oldzombie14 2024-10-07 20:01
loved the visual! Soooo juicy
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Juicy Little Morsels
By brendan-milos, yodoG and BestJess
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 453 | 3.64 | 34 | |
| Fun | 344 | 3.62 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 369 | 3.51 | 34 | |
| Theme | 129 | 4.18 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 101 | 4.40 | 34 | |
| Audio | 30 | 4.23 | 34 | |
| Humor | 289 | 3.51 | 32 | |
| Mood | 291 | 3.82 | 34 |
loved the visual! Soooo juicy
Beautiful! I love the game, and I’m getting addicted to improving my score—I’ve eaten 93 creatures so far. However, I couldn't find the pause menu when I wanted to pause the game. For feedback, I didn’t really understand when I was in the correct cursor location during the QTE. Great job, and congratulations!
Very satisfying sounds and visuals! Almost prefer squishing them over eating them :D
Nice job, everything feels "nice". After more than 50 tiny creatures eatens, the games feels pretty repetitive. Good job on the soundtrack!
Capture d’écran_2024-10-08_01-53-10.png
I agree on comments saying game gets repetitive. The difficulty curve is not my favourite. I wasn't losing so I closed the game at this point: ld56.png
Loved the music and the artstyle. Also nice SFX too!
Cool concept and great art! I like how simple this was.
@chocolat-endive @brainoid Thank you for playing! I appreciate the feedback. Balancing difficulty was very difficult for me, because I'm in the same camp as you guys -- the final game ended up too easy for me.
During playtesting there was a huuuge divide between "normal-level" players and "expert-level" players. This difficulty curve is currently tuned so the average player, who probably doesn't play aim-based games a lot, can have fun. If I'd had more time I'd have added a difficulty mode selector, so separate difficulty curves could exist for the different player types, but alas! As it is, this game shipped with just "normal" mode. Something to think about next time I make a reflexes-based game!
Juicyyyyyy! My belly is so full of morsels
I really the 'catch' animation, really fluid, and the mood is great. I enjoyed a little critter splash session to end the test with style !!! :)
Nicely done.
THIS is wonderful! Really well put together. Who made the "Yoda" laugh noise?! :D Lovely feel to play, amazing audio and art, top marks all around. Great work.
@designernap hahaha I recorded my wife giving me her best witch's cackle and did some pitch and formant shifting to try to make her sound as "sea witchy" as possible, but now I can't unhear Yoda. Thanks for playing!
Really like the art. Was fun to play.
Apart from what was already said about the difficulty curve being too easy I actually have no complaints here!
Sound and art were really nice and everything fit the eerie mood, especially the 'splash' if you pressed too hard :grin:
The gameplay is easy to learn and with the right difficulty curve probably also hard to master, which I really like in games. And everything with this basic premise of just eating small creatures!
This mechanic of catching morsels is quite clever—simple, effective, and surprisingly addictive. It reminds me a bit of the fishing mechanics in Dredge. You know, having to release or press the button when the pointer is in a specific area of the round thingy.
This is some lovely art style, and the mechanic is simple yet effective. With some extra lil things it could become one of those addictive "number go up" sorta games that people love.
The controls felt really responsive and if I was aiming badly (very forgiving!). The graphics are wonderful and the sound effects are nice and chunky! The music really set the mood too! Nice!
Really nice simple but effective execution! The art and audio pull it together quite nicely for tone and mood
I would have like to see a little more challenge as things progressed
But otherwise, great work!
Found the gameplay a bit too repetitive and I wished there was more to do. The art was really good and the sound design too!
The graphics was lit, but could be better with more animations. We would like to see some progression or increasing of difficulty. Nicely done!
I loved this, The art is perfectly spooky, and sets a mood. And I like the simple but interesting game mechanic. I wish that the hand would grab, where the creature was, and not just always in the middle. And I saw a few times, where I clearly released the button too late (outside the sweet spot), but I still got it.
Oh, I just realized the difference in animation between eating and squshing them. I think it wasn't complete clear to me, that I did something wrong, as I focused on that the creature disappeared and thought that as a positive feedback from the game.
