Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Tiny Heads
By dashvirus
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 30 | 4.10 | 34 | |
| Fun | 30 | 4.06 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 35 | 4.00 | 34 | |
| Theme | 228 | 3.28 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 94 | 3.85 | 34 | |
| Audio | 86 | 3.59 | 34 | |
| Humor | 70 | 3.61 | 33 | |
| Mood | 109 | 3.60 | 34 |
Cool concept and nice work! I spent about half an hour finishing the game (the level go to the first one), and maybe it is a little bit too difficult for me haha. After finishing the game, I still feel like not really understood the whole rules of all tiny heads, myabe some rules revealed after several level or some hint will be better for me.
Anyway, really great game!
I think it's a very fun game and I'm surprised at how much you were able to do in such a short time! Maybe I would add some instructions inside the game, it took me a little while to understand it but after a while I enjoyed it a lot :)
it's so intriguing already to have robots and zombies in the same game. def worth my time and wow i cant believe you did all these within 2 days
Really cool game! It's amazing to see the number of different rules your game have, and how you could easily build up on them to make more new levels!
Nice visuals, it's simple but very easy to understand what's going on, and good job on the polish of the anims in the main menu and in the background.
The music fits the game perfectly, and never sounds repetitive.
Great job!
This is a very neat puzzle! I enjoyed figuring out the rules for each of the Tiny Head through trial and error. These are the rules I discovered during gameplay: https://pastebin.com/NaWx52aZ (EDIT: Placed the rules in this link to prevent spoilers)
Some of the smaller levels intended to teach these rules to me, and it did work somewhat... but it did take me a long time to get there. Maybe a hint to expedite the process like loco has said would be a good idea? Speaking of the smaller levels, I find that the small mid-game levels are less forgiving than the large 5x5 levels at the end, as there isn't much room to avoid neighbors that don't like each other.
I'm personally 50/50 on the Baby crying. On one hand, it *is* funny and I can imagine streamers would have funny reactions to it the first time they encountered it. On another hand, it does get old after a while and you end up cursing under your breath after you accidentally put a Baby next to a Zombie.
It also felt like the game looped back to the first level after you finish the last level. An end screen that shows that you have cleared all the levels would be nice. The ability to see your progress (how many levels you have cleared out of the total number of levels in the game) would also be pretty neat.
All that aside though, you've made a really cool puzzle game. Good job!
Hey @ramchops-games thank you so much for your review and this long feedback, it's much appreciated.
First of all, you perfectly described all of the behaviours, congratulations ! There's just a small subtile one that you missed : Cats and dogs can face each other if there is a gap of 3 tiles or more between them.
All of the points you made above are really accurate and I thought about most of them and just unfortunately didn't have the time to implement them.
- The hint could be nice yes, though I still want the players to figure out the rules by themselves. So maybe a better step by step onboarding/tutorial ? - About the difficult mid level, I noticed after that a level is particularly difficult (chameleon, zombies, flies and a cat) due to the small amount of possible solutions. I should have ordered them differently. - I understand for the baby, it sometimes frustrated me as well, I implemented this just for fun and trolling the player haha. - The loop back is a bit clumsy I have to admit. As there is no way to get back to the main menu I quickly added this. I'm a bit lucky that the first level is the only one with 2x2 hahaha !
Thank you again for all the feedbacks, it's really constructive and positive !
I won't leave bug comment as guys above, but I just want to say that the concept for the game is great. Easy to understamd mechanic, simple but cute visuals and just cool puzzle game. Great job!
Interesting stacking of mechanics, and a good art style for development!
Great game! 🧩 I love how the rules for each creature are gradually revealed - it makes the game fun! 👾 The graphics are simple but very cute, and the music perfectly complements the atmosphere. 🎶 It gets a little tricky in the middle of the game, but that only adds to the fun. It would be great to add a few more hints so players can master the mechanics faster. Anyway, great job! 👏
Fun puzzle game! Managing different creatures with unique rules was cool, and the visuals and music fit well. Some levels were tricky but very satisfying. Great job!
Loved the game! I really liked discovering all the interactions, an then finding something new on subsequent levels and being surprised as it seemed like what I figured out was only half of the actual mechanic. Some mid levels took me a few minutes to figure out, but on the last levels I guess I kinda lucked out as I did them pretty fast, just had to figure out how to satisfy 1 person. On the note of the baby crying, It wasn't a problem for me at all since I was still able to swap other thing with the baby, so I moved it indirectly by swapping the zombie it didn't like with it. I also think it would be better not to loop back to the first level as it was a bit confusing, after it finished.
