Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → 3LSTMsInATrenchcoat
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 60 | Old Tech | Danger Looms | jam | |||||||||||
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | Serum Run | compo | 56 | 3.98 | 3.67 | 3.51 | 4.27 | 4.12 | 2.69 | 4.28 | |||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | Radar Rider | compo | 94 | 3.78 | 3.56 | 4.18 | 4.18 | 3.58 | 3.00 | 2.48 | 3.53 | ||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | š„ | Running Late | jam | 66 | 4.13 | 3.97 | 3.80 | 4.10 | 3.81 | 4.11 | 4.11 | ||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Helico Pter | compo | 139 | 3.76 | 3.70 | 3.17 | 3.61 | 3.66 | 2.77 | 2.65 | 3.34 | ||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | The Company Store | compo | 470 | 3.43 | 3.24 | 3.14 | 3.72 | 3.60 | 1.00 | 2.95 | 3.13 | ||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Purple Thing! | jam | 1204 | 3.50 | 3.86 | 3.75 | 4.03 | 2.63 | 3.52 |
3LSTMsInATrenchcoat leaves an average of 23.1 feedback comments each event.
This is an excellent example of what I think of as the "classic LD game" genre: a platformer with competent pixel art, a genuinely novel and fascinating mechanic, a series of well-designed levels that can be completed in 15ish minutes, and some sort of narratively satisfying conclusion. I love it!
This is probably my favourite narrative game of the jam so far. Plus the art and music are extremely top-tier. I like all of the character design, but especially Shane's Jawa-hoodie. Not really saying anything that hasn't already been said by everyone else, of course - everyone can see this game is great!
I really like the vibes on this one. The simple art style does really fits a dystopian city. The "after curfew" setting conveniently explains why the city is so empty and silent. Trying to cross that wide-open street was very stressful. Unfortunately, I am very bad at stealth games and never actually successfully completed a delivery, despite trying several times. But perhaps that's on me.
Wow, this is probably my favourite pixel art of the jam so far. The gameplay was reasonably fun, not to innovative, but reasonably well-balanced and executed well. And the music is also top-tier. Extremely solid all-around.
I found this quite difficult, even once I got the hang of the dash ability. I think the handholds should be a tiny bit closer together, at least at the lower levels. The highest I was able to get was height 12. The mechanics do feel satisfying to improve at, though. If the balancing was a bit better I definitely would have gotten hooked. I might still come back to it later and try to do better.
The opening cutscene are is very cute. Gameplay concept is interesting. It seems probably impossible to craft an actually coherent letter, which I guess is the point? Interesting entry.
The art is cute. Gameplay is not particularly interesting but works well enough. Audio is fine. There have been a lot of ferrying-the-dead games in this jam, but that's understandable because it's evidently one of the more compelling ways of interpreting the theme, so no complaints there. Good work overall.
Fun fact: looks like you guys have the largest team in Ludum Dare this year, by a large margin! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get this game to run on Linux using Wine.
The art and audio are really nice, but it's really not clear how to not die immediately. I've tried to be quiet as stated above, but I have no idea how to tell if I'm being sufficiently quiet, or what else I'm supposed to be doing. Seems like the thing behind me gets me no matter what I try.
The control scheme is not super intuitive, because instead of having a direct 1-to-1 correspondence between key positions and the position of the "notes"/babies there's a lot of extra cognitive load involved in trying to associate colours and/or letters with positions. I think there's a reason why most rhythm games either put the notes on tracks in one-to-one correspondence with the physical locations of the buttons, or else use a physically-interpretable symbol (e.g. an arrow) on the notes. I agree with @zettelkasten suggesting that arrows, rather than colours and/or letters, would make it a lot more intuitive.
The art is nice, the levels are fair (It took me a few tries on the later ones, but I finished the game in reasonable time). Not super mechanically innovative, but still fun to play. Music is a bit repetitive but not too bad. The dialog is funny. Pretty solid over all.
This is probably the best game comedy-wise that I've seen so far. Going "goblin mode" is fun. Gameplay wise it's not super complex, but reasonably fun. Sometimes the random generation feels very unfortunate, but that's life, I guess. I wanted to talk to as many people as possible, but unfortunately it seemed like that was slowing me down just enough to make a serious difference in how far I was able to get, so I felt a bit disincentivized to engage with that part of the content. Which is a shame, because the dialog that I did see was reasonably funny. Overall, I definitely had fun with this one.
Very polished & inventive, as usual. Now I understand why you never mess with a forklift operator born in January etc. I think the constantly-depleting health is a little harsh, but I sort of got the hang of it eventually? Well, after several tries I wasn't able to last longer than a minute, but I can probably get there with enough practice. A very solid entry overall!
I think this is the longest/deepest narrative game I've seen in a game jam (although I don't usually go for visual novels, so maybe that doesn't mean much). The story was compelling and the audio accompaniment is good. Took a while to figure out what exactly was going on with the word selection minigame, but that's fine. I was able to reach the end eventually. Overall, a pretty solid entry!
The setting is very evocative. I found the movement janky at first, until I read the instructions and realized that it steers more like a real-life car, not a video game car (not being someone who drives, this didn't occur to me). There's a lot of nice polish in terms of lighting, dust, and the like. The gameplay is a bit frustrating, not knowing where to deliver the pizza, but I still had some fun once I figured out how to drive properly. A solid entry overall.
