aaronjnc 2024-04-16 03:50
This is a really great game, I haven't been able to master it quite yet but I see the vision.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → The In Between
By adam-gallina
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 266 | 3.85 | 51 | |
| Fun | 275 | 3.79 | 51 | |
| Innovation | 162 | 3.88 | 51 | |
| Theme | 182 | 4.18 | 51 | |
| Graphics | 676 | 3.60 | 52 | |
| Mood | 428 | 3.73 | 51 |
This is a really great game, I haven't been able to master it quite yet but I see the vision.
A fun twist on the summoning concept! I had a point where it seemed like flinging chicken into the yellow portal wasn't doing anything, and I couldn't quite figure out how to get any further than that.
Either way, this is a polished-looking game with great soundtrack that scratches the same itch as Factorio! I do love getting everything flinging precisely where it's supposed to go
very interesting and fun use of the theme!
i really liked this one! it was a little confusing at first understanding how to use the items on the bar on the right, but once i got it i had fun building a little automation system
Overall a fantastic puzzle game. At first it's super simple but once things start piling up I found myself pausing a lot and rearranging my layouts in order to optimize. It's a very satisfying game loop and paired with the strong visuals and sound design, made it a really fun experience. Great work!
Woah, nice job! The art is cool and the concept (both lore and mechanics) is awesome. You even made accessibility options! Great work.
It was kinda confusing at first figuring out how to use the items on the right bar, but once I got it, I had fun setting up a little automation system.
I like this factory game. It's fun how factory games never made sense, really, but it makes a lot more sense with summoning portals! I love the way this game gets harder the longer it goes, as things get in the way of each other. My only complaint is that I find it frustrating how an item will ignore the thing one space after it's interacted with something else. Including delivery portals! I don't know if it's a bug or intended, but I hate it. Still a fun game, though, thanks for making it!
I played the web version and scrolling over the items didn't tell me what they did so I went with the obvious pipes to help route the items. I do love the idea/concept but definitely struggled with trying to figure out how everything worked even with the tutorial.
I liked the idea of the game tying into the theme. Summoning doesn't just happen, someone's gotta make it happen behind the scenes. It can get pretty tough dealing with everything. I've not mastered it yet, but I think I'll come back and give it a few more tries.
The concept is super unique. I love the idea that there are people working a like minimum wage job moving things from one portal to another xD.
The gameplay itself was a little confusing at first, I read the tutorial but it was hard to wrap my head around without any graphic examples. I had to go back to the tutorial to find the rotate keys because I am used to R or right click being able to rotate lol.
Omg this is so fun! I think I'm too sleep-deprived from the game jam to get past any of the harder levels but my friends will LOVE this game and I'm going to come back to it tomorrow after a good night's rest.
Very clever "meta" use of the theme, and I like the aesthetics. My biggest gripe lies with the instant portal tiles. I don't see anything that stops you from just portal looping everything like the attached image, and it kind of makes the other tiles obsolete. Screenshot 2024-04-16 135703.png Also earlier in the game I think the map bugged because there was about 4 minutes where the view just kept zooming out, then snapping back in, all while the game didn't place any new input or summon portals. Activating fast forward seemed to fix this
@conduit I didn't catch that in the web build, looks like godot tooltips don't work correctly in it - I added item descriptions to the page, so hopefully that helps
@dinoraz Thanks for letting me know, I can't seem to replicate it, so hopefully it's not too common - was it in zen or challenge mode? The only thing I can think of is you lost the game, but the ui didn't update for some reason. For the portals, I thought about limiting them, or making items moving through portals not score at all, but I found that they only made the early game easier, and later held me back more than using all the items
@waterspirit glad you liked the story :) I definitely wanted to spend some more time on the tutorial but ran out
@jason-shapiro Thanks! The items are a little jank sometimes, definitely not intended, just a little too inconsistent to troubleshoot during the jam
@breadstick The portals have a max capacity, so the extras passed over it, glad you still had fun tho!
Pretty fun and a really interesting lil systems game. I like the concept and don't think I've seen anything like this before. A little hard to find which portals are "hungry". I am kinda terrible at this game but the chaos of all the stuff flying everywhere is neat
This is fun! The zen mode is a great addition. I would have liked to have a visual effect for collisions.
2024-04-16-143617_1920x1080_scrot.png
Cool game. The teleporting pair seem a bit OP. Ended up running it on the faster speed and just pausing every time a new input-output pair spawned. It got quite hard to track where the new portals were appearing once it zooms out a bit, and the indicators of how quickly the inputs were triggering and how often the outputs needed items were too small to see.
@khaotom, yeah, that's something I wanted to implement but never got around to it
@nathmate I personally wasn't able to get the tp portals be that op and didn't think it was a problem...but that score completely proves that wrong lol, if I end up continuing development I'll definitely balance that somehow
@poboy glad you liked it! The shake helps a bit, but it definitely needs to be more obvious when the map scrolls out
After 5K score speed 1 in Zen mode... Honestly had more fun than I thought i would and I may have found my lo-fi game.
The only problem I had was the game got so zoomed out the arrows stopped rendering for the pipelines (I used portals very little for extra fun) and couldn't tell what started going wrong as new portals appeared. So - Scaling could see an improvement? and perhaps better way to tell where things are going wrong. Very happy with the experience, thank you.
