paroxysmal 2024-10-06 23:28
Well made and fun puzzle game.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Mini Beasts
By cassowary
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 17 | 4.21 | 53 | |
| Fun | 14 | 4.19 | 53 | |
| Innovation | 77 | 3.78 | 53 | |
| Theme | 58 | 4.04 | 53 | |
| Graphics | 61 | 4.05 | 53 | |
| Audio | 11 | 4.20 | 51 | |
| Humor | 169 | 2.96 | 42 | |
| Mood | 24 | 4.12 | 50 |
Well made and fun puzzle game.
A really enjoyable and good game
Nice game. I didn't explore it full right now, as it's too late in the evening to focus on these puzzels, but it felt really well done and polished. I especially liked the music and sound design.
I always love seeing the puzzle games you come up with! Nice, simple mechanics with some good depth as you progress. Top-notch art as well.
The stag beetle was a great mechanic. Up until level 7, the puzzles kinda solved themselves if you just looked at the end spaces, but once you could push pieces off their starting paths, it really opened up another dimension to the game.
A small bit of feedback about the audio - I think the sound effects that the pieces made was really satisfying, but the music was almost too loud to hear it. Bumping up the volume just a tiny bit would have put them at a better balance IMO.
Great work!
@andrewkennedy that's what I get for leaving all the audio stuff until the last 2 hours :sweat_smile: glad you enjoyed though! I'll adjust the audio levels after the rating period ends. (I have a couple other tweaks I'd like to make to the music as well.)
Very clever puzzle game. Does a great job of introducing the different pieces and building on how they interact.
very good difficulty curve and mechanic introducing! the pixel art is really nice too as always :) it's amazing to see you make interesting top-notch puzzle games every LD!
As always, great entry! Always fun to play the games you submit.
My only complaint is that I make no progress when I get distracted by how good the music is. :sweat_smile:
Being able to click anywhere and not have to walk through the, say, knight moves, each step at a time is really a great help. Brilliant puzzle design as usual! I made it through to the end, only had to reset/undo once (on the first stag beetle level), it was nice being able to (usually) get myself out of trouble.
A well made puzzle game that stays interesting with each new creature/mechanic introduced. Well done!
Another ludum dare, another lovely cassowary puzzler. Well done!
Lovely game, very polished. I agree, the "click in any valid location and insta-move there is a great feature.
I sunk a bunch of time into it - alas, I didn't get to the end. I kinda just wanted to skip a level I was stuck on... I guess that's not in the spirit of the game though!
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Interesting! I love it!!!
Very well made! Puzzles are interesting, mood is very chill and relaxing. Congrats!
Cool game, finished all 16 levels
Really well made! The art and the music are a real gem ππ
My only issue, is that the mobile controls are a bit clunky. Wished I didn't have to press on a character twice when I want toove it twice π
But still, one of my favourites so far π€©π€©π€©
Really cool puzzle game!
Great music! After I completed the game, I was surprised to find out it was a compo insane! Great job :) The detail of the different leaves around the map is fantastic it adds a lot of polish and juice to the game.
last level.JPG
That's fun! I don't typically enjoy puzzle games much, but I got to level 6 before stopping. Congrats! A polished little gem!
Very well done, especially for 48 hours. How did you implement the puzzles? Did you create the win condition and then work backwards to a start state? I always wonder about the most efficient way to create puzzles for games like this. 5 stars from me in multiple categories.
Nicely done. Played very cleanly and the mood was excellent. I am glad you included frogs even if they aren't technically mini beasts as well.
@defrag For this game, most of the puzzles came from particular ideas I came up with for how certain pieces could interact in interesting ways. ("What if we make a frog and a spider have to switch places?") Then, I had to fill in the rest of the level around that idea in order to make sure that every blue and red spot could be flipped properly, which sometimes complicated the original solution or could act as a 'red herring'.
I have definitely constructed puzzles by working backwards from the solution in past games though. That's how I made most of the puzzles in my ludum dare 52 game, lol.
Very good puzzle game with interessing mechanics !
Those last puzzles really tickled my brain. It is crazy how you were able to do this within 48 hours.
Proof that I made it till the end :smiley: Looking forward to extra levels. Nice music also.
Screenshot 2024-10-11 011458.png
This game really deserves more attention, itβs awesome! The creature movement mechanics made the puzzles super fun, and the art and music added a lot to the vibe. Really solid work, especially for just 48 hours!
Amazing game! In terms of gameplay, this was the best I've played on the jam so far. In addition to that, everything is very very concise and polished.
If you expand this game post jam, I would love to have a counter of how many movements I made, to try to break my own "records".
Yet another Cassowary classic! Always glad I get to play your entries, this time around I had less trouble than usual, but just as much fun! The last level was pretty interesting too. Loved the music once again! Cheers!
This game was tough! It always had a specific solution in mind for each puzzle, but was flexible enough to leave some wiggle room in the way you moved creatures around to clear the traffic. Really decent puzzle game!
Also, the sax was epic, I'm impressed (I played bari back in high school).