I love it. Having tried to do adventure- or adventure-adjacent games for a couple of jams now, I know that this sort of thing is definitely more work than it looks like, even to make something this short. I really enjoyed playing it. The vibes are great, audio is on point. Mechanically speaking, seems to work smoothly. This definitely contributes to my growing feeling that point-and-click adventures are due for a comeback.
The gameplay is not exactly groundbreaking, but the vibes are great. It combines two great things - geometrically impossible 3D settings and a *le Petit Prince*/*Super Mario Galaxy*-style tiny cozy planet - in a nice little game that probably wouldn't exist outside of a game jam setting. This is exactly the kind of thing I love to see in a game jam.
My high score was 101000.
Not exactly a groundbreaking puzzle format, but still fun & satisfying to play with. More importantly, the execution is really excellent. The visuals & audio are very polished and juicy, and the visual presentation is kinda unusual in that it uses concrete, realistically-depicted objects for an otherwise very abstract & stylized pozzle. The choice of items to satisfy various shape requirements is fun. The zig-zaggy snake box is very charming. Overall, I really liked this one.
The art is charming, and I like how the hue changes as you go up. I did run in to some of that jankiness in the web build that you mentioned (couldn't get the windows build to run in Wine), but I was still able to finish in reasonable time once I got the hang of it. Best time was 1:55:08. Overall, I liked it a lot.
I wasn't able to click the tutorial link in LibreOffice Calc, but the main game itself seems to work (at least, entering the provided solutions gives the expected results). Unfortunately, I'm totally lost without the tutorial, and unclear on what I'm supposed to figure out as part of the puzzle vs. what I'm supposed to have learned from the tutorial.
EDIT: I figured out how to view the tutorial, and it turns out I'm still confused. Maybe if I wasn't tired from doing LD all weekend I could figure it out. The idea of a spreadsheet-based game is certainly something I've never seen before, though. I assume the puzzle is good when you're not sleep-deprived.
Very challenging to control, but reasonably entertaining to try. I managed a few deliveries before crashing into a wall in a way that got one of the thrusters stuck at a weird angle, which made further navigation basically impossible. Not sure if that was intended. The music is great.
I found it very difficult to navigate, because the flat-coloured walls make it hard to tell whether you're looking down a corridor or staring straight into a wall. Even trying to follow a classic wall-hugging maze strategy was extremely difficult. If it was possible to look down at the floor then this would be a lot less of a problem.
I wandered around for a few minutes before giving up. Not clear on whether there's actual content in there that I just couldn't find. But for a platform that, as I understand it, isn't really intended to do 3D, it seems technically interesting?
Took me a while to figure out what all the cards do, but eventually I figured out most of them and got the hang of it (although it did sometimes seem like the little guy changed directions for unclear reasons). My high score was 55. The atmosphere is great (the art and music both fit). The idea of past tiles being "full of ghosts" is very evocative. Overall, I enjoyed it.
Interesting, another sonar-based interpretation of the theme. I did a game based around radar, so I've been paying more attention to these radar/sonar games. It's always interesting to see the wide variety of ways people can implement a similar idea. Unfortunately I couldn't get this one to run on Linux using Wine :(
Chill little game. The art is great; I like that wobbly/hand-drawn effect where you have multiple frames even for static objects. The story mode doesn't seem to require much deliberate shaping, but it was nice as a non-goal-oriented experience. The audio is nice to. Overall, it feels very polished and cohesive. Good vibes all around.
It seems a little implausible to grow some custom flowers from scratch for a date *tonight*, but I can suspend my disbelief on that front.
Couldn't get it to run for me in Wine on Linux, but based on the description it sounds mechanically/thematically similar to my radar-based game.
The art/music/worldbuilding/vibes are all top-notch. Not sure what I'm doing as far as the gameplay is concerned. It's a shame that you probably won't get many people playing the game due to needing to run it from source, because the overall vibe is great.
Interesting to have new music for each minigame. You don't usually see that. The sleeping minigame was unexpected & kinda cute. The controls for some games felt a bit awkward, but it was fine overall.
The art is cute and the music is nice. Gameplay was reasonably fun, although it was a bit difficult to pay attention to the options and the ongoing movement/fighting at the same time. The weapon variety was good. Solid overall.
The art is nice, especially the background art. You don't usually see an opening cutscene like that for a jam game, so that was cool. The gameplay got a bit boring after a while, but I was able to finish successfully first try.
The embedded version doesn't seem to be working for me, unfortunately. But it looks like your interpretation of the theme was similar to mine (I also did a game based on a radar that updates every 10 seconds).
EDIT: The windows version runs fine on Linux using Wine. I really like the console-within-a-game presentation, although the gameplay itself seemed a bit lacking in variety. Fun twist at the end. A nicely polished game overall.
Spooky atmosphere. Seems like a lot of work was put into the level art. Even after figuring out the puzzles and beating the game, it wasn't exactly clear what had happened narratively-speaking, but your spoiler in the description cleared that up for me. Not sure the reset-every-ten-seconds mechanic really adds anything (it mostly just plays like a normal puzzle-adventure game, but slightly more annoying. I liked the lighting a lot (the blacklight bit was particularly interesting).
Tried to play it in Wine on Linux and it unfortunately didn't work. The narrative premise seems very creative, though.