I really enjoyed the art and style of this game. It was almost more satisfying to "accidentally" pop the morsels. The game play loop felt like it did lack a bit of progression though, that there wasn't much things happening or getting harder or that the pace of that ramp up was a bit too slow. So by 20 something morsels I switched to popping them on purpose to get to see the ending.
I also found it a bit confusing at first, though I get why, that when the hand picked up the morsel it did so from the center of the bowl no matter where it actually was when I released the mouse button. That made me wonder quite some in the beginning if I was failing or doing things wrong. I think it would add quite a lot to the understanding of what is happening and to the feeling that it's me picking up the little things if they got picked up where they were when I was clicking on them.
All in all, very good arcade-styled entry. And very good visual presentation.
@local-minimum Thank you for the thoughtful feedback and +1 to all of it, agreed! We all had other obligations over the weekend, so we made sure to keep the scope as tight as possible. Adding more creature variety and more accurate "hand picking up" placement+feedback would absolutely help out :)
@brendan-milos totally understandable. The way I handled limited game play in my own game was trying to force the game to be short (around max 100 seconds). And hopefully making people try more than once that way to beat their record.
@local-minimum We had the same goal of keeping the game loop to about 1-2 minutes -- the hard part here is the skill disparity between "normal" players and "expert" players. With the current difficulty curve, by far our average player does NOT make it past the 100 second mark. For many people, this is actually a difficult game!
But for players with prior experience with aim-based games, this difficulty curve is far too easy/boring. We didn't have time to add in multiple difficulty levels, so the game released with what is basically just "normal" mode, so it can be accessible to as many players as possible. But I agree -- I also find it boring as-is, and wish I'd had time to improve the gameplay experience for more advanced gamers.
Very good! Loved the graphics, loved the sounds, loved the music. Gameplay is simple but catchy.
Superb graphics, and the gameplay was juicy. It did start to get very easy, maybe adding some morsels that did caused indegestion? That said it was still fun. Well done.
Pretty minimalistic yet addictive game play. I liked that it took zero time to understand game mechanics. Overall implementation is very neat, the graphics and sfx are really good and consistent.
Screenshot 2024-10-13 at 10-54-12 Juicy Little Morsels by BestJess.png
Great music, sounds and animations. The gameplay is nice and you ramp up the difficulty slowly which I enjoyed a lot. Well done!
Nice Game!
My favorite part was the music loop. I am not good at aim-based games so I could only manage about 50 :laughing: I found it endlessly amusing that several seemed to be HAPPY to be eaten.
If you develop it further, to counter the repetitiveness, I'd say maybe change up the morsel behavior depending on how well the player is doing or their proximity to a recent fetch. None of these comments are fully baked, but context switching should break up the limited game loop to keep it engaging.
I dig how tight the scope is here. The game isn't huge, but everything you've done you've executed really well. Audio and visuals are top-notch, my experience was bug-free, and everything feels really tactile and playable. Difficulty ramps nicely too. Great jam game!
Was Have a Nice Death an influence for the team by any chance? I couldn't help but wonder, with the palette, visual themes and music. If so, awesome. If not, take it was a compliment - the game is audio visually stunning :)
Special note on the music: Loved the full orchestral approach here. Really suited the atmosphere of the game and made me feel as the player that I was definitely the heinous villain in the setting, haha. What VSTs were you using for this? Was it just one kit or a range of stuff? Sounded great.
@lachlan-james thanks for the feedback! The game you mentioned wasn't one of the references on my end, I tend to like cute horror aesthetically though and can see the overlap. Have a Nice Death looks really fun!
@yodog can speak to the musical direction more. From my perspective, I know that he has worked woth Cello insutrmentation a lot and I had requested that early on because of the dramatic, moody sound. The musician on this really knocked it out of the park here!
I was able to play this on mobile in widescreen, which was a treat. High score of 47! Loved the score, sfx, and visuals. I especially loved the crunchy application of the sfx. The difficulty curve was great too. Be proud; this is a great entry!
@lachlan-james Thanks so much! It was a range of things, but almost all of it was from the Native Instruments Komplete package. Lots of Symphony Series instruments as well as some Action Strikes instruments, Damage, and Thrill. I also used Spitfire Audio Solo Cello for the cello solo.