@spudsef glad you liked it! Definitely agree that the scaling needs an improvement, I don't think I ever went up that high, but I can only imagine - probably should've set it up to scale slower over time to be less of an issue
Solid game with a fun take on the prompt. It gets very chaotic which works thematically.
The subtle and constant zoom out is great. You don't notice it until way later and you're like "where did this empty space come from?"
I think the portals might be a bit overpowered though because I can just put any portal right from the entrance to the exit. Maybe some restrictions like making them only go in a straight line, or making it so you only get a certain number would make it more balanced, because I found myself just using those 95% of the time.
Also could go with some visual indication where I'm about to die, because I heard the sound of the exit portal and I could just not find it until I died and I'm like "oh there it is". Items colliding and destroying each other could use a visual indicator too, it was hard to find where my things were colliding. My final high score was 1363
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also an afterthought: If there's portals in the in-between, do those portals have their own in-between? With yet another person sending things from one end to the other? Funny thought.
Nice game, it reminded me a bit of the puzzle part of Pony Island, but more expanded. For a jam you can see that a lot of work went into it.
@themixedmaster great minds think alike lol - I wanted to add some flavor text to the portals that said smth along the lines of "send it elsewhere In Between and make it someone else's problem", also the design of the destroy object is meant to be a recycled destabilized portal :)
Fun game with an interesting lore (Portal references?).
Troubles I had: - Some connections would at first work and receive the item and then would suddenly stop working later. This happened to me using portal connectors. - When a portal is about to expire, I hear the sound, but it takes time to find which portal is sending the distress signal when the screen is full of portals. A visual indicator of which portals are sending distress signals would be useful.
@andriybyelikov if you had multiple inputs going into the portal, it could be that they were colliding and you didn't notice, but aside from that I'll have to look into it
There is an animation for the portals that are about to expire, but it's really subtle and hard to notice zoomed out, I definitely need to scale it up with the zoom level
Dang, this game is so fun! Love it. If I only had a mouse with a fully functional mouse wheel.
Great job! The idea is simple but fun, I really liked the two game modes and the work they did on the mechanics. Visually the freehand drawing style is striking, I think a greater polish would look better. The visual and sound effects are very well done XD
Complex puzzler and tricky, but I put a lot of gems in holes I think... clever concept!
Fun game, well polished mechanics and challenging ramp up in difficulty. Tool tips with information about place-able pieces would have be helpful. Overall really enjoyed it.
Clever and fun game. It was scratching the same itch for me than MiniMotor Subway and those games! Thanks!
Nice! It's a unique interpretation of the theme and a very enjoyable game to play.
Visual feedback of expiring portal could be more "in your face", currently it's rather shy. Graphics are a bit inconsistent - you have perfectly symmetrical, straight-lined arrow (clearly drawn with shapes) next to a more sketchy, hand-drawn pipes. They are not bad by all means, just could use more consistency of design :smile:
It's an impressive entry (a one-man job!). Keep up the good work :smile:
@lancejz glad you liked it! You can also use Q/E to rotate instead of mouse wheel
@emaigualmc2-art 'striking' is being generous lol...I am by no means an artist, but glad you liked it! It was a bit quick-and-dirty spritework, but I was relatively pleased with the result
@fabula-rasa agreed on the sketchy pipes, I redid the arrow sprite towards the end and wanted to redo the pipes in a similar fashion, but couldn't come up with a design I liked, so shelved that for the sake of time
@salanyel Thanks! Mini Motorways was a huge inspiration for this, so glad to hear it :)
@zindarm In theory there were tooltips available, but I don't think they work on the web build unfortunately, it seems like godot is drawing them offscreen
Nice puzzle game with lots of possibilities and mechanics. Great replay value. Well done!
I didn't realize portals were a thing! Really nice game my score is 515
This may very well be the funnest one I've played for LD55.
Hahaha, I really liked the idea you're playing the space in-between portals! The gameplay was really nice, controls a bit clunky for my part (having this one tile you have to rotate or mirror with keys, it was taking me a lot of time to have it in the right orientation each time) but it reminded me the same kind of "Mini-metro" gameplay (which is a great reference) where after a while you have to managed some spaghettis designs. Congratulation for your entry!
Fun to imagine all the times I mess up in this game causing all the wrong summons in the other LD55 games ;)
Amazing work for a solo entry! Reminded me of the Dinosaur Polo Club games, which is an achievement in itself. Graphics are a bit programmer-artsy, but they do their job. Sounds and music are also pleasant enough. Interesting interpretation of the theme.
The instructions at the beginning were a bit obtrusive, and despite their presence the gameplay still felt a bit confusing (although that could be a skill issue on my part). A proper tutorial where the different elements would be taught to the player in a more intuitive manner would have gone a long way, but considering that all of this was made by a single person within 72 h I can see that there probably would not have been time for that. Great entry overall!
@justmars Thanks! Definitely would have wanted to put a bit more polish in the tutorial, but ran out of time, glad you liked it!
Nicely executed idea i feel like having some sort of cost for the different item would be nice to prevent you from just doing massive amount of portal
Very nice aesthetic, and very cool idea to apply the theme.
Cool take on the theme! I appreciate that you included a zen mode. There were a few times when the pipes didn't seem to be working, but I may have been doing something wrong.