Interesting. There have been a lot of minigame-based entries this jam, but the minigames in this one seem a bit more varied/original than you sometimes see. The fill-the-train game was particularly interesting to me. I guess minigames are a good fit for such a large team. I like that you went for a multiplayer game, but made it still be playable as a single player.
I like the Flappy Bat game. The parallax background is pretty, and I've always been a fan of bats so it's nice to play as one rather than them just being used as a generic spooky enemy.
I like the colour scheme, the death explosion effect, and the way the sonar ping is represented visually. The theme interpretation & mechanics are similar to what I went with (mine is based on radar, rather than sonar). It does seem a bit too difficult (you rarely get sufficient warning of the mines coming for you), but that's common for jam games. The audio is nice as well.
I was just thinking that I haven't seen a pinball game in a jam before, and along comes this!
I like it. Very polished, nice simple colour palette and legible art style, lots of things to light up and turn on and off and make satisfying sounds. I had a lot of fun. My high score was 122021.
Not sure exactly what I'm doing. When I try to play at a pace where I can actually see what's happening I eventually get stuck out of frame. Conversely, just holding up, wiggling side-to-side a bit, and hoping for the best seems to lead to a much higher score, before the bubbles eventually run out. I like the colour-changing background, though.
Very cute. One thing I'll point out is that it's not clear where on the food dish the cursor is (i.e. which bit needs to be touching in order to successfully feed the cat), which seems like an important thing to know in a game that's all about clicking on things hidden behind other things. But overall it's a nice little polished & complete game with cute sprites/animations, and I had fun with it.
Very juicy & polished, with a lot of variety in the minigames. I think this is one of the best minigame-based LD entries I've seen. I found the shatter-the-jars game to be the trickiest (or, at least, it's the one that came down to the wire the most often for me before I got the hang of it). My high score was 32.
The goofy sound effects are great. The tactical nuke was a fun surprise. The difficulty seems well-balanced. Overall, I think it's a well-executed twist on a classic game and I enjoyed playing it.
Fun game, although with the minimum-placement rule + no rotation it feels more unforgiving than regular tetris. I like the swirly Game Over screen. Controls are simple and intuitive. Not sure what's up with rainbow powerups. A solid game overall; I had fun.
Kiam mi venkiÄis, la teksto diris "Vi esperan**g**iÄis." Mi kredas ke Äi tio estas eraro?
Interesting concept. I like the use-the-train-to-gain-momentum feature. I found the hitboxes on the trees frustratingly large, though. It was pretty easy to get the axe stuck somewhere semi-inaccessible and fall behind quickly, and catching up can be tricky even with the berries, since it's so easy to collide with the trees. But with a little bit of improved balance/polish the gameplay could be pretty fun, I think.
Incidentally, we also made a game about delaying a train!
This is gorgeous. I love the art style, the flavour text, and the sound design. I thought it was funny to guilt the player about protected species when the world is imminently about to end anyways. Actually, there's a lot of silly stuff like that in there. After winning I had to play through again to see what would happen if I made a different choice at the end. Great game overall!
I like the premise and the modeled office environment. Some parts of the actual gameplay/UI were a bit confusing, though. It took me a while to notice the grey circles indicating where to click, since they're not very high-contrast relative to everything else. I kept trying to click in the middle of the purple decreasing-time-ring-thing, which I assumed referred to something in the middle of the circle, not below it.
Some of the minigames took a few tries to figure out what I was supposed to do. I guess it's hard to avoid that, though, since you can't really put a tutorial at the beginning of each minigame. In any case, I always find minigame-based jam entries impressive since it seems like a lot of content to fit in during the short time frame.
The level art is neat. I love the vaulted ceiling. It was a bit difficult to figure out what you were supposed to do to resolve some of the problems, but I figured most of them out eventually. Still not sure what's up with the ID card scanner (?). Anyways, a decent game over all.
Also, I think I played a couple games with the exact same premise for LD49 (theme was "unstable"). But that's fine; I like seeing the huge variety in terms of how people implement the same basic idea.
My high score was 69570.
I love the shadowy figures that appear only on the edges of your vision. The fact that the bar representing your candle also visually appears as a candle is a nice touch. Like others have said, it's not initially clear that you need to complete the riddles in order; I only got that by reading other comments. The map is large and requires multiple attempts to get a feel for, especially since the candle becomes unusably dark long before it officially runs out, so you really only get a feel for where you are for about 2 thirds of the time. For those reasons I found it a bit frustrating to play. The ambience is really good, though!
I'm seeing a lot of unusually large teams this year, all from from Image Campus. I guess you guys are doing Ludum Dare as part of an assignment or something?
The concept is pretty simple but I think it was executed well. I had fun. It took me a while to understand what the coke bottle power up does (reversing controls), since at first I almost always immediately died when collecting it due to being closely followed by a crowd of people. I think the crowd noises add a lot to selling the setting.
I haven't tried the game yet, but I thought you might want to know that you're tied with a couple other games for second-largest team in Ludum Dare history (or, at least, since LD38, which is how far back my data goes). The only team larger than yours has 27 collaborators.
Haven't tried the game yet, but I thought you might want to know that you're tied with a couple other games for second-largest team in Ludum Dare history (or, at least, since LD38, which is how far back my data goes). The only team larger than yours has 27 collaborators.
The gameplay is quite simple, but it works reasonably well. I had fun. I like how the music is blatantly trying to come as close as possible to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme without actually being it.