Screenshot_20241011_161403.png
@sudocoffee I played the bari in high school too! Maybe for one of these jams I'll use *that* for the soundtrack... π€
Extremely good little puzzle game, it's wild that you made this in 48 hours. The music slaps.
Woaw, what an excellent and polished game! I was hooked and spent about 1 hour minutes completing all 16 levels! (the last one got me thinking for much longer that I'd like to admit :p)
The game is great, the various beasts make for loads of variety, the level design is top notch with a smooth learning curves. I'm very impressed that you managed to make such a polished and content-rich game during the compo, congrats!
My only complaint would be about the music. It's good and set a fitting mood, but it's way to loud compared to sound effects, and can be distracting. It's made a bit to fast / upbeat rythm too, I think a slower tune would allow a for a "calmer" mood, but I'm nitpicking here, as it's an outstanding track on its own.
This feels like a commercial and complete games. Add more levels, and you're ready to release it for the world! (and honestly, with the 16 levels currently in the game, it's offering quite a long play time already).
i extremely love you ornament in game around blocks with leaves and mushrooms it's adorable and fits perfectly :> level 8 is so cool i love it! :mushroom:
I really like the combination of Tetris and Checkers. The smooth jazz was nice too, just a little loud.
what a wonderful game! First: I have to talk about the art. I've never seen a game made of modeling clay here at LD. It's truly a work of extreme good taste. Second: What a brilliant and objective minimalist idea. You hit the nail on the head regarding what it means to create a simple and functional game. It aligns perfectly with the theme. I can only thank you for the experience."
Great puzzle game ! Good gameplay ! solid pixel art , music like Pixar's movies = very good mood !
@euler-moises did you mean to comment this on a different game? there's no modeling clay in this game π
@cassowary
I really commented on the wrong game. I sincerely apologize.
Now for the real comment:
I love puzzles like this. I could spend hours playing it. Congratulations on the idea. The game is very polished and the puzzles, even though they are not difficult, are fun.
It reminded me of a board game called Hive. :)
@euler-moises haha, no problem, I figured something like that was what happened. Thank you for the kind words!
I actually also thought of the Hive similarity partway through the jam -- the earlier graphics looked a bit more like that game, too... I've never actually played Hive, but I used to work in a store that sold board games, and I always thought its aesthetic was very cool, so maybe there was a subconscious influence there, haha.
That was quite delightful, polished and pretty, with good gameplay and attention to detail. Appreciated the little settings menu on top. Music is *fantastic* and little bugs are cute.
Nitpicks:
I was playing on my phone in browser and it felt a bit tedious to click on the bug again after every move, when I wanted to move one several times.
Overall, really good jam game! ^^
Very clever and addictive game. The concept is amazing, it's cool that there are different insects that walk in different ways and from this new levels are built, I really love good puzzles, definitely one of the best games on this JAM.
Very well-designed puzzle game! The solutions are intuitive, and the difficulty curve is really well-done. The music is great but maybe a bit too loud.
Incredible puzzle design and smoothest jazz
Oh my goodness lol I only made it to level 5 before my brain blew up π€£π€£π€£ I'm not a great puzzle game player... But this was fun, and super cute, and I loved the way the different pieces work in different ways! Well done!
Nice work as always! I continue to be impressed at how you manage to make a novel puzzle game every event and this one is a worthy addition to the collection.
I really like the premise of this one; take a bunch of simple creatures, give them unique movement mechanics, and try to position them into the right spots.
If I had one piece of criticism, it would be that the early levels felt a little too straightforward. You could usually figure out which pieces needed to end up in which goals because of the movement restrictions, and get pretty close to the answer by just moving the units closer without a specific plan. **However,** this changed with the stag beetle! That helped introduce some fun contradictions ("wait, it's impossible for the frog to move there!") and realizations ("but if it was one square higher...") that shine through in a good puzzle game. In my opinion, if the game had cut a few levels and introduced the stag beetle earlier, it would still have been a satisfying length but would have gotten to the meaty levels earlier.
Graphics are as cute and clean as ever, and I appreciate you bringing back the live sax for the soundtrack.
I drew some of the little critters (less polished than usual since I'm rushing to get some last-minute ratings in).
mini_beasts.png
Thanks for making this, and good luck for the results!
@jeremy-ryan thank you so much! I'm also getting my ratings in at the last minute lol ;._.
Not enough time left for ratings to completely finish the game before rating, currently headscratching over level 10, but this is another excellent puzzle game as always! :smile_cat: I really love the SFX for the lil ladybugs scurrying around, I can't actually tell if they're animated or not but the sounds sure make my brain see those legs moving if they aren't!
And the soundtrack is perfect for this type of game - relaxing, thought-provoking, vibing like I should be solving a murder mystery in an armchair by a fireplace. Excellent work! :smile_cat:
@papabirb the ladybugs are animated, but it's just a pretty basic 2-frame animation (and their legs don't actually move that much). The sound effects are definitely doing the heavy lifting there lol. Thanks for playing!