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Esca - Ludum Dare 57
Esca - Ludum Dare 57
By bakuzen
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 552 | 3.39 | 35 | |
| Fun | 594 | 3.13 | 35 | |
| Innovation | 603 | 3.01 | 35 | |
| Theme | 613 | 3.36 | 35 | |
| Graphics | 241 | 4.05 | 37 | |
| Humor | 403 | 2.87 | 31 | |
| Mood | 504 | 3.47 | 35 | |
Comments
Congrats on your first solo game jam! This is very cute!
I love the gentle vibe and the art direction. I would have liked a little more control; sometimes pushing with the mouse led to unexpected force or direction (might be something with checking mouse movement over just a few frames?), and dark fish can be hard to see against a dark background.
For the final score, I can see that it flashes the real score for just a moment before resetting to zero. Maybe something is getting called early on the end screen rather than when the player hits reset?
The art was adorable – great job! I was a bit confused by the controls at first, but once I got the hang of it, it was fun. The music was awesome too, though the hype was pretty intense, haha. Keep up the great work!
The adorable art is what drew me in at first. Very cute simple game, great work! You really get thrown right into gameplay with no warning, caught me off guard at first. No gameplay bugs to be seen (only the high score one). I managed see I got 102 points before the game ended. Great job, hope you make more in the future :)
Such a cool atmosphere, and the execution is so smooth!cute art！
The art and the music make this such a vibe!! I spent my first run just having fun bouncing around before realizing I should probably go for a high score, LOL. Awesome job!!
The game's aesthetic is very cohesive, and I really love the interactive sound effects along with the overall design. The gameplay is also very engaging—it makes me want to play it again after just one round! If you can further expand the mechanics and gameplay based on this foundation, the game would definitely become even more enjoyable. Either way, this is an excellent piece of work! However, it seems there's a small bug in the results screen where the score doesn't display correctly.
Perfect approach for a first solo jam - focus on quality in a smaller game. Nice art, good sound, creative controls - overall, I'm positively impressed!
liam
2025-04-08 15:20
Loved it, super cute graphics and fun gameplay loop. I thought the high score bug was from running using pygame on Mac maybe but see it's a general issue. Really a nice job overall, hope to play many more games from you in the future!
bakuzen
2025-04-08 17:39
@magnesiumninja Oh, good catch on the score appearing properly for a split second before returning to 0, I didn't even notice that myself! Seems like you're exactly right on the score being reset a little too early, if I ever push out a more polished version of the game that'll be the first pesky mistake I'll fix hahah
Thanks for the feedback, especially the issues with control-- lots of room for improvement there ^^
bakuzen
2025-04-08 17:43
@gold-daniel Ooh a triple digit score, well done hahah ^^ If I had an extra day, a starting screen or something similar would've been a really nice upgrade yeah. Makes sense that the lack of one caught you off-guard, but good to know for the future! I'll have to practice making some in my free time so I can get them in quickly for the next game jam :D
I love that the character is controlled indirectly, that's a nice touch, and makes a simple idea more interesting. You have already addressed the biggest problem in your description: the high score system being broken takes away the ability to know how well I'm doing: while playing, I want to focus on catching fish. Congratulations on your first solo jam game!
Beautiful and atmospheric graphics. The theme is well-executed too. Great job!
midamida
2025-04-08 23:31
This game is so chill. Puts me in a good mood x)
This was awesome! really cool idea that was executed really well, just wish the final score worked to see how well I did ahah, doesn't take away from how good the game is though well done!
kseniya
2025-04-09 11:36
It's a very cute game, the main character makes you smile
Very nice game, unusual controls. You can get stuck for a couple of minutes. It would be great to have the ability to extend the session, for example, with a separate type of fish
The visuals are super!
Simple but effective I really liked it ! The visuals were beautiful. I had a fun time !
swooty
2025-04-09 21:57
This is a great looking game! I love your use of lighting, and the color palette with the white and that shade of blue is wonderful! The fish is adorable, and I love the design of everything. It's a bit hard to see with the (necessary) pitch black, but I hope people pay enough attention to how lovely everything is like the planted foreground, and the watery background. Love the look of the fish too, very wonderfully cohesive, and a good basis to sell the theme
As far as gameplay, this is honestly quite fun! An unconventional way of doing fish collection, feels well tuned and I could get into the grove of sweeping through schools of fish. Very satisfying. Great work on this!
The sound effect for collecting is very nice and satisfying, sounds like bubble wrap! Music is a good choice too. I wish there was a subtle sound effect for when the fish collides with the mouse/wall, but it's not a huge deal without.
All in all, there's not too much criticism to give. It's a small simple game, but obviously the visuals are solid, and what you did build is nicely tuned. Of course as you do more design/programming, you'll be able to increase your scope for more features, variety to the gameplay, as here there's not really a reason to play more than 1-3 rounds. But it's all too easy to spread yourself thin, and instead you made something solid and nice. Good showing of your skill set as well. Great work!
Love the graphics and design. The way the anglerfish just smiles while devouring all these fish, lol. Really fun game!
alec
2025-04-09 23:59
well done on your first solo jam! Mechanic was simple but fun, reminded me of trying to keep a balloon up for as long as possible :balloon:
keeta
2025-04-10 03:18
Really nice art and music. I like the concept of moving the character around indirectly as well. To add some more variation / strategy to the gameplay, maybe the map could be expanded or different types of fish could spawn. Great work overall!
senso
2025-04-10 11:26
The artwork looks great, you really got that part nailed down. The programming side works too, so props for pulling that off, especially for a first solo game jam. My first jam game didn’t turn out this well, so I hope to see you join again next time!
ludokai
2025-04-10 14:04
Congrats on finishing your first solo game jam! Artwork looks just great with all the moody lighting and composition, and the anglerfish looks really cute! Took me some time to adjust to the controls, but it was really fun once I did. Great entry!
The visuals are very beautiful! If you also animate the character and make a little adventure, it will be great!
artel
2025-04-13 04:08
Beautiful visuals!
borabee
2025-04-14 15:31
Very pretty, short and relaxing game, with very cute art. Although the ontrols are a bit counterintuitive at first, they're simple enough to understand and I think it's a quite an interesting innovation to have the character be pushed by the mouse instead of follow it. Congrats on doing it all on your own!
atsh
2025-04-16 15:26
Really cute graphics, you were able to create a great mood with the lighting over the dark ocean. I also liked that the character is bright and the music and the vibe are happy to contrast that
As a software developer with 20+ years of experience, I think it's totally fair to use AI to assist in coding. One of the nicer aspect of it is the ability to phrase a question with a piece of code, and get to answer faster then looking up online or reading books, which are still useful tools regardless. I also think your game, while simple, feel really nice to play, and with my experience it's something that can't be achieved by AI alone
Very nice work
LOVE THA ART!!, pretty impressive since you used pygame!, i couldnt imagine making a game without a game engine lol! cool game
inavtr
2025-04-17 09:28
Nice job for a solo game jam! I really like the art :)