Also, according to data downloaded from the API this the largest team in Ludum Dare history (or at least since LD38, which is how far back the data goes) by a wide margin. The next largest is 17. Thought you might like to know that.
Cute concept and art! The gameplay felt pretty guess-and-check a lot of the time, and whenever I lost and had to restart it was a bit annoying to play all the way through again, but overall I enjoyed the experience. Mechanically I guess it's basically just a classic choose-your-own-adventure, but the unique premise/framing gives it a genuine feeling of novelty relative to some of the other text-choice-based jam games I've played.
Nice game! The dialogue and theming is cute (albeit a bit all-over-the-place). Movement and game feel are good and the difficulty seems fair. Sometimes it was a bit unclear whether certain things were asteroids or stationary background planets, but it wasn't too much of a problem. Fun SFX. A good entry overall!
It's rare enough to come across a print-and-play game in Ludum Dare (especially a solitaire game, so that I can actually play it), but this impressed me further by utilizing dice as both a random number generator *and* a physical object (including incorporating the position/shape of the pips as a gameplay element!). Nice to have a game that justifies my desire to handle large piles of dice (although I unfortunately don't have that many available at the moment). It's a shame you opted out of Audio so I can't give you 5 stars for the satisfying sound of dice rolling.
Also, hurray for LibreOffice. Reminds me of when I did the level design for my first LD game with a conditionally-formatted spreadsheet in LibreOffice Calc.
My best score currently with 14 dice (of 3 different sizes) is 36.
Also, thanks for playing my game on stream earlier!
I had some trouble with hitboxes (especially hitting the crabs + draining the water), and it took me a while to realize you have to go down below the high-tide mark to collect sand. But the story concept with the brother & his drone was cute. With the bugs fully worked out it would be a cute & fun little game. And thanks again for playing my game on stream!
I enjoyed the regular gravity-switching mechanic. I turned the audio off due to the bit at the start of the level being very loud (although that's probably partly the fart of my headphones), but then without audio I kept not knowing why I had died, since there's no visual indication of the moment at which I died, and the restart is delayed by a bit. I eventually figured out what I was supposed to be avoiding, though, and was able to have fun and finish the level.
The cape adds some nice juice, and I liked the background landscape as well. It looks a little weird to be walking in the sky as though there's a flat surface there; maybe the game would be more visually coherent if set in a hallway?
Overall, a decent first Ludum Dare entry!
As others have said, it really is incredibly slow, and it was not at all clear to me that I was supposed to be destroying blocks in order to progress. I spent quite a long time advancing slowly & carefully upwards while deliberately staying well short of destroying any blocks. I didn't realize what I was doing wrong until reading the comments.
The minimalist isometric art is quite nice, though. Once I knew what I was supposed to be doing it was relaxing and satisfying (especially when I was able to break multiple blocks at once), but not particularly challenging. As others have said, some simple "jump" and "block breaking" sound effects would be nice (nothing complicated, sufficient sounds could be obtained from SFXR or any of its newer derivatives).
It was sometimes hard to judge height visually due to the isometric projection. The shadow is presumable supposed to solve this, but it was very faint and I could barely see it. Making the shadow more visible would help a lot.
Overall, it seems fine for what it is (a prototype), although not something I'd be super interested in in its current state.
Wow, that was a ton of content for a 3D jam game. I really like the cell-shaded look and the level art in general, and the concept seems good as well. Like others, I didn't really understand what the crystals were doing for quite a while. Overall, I had fun with this!
Looks like there's a lot of content, but it sort of lacks a unifying vision and it seems like you maybe overscoped? Also, without being able to see a health bar for enemies it's hard to know whether you're actually making any progress, or just wasting your time. I gave up after a while of fighting a pile of mud (?) with no visible progress.
Unfortunately it doesn't work properly for me (trying to run in Linux using Wine). Most of the screen is black, the text on the buttons in the main menu is missing, etc. I was able to hear the audio in the main game, though. The voice acting sounds great!
Interesting. Kinda Stanley Parable-esque, and I like the hand drawn art. The game crashed eventually (went all black and I had to force quit it), and I don't *think* that was deliberate? But I was running it on Linux using Wine, so that might be part of the cause.
I like the music and the colours, although some of the art doesn't feel like it all goes together. The gameplay was reasonably fun once I saw the previous comment mentioning that double jump exists, although it did eventually feel kinda samey/repetitive. But the pacing and the panic of platforms falling away under you is good.
Very unique. I feel like blowing into the microphone used to be a common mechanic in Nintendo DS games, but not on other platforms (I guess because most platforms besides Desktop don't have a microphone?). Anyways, it does kinda feel like you really are blowing on the character. Maybe the feeling would be enhanced a bit if the direction matched (i.e. if the gymnast was tipping towards you)? But that would be less visually clear gameplay-wise, so maybe just ignore me.
I have no idea what I'm doing (even once I realized that there were labels on the various levels and buttons; as others have said, the text is very unreadable). I think that might be the intended experience? But it does affect the ability to really get into it.
The narrative premise is very interesting, and I really liked the audio which seemed like a great mix of music, ambient non-music noises, and "I'm operating a dangerous machine" noises. The atmosphere overall is great.
I found it amusing that on the downloads page you're essentially telling people "trust me, there's nothing unsafe about running a file named `data-loss.exe` that you downloaded from the internet."
