Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Fresneltic
By shoalmuse
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 212 | 3.20 | 24 | |
| Fun | 237 | 2.84 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 55 | 3.81 | 23 | |
| Theme | 45 | 4.21 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 219 | 3.09 | 23 | |
| Audio | 207 | 2.71 | 23 | |
| Humor | 189 | 2.04 | 23 | |
| Mood | 209 | 3.09 | 23 |
This game made me feel like a lighthouse keeper with a morse code machine and that's cool. I figured it out but FYI you need to click individual ships to send orders. I thought the port could be a little more generous with accepting boats about to dock because the multitasking becomes a lot to keep up with. The visuals are also really nice and indicators for what signal just went out and whether it went out correct.
Ah I loved this one so much! I played a ton of it - I really could see this being a full game. Some things I adored: * The difference between nudging slow moving ship to help them, verses the full maneuverable and nimble craft at full-steam. I was always surprised how, once I got comfortable, I was able to maneuverer a ship to chase down and tackle a red. * "Learning" the morse here was so cool. I've played plenty of games that used it in some way, but never really lifted my eyes away from the guide in those games. This is the first game where I truly 'spoke in the signal' (of course, in this much limited command set). But it was so satisfying to just 'know' what commands to give. * The sweeping vs focused beam is a such a cool little piece of diegetic UI, I love it.
I wish the ship spawns were a little more controlled in some way, perhaps a wave of friendly ships, then a few enemy ships - giving you time to play as 'benevolent traffic control' and then swap to 'okay, who is closest that I can sacrifice'? When I happened to get spawns that lined up that way - that is when the game truly shined.
If you decide to take this further, I'd love to see some more complexity added as the game goes on: * What if certain ships want to dock? What if two ship want to 'pair up and trade' in the water, and you have to guide them over? * What if you have to 'defocus' the beam to detect hiding enemy submarines? * What if 'radar' ship pass through, and you can park them in strategic locations to uncover subs? Or mine-laying ships? Or battleships that can act as stationary artilelry? * What if there is some kind of risk/reward trade-off for "certain ships are higher priority, and I want to help them pass through quickly unabated. Other ships are more disposable, and I can have them wait around until I need them to kamakazi. Other ships might be willing to wait around a while - then get angry and try to leave?
Sorry - I'm rambling, not sure if any of that is helpful - mostly I just want you to know what a though provoking piece of game design this is!
Yeah - I hold this entry in such high regard - a perfect 'signal' entry - fantastic work!
Great idea.
Nice design! Morse code input detect is pretty accurate, which i can tell you have spent a lot effort on
A really cool idea and a solid implementation.
It did feel like you have to hold the mouse button a bit too long for a dash in Morse code. At first, I often ended up sending something completely different from what I intended :)
Really pretty graphics. Even without the morse code the game was a bit of challenge after a while :laughing:
I felt a little stupid at the beginning. Took a me a little to realize that I had to click on ships to send a signal, but I figured it out eventually.
The game was harder than I expected as more and more ships spawn, but getting the ships to the harbor felt satisfying as a result.
Thematically it makes sense the way the signals are implemented, but the only thing I didn't like about the gameplay was that it created a big communication bottleneck. You can't really quickly manage multiple ships because sending a signal and turning the lighthouse beam takes too much time. And as a result I often got into situations where I knew I was fucked already but I could really steer them away anymore. Would've been cool if there was a way to speed up the lighthouse maybe make sending signals faster.
Pretty cool entry overall though.
This is a really cool concept and a great use of the theme. My biggest complaint is that I couldn't use a key on the keyboard to tap out the signals. Trying to manage the ships (and port vs starboard) was pretty stressful but in a fun way. I didn't really understand the purpose of the enemy ships as I just kinda let them sail until they crashed or left the screen. Really interesting entry that could be a fun game with a little more work. Great job.
Fun game! Kind of wish the default speed was a bit faster.
One of my favourite jam games so far! During the first round I did not understand how to thwart enemies, but reading the manual helped :) Having more fine grained control of the ships would have been even nicer
Nice idea, but I'd like also having CCW rotation... Yeah also keyboard key for tapping could be nice Overall was quite difficult, probably could be better if difficulty was scaling so youre not so overwhelmed by amount of ships
@cax .. (left) should result in counter-clockwise rotation.
Great idea, quite hard to manage boats! (But it's meant to be hard). Cool entry!
It's a very interesting idea, but I don't understand at all what the game wants from me.
Nice idea! But yeah, like others, I don't really understand what’s going on here or how my signals affect the ships. It would be easier if I could use my keyboard to send signals.
Very nicely done! Easy to figure out the controls but not so easy to manage the ships.
Very cool concept! Do feel like it could've used a little more explanation - also took me a while and probably these comments to realize you had to click on the ships - but once I got the hang of it I got... alright at it. Love how it gets more difficult the more ships you're trying to guide in. Simple but effective audio.
I really enjoyed this concept! My one nitpick would be that sometimes I had my beam focused on one ship, I would enter a code, the code would get registered, then I'd switch the beam to a different ship and the instruction would get assigned to the new ship rather than the intended ship. I think if the code registered immediately to the ship the beam is on that would feel a bit more intuitive, but maybe I'm just impatient. Otherwise, nice work!
Great idea! The mechanism is very interesting. The game design is very thoughtful and the gameplay is also quite diverse.