nathmate 2026-10-20 02:54 ♥ 1
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I couldn't get past the first level, is there something you need to do to execute the current instruction?
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → Falcon Mainframe
By sarenei
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 17 | |||||
| Fun | 17 | |||||
| Innovation | 17 | |||||
| Theme | 17 | |||||
| Graphics | 17 | |||||
| Audio | 16 | |||||
| Humor | 15 | |||||
| Mood | 16 | |||||
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I couldn't get past the first level, is there something you need to do to execute the current instruction?
I'm glad I'm not a computer. 🤣 Nice work on this!
@nathmate You have to manually do what the instructions say. So if the first instruction is SET R1 1, you need to manually change the value of R1 to 1. Then increment PC and press FETCH to get the next instruction. And so on.
@sarenei > Then increment PC
Ahhh, that's what I was missing. The How To Play doesn't mention that PC = program counter, though I suppose it's obvious in hindsight. Still, goes to show the importance of a foolproof tutorial.
Neat concept, though I'm already predisposed to enjoying toy assembly programming languages. There's something about little books of instructions in games that's enjoyable. I'm glad you put the lightbulb button in to auto translate the punchcard, it would've been tedious otherwise. To be honest executing the program instead of writing it kinda is tedious as a concept, but it's still a fun exercise for a bit.
@nathmate Yeah I ended up dumping a LOT of time into the last level and the polish suffered. I would've definitely made it so the How to Play could fit more info and mentioned that. It didn't end up being as fun as I wanted but such are game jams. Only so much time.
Very confusing at first, luckily I read the feedbacks just to understand how to play... An interactive tutorial (like: "read the instructions", "set the values specified (e.g. first level: set R1 to 15)", "increment PC to 1 and press FETCH to get the next instructions" etc.
Since the complexity is way higher than I expected, it takes time to actually do the sequence. That's just the very old technology of computers.
After I understand this game, I enjoyed playing it! Nice entry!
This was interesting, definitely different. It's a bit of a test to see if you can pay attention to what you're doing mostly. Anyone who's done any assembly should be pretty good at it.
This was interesting though a little hard to understand at first. Reading some of the other comments definitely helped. A cool idea though, well executed! Great job!
I played a few levels. It took me a while to figure out how to manually decode the punch cards and I had to look into the comments to figure out I had to increment the program counter manually too. It is a really interesting concept, you usually program computers in these kind of games, but here the roles are reversed.
Played up to the random access level, which I proceeded to fail haha.
Honestly my main feedback on this game is that the core of the game, following the instructions like a computer does, is just not fun for me. So I think you could build this game extremely well and polish all the details and I don't think I'd have fun following the instructions.
Because I have some computer engineering skills this felt fairly familiar to me. I appreciate having the button that decodes the punchcard automatically as that might've become tedious!
Was there audio for the game? I couldn't hear anything but I might be having sound issues on my end. Otherwise you can opt out of the audio category if you want
@jezzamon There were a handful of sound effects but not much. I understand the feedback about the fun. I had a feeling it wasn't going to be the most stimulating gameplay when I started. I think it leans more toward education/sim. People have a HARD time understanding assembly or how a function call really works. Stripping it down to a toy makes it easier for people to understand.