Anyways, neither the Linux build nor the Windows build (using Wine) seems to be working for me, unfortunately.
The screenshots look great, and I love the main menu background music, but unfortunately the main game doesn't seem to render for me, both in the browser (Firefox for Linux) and the windows build (when run on Linux using Wine).
I guess it's not exactly a game, but definitely fun regardless. Not sure how it relates to the theme. I'm a WTFIL, apparently.
Neat premise, I really enjoyed it. Short and not that difficult, but fine for what it is. The web version doesn't seem to load for me (Firefox on Linux) but I was able to run the windows version using Wine. It would be nice if there was a bit more depth (e.g. later days' options varying more based on the previous days), but I realize that could get very time-consuming very fast.
~~I love the title, but unfortunately it doesn't load for me (Firefox on Linux).~~ Never mind, it did load eventually, just veeeeery slowly.
The name is great, as is the 2D art. I'm not sure it goes together that well with the 2D style of the boat, and the boat is quite small which makes it a bit tricky to see how your navigation will affect the pile of objects. But the concept seems solid.
The line art is charming, but it feels like it's missing something; namely, since the guy in the picture doesn't actually tip relative to how unbalanced you are it feels like the gameplay and graphics are kinda disconnected. And since the player is mainly looking at the bar at the top rather than the sprite, less attention is drawn to the increasingly large piles of birds, which might lead to the player not feeling much sense of progression or accomplishment.
I agree with what others have said about it being confusing at first, but very doable once you figure it out. I do feel like the "smoke room" is disproportionately more frustrating than the other rooms due to the slow-moving platforms + lots of jumping required in a game that doesn't seem to otherwise be very optimized for jumping. I liked the hectic overall experience, though.
There are obviously tons of "object stacking" games in this jam, and it's interesting to me to see the wide range of approaches and themes people have come up with. Unfortunately, I can't play/rate this particular one since it won't load for me (Firefox on Linux). But props for the creative premise!
I like the concept, and the range of abilities is enough to meaningfully tip the balance without making things complicated. Games that involve watching a bunch of autonomous agents doing stuff with only indirect interference from the player are a lot of fun.
My one suggestion is that maybe stars should generate a bit faster. I kept running out and feeling helpless near the end.
Very cute and atmospheric. I did things in the wrong order the first time (picked up everything in the house before realizing that I could go outside) which triggered a lot of out-of-context dialogue options. But it's a sweet little game overall. "Friendly exorcist" is a great job title.
The movement is a bit too slow for me, but the level art and the music are really pretty.
I'm usually not a big fan of at rhythm games, but this one felt pretty accessible and I was able to finish it (the Itch.io version) successfully. The visuals are interesting, and I enjoyed the music.
I did have the issue where the actual game didn't show up for the first attempt. Also, it wasn't immediately obvious that you were supposed to *not* hit the notes marked with x's, although maybe that's just me not knowing how rhythm games work.
Overall, a fun game with nice music.
This is very cool. As a narrative game without much in the way of gameplay *and* no dialogue, it really needs to rely on visuals and audio, but the visuals and audio are really up to the task. I was impressed by the audio in particular, but then again that's the aspect of game design that I'm the worst at and have the least experience with, so maybe I'm just easily impressed. I also like how several activities are represented in a sort of abstract but clearly understandable way.
Overall, the game definitely achieves its intended emotional effect.
I had fun with this. There's an interesting risk-reward tradeoff available, although the existence of enemies who can only be hurt by stalactites sometimes takes that choice away. It's maybe not conceptually clear why health and stability are the same thing (why would getting hurt by an enemy mean that stalactites are more likely to drop?) but that's beside the point. I like the art style & think that it communicates information pretty effectively; attacks are clearly telegraphed, it's clear who can only be injured by stalactites, etc. A good game overall.
The idea of a roguelike full of minigames is very cool and could fit well with the exploratory nature of the genre. Obviously it would require more variety / explorable content to be really fun and fulfill its potential, which is beyond the scope of a 2-day game jam, but this is pretty good for what it is. Multiple games in a single entry is always impressive to me.
I'm pretty sure I've seen pogo-stick-based jam games before, but that's fine because it really is a fun mechanic. And I don't think I've done pogo-stick wall jumping before. That was pretty cool.
Nice art and interesting concept. I feel like it would be a bit less frustrating if there was some sort of visible centre line for the middle slider, though.
Demolition is sort of slow and methodical and relaxing. Or maybe I'm just tired.
The web version doesn't render properly for me (Firefox on Linux), unfortunately. I see some UI/HUD elements, but most of the screen is just black.
A simple concept executed with a high degree of polish. I enjoyed it.
This isn't the first stacking game I've seen so far, and it definitely won't be the last either, but it does stand out as a particularly minimalist & polished version of the concept. It's kinda like the opposite of Tetris.
I like the setting, the interpretation of the theme and the character animations. I found getting up over a ledge a bit frustrating sometimes, but otherwise the controls were good.
Disorienting but very visually compelling. Reminds me of the Beethoven's 5th sequence from Fantasia 2000. I *think* I understood the mechanics after a while, but it also seems like not knowing what's going on at first is part of the intended experience?
The art and audio are great. I really like the colour palette. The movement feels cool, although the small field of view makes it very difficult to plan ahead. Having your orbit visualized in front of you and seeing it change as you apply your thrusters is neat. I had some fun blasting asteroids but wasn't quite able to pick up the fuel from any of them; I think the game would be improved a lot if you automatically collected the minerals upon breaking an asteroid.
