Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Howard and the Ants
By henk
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 231 | 3.24 | 35 | |
| Fun | 227 | 3.15 | 35 | |
| Innovation | 227 | 3.03 | 34 | |
| Theme | 165 | 3.62 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 269 | 2.87 | 35 | |
| Audio | 132 | 3.34 | 35 | |
| Humor | 227 | 2.56 | 33 | |
| Mood | 225 | 3.08 | 33 |
Surprised me that they one hit me, what did the ants do that they deserve to get doinked by me in the first place? Gotta throw all the rocks~ I quite enjoyed it and the soundtrack kind of got stuck into my brain haha, lovely work!
omg. its a little Terraria!) I think it could be better not to die with 1st hit. Soundtrack is very nice.
A very cute and relaxing game. It was interesting to watch the processes, the very nice graphics make the game even more interesting. the music is very suitable for the style of the game. I liked that there is something to explore here
A good fit for the theme, but the ants killed me too quickly. I even found the green stones I could throw, but that didn’t help. Unfortunately, I never found the ants' treasure.
Graphics are a little flickery and it'd be nice if the ants didn't teleport. Took me a bit to realize you could dig and collect. You should be able to click through the death screen since you do a lot of clicking. I definitely felt motivated to finish. More health would help a lot. Hard to see the ants and speed past them on return trips, even when you've lit up a corridor. Easiest strategy was digging down and lots of blind runs to reveal the map location. Overall liked this game.
@trogdor-20x6 Could you clarify what you mean by "flickery"? Also, what is your operating system, web browser, and graphics card?
I wish the window would be bigger or ants would be slower... was regrowing worms, exploring and suddenly send back - didn't even have the time to switch to stones and shoot fast ant at all...
Didn't find golden worms. Was constantly being send back with fast moving ants even in the lights. But I liked the idea a lot and sounds with music were really nice.
@henk When I shuffle left and right rapidly over a few blocks the edges will flicker. Mostly noticeable on the dirt blocks. You see glimpses of white. I'm using Chrome on Windows at 100% zoom. I've seen something similar in my own games, and now that I'm looking at your level.png, it's definitely Howard's white coat that's bleeding in. The easiest way to fix this is to add some padding to your tile textures. Snapping the camera to pixel coordinates has also fixed this for me, though this is hackier and less robust.
Played this to the end! A very simple game, yet I had fun managing my supplies and carefully exploring the world... good job!
@trogdor-20x6 I am sadly not able to reproduce this issue on any of the hardware available to me. What's your model of GPU?
Regardless, I've added a little hack to the shader which might fix the problem. Would you be willing to check again and let me know if the texture bleed issues are still there (be sure to clear browser cache)?
CleanShot 2024-10-12 at 19.18.19@2x.png
Oh I was really hoping to find something at the far left end! Quick feedback - I did not really like that the mouse was hidden, it was a little difficult to orient myself when I could not see any pointer.
@henk Perhaps that helps, I did have some occasional flicker with the tiles, it might be that their draw positions round badly because of how the camera translates - occasionally, gaps will form between them because of imprecision (well, this is at least what used to happen to me in games, and even to this day.) Although if it doesn't happen on your machine, it's tough to fix.
very cool game!!!!! it was satisfying to reach the goal finally. would have been nice for the glow worms to be more useful because i felt like my best strategy was to just run in throwing pebbles in front of me at all times. the controls feel very good, except i do agree with @chuckeles that having a visible cursor (or something) would help with knowing where ur aiming. overall, fun lil game!!
also i loooove that holding down dig matches the beat of the music (or at least i think it does).
@fusionnist What is your browser/os/gpu combination? Also, can you confirm whether the issue you saw is still present in the latest version? The recent fix included some floating-point precision updates.
You'd think drawing a square grid of tiles would be simple...
@henk yes, just launched the web game to see it again. it's minor, although I get a glimpse of it every few seconds of movement. windows/chrome/intel core i5 11 iris graphics.
Quite hard but there is something addictive trying to uncover all the map; in the end I could'nt find the ant's material but discovered quite the whole map dying brutally for nearly one hour XD It took me some time to really understand themechanics, however I felt like ants are a bit unfair, especially in dark zones ; i wish there was a little bit more brightness. Controls felt a bit raw, as mentioned a mouse cursor could help aiming ; as a suggestion I think gamefeel control can be enhanced with some lerp when releasing arrows, or requiring the player to press again jump key to be able to jump. Adding a timer on jumps (as you noticed on mine ;) may allow to control jump height and also that extra button press from player to jump again. Another dirty cheap trick could be adding some lerp on camera movements rather than fixing the player in the center of screen. Great take on the theme and funny to try different strategies and path along my way throught the ants !
Thank you for your help, @fusionnist and @trogdor-20x6.
I had some friends reproduce the issue for me, and have uploaded a new version of the game which I believe fixes it. Would either of you be willing to test again and confirm?
fixed for me! ;)
Cool game!
I like how your fov gets smaller as you go deeper. Wasn't clear of the gameplay at first, but anyway, it's a nice submission!
waw quiet impressive to have destructible terrain! fun experience, good job!
This is much deeper than it looks at the first glance! Great to see the destructible terrain; you don't see that in many jam games! Once I figured out that I was just sent to the beginning, I started having fun discovering and I was able to finish the game too, yay!
Snímek obrazovky 2024-10-20 124950.png
The only thing that bothered me were the ants — it would be significantly better if they moved continuously instead of jumping around; it makes them quite unpredictable. And I would perhaps not send the player above after one hit, but maybe after two or three. Otherwise really good entry, I spent quite a lot of time playing it in order to uncover the whole map. Well done on this engagement part, not many jam games can pull that off!
Wow! What a cool game and such an interesting concept! To be honest, I ended up sticking to the edges, not sure why I gravitated towards that, and I'm not sure if it was the best strategy! At the beginning, I felt a bit lost, so it might be a good idea to gradually introduce the game's possibilities early on. Another thought, the digging punch feels a bit slow (I love destroying things quickly), so maybe having a hold-to-destroy mechanic like in Minecraft, where the terrain breaks down progressively, could work. Aside from these small details, I have to congratulate you on creating such a unique and distinctive game. I remember playing your game from the last Ludum Dare, and I always have fun with your games, they definitely have your signature style. For me, this is a solid entry. Great game!
Impressive game! The digging and inventory works well, lightning is very moody and physics are pretty good. The vision range, ants teleporting from one tile to the next and lights taking random lenghts of time to turn on added a lot to my frustration though. I'd rather play exciting cave exploration game that's fairly easy. If the lights were instant and a bit brighter I can see myself going through every bit of the map. Not to be too negative it's a really well made entry!
impressive little game, you can build, throw pebbles, die to ants! charming and fun, hope you expand on the game :D
A nice little explorational game. The mechanics are straightforward and well-explained at the beginning. The inclusion of a map was great, kept me excited to see where the paths would lead to the bottom. I just wish the ants had smoother movement 'cause they almost phase into you when they are coming from off-screen, but on the other hand it does serve a purpose to always keep the player always on their toes.
P.S kudos for making a game without the use of an engine, took a peek at the source code and was intrigued :eyes: