dzukika 2024-10-08 06:39
So cute!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Build The Sun
By trasevol-dog and Pentadrangle
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 13 | 4.35 | 57 | |
| Fun | 95 | 4.01 | 57 | |
| Innovation | 30 | 4.18 | 57 | |
| Theme | 16 | 4.50 | 57 | |
| Graphics | 25 | 4.67 | 58 | |
| Audio | 14 | 4.37 | 56 | |
| Humor | 369 | 3.36 | 52 | |
| Mood | 54 | 4.25 | 56 |
So cute!
Hi @dzukika, thanks for checking it out, but I think the build was broken when you played it. There was a bug that wouldn't let you get anymore little guys, which means you really couldn't do anything much beside making your first fire and cutting down one tree or getting a berry gatherer. There's actually quite a lot more to the game if you don't mind trying it again. 😊
pretty cute
they're so cuteeeeeeeee
I have been strugling a bit with the cursor and the system for a while but once i did understood the system i had a great fun ! The smaal creatures are pretty cute and the ammount of different types you can have is pretty massive for a jam. I had a great time ! The little fire guy is a great idea !
Neet game, i can see myself loosing hours to it. A menu and pause would be appreciated
Very chill, but I played for far too long and would have been nice to know whether the game has an end. Great pixel art.
Capture d’écran (23).png I love it !
Incredible, I loved it !! If I'm not mistaken I couldnt save my progression so had to hard quit at some point, but will love to play again.
@googlefrog Thanks!! There is an end but it's definitely a bit of a grind to get there, I couldn't test the game fully during the jam so I had to eyeball the progression and I didn't do the best job of that haha. :smile: I'll be making a new version with reworked progression and a save system a few weeks from now. :slight_smile:
One of the best game I've played this far. Every part of this game is excellent, and the way you interact with everything is super original. Well done!
The animation is so neat, procedurally generated?
The screenshots show me that this is truly a complete game, with beautiful environment design. However, the game always crashes when I try to light the first campfire. I'm not sure if it's an issue with my computer or something else. But based on the little gameplay I've experienced so far, this is a really amazing work! The character movement and animations are incredibly smooth.
Wow the graphic is so good!
@cathelaleph you have to hold click for the action to go through! Otherwise it crashes on that first fire yeah. I'm so sorry I couldn't figure out how to fix it, the code for this game became such a mess over the weekend. :smile: Would love for you to give it another try if you don't mind. :slight_smile:
WORLD RECORD FOR BREAKING THE GAME BEFORE IT STARTED! (peak performance from me) Anyhow I'm not super sure what I was doing but I was doing something I think I will play another run and try to do things differently, very fun game tho as usual Rémy :P
Took me some time to understand that I needed to click and hold things to make them do stuff, and after a while I got tired of holding my left button That said, this game is gorgeous, probably the best I've seen in this jam. Everything looked fantastic, the art, the audio, the feeling, trully awesome! Congrats on your entry!
I love this style of game! So disappointed that i haven't seen more like this in the jam. Overall awesome! Filled with so much personality. The way the little creatures whizz around the trees and become the different types is really satisfying. Super clean and simple UX, i love this kind of clean design. The darkness had a great sense of exploration and i was intrigued to explore further into the world. I was a little bit confused on what everything was doing at first, maybe some more feedback on what things do. eg the houses and farms? Do they give more creatures? The art was beautiful, though it did feel a bit too zoomed in on my ultra wide. The main goal of building the sun was a great goal to work towards. Fantastic entry.
What a beautiful game! The gameplay was both intriguing yet intuitive, and the progression felt smooth. My only issue was with the "delete if holding" mechanic, I deleted important material from creatures that just kept walking into my cursor while I was doing something else several times. Still, I built the sun in the end ☀️
Beautiful game with a simple to grasp but very well executed concept. Congrats for your entry!
Excellent jam entry! The game feel is perfect, the art direction is beautiful. It was a bit frustrating when approaching then game, resources placement is really unbalanced and and found gold really late in the game. Also, there wasn't enough flint/axe available and so the game tend to bit artificially longer that it should be.
Anyway, the best jam entry I played this year :thumbsup:
Screenshot 2024-10-10 092805.png It takes me about 3 hours, I'm gonna say it's defnitly a good game.
if you could make any adjust that should be increase the pickaxe drop rate. On avearge they are even rare than gold when you need lot of them
here's a little doodling
sun2.png
Really cool game! The creatures move smoothly, the music fits well, the building of the small communities feels fulfilling and the hold-to-build-mechanic is great. I really wanted to play this game through, but after a while, it just felt dragging on and on. Would have continued at a later point if I could save. This is the kind of game I feel I would revisit often, just to explore more of the world, bit by bit.
Very addictive, I loved it!
Wow thank you so much for the lil drawing @thyoi I love it, it honestly fills my heart. :revolving_hearts: And congrats on reaching the end!! I know it's more than a bit of a grind to get there. I hope you look forward to further versions of this game! :blush: (with a save system this time, I promise everyone!)
Thank you for the reminder! I played again today, and I felt a great sense of accomplishment when I saw the little creatures gradually form a community and build greater sources of light! It’s a great game, but I think it could benefit from adding some feedback on the actions of the little creatures. Sometimes, I can’t tell who is heading toward the location I assigned. When the number of creatures reaches a certain point, perhaps an upgrade system could be added to speed up resource accumulation in the later stages of the game? (I’m sorry that this is just a suggestion based on my personal preferences. I know that this game has taken a lot of effort and time from you and your team, and you’re still preparing for future updates. Great work!) I’m looking forward to a future version with a save function!
Update on the breaking of the game... if you tap the flame guy on and off from the first flame it can extinguish itself and lead to a lovely softlock and crash
image_2024-10-11_112046502.png
@stmate03 Thanks, I'm aware, hence all the warnings everywhere to make sure to hold click on that first fire. :slight_smile: Even after the jam I have yet to figure out why it's doing that, this game's code is going to need a good clean-up before I continue with it I think. :smile:
@trasevol-dog no worries! I love breaking your games both in the record and in the code sense :dragon: (buff pickaxe part drop rate I beg you)
I think I spent about 4-5 hours all in playing this! You're onto an epic theme here - for a jam game it has a bunch of depth.
It'd be great to see more development of the civilisations - the mechanic of the different types of worker jumping onto the thing to build / destroy was really fun.
I never saw it to completion as no save and I had to get to sleep as a work night - will definitely be looking forward to a version with perhaps more impact of the farms / houses so there's less of a grind - even when I had a bunch of farm-land/houses, spawning of fresh blob guys felt quite slow )
The only other thing, you're probably already aware of, which caught me off guard when I got my first pick-axe dude, was that holding over a dude will remove their speciality. When trying to chop trees or build fires etc, sometimes a guy who wasn't the right type would wander into the mouse zone, then inadvertently erase his speciality/hat/power etc.
Screenshot 2024-10-11 013422.png
I LOVE how you can just get lost in this game and you'd have to start over! Couldn't finish it yet but I'm amazed by it
I am so glad that @johnnysix and @thyoi said this game was winable. You kept me in it for 6+ hours. I was determined to see that ending! I LOVE this game.
I did find myself getting frustrated when I accidentally hover over something someone was carrying, and deleted it. Happened with ore at least once ( :fingers_crossed: ) and I was like "I hope I didn't soft lock myself." At some point I clicked on or used something and a diamond appeared in one of the little dude's hands. I wasn't able to get another diamond from what I saw.
This is a truly impressive entry given the amount of visual flourish, mechanics and content included, especially from a team of one and with a custom engine. That totally excuses the initial crash :smile: Most jam games need to cut _much_ earlier in terms of features ~~and you're making all of us look bad~~ :see_no_evil:
What I'm about to say has probably been covered by others, but here are my notes: - It's impressive that you could deliver procedural generation on top of everything. Although I think it could be adjusted so some resources are easier to find; it took me a long time to even find millstones or ores. - It's not obvious what you can obtain out of a certain item on the ground, even if you've done it a few times already. Houses can be built from normal branches but also from white ones, which I kept confusing with rock shards that would get me a pickaxe. I get the idea of having zero text, so I would suggest showing the result of the recipe in the tooltip (perhaps only after trying it once). - At first I tried playing without reading the "how to play", as you suggested, but some things are hard to guess without it. For example, I thought clicking on berries gave me a resource to use elsewhere, just like every other item. But it didn't appear in any recipes, so I just didn't bother with berries at all. It's hard to tell that your character is harvesting as it looks like he's holding a resource and there's no visual indicator that you're exploiting the tree. Perhaps the way to gain population should be less obscure altogether, as it's also unclear what houses do, and I never really saw new people appear. - I noticed I was getting new flamebearers every now and then, but I'm not sure what action led to this? - When I first sent a guy with a helmet to the... dungeon (?), he disappeared in the fog of war as soon as he entered, so I couldn't tell what I gained from it. - It can take a long time for the character with the right resource to arrive when you're building something. Perhaps their speed could be increased as long as they're off screen?
This is a really nice and addictive twist on the AoE or god game formula, full of intuitive and juicy elements (the little guys jumping into the recipe slots!). For me at least, the micro-managing became a bit overwhelming as my settlement grew, and after a while I started wishing for a way to let my citizens gather resources on their own - which probably would make it a very different game. Still I'm stunned by the quality of the presentation here, and this is definitely an entry that could morph into a full game.
Finally, someone made a build for Mac! Although the pixels on my screen are huge, it is a bit hard to figure out what to do at first. As soon as I figured out I could light a fire, it became much clearer. Awesome entry—well done.
One of the best so far!
This is probably one of cutest entry, and also the one that kept me busy for the longest time here, yet I couldn't build a sun XD in fact after several hours i minimized the game and went AFK and when switched back to it my creatures have been travelling too far for hours, and I lost any hope to find back the main fire :') I'll try to build a sun once again later but it was not a lie when told it requires some grinding, it already kept me busy at least 2 hours aha !
Visuals and sounds were sweet, juicy animation of tiny dark creatures are lovely and satysfying, and gameplay far ahead from average LDJAM game expectations. The whole thing feels unique, such as the tiny creatures that obviously fits perfectly the theme. Also I enjoyed the nature of the goal.
It's close to perfect for a LD game, thus said here are some small ideas that came when playing:
I accidentally deleted few times the objects creatures were carrying on (some other talked about it above), maybe another mouse button for destruction would avoid this, that can be frustrating when deleting something hard to reach :) Sometime I gave up waiting for creatures because they were too far and I was unsure someone was indeed coming or not ; maybe a small arrow/indicator could help knowing if we wait in vain clicking or not ?
when I finally got lost, I thougt a small arrow such as when starting the adventure when going too far would have been appreciated :) Also, for same reasons, a pause/save or windowing feature; ut of course these are requirement that comes from the fact that the game has a lot of content to show and is able to keep us entertained for hours to get there; so only good things in the end :)
Congrats, well done !
wow how do you know that i always wanna have an army of coals from 'Spirited Away' :black_heart: I like to see a windowed mode because the pixels are too big and it's hard to see the shape of some objects anyway cool i love them all :pick: :pick: :pick:
Very nice and relaxing. I got up to the iron fire before I stopped, but I had a lot of fun. Absolutely love the art style and general vibes. I'm very curious how you got the walk animation working, whether is was hand drawn or programmed. No clue how you finished this in 72 hours lol
Beautiful game!
Yay! Finished in about 2.5 hours.
As others said, the pickaxe droprate felt really bad - I'd suggest to at least reduce the amount of little guys per rock - with pathfinding as it is now, it also took quite a while to get them where I wanted them!
Graphics are amazing, and while SFX works really well, I had to mute the game around an hour in due to repetitiveness of the BGM.
I really wish the controls were "click and wait" instead of "hold and wait" - I noticed that holding for long periods of time generally makes me press the mouse button rather hard without noticing, and that's kinda tiring on my hand.