A bit confusing at first, but once I got the hang of it I definitely had fun. The tower stayed semi-viable for way longer than I expected; I went from 90m to 170m with only half a cylinder standing. My computer was starting to chug a bit by the end, but that's to be expected.
LaÅ mi, Äi tio estas amuzega ludo!
Took me a while to figure out how to stab the dragon properly. Otherwise, great game. I like how the character flails their legs while dangling from the sword.
I love the swinging mechanics and the character animation. I'm a bit surprised that I never had to rappel and fight the jumping spider thingies at the same time.
Without a doubt the best "deep sea lighting" game I've played so far. The marine snow particles are a great touch and the audio is perfect as well.
I still haven't gotten tired of deep sea lighting. It looks great.
Fun game. I feel like it's rare for game jam games to progress mechanically like that over the course of the game.
I didn't quite understand what I was supposed to do about the demons, though. The dialog said to "slap them around" but clicking on them or trying to slap them with a crystal didn't seem to do anything (although it could conceivably be a platfrom bug, since I was playing on Linux using Wine; incidentally, this is the first windows game so far that I've actually been able to successfully play via Wine).
The fact that you move slower as you get more powerful makes it a lot more interesting than a move-around-and-shoot-things game otherwise would be. Weird mix of subject matter. Overall a very interesting game.
I found a weirdly specific detail of scrap collection intriguing. If you get very close to a piece of scrap, it starts to gravitate towards you. I initially assumed that this was just a bit of animation added for visual flair, to let you pick up scrap from slightly further away without it looking awkward. But it's not purely visual; if you move away fast enough, the scrap stops being attracted to you, and you don't pick it up. But the radius for this attraction is small enough that it doesn't normally make a gameplay difference, so overall I'm not sure what the idea behind the scrap collection mechanics is.
Anyways, good game, ignore my distracted speculation.
This idle-game-pretending-to-be-a-dungeon-crawler is well-polished & small enough that I was able to finish it before getting bored. The art is nice as well. Pretty good overall.
Very cool look and feel. Movement is a bit tricky (is there supposed to be a current or something?)
I had fun. Big "It's a Unix system! I know this!" vibes. The bullet mechanic feels a little weird, but it works fine.
It looks nice and it's fun to play. I especially like the parallax & ominous boss music/drums. The text can be a bit hard to read, though.
A nice, complete little experience. The graphics are well polished and the ranged combat mechanic is enjoyable. Good ambience as well.
I feel like the left/right acceleration isn't quite fast enough to respond to anything, so you kinda have to use the dash, which makes the regular left-right movement a bit pointless. Interesting game overall, though.
I enjoyed it. I can see how it might get repetitive after a while, but I think that's true of almost all game jam games.
The suggestion to "make sure not miss any air" seems wrong, though, since really it makes more sense to skip air that looks inconvenient to get, especially when the bar is already mostly full.
I love basically everything about this. Probably my favourite so far. Echoing what others have said, I just wish the map was a bit bigger and the pickups were less impossible to grab.
I gave up after 20 minutes, while still stuck at the beginning of level 2. I definitely plan on coming back later, though. It looks nice and really feels like I should be able to make progress, despite all evidence to the contrary.
I really like the look and feel. I got sucked into a degenerate strategy of just staying ducked all the time before I read the previous comment mentioning that you can stop to pick up the miners, though.
I like the attempt to do a natural-language-input game, which isn't something I've seen before (unless you count all the GPT-3-based pseudo-choose-your-own-adventure games out there). But I'm not sure that sentiment analysis is the right tool to use here. It kinda feels like a weird, superstitious guessing game, rather than like I actually have any idea what I'm supposed to be doing.
(To be honest, I'm a bit skeptical about whether sentiment analysis is actually useful for much of anything. It kinda seems like people's go-to choice when they want to "do some NLP" without a clearer idea of what they're actually trying to accomplish.)
I know that as I review more games I'll probably eventually get tired of the spooky deep sea lighting, but it hasn't happened yet. Looks great, and the difficulty level was good for the I'll-play-briefly-but-I-have-lots-of-other-games-to-get-to setting of Ludum Dare.
I was constantly hopelessly lost due to the lack of identifiable landmarks, so I eventually gave up on completing the game, but I think it's one of the better LD horror games that I've played when it comes to actually making me scared to encounter whatever-it-is that I'm supposed to be avoiding.
I enjoyed the gameplay, although the rapid transition from rotated to horizontal when coming to a stop is a bit annoying.
I don't think I really understand what the valve-turning represents navigation-wise, but the atmosphere is great and I definitely got got despite the warning.
The lighting doesn't seem to work for me (Firefox on Linux). All I see is a white light-beam shape on a black background.
I like the music, and the graphics-ification of what is essentially a text-based interactive fiction game. There's not a lot of depth or interactivity to the story, though, unless I'm missing an obvious story branch somewhere. Presumably more was planned but you ran out of time?
Very polished art- and interface-wise. Reminds me of something like the Wire World cellular automaton. If you had more time, you could make some pretty interesting puzzles without necessarily needing to introduce more block types (assuming that two electrons annihilate each other when they collide).
EDIT: Also, for the record, the Linux build seems to work fine.
