Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → UPLiNK Defender
By logic-monkey, Wraithind, and
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 391 | 3.60 | 30 | |
| Fun | 324 | 3.51 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 733 | 2.76 | 30 | |
| Theme | 687 | 3.08 | 30 | |
| Graphics | 288 | 4.00 | 30 | |
| Audio | 453 | 3.18 | 29 | |
| Humor | 573 | 2.35 | 23 | |
| Mood | 539 | 3.44 | 28 |
Nice fun little game! Love the UI and the menu feels sleek. I was a little confused when to press E to upgrade as the options didn't show when I was pressed E and it appeared that the EXP bar was full. But otherwise a fantastic game! Great job you guys!
@akapythius The lack of prompt to enter the upgrade screen is sadly one of my biggest regrets on this one. As what happens with game jams, I ran out of time, but that was an essential enough feature that it was the next on my to do list, but we encountered some weird anomalies at the end that threatened to break the whole thing that I just didn't make it. Glad you enjoyed it!
Overall pretty fun! I like the different unit types and it's cool to swarm around your mother ship.
Small improvements could be made on the UI side: for me (at least in the beginning) it wasn't clear when I could buy upgrades (a sound or so indicating that it's fully charged could help a lot already!), and also because there are many other blue lines in the UI it's not immediately clear what is e.g. the health of the mothership and what is static.
Good job!
I like the artwork, but the game was a bit confusing on what was going on for a few moments. Like at the start wasn't sure what was going on until I scrolled out and saw an enemy.
A well rounded entry. Everything felt smooth and complete, and I was engaged the whole time. It gets pretty tough! I'm going back for another try with a speed-forward strategy next. I like the graphics, sound, and how fun it was.
Gave it like six more tries and I can't beat the boss.
Fun game, graphics and sound design is nicely done. I had the same Problem with that I could not win (maybe im just bad ?) But over all nice entry to the Jam ^^
A really cool game! Unfortunately, I had a few sound glitches, but that was probably due to my browser. I really enjoyed playing it! Maybe I'll come back later for another round :)
Hmm, this one plays good enough, I played 4 runs actually.
1 run - couldn't figure out that E only works on top of the station
2 run - managed to play for a few minuts, but then "signal lost" (I was unsure what was the reason - my hp? base hp?)
3 run - only noticed the beacons thing, but I wasn't sure what it does, so I spent too much time flying around it and lost due to the inefficient play
4 run - I tried my best and it was alright, but then I died again - not sure what was it again, as base HP looked like it's near full
My best score was around 6 or 7 minutes (I didn't have time to pay close attention as my every death was very sudden)
I enjoyed the idea that you can upgrade the base and it's probably more powerful due to the easier multi-shot access. The beacons... I am still not sure what they do. I thought they would damage the enemies on their own, but they seem to allow the station to attack further targets? That's useful, but does it help if your base is already surrounded? It would help if there were directional waves, but I think the enemies go at you at random, so I was not feeling the decision making while activating the beacons. I did it just because I was passing by anyway, so "maybe it could help", but honestly that probably led to my demise as you can only do this much stuff at the same time - my vessel was probably destroyed in the process.
I re-launched the game and noticed that the bottom-left corner mentions the beacons. I am still not sure what "beacon draining time means". Also, I don't know what's the ace repair drone :D
Maybe making the player less vulnerable and moving the focus to the base survival could be the key here. Managing 2 HP bars is a bit overwhelming without a clear UI. For instance, I would like some HP around the vessel, so I can always see it without staring down. Or even better - around the pointer as it's where we're usually looking at in this game.
I might do a couple more runs as this game is otherwise well made. It's fascinating that survivors and its interpretations are one of the good recipes to make a good game loop in the limited time! And I don't think I saw this exact interpretation before (I mean the base + player as upgradable units).
Also, neat cover art. That's one of the reasons I clicked and came here :D
The exp didn’t seem to do anything, but I saw in a gif you posted that it should let you upgrade. Unfortunately, that never happened for me. I wish you started the camera fully zoomed out, not sure why you’d ever want it zoomed in. It felt really slow. I wanted some more speed to my actions. But still, interesting idea!
Good base defense / survivor-like game. The level-up system doesn’t seem to work, and upgrades neither. The controls are smooth, and I like the graphics.
A small onboarding improvement could be to invite the player to move in a direction using an alert indicator on the edge of the screen.
Good job! Nice game!
Cool art style and nice simple defense gameplay. Good job!
Cute entry. The art in this is great and really cute. The amount of enemies builds up fast so you're constantly needing to upgrade. Feel the balance there is quite good. Always feels intense but not overwhelming. Nice variety of alien types.
I played it a few times to get the hand of it. The upgrade menu was in the instructions but it only appearing once you have full XP so that was a bit confusing at first. Good job!
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I liked it. I died a couple of times without realizing I could zoom the camera out, but it was still interesting to replay. Thanks!
Great game! There are a few minor issues with the UI and the information provided, but overall it feels very cohesive!
Really neat little concept for an arcadey shooter. A little more work on feedback for taking damage (both player and mothership) would have gone a long way.
@zettelkasten @skytech6 @thesmellofoxygen @lehmy @redphoenix2412 @quasilyte @quasilyte @coatline @flowerfield-games @irkar @roitchie @fassenberg @sinemual @hexyvexy
Thank you all for taking the time to play our little game! Sorry it took so long to reply, lifes been hectic since the Jam.
I realize things were definitely dialed a little bit on the hard side, which I was worried about, but we ran out of time to dial in the difficulty to do some catastrophic things near the end, which is how these always seem to go. I assure you the game can be beaten, though that's easy to say seeing as I'm the one who programmed it, but our artist, who hadn't really played it seriously til the last hour, was able to beat it.
I realize there's quite a few issues, mostly in knowing how the upgrades and Exp works, and for that I apologize. You can only access the upgrades menu by being near the center of the mothership and pressing E, and only when the Exp bar is full. I realize this desperately needed an on screen prompt, but it was an item on my do to list that unfortunately got buried.
I also should have started the game zoomed out, that probably would have alleviated some frustrations.
Not sure on the audio bugs. I've encountered them once or twice after the fact, but only in the web browser. I'll try to include an executable later that'll hopefully alleviate this.
Thank you all for the feedback! The point to these is to learn and improve, and I believe that we have done that.
I enjoyed the game, the art is good and the gameplay loop is solid!
I wasn't able to finish it but it may be because I wasn't efficient enough with how I managed everything, it's really fun tho!
@tetracold
Glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah my artists did awesome on this one I feel, really happy with the team I worked with. Admittedly the game is pretty dang hard, blame that on lack of time to play test unfortunately. There also might be an issue with the boss killing you when it's not supposed to, but without feedback on things being hit (Again, my bad) it's sort of hard to tell. Regardless, it can be beaten, I know that. Thanks for the feedback!
Took me 4 tries, but I managed to beat the game. Upgrades have a huge impact, but RNG doesn't always give you what you need. I get that it's just the nature of game jams, no worries. Overall, I had fun.
This style of the game is just too cool! It has a strong sense of memorability, is an interesting game, and the menu design is also very thoughtful.