FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD57 → Depths of Madness

Depths of Madness

By gold-daniel and Sagan Rayner

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall5503.3946
Fun3123.5546
Innovation7872.5846
Theme8212.5247
Graphics7702.4846
Humor6552.1141
Mood6113.2945

Comments

pontax 2025-04-08 02:34

nice vampire survivors feel to it. It was a little hard to see the sprites but mechanically worked as intended for the game mechanics. good job.

jon-curtin 2025-04-08 02:40

This was a lot of fun, really like the quick leveling and constant action. The runes on the ground are a great way to keep the player moving. The tentacles on the sides are a great touch too. Backing sound also does a primo job of keeping the tension up. I always appreciate games in a jam that you can figure out what to do and what's going on in like the first 3 seconds and this game does that very well. Great job!

pavlov36 2025-04-08 03:37

Nice to play) Shooting, as a main feature of the game, can have some splash damage upgrades. And the xp (time to next upgrade) can be visible, like progress bar

youzi 2025-04-08 03:42

good job!

jon-wake 2025-04-08 03:43

Nice! As a vampire survivors fan this was a nice homage, controls were easy to understand and it was nice to get straight into the game. For future states, it might be nice to see more attacks as well as having the upgrades/ level up menu be a bit longer so it cna be fully read. Great submission!

siilicac 2025-04-08 03:49

i loved how the sides slowly multiplied and crept up on your vision as the game progressed it was very cool. well balanced and the music fit very well!

flinge 2025-04-08 03:50

First of all, this borderline madness is awesome. I also really like the gameplay around mana. The Cascade upgrade feels super overpowered — but that’s exactly what makes it so fun to use. I'd love to see an XP bar and maybe some kind of score or goal system added. The game doesn’t quite match the theme, but the core idea is solid and enjoyable overall.

wetburritosupreme 2025-04-08 03:51

I liked this a lot, I can see lots of work went into the leveling and the challenge curve, I had a tough time, got to 408 points!

team-9tailed 2025-04-08 04:20

Always love things inspired by Lovecraft. Thought the intellect devourer style enemies were a nice touch. The mechanics were pretty simple overall, but able to provide an experience with a bit of a learning curve. I liked the upgrade system except for one very annoying issue - often, while attacking, I'd have the upgrade screen pop up and immediately disappear because I was clicking to attack. After a while, I just tried to be cautious about clicking when my fireball was about to hit an enemy in case that happened, and it was mostly effective. However, it would be preferrable if there was some way to prevent accidents like that. Apart from that, I will say I don't think the game really fit the theme, so I could not rate it high in that category. But otherwise: decent visuals, nice music, simple but engaging gameplay. Would like to see a more expanded edition of this.

okuso 2025-04-08 04:20

Kinda feels like the enemies are having a hard time keeping up with me. Maybe they rubberband after I m gone a certain distance ?

hollowheartedcabbage 2025-04-08 05:29

cool game

akkadion 2025-04-08 05:52

Very fun. I ended up with 2k points without noticing, ended up playing a lot more than I intended lol. There were some times I misclicked a skill cause I was spam shooting and I guess the animation starts a little early. Cool entry.

pusheeneiro 2025-04-08 09:25

Nice survivors-like game

tomtomgome 2025-04-08 11:23

I definitely not see the "how to play" button at first so my first run was... Well... blind. Because I thought I was supposed to get the tentacles to reach me. So yeah I was OP, but couldn't see what was happening x)

The art style is crude but the gameplay is pretty well made, and fun to play. At first the lack of AoE attacks means the squads of little one are difficult to tackle, but it's alright! Nice job!

toupaks 2025-04-08 12:28

Perhaps a little timing or input blocker before selecting an augment would be cool, it got better after a few upgrades but I selected my first augments randomly as I was clicking to shoot. Apart from this the ambiance and atmosphere is rich and I found myself playing for a while without realizing it !

Maybe some fancy spells to unlock and do cool AoE could be cool ? I definitely wanted to blow all of those crabs up at once with something big at some point.