I love the colour choices and the ambiance. Good transition from cute to kinda spooky.
I'm terrible at tower defense games, but I enjoyed this one, and I love the premise/title.
Similar concept to my entry, but more with a more comedic & precarious feeling. Nice work.
Very pretty!
A lot of these binary-choice-based games suffer from the problem of having no clear link between the choices and their outcomes, but you definitely avoided that problem. I think I should have dropped below 0 fuel a couple times but didn't, but maybe there's a deliberate grace period? Anyways, I enjoyed the game.
The spider climbed into the respawn checkpoint and I got stuck in a loop of respawning & getting killed immediately. The atmosphere is good, though.
The lack of visibility makes it very difficult to tell whether you're going in the right direction, but otherwise I like it.
The art is nice and the gameplay is satisfying, but I keep ending up in situations where it's impossible to progress because the next platform is just a bit too high to reach.
I find that when you're moving slowly it's very difficult to clear double obstacles, so success feels dependent on the rng, but once you get up to speed the gameplay becomes a lot more enjoyable.
Probably the best not-monochrome-pixelart game I've tried so far.
This is definitely one of the best that I've tried so far. The art, audio, and story all go together effectively and create a great atmosphere, and the gameplay is fun.
With the Linux version, I get stuck at the title screen. It seems like I can't advance, nor can I exit without force quitting. There's a big button saying "press flail to fail" but it doesn't seem to do anything when clicked. Is this a known bug?
Movement doesn't seem to be working properly for me (Firefox), but the atmosphere is nice.
It gets a bit difficult to see what's where near the end when everyone is overlapping, but aside from that minor problem it's very good.
I eventually figured out the surgery part that others are having trouble with. The "pointer" of the hand is just a lot further forward than it looks like it should be.
I feel like there could be more obvious feedback on how well the creature is currently doing, but otherwise it's fine.
LD60 — Old Tech (22)
SLOOM by medvejut 2026-10-25T03:38:29Z ♥ 0
I really liked this! The graphics were nice and clean, and it felt more strategic than I initially expected. I did convince myself for a while that space could be used to skip a turn, when in fact it actually attacks (although this does effectively act as skipping a turn *when wielding the axe*), which led to me repeatedly wasting ammo for a while; I think maybe this was exacerbated by the fact that space is initially tutorialized as "open door".
Also, a fullscreen button would be nice (presumably you could just turn on the built-in fullscreen button option on Itch?)
Ancient Brick by wakanake 2026-10-24T07:35:39Z ♥ 1
The collage-y style is fun, and the animations make it nice and dynamic. Unfortunately, like another commenter I got stuck on the screen full of computers, and didn't know how to progress until I checked the comments here. I think that in a game that has not really be interactive until that point, there ought to be *some sort* of feedback for incorrect actions, to make it clear that the game is actually functioning correctly and that the player is supposed to be doing something.
I did like this computer that looks like a face.
pc_face.png
rdcrawl by hatmajaster 2026-10-24T07:25:13Z ♥ 1
Very simple graphically, but the limited visual range goes a long way towards adding atmosphere. I didn't really need to engage with combat much; I got very killed by a skeleton on my first attempt, but on my second end I was able to win while only fighting a single slime, and then on my third attempt I generated almost immediately in front of the treasure chest and won basically immediately.
Mammoth Slayer by runningopenloop 2026-10-24T07:15:45Z ♥ 1
I like the use of a 2.5D art style - it's arguably an under-utilized option for jam games, considering that it adds a lot of depth (literally) without really increasing the burden wrt drawing. Unfortunately, it does make the hitboxes on the Mammoths a bit less clear (should I be throwing from the side to maximize my chances of hitting? The aiming is kinda unclear). Like other commenters, I found it pretty difficult; after three attempts I still did not succeed at killing a single mammoth (though I came close once). The animation for getting thrown around by the mammoths is sort of a fun consolation prize, though, I guess.
The Lamplighter by NickoGino 2026-10-24T06:53:49Z ♥ 1
I really like the premise. It reminds me of the chapter from *The Little Prince* about the lamplighters, and the art and sound design both work really well and contribute to that charming feeling. Unfortunately I wasn't really able to figure out a good strategy to progress very far, particularly because whenever I tried to go from F to E I kept accidentally hitting R and resetting the game. I guess this is totally my fault, but I still got frustrated and gave up trying to progress further after doing this, like, 4 games in a row.
Lighthouse Operator by hammy275 2026-10-24T06:39:28Z ♥ 0
I also experienced the bug mentioned by @noble-goose . The location where objects are drawn doesn't match the location where the light circle is being drawn, and I can't tell which of these is "correct" in terms of the actual location of the objects.
ONE MORE CANDLE by lovecreep 2026-10-23T20:21:12Z ♥ 0
The UI is very polished. I didn't feel like I had much agency with respect to the actual gameplay. Good idea to integrate the music into the story diegetically.
Textolite by perrarancino 2026-10-23T06:33:55Z ♥ 1
Ooh, I like the procedural animation. The kinda awkward/unnatural movement of it fits with the puppet/robot character. Nice use of lighting and particles as well - very juicy overall!
