Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Router Wilds
By andreadbx, brainoid, pomo, itsboats and markais
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 104 | 4.03 | 34 | |
| Fun | 104 | 3.90 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 35 | 4.20 | 34 | |
| Theme | 37 | 4.46 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 284 | 4.01 | 34 | |
| Audio | 107 | 4.04 | 33 | |
| Humor | 456 | 2.67 | 28 | |
| Mood | 434 | 3.61 | 33 |
This is an incredibly fun game. The mechanics are cool and easy to understand, and the level design makes the most of those simple building blocks. The added complication of there being combat that's influenced by your signal strength really adds a lot to the puzzle solving. Excellent work! Also bonus points for referencing Outer Wilds.
Our first comment coming from someone called @passalong is very significant - we did no comms pass the game challenge for this game. Thanks a lot for the kind words!
the outer wilds clickbait worked. Anyways, here's a wall of text of first thoughts and micro nitpicks:
- Great music - Good visual polish (give a raise to whoever made that level transition) - Level design feels varied - main mechanic is interesting - level 2 felt harder than level 3 - the rotating levels are a bit awkward to control (100% skill issue, i just would have waited until later to avoid early frustration) Maybe both the player and the mouse should rotate together with the floor, in the spinning part of the level? Main issue is it made it awkward to position objects accurately, or to stay in the narrow beam of a signal to prepare for shooting. - the lock icon on the signal source appearing before explaining that there can be unlocked signal sources gave me 2.5 seconds of confusion that i then moved past. no big deal who cares - thanks for the self destruct button, preventing softlocks - when strong signals overlap, the colors invert, which i assume was intended to be destructive interference cancelling out the signals? but signal strength appears to just add up. maybe i'm too much of a nerrrd - putting a mirror right behind a signal source, to receive both the source signal and the reflection, doesnt seem to increase the maximum range of the signal, but it greatly improves signal strength. so it doesn't help with puzzle solving, but it lets you have faster than full firing speed in a large area far from the signal source. This feels fine to me, i can't tell if it was intended or not. Mirrors repeating a signal amplified like this also repeat the effect, which in the right context, can flood a level with large areas of high signal strength. If this was intentional, i would have made a level that teaches you this, and then levels that exploit it on purpose. - some of the saws move/stop based on a receiver being powered. a way to visualize what they are connected to, or, just highlighting that they are starting and stopping with visuals would be nice. i found myself noticing very late "oh, those react", since it happens away from what i am currently doing. but this wasn't a big deal, your decisions dont change based on if the saw is moving or not, you're still just trying to avoid it. - wow the enemies charge you at mach 10 - you can get noclipped out of the uwu level - solving a puzzle and then getting oneshot by the enemies in the central room is a very *Fun* feeling
i am very impressed you managed to make a totally playable and quite polished game with no communication. if you didn't tell me, i would have assumed this is a "regular" jam entry. Good job
Very good job for a team with no communication! Couple of the later levels were pretty difficult but i managed to get to the signal.
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Wow, very engaging game! I couldn't make to the end, but the game gave me a lot of fun! I love the difficulty of this game. Especially the level where everything moves around - total chaos :D very good job!
Nice visuals, fun gameplay, and the signal reflection/spread mechanics are awesome. Kinda sucked being stuck in that little “closet” on level two though — the signal had already faded by then :(
Great game with minimalistic graphics, what blown me away the most is the amount of polishing work you guys have done, super well done! This is by far the best-suited game for the theme of Signal in my opinion.
The main mechanics took me a bit to get used to, but it was really fun when I got the hang of it. Also, I loved the Outer Wilds spin you guys did with the game name lol.
That was pretty awesome! Every level feels very distinct. The mechanics are so flexible that they seem like they can lead to some pretty crazy level design. I think having very precise movement, like in the last level, doesn't feel great when everything is spinning around like that, but I enjoyed the challenge!
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Took me a minute to understand what the game is about, but after that it was a smooth experience
Wow really clever game. I love the idea of the hot potato challenge, and even though it shows with all the different mechanics, they surprisingly managed to come together fairly well. I understand why there isn't any visual element to the signals to make aiming and reflection easier, and I think it's better that way. However, some other form of feedback on the signals would have been nice, like a sound or something just to help with the reflections. Maybe even the first level has a laser, but after that it switches to the signal. Great game over all. Really unique, and pretty enjoyable. Nice work!
@link270 hey, thanks for the great feedback. one question, what do you mean by some other form of feedback on the signals? Like we have the music getting muffled when you are far away from the signal source or completely out of the signal zone. But I'm confused about what you said "something to help with the reflections". Thanks again!