Very nice puzzle)
Neat puzzle game! It was fun to figure out interactions that were somewhat consistent with our expectations in reality. Just a thought - I coludn't really tell what creatures some of the heads represented, such as the chameleon - knowing that might have made discovering some of the rules more intuitive.
I had a great time playing this and figuring out the interactions. Great idea! The charming cute graphics are just the best. :star:
Really great game, for me it got very hard very quickly but it forced me to play around with the interactions the tiles have with eachother. I think it took me about 15 minutes to get to level 4. The game for some reason gave me daily puzzle vibes like connections/wordle/etc. It's really engaging but hard so I'm not able to play it for long stretches of time before getting mentally tired. This is one of the few games I'd go back to play at a later time though. Just to see if I can solve the harder levels.
Making a puzzle game isn't what's difficult. Making a puzzle game that keeps on giving you interactions to discover and keeps you entertained and hooked for that long..? I'm VERY impressed. I LOVED your submission! I strongly disagree with people telling you hints for rules would be better. What's fun to me is how you first has no clue, then you think you get it, then discover after a few level that you only got half the idea and has to adapt your thinking. You did amazing on that part, I really feel like a more in-depth version would be quite a decent mobile game that would keep me hooked for a good amount of time!
Thanks everyone for all the positive comments and constructive feedbacks, it's awesome !
@quintec Yeah you're definitely right ! For the chameleons "Happiness" and "Anger" are not as clear as for the others. In everyday life I'm a game developer so I'm not used to artists tools, I only can do a bit of pixel art ^^
@mechazawa You're right too ! I discovered after all that some levels especially the 4th or 5th were way more difficult than expected, I should have ordered them differently and add more "onboarding" levels in between ;) Also, guess what ? There's a small save system that keeps track of your level progression so you can go back on it later (with PC build only)
@dashvirus haha that's a lot easier than trying to make screenshots of previous levels to remember the answer. I'll make sure to download the PC version
Very tricky! I enjoyed that! I really liked the how it didn't overly explain things and let you figure it out, I think it would be taken to the next level with some more theming/sound effects, as the minimalist vibe clashed a bit with the sprites and the characters of the puzzle pieces
@nevercade Thank you very much for your review :) It was the thing I didn't have the time to implement... :'( I wanted to have funky SFX, like cats "Meows" and dogs barks when you select them etc. If I continue the game I'll surely implement it. I'll keep you informed if you wanna see the progression !
No worries! That sounds great! I'll follow you on Ludum Dare, if you have any socials which you add to your profile I'll follow there too!
Cool concept! Would be helpful to have popup info about unit requirements for neighbors. It's a fun puzzle, very flexible with potential for scaling
Very cool to discover new mechanics of each tile by testing! And the art is very charming too!
I love the idea, most of the constraints are quite "logical", and we learn them little by little.
But sometimes, I felt like I wasn't trying to find the solution with a smart method. I was just randomly moving the elements, untile something cool happens.
It would have been useful to tell us the number of the current level. I guess I made 10 or 12, but I can't even tell you because I'm not sure.
There is a little display bug. I had to put the game full screen to be able to see the right and left parts.
Some of the first levels could be "cleaned". There is one on a 3x3 grid with 3 white flags. It would have been simpler to just have a 2x3 grid with no white flags.
Merci beaucoup, à la prochaine !
Very clever concept, haven't completed it (yet?), but I love this type of puzzle game. I appreciate the fact that you took the "no tutorial" approach, which is nice, but might be a bit of a steep curve at the start? I felt like I didn't get the time to fully understand what were the constraints on the first neighbors before moving to some new ones. Maybe it's just me being bad at puzzle games ;) Anyways, congratulations on a very polished and nice game!
A nice puzzle. I really liked the idea, it looks simple but is very interesting
Excellent puzzle game! It was really fun to discover the rules of each element! I don't know how many levels there was, maybe have or current/total level indicator or breadcrumbs (a dot for each level that would fill, the dot could also be stylize for what the level introduce (new tile, new grid size)... that would allow the player to assess its progress a bit better