prepared for the battle, the internal turmoil, the philosophical war of taking cookies out of the oven. @hardlyquinn I understand your fall in the line of battle and will remember you as the dear soldier of cooking you were. amen, and bon appetit.
Wish there was more to do with the summoned objects. Cookies got stuck in the oven twice
Was fun to just break stuff :laughing: Would be great if there was more purpose to summoning objects, but otherwise, Awesome game!
Absolutely loved destroying the kitchen
I liked the animations and the way of picking up objects. Aesthetically, a very beautiful game.
Well done! A big ammount of work for a short time to do it! Was able to block the butter behind the bowl but I put some poison instead. Worked well... The animation are greats and the sound is cool.
@swerky you are banned from my kitchen wtf
Fun little game. I liked the cathartic way you could throw and break the stuff around you. I was a bit frustrated with the cookies and the placing mechaninc with the bowl, but besides that it was a fun experience :)
Guys love it so much!!!! Congrats!!! This game has some potential fr!!
"throws pickle jar across the room" ahh a job well done
@enad96 it's honest work and somebody's got to do it
Had a blast breaking stuff, love the "ghost simulator".
Love it! Calmly completed the objectives the first time, enjoyed some "interior design" the second time. Impressive simulation!
- Open pickle jar *grabs jar and chucks it* "Check" - Remove cookies *grabs tray and leaves all the cookies in the oven.. then struggles pulling them out one at a time until realizing there's a hidden banana inside the oven* ".. check"
Fun stuff! :P
It probably took serious bowling balls to go for 3D in a jam. The result looks good! The music selection is good and so is the plot of the game. Although it's the gameplay itself is funny, it is lacking in content. I guess that's the price of the extra dimension (pun intended). Though given time, you can easily scale this up to include more activities and even get some reaction out of the guy who summoned you into this home
Absolutely hilarious and entertaining! The chaos of physics-based tasks combined with the creative use of summoned objects made for a truly enjoyable experience. Great work on creating such a fun and polished game!
@rex240 The music wasn't selected, it was made! Every track was made by our composer. And yeah, seeing that the low content has been the primary complaint I can't help but feel at least some responsibility. I was the main organizational force and lead designer. It feels like it was on me to help us allocate our resources more effectively, and there was definitely some waste as a result of us not hammering down exactly what we were going to do early on. Because we iterated and cut ideas, things like animations and sound effects were made that didn't wind up getting used. I feel really bad about that, because I liked them so much but I wasn't going to force them into the game to the detriment of its overall quality.
I had a lot of fun with this because while the physics make precision very difficult, the game doesn't penalise you for that, so throwing plates across the room into jars is considered a valid way of opening them. When I completed it I thought I'd accidentally pressed a button to reset the game, it came so abruptly, so it'd be good if that was made more clear. But really more than anything I just wanted more tasks to do!
Great visuals and music/SFX! Hilarious premise and interactions xD When I broke the pickle jar for the first time I was afraid something bad would happen but the game just crossed our this task :D This cracked me up! Awesome job!
Like others said, it would've been nice to have more tasks but you can only do so much in a short jam like this. The physics was fun to mess around in the room with though. Nice entry!
Really cool game! Well done getting the main gameplay to work, for a short game jam it's quite a ambitions game!
I really think the joke landed well! First couple of second I started picking items of the kitchen counter and looking around for a trashcan. Then I saw the "quest" picking cookies out of the oven, accidentally flung them everywhere and then realised poltergeist is in the title and this is what I'm meant to be doing :D As noted above it makes a quite short experience. It would have been nice to wreak havoc over to whole kitchen and then get some sort of before and after view before being sent to the credits.
That said, well done getting it to they state it is in. Not the easiest game to make in three days, you did well just getting it to work! The game is polished enough that the player understands the idea of the game!
I like it) I was amused by the idea)
I loved the concept; the interaction is fluid and it's fun being able to throw items.
I was kinda sad that there are not more tasks to do xD but that is a good thing! I got hooked and wanted to play more. Also really like jus throwing/destroying stuff. Very well done!
Wonderful game with cool visual! I like the way the hand moves: so smooth and elegant. It's fun to destroy kitchen while majestic music is plaing
This is very funny game, i love it ) I like kinectetic vibe by grabing some stuff and throwing it away ) Like the tasks, wanna more ) So many little details for 72 hours, you did great lob )
This was lovely! Unique take, clever writing, fun to throw things! Had a bit of a struggle getting things stuck behind the mixing bowl but after my first failed attempt I had a smooth run. Even with the low poly minimal look, you managed to make me feel like I was quite the mischievous ghost. You sort of imagine what it would look like to a live soul watching things get strewn around the house, like in a proper 80's horror flick.
I think the FOV could be reduced a bit, I felt very far away from things I was grabbing, otherwise everything felt tight and satisfying.
Destroys everything in the kitchen => checks the to-do list => proceeds to destroy what was left intact. Ah yes, the sweet freedom of mischief! :D
I uploaded my playthrough to YouTube, I hope it's useful for you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvw31U45lSg
Nice idea and mechanics. Music is showing mood very well.
@joeshanahan Thanks for adding us to your video. It's awesome getting to see someone's initial reactions as they're playing through it for the first time!
good soundtrack, nice visual style, reminds me of octodad in some ways, it would be cool if it was a little longer
The music and visuals is pretty good. The gameplay idea is pretty fun, but it fell like it not used for very much. Overall a pretty well made little jam game.