I feel like it'd be better if there actually was a wall and not just infinite empty field, as without the way to recenter camera on (any of) my bonfires, I accidentally almost lost my home location while exploring the vast emptiness.
Overall, a neat experience, and I'd play more if there was more content.
build_the_sun_2024-10-16_12-19-34.png
These little guys remind me of morsels from Monster Train
Very good submission! I have a few gripes but these are small complaints on the best game I played this jam.
It felt fatiguing to have to hold down the mouse button all the time. Especially when it's ambiguous if I have enough of a given resource. I found myself asking the question "do I need one more stone or is my last wood-holding critter somewhere across the map slowly making his way here?"
What if: - You click once to issue an order (eg: harvest this tree) - You only get ONE "task" you can issue at a time - BUT you can unlock more "task capacity" as a resource. like maybe for every campfire you have you can issue one more order eg: I have 3 campfires so I can request 3 tasks simultaneously.
That would make me as a player feel more powerful over time, like I'm issuing high level commands like "harvest this whole forest" rather than still holding down the button on each and every tree.
Without a doubt, it's one of the best games I've played in LD56. I sincerely hope this game will someday be on Steam with more levels and missions. It reminded me of the times I played Age of Empires.
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My critique is: It got too big for a game jam. I almost gave up after playing for 2 hours. It was my son who urged me to finish it. I would have stopped otherwise. Some small bugs (normal in a game jam) contributed to the long delays: some little characters simply don’t respond even when close to the cursor, sometimes the small torch doesn’t light up the map (I had to increase the campfire level for it to work again), some little characters get stuck in trees even when there’s just one in the way, and others keep circling around houses without leaving. I really hope to play this game one day with missions and a story mode (not in a game jam). Congratulations on the amazing game!
Ohmygod i love this game sososo much!
silly litlle guys have the same lovability as some tiny birds or something
the controls are simple yet cool, i learned to relax a bit while waiting for my fellas to do what i said
This is a really really solid entry and i'll certainly keep tabs on how the game is going!
The style is amazing and everything feels lively and juicy. I played quite a while and never was able to receive pickaxes, was a bit frustrating. Reading the spoilers now, it seems rng was on the bad side and never generated something new from rocks. I had like 4 fires, two farms with a total of 12 fields and maybe two dozen huts. It was slightly discouraging to go on as it felt my power does not scale well with the size of my realm. Building another hut for 50s while already having 20 huts feels low impact, compared to the early ones. That being said it's a fantastic jam entry, full of character and very well executed :)
The visual style is super strong! I love the gradient effect on the edge of the light radius. And the little guys are very cute!
I really loved the little buddies and this game had me hooked! I definitely struggled to find pickaxes which was a bit frustrating but overall had a really great time playing it!
OMG. This is incredible. :heart_eyes: :blush: I actually had to stop myself from playing because I needed to do other stuff, and I could literally play this for hours.
It's so fun and satisfying. Such an engaging loop, and the music and art and everything make for a very chill relaxing experience. I loved the little jump into the slots animation. It's so dang cute. :smile:
The upgrade style reminded me of Kingdoms and I absolutely LOVE that game. There is something so gratifying and tactile about it. This game takes that fun interaction and makes a very new and unique experience out of it.
There is so much I loved about this I could go on and on... I wanted to keep exploring and building out my colony all day.
I only had one bug that kind of hindered things for a bit, and that's when I lit my second fire, my fire scout guy stopped working.. .he didn't light up the path any more which made it difficult to explore. But then that fixed as soon as I upgraded that fire.
I am absolutely blown away by this entry. I really want to play a full game of this now. :laughing: :fire:
I wouldn't be surprised if you guys are one of the top overall entries. Definitely deserve it. :raised_hands:
This game is both incredibly and begging for a full featured version (wishlisted)
A very stylish game. But even for a meditative game, it lacks some variety and different situations, so I got bored with it). It’s clear that within time frame of a jam it’s difficult, but I’m just saying my first thoughts). Overall I liked the game, thank you for such a game.
So pretty!! I love the art.
Very comfy vibes! Love watching the little guys run around. Very satisfying method of interaction. Good luck on full release!