Fantastic entry! Lots of fun, little bits of emergent gameplay arising from the interacting mechanics, a learning curve that makes it fun to get better and faster at playing. The sound is great - I love the music changing depending on your signal strength. Fun graphics, and I love that you can see the signal interfering with itself sometimes.
Lots of innovative and unique ideas. I like being able to grad things around with the mouse while moving the character, and those objects dropping in place when line-of-sight breaks, but a ghosty version still following your ccursor is a super neat mechanic. The signal strengh idea is something I've also not seen before and adds an interesting aspect to the top-down shooter.
Thanks for the game!
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Super nice! Loved the puzzles, the visuals, and the signal reflection mechanic is pleasantly working very well!
Challenging as should be, not too easy not too hard, good balance :thumbsup:
These are some badass models. Uwu level wrecked me.
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Haven't finished yet but had to pause to post this (I spent too much time trying to pass this level before noticing this)
Now I've finished it Captura de tela 2026-04-25 131820.png
Gotta say I agree with the sentiment of other players, this is a great entry, very polished. You all should do this hot potato challenge for more jams :) (says me, having no idea how hard it was to coordinate this)
There were only very few things I wasn't a fan, like having to wait the whole level to rotate to free me from my prison 😅
God bless you fellas for being able to manage a challenge like this. Honestly packaging all of this up into a finished product is pretty impressive. I can definitely see the different personalities and intentions mixing together which creates for some eclectic game play (both entertaining and maddening). Would have liked a rotating mechanic that didn't make me move my hand away from wasd so i could feel more nimble in a game that requires a lot of movement, especially later when the fact that the level is rotating becomes really sloggy. The mixture of precision thinking and combat awareness is a little overwhelming for me but that's a personal bias for sure. But overall the atmosphere and art looks great, the lil signal effects look so good and the contrast makes everything easy to read. Music and other sounds are on point. It's definitely one of those games for me where if you remove like one element and strengthen what's left all those other parts would read more clearly and take less work to enjoy!
@ruddiculous thank you for the feedback! btw you can also rotate using the scroll wheel which leaves the WASD in place ;)
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2756337981?t=00h48m11s)
Again, jokes aside, it is incredible that y'all were able to get anything out the door with this strategy. Well done!
Damn that's crazy, both the game itself, and the way it was made. I think it turned out great, it kept me engaged by adding mechanics or *twisting* them in unexpected ways, it had that focused+intense mood, elevated by the music really well, and also lots of visual polish. It was challenging and I definitely felt that I'm probably on the final level when I got there. Impressive work all around.
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Loved it, super creative use of the mechanic, I enjoyed it form beginning to end. the presentation and the music are also great, it's just all around an amazing entry.
I definitely died a lot more than I probably should have but it was fun LOL
What a brilliant entry and what a wild way to make it! The hot potato challenge alone makes this one of the coolest things in the jam, and the fact that the result is this cohesive and polished is genuinely astonishing. The signal strength- fire rate mechanic is super clever, the level design is great. I'd absolutely love to try something like this, I just don't have a group of gamedev friends to pull it off with. Major respect for actually doing it. Amazing entry!
Amazing shooter/puzzle game. The last level took me a while. I managed to push myself outside the wall so thank you for the self destruct. Also i pushed the quit game in browser, Made me laugh a lot because i do it every time, at least 4 click usually. My score was awful so i wont bother with the proof 25:32:43 its not even the worst score, thats how bad it is, it wins nothing. The creation process video was awesome aswell. Im glad the circle levels came back.
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The core idea is great! The visuals felt polished, and music and SFX were great (although I didn't notice the muffling mentioned in the video, as I was too focused on clearing the levels I guess).
I don't feel like enemies brought much to the table - they were annoyances at best, but that's expected for a jam format.
Overall I liked the game and just wish there were more puzzle levels. Good job!
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I was on the slow side, but I might have taken 10 minutes to read the "you can signals too" hint :smile: Very interesting concept to work create a game! I wished there was some checkpoint in the last level, but otherwise the levels have some great and creative ideas!
How did you get such a great game in a hot potato challenge? These were super fun puzzles with interesting ideas. The presentation was unique and I really liked how it did not feel repetitive at any time. Amazing game! Loved it. Screenshot Router Wilds.png
Really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to play this game [on stream.](https://www.youtube.com/live/Ho1IFp0qgAc?si=NBvxv_qEIBnUWQ_H&t=2702)
The hot potato challenge is an interesting idea but I feel the lack of cohesive game play really holds this project back. More thoughts are shared in the VOD.