FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD57 → Swoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooord!!

Swoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooord!!

By she-wrote

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1393.4951
Fun1243.4151
Innovation713.7351
Theme1563.5351
Graphics813.8351
Audio933.5150
Humor153.8949
Mood1113.5749

Comments

absolute-garbage 2025-04-07 19:42

loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove the title

oter 2025-04-07 19:50

Hitboxes for item placement felt a bit tight, like you could only place something in the middle of the previous object. Still, once I saw that I almost hit the heart or weakspot or whatever once, I kept playing until I could beat it. Even though it probably depended on getting lucky with tall, skinny items, the frantic trying to place them to reach the heart felt nice and fun.

untitled-studios 2025-04-07 22:33

I *love* the graphics here. Audio is also lovely. I found the gameplay a bit difficult to figure out, and a bit frustrating. I got close to the heart, but didn't quite make it. Great work!

paprikaka 2025-04-08 05:28

it's soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo lovely!!!!! Concise and light design

bubblewandgames 2025-04-08 07:54

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooouper clever. Felt a bit finicky at times but felt like that was part of the charm, like getting a gun in the middle of my perfectly balanced pillar and just having to figure it out on the fly. Excellent work on this

alopar 2025-04-08 20:00

It looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooks crazy! But funny! 🤣

alex-davies 2025-04-09 00:21

Pretty neat idea, but it feels a bit restrictive with the hitboxes - there's some pretty weird shaped items there but it feels like the hitboxes are always roughly rectangular.

keith-wang 2025-04-09 00:27

Very cool concept. I remember I saw your post and gif while I was working on mine. I am a bit confused on how things are attached, though.

xpoho 2025-04-09 03:52

изображение_2025-04-09_105134441.png

This is realy long sword. Yeah.

Nice game ^_^

qhboiboi 2025-04-09 06:20

i got frustrated and decided to just spam click every object. my highest score yet. 10/10 game

makache 2025-04-09 10:47

One of the few games I actually enjoyed at this jam. It's short, simple, and fits the theme of the jam well. Keep it up!

koalabear 2025-04-09 17:15

Good idea like a twist on stacking games ! very well done

zirrrus 2025-04-09 17:55

Really cool idea and great presentation!

mr-mesmer 2025-04-09 18:29

Like game and Idea! Try to exploit it with knowlages in physics by putting a lot heavy items in start near hand to make center of mass maximal down, but seems this cheat not works) But it is a swooooooooooooord, not the physiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiics, and I have fun with it xD. And it will be cooler, if I it is infinity, and I can see final maximul length, like "310m height, 300m is Eiffel tower height" with different objects.

pincushion 2025-04-09 18:58

Really nice looking game. And with those sounds it feels so cold. Pretty funny too.

I couldn't quite get the balancing right, but I did manage to kill the beast by clicking very quickly.

uzpykes 2025-04-09 20:12

Neat idea! Enjoyed my time with the game. The only time I managed to reach the heart was when I was quickly pressing my mouse without much thinking :laughing:

python-b5 2025-04-09 20:58

Pretty simple, but fun! Cute premise. I'm not sure if I was any good at it, though; at a certain point it seemed that no matter what I did, the sword would just start wobbling violently, and I couldn't figure out a way to stop it.

discofish 2025-04-10 09:17

Nice and fun game! Lovely art style. Awesome work!

woe 2025-04-10 17:22

wow that's a pretty long sword!

phasmantic 2025-04-12 03:28

Fun concept! It would be neat to be able to rotate objects. I like the art style

the-stewarts 2025-04-13 13:19

I got sooooooooooooo close to the heart! Great concept and the art style works really well

shakirovich 2025-04-13 23:47

Fun little game, took me several tries to beat it. This would be banger on mobile, if you ever want to expand it.

ryusui 2025-04-14 00:16

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_cDT5_Vmdc

I love all the wacky stuff you hot-glue together to extend your sword. I just wish it was a little clearer what the rules were for attachment - when I played, there was a little "X" mark that seemed to indicate valid connection points, but it didn't seem to necessarily indicate the *only* place I could attach new stuff.

Would've also appreciated something more than just a sound effect and a solid red screen to indicate I'd won, too.

she-wrote 2025-04-14 05:54

Thank yoooooooooooooooou all for playing!! ❤️

@untitled-studios @bubblewandgames @alopar @xpoho @koalabear @zirrrus @discofish @the-stewarts @uzpykes

@absolute-garbage Thank yoooooooooooooooooooooooou!! Once I thought of it, I knew it was perfect!