The music is amazing and i love the mechanics. Pretty good game, good job :)
The basic concept attracted me. As a butler, I was thinking of responding to the father of the family's request by using summoning, which would have been original and effective. Although the game description mentions that it's the father of the family who summons me, when I carry out my tasks I'm not reminded of the summoming theme. With a nice potential of exploitation and a small improvement of the gameplay (some objects can block or disappear), it would be cool! Still, you've done a great job!
The graphics and physics are well executed. I could not really feel the summoning theme in the game and the task list is so small that the game is finished in 1 minute. Maybe some more tasks and some events in between would make it more complete.
You have a cool sandbox and as other said there is potential for more gameplay !
Push-pull physics sandboxes are always a hoot! But the summoning felt like a bolt-on DLC rather than a core game mechanic; I was able to complete everything without ever touching that feature.
I'd love to see more content in this little world. It feels like the beginning of something deeper.
Interesting concept. I really like an artstyle and psycics system even if I was sometimes annoyed with grabing staff
The concept is interesting, however the UX is a bit wonky because you hide tasks behind the button. Also, the physics is a bit buggy.
Pretty fun game, although it was very short! I struggled a little but to read the font, but the rest of the graphics was nice.
@tricky-fat-cat that was VERY intentional - we prioritized creating a fun sandbox to fool around in and populating it with lots of bespoke and/or destructive objects. To try and encourage people to play in it, we delayed giving them a clear "win condition" in the hopes that they'd have fun breaking things, stacking things, and experimenting and continue to be interested in that through the objectives.
The task list was short but over the course of the jam we realized we were having fun just ruining the environment so we emphasized the environment. I still get distracted when I come back to play the game, lol. If I had to change something, I honestly think I'd obfuscate the tasks *more*. I want people to have to respond to the game's systems with flippancy and mischief - making the objectives clear cut seems to have lead a lot of people to beeline the objectives and go "oh game's over that was short."
We're likely going to expand this game in the future, since we built it to be scalable. My priorities are probably more interactive objectives (responses to using poison in the mixing bowl, needing to put the full mixing bowl in the oven, laying the table with a very loose definition of cutlery and plates, etc.) and more natural controls (the ability to push and pull objects while holding them, rotating them, things breaking far less when you're just pulling them off of shelves). I'm not sure a long list of objectives is what makes this kind of game good, so much as active and responsive objectives.
Tl;Dr - I want the objectives to be hidden so people are experimental in trying to find them.
@heretic Octodad and I am Bread were maybe the two first direct game references I pulled on to communicate the tone we were going for to the team. Overcooked was another one, we wanted that tone of sickly sweet perfect familial environment that you do very callous destructive things in, played for comedy. It's kind of an honor to be compared to octodad!
@dissonance-generator you hit the nail on the head 😅. The initial pitch was "alright, let's have you play AS the guy who gets summoned, and do tasks to the letter but not the spirit." GreatOT pointed out that while that fits the theme in writing, it doesn't integrate it into gameplay. If/when we expand the game, I'd like to make the summoning items more relevant, if not necessary. But for the purpose of this jam, it let us set tone and include fun silly items without putting a saw or a bowling ball in the kitchen for some reason.
There is still pre-spawned poison, though. What can I say, some people stock marmite in their home.
@judjudson to be clear, I'm talking about UI with objectives not the actual objectives in the world, they are fine without any hints.
@tricky-fat-cat Are you talking about the hand crosshair obscuring what you're looking at, then? Because that makes sense, yeah.
@judjudson I'm talking about the list of objectives I have which I open by pressing F, even though you have a tutorial, it would be better to have objectives tracker in HUD.
Interesting concept, just lacked in content. Whish there was more of a point to the game
Simples, yet very fun game! I loved the feel of grabbing and throwing things around, and I like that the most random solutions count lik throwing glass into the mixing bowl lol
Very short, but it was fun! I absolutely love the concept, and would love to play an extended version if you're planning on making one.
It seemed you have implemented quite a deep system (with the spawning of different items), and the goal didn't require you to utilize part of it as much. It's a jam with a deadline, so that's completely fair. But it shows you have something to expand upon, as the system is already there.
Great job!
very nice game with physics! not sure why exactly, but i recive some hello neighbor vibes :) GJ guys!
I had a lot of fun playing this entry, and was surprised how polished the game was for a jam (both music and visuals were pleasing). The idea fits the theme well too. Well done.
There were a couple of issues with the mouse leaving the main game window, for example when opened the summoning wheel. I guess these are more related to Unity web-app.
An Octodad esque 3D game! i feel like this is a really impressive mechanic to pull off to this degree in the time frame of a game jam! It feels quite polished. Looks and sounds great, whipping objects around is fun and goofy, breaking stuff is satisfying. : )
I initially had some trouble getting ingredients to land in the bowl (it felt like the objects i threw at the bowl wanted to get stuck behind it instead of go into it). Eventually I found that standing on the open oven door greatly increased the chances of things going into the bowl though -- maybe it was the angle from above.
I think my second ingredient was the jar of pickles? My third ingredient shattered the pickle jar which i can only guess caused the individual pickles to come out and count as the 4th and 5th items because that suddenly checked off the "put ingredients in the bowl" task. It also checked off the "open the pickle jar" task and seemed to trigger a win. Felt like a fun bit of emergent consequence lol.
I liked the music ramping up as goals were met, as well, that was a nice touch!