Abataz by unpronounceable 2026-10-23T06:19:52Z ♥ 1
Nice consistent art direction, definitely matches the intended game boy aesthetic. I found that the timed text made everything take way longer than it should, so I got a bit frustrated with that by the end. I was able to defeat the king because my PP somehow overflowed to 255, but then didn't get so lucky with the God of Death.
da Vinci's WAR MACHINE by Fassenberg 2026-10-22T07:46:36Z ♥ 1
Creative concept. I found it a bit difficult to tell what direction I was facing at times, once I had the armour on, but in the end it didn't really matter that much, once I had a ton of upgrades (lots of bombards). Defeated the giant fairly easily. Could have done with a bit more variety in terms of the enemies, maybe?
Antre by bokanik 2026-10-22T06:55:49Z ♥ 2
The art and sound design are great, very atmospheric. Took me a long time to figure out the hiding in jack-o-lanterns, though; that could have been explained better. I also agree with others that the font is difficult to read, and I don't really understand what this style of puzzle is asking me to do; it seems like I was unable to interact with several of the objects? For example, it really seems like I should be able to adjust the radio in some way, but the slider at the bottom doesn't seem to slide?
Antiquus Labyrinthus by Trusty 2026-10-22T06:36:55Z ♥ 2
The music is nice and atmospheric, and the voice acting has a charm to it.
The Lost Rifleman by freamdev 2026-10-22T06:18:51Z ♥ 1
Very atmospheric but also kinda cute? It definitely has a lot of character. Unfortunately I wasn't able to beat it; I found the camera controls pretty finicky, and I don't understand the aiming. I feel like maybe it would work better in 1st person? Regardless, if you were aiming for atmosphere I think you succeeded, so congrats on that!
Torch Keeper by Boxofcuriosity 2026-10-22T06:09:03Z ♥ 1
I really liked this! The graphics are clean and pleasant to look at, the sound design is minimal but pleasant, and I like the splooshy water. The ending had a satisfying little payoff as well as well. The mouse-based control system was a little frustrating at times, but in a fair way. I feel like puzzle platformers are the genre I most mentally associate with game jams, and Ludum Dare in particular, but I hadn't come across any yet so far this jam (not that I've been getting around to playing that many games this time), so it's nice to find a good one. Great work!
Neolithica by nathmate 2026-10-22T05:53:23Z ♥ 0
The art direction is pretty consistent & well-considered. The sound design is nice, too. I was generally kinda in terms of what I was supposed to be doing, until I read the comments here. Had some trouble with the game not really fitting properly on my screen, too. But there's a solid base here.
I am Computer by Ioana 2026-10-22T05:31:46Z ♥ 1
Cute little classic roguelike. I found it a bit hard to figure out how to deal with the fish enemies at first, due to not being able to see how much health they had left, although I got it eventually. Not a very long game overall, but I had fun.
T.O.R.Q by BadPiggy 2026-10-21T06:35:02Z ♥ 1
Art direction is clean and consistent, as usual, if a little bit thematically unclear. Sound design was great, gamefeel also great! The difficulty felt pretty unforgiving at first. I guess I eventually realized that I needed to take it as less of a "race" where the goal is to go fast, and more of an abstract action game where the goal is primarily to jump over people. Even after I figured that out it still took me quite a while to successfully complete a race, although I did manage it in the end (my time was 56.64). Fun game overall! I'm usually not a huge fan of combat-based games, which a lot of yours are, so it was nice to have a non-combat-oriented game that still had that fast-paced action feel.
Waste Not Robot by jabzey 2026-10-21T05:52:31Z ♥ 0
The gamefeel is very nice! I wasn't totally clear on how scoring works, and fulfilling the recipes felt fairly luck-based, but the feeling of everything (graphics + art direction, sound design, the tactile-ish snapping of bits onto the robot, etc.) was very polished.
It's a Pipe Dream by dracco_0n 2026-10-21T01:01:36Z ♥ 3
I really liked this! I considered pneumatic tubes during brainstorming as well. The premise lends itself well to some interesting little vignettes, and I learned about a few new things (I like the abacus ring!). The ending was great as well. Very solid all around.
FINGERTRICK by alex-lumi 2026-10-20T22:18:22Z ♥ 2
The skeuomorphism of the controls resembling finger skateboarding is pretty neat, although I also found it untuitive at times (e.g. switching lanes by moving fingers to VN or RY, but then having to actually go back to using F/H to land?). It also seems like I would sometimes wipe out on flat ground for no clear reason? But it seems like the concept could be made more intuitive if it were dialed in a bit. Anyways, I had fun experimenting with it a bit, even if I was never able to land one of those 5-trick combos it seemed to be prompting me to try.
Notes on Ancient Tech by kristinamay 2026-10-20T21:24:23Z ♥ 1
This is really cute! I like how it integrates the worldbuilding directly into the gameplay concept. I managed to beat it, which means that the difficulty was reasonably fair. There was one thing that tripped me up a bit:
!> "entertain inhabitants" for the little triangular blocks threw me off, because the blocks are clearly too small to inhabit, so I'm not sure what "inhabitants" is doing here. It sort of makes sense for the VR goggles, but even then, just "entertainment" would have been clearer, I think.
I really enjoyed it overall! A very polished & positive experience.
Blackwater by Avi 2026-10-20T20:19:19Z ♥ 1
Very pretty and atmospheric. I know someone must have put a lot of effort into making the water/waves. The broadside shooting is a small detail that makes it still feel unique relative to other shooting games. Seems like there wasn't a ton of variety, but that's reasonable for a jam game.