Cool stuff !

jtap 2025-04-08 13:27

Nice game, if you add some simple animations, it would be great. Thanks!

batthecat 2025-04-08 13:34

love the perk system, the tentacles its pretty cool

thrawn911 2025-04-08 18:04

Nice game, I like the minimalist graphics. Maybe add some delay when the upgrades show up, because I always accidentally selected one while I was repeatedly pressing the left mouse button.

relictooth 2025-04-08 21:38

Had fun with this game, it felt really good when I found the cast speed upgrade. At that point I was quite mad of course but realized that I had forgotten to acquire any mana regen upgrades. Then I saw a shield upgrade but went for mana regen instead and died shortly after. Cheers on a great entry!

vary 2025-04-09 00:38

Neat entry! I like the madness mechanic and the ability to reduce it with the halo upgrades, makes the player have to think twice about picking up every drop they see. I also quite liked the visual representation of the madness with the tentacles slowly moving in and obstructing vision. It took a bit for me to get the cascading effect, but once I stacked it up it was incredibly satisfying to see a chain of them go off, but I do wish there was a bit more variety in the upgrades. I'd also like to be able to see what upgrades I've got, or at least some sort of pop-up for when I chose the 'two random' ones to see what I rolled (unless I missed it?). I had fun with this either way!

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510 2025-04-09 00:56

That was a pretty simple game, but it worked =) Had some strong mana issues in the beginning, but after I got some mana cost reduction upgrades, I could perma-attack.

depth_of_madness.png

Here are a couple suggestions: * It felt kind of unfair that enemies can walk through cars, but you can't. Either remove obstacles completely or implement collisions for enemies. Another solution would be to be facing only flying enemies haha * When designing graphics, make sure the important objects on the scene (for example the player character and enemies) stand out by using strong color contrasts with the background. On the other hand, decorative items must not interfere with the game or catch attention (especially if they're not obstacles). In this case, the parking lines were way too flashy in my opinion (even if they serve no purpose).

mollusk 2025-04-09 01:51

Fun mashup of a twin stick with a wave survivor... nicely designed with balanced choices and a variety of behaviors. Nice work!

radiorat 2025-04-09 07:06

Pretty fun mechanics!

andriybyelikov 2025-04-09 20:07

Got to wave 11 with a score of 284!

margo 2025-04-09 23:19

Definetly my favorite! Love the art, so cool grass tentacles :D

monogatari 2025-04-10 20:49

The game is super cool ! I had a fun time playing it, love the madness mechanics that forces you to choose between perks and vision (I choose to be blind actually hahaha) also there's a lot of different upgrades and the three different ennemies have interesting patterns. Great Job !

mackain 2025-04-11 07:56

cool game! took me a second to understand what the player sprite was because of the dark background, but looks good :)

ruruie 2025-04-12 21:33

Cool game! I did find it was very easy to accidentally click immediately through upgrades because I'm typically shooting constantly. That and a few little things, like the madness icons having a hitbox (blocking fireballs).

fluffyou 2025-04-13 17:15

I thought I got pretty far, but looking at some of the other comments, my 289 score is seemingly not all that impressive. :D I like the tentacle effect! Also, there were two soundtracks playing at once, I think the menu theme + the game soundtrack, which sounded strange, but just added to the madness.

very-dark-lord 2025-04-14 15:46

Pretty cool! And a surprising amount of upgrades! Played this for way longer than I expected. I think this could turn into a very worthwhile web game with some adjustments:

- finding ways to make the basic combat a bit more satisfying (which of course is easier said than done :D but I guess more visual + acoustic cues, particles, decals, maybe "recoil") - maybe adding some versatility to the movement (e.g. vaulting over cars, or dash/roll) - I think every(?) level came with a hoard of the weakest enemies (at least for the first 15 levels or so), would be nice to also have some mixed in between without them to change the pacing a bit - speaking of the weak enemies, some randomness in their behavior would be nice to not have them flock together so predictably all the time - a man can dream, but at some point being able to build turrets or traps would be very cool, or having some supportive drone following you around

That being said, I could give somewhat similar advice to my own game. :D

limered 2025-04-18 13:42

Nice survivors clone. Upgrades feel nice and the pase is good. Next time try to polish the main mechanic (shooting and movement) to be the most satifying thing. Maybe add particles or other cool effects. Without this the game feels a little flat.

Overall i enjojed my time with it but it could be better.