@oter Thank you, I'm glad you liked it, Mr. Oter! I was planning to make the hitbox match the visible parts of the objects, but in GameMaker that can get a bit complex, and in the end, I ran out of time :/. And yesss, there’s a bit of luck near the heart, it gets really hard.

@paprikaka You are also looooovely! Thank yooou for playing! By the way, that was exactly my intention — I love games with as little HUD as possible.

@alex-davies Thank yoooou!! They're actually all square-shaped. I was going to make only the visible parts of the sprites count as the hitbox, but in GameMaker that's a bit tricky, and in the end, I ran out of time.

@keith-wang Thank you! The hitbox can be a bit tricky, yes, but I like the feeling that — just like stacking things in real life — it's not always convenient or clear, and you kind of need to figure out where it fits best through trial and error.

@qhboiboi lol I tried that like three times to see if the game could be cheesed, it didn’t work. I should’ve tried more times lol.

@makache Thank you! I'm flattered! 😊

@mr-mesmer Yeah, that won't work lol! The balance is based on the number of objects on each side of the sword — more items on the left means it’ll fall to the left. It’s not really realistic physics. I did consider making an infinite version (and still might later!), but I really like games that have an end. It gives the player a sense of completion. Thank you for playing!

@pincushion Thank yooooou for playing!! ...And I have bad news — the exploit was fixed!

@python-b5 Thank you!! The higher you get, the less control the player has. At that point, speed becomes super important. It’s part luck, part speed, and still a bit of skill.

@woe It is!

@phasmantic That’s a great idea. Originally I wanted every object to spawn at a random angle, but the system was full of bugs. Eventually I had to drop it because I ran out of time.

@shakirovich Thank you!! Yes, I'm actually considering a mobile version!

@ryusui Thank you for playing! I was trying to find the wackiest things lol! There’s basically an invisible square around each X that defines the hitbox. The closer you are to the center, the more likely the item will work. But yeah, it’s still pretty vague — hopefully I can find an alternative way to do it in the future. Also, I wasn’t really sure how to end the game, so I went for a more artsy ending. It wasn’t even supposed to have that sound effect at first — but without it, it looked too much like a bug, so I changed it lol.

nbumgardner 2025-04-15 01:40

This was the first winter game I tried this game jam. The snow, wind, and bells when placing an object synergize well. It felt like a Norse mythology setting to me with the setting and mysterious 'x' feedback. Reading the comments above, its good to know discovering how to play is part of the game.

Given more time, being able to make the game full screen would be nice, even with the narrow dimensions. Also the variety of objects is funny and charming.

grid96 2025-04-15 22:23

Cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool idea!

bentglasstube 2025-04-21 04:01

Very amusing concept and it's mostly well executed. I beat the game but I didn't really understand how to lose. I guess just quickly mashing the items on to the end is a pretty good strategy because it seems to be some kind of weight based system that topples your weapon over. That's really my only complaint, is that I was able to beat the game by rushing and not understanding the mechanics much at all. I loved the artwork and the variety of attachments. The audio also gave a nice atmosphere. Well done.

tygrak 2025-04-21 07:26

Short but sweet! I didn't expect a game with such a silly premise to be so atmospheric :D the sound design was really nice, and the gameplay of course very funny.

digital-bacon 2025-04-22 11:39

Awesome little game, loved the art design! Very surprising gameplay -- nice and short, and a bit weird: love it! Well done!

matt-giuca 2025-04-23 03:06

Fun setup, but I didn't really understand the mechanics. As others have said I couldn't really make it more stable by adding more to the bottom, so it just seemed to be about getting tall, then building quickly and being lucky that it didn't topple over. I managed to beat it once, but I didn't feel that I mastered anything, just tried over and over until I got lucky.

papaver 2025-04-23 23:04

Original idea! It's like a speedy 'tower of pisa' game. I really like how the game looks with the different sharp items :laughing: But some of the items stacked a bit funnily, espcially the one consisting of two separate parts :wink: I was somewhat confused of what to do. Had to read some of the comments first. Then I managed once to get to the end. :smile: :crossed_swords:

kristinamay 2025-04-24 19:08

This is a very very silly game, I wasn't totally sure what the correct strategy was but I did laugh when I attached scissors on top of a saw on top of a gun ??? I love the simplistic art and the very basic concept. Great work.