Deliver the Cube by peterfiftyfour 2023-05-09T13:52:14Z ♥ 1
Some neat ideas and some really sad misses! I'm really sad it's missing the objective system itself, having to take the cube to even random coordinates would add such a huge amount to this game and I'm sad it didn't make it.
Chill BGM is nice. The parts all look pretty good, I wish conduits could stack on conduits to make weird wiring easier. Lighting on the dark sides of the cube makes it really hard to place structures, and I found some minor issues where some tiles couldn't accept a tile for no reason. The metal economy feels a little bare bones and simple to manage, so wasn't super interesting to deal with. The energy economy was nice in that it operated on a very different axis to metal, but I'm not sure exactly how it worked since the game didn't communicate state very well, bringing me to my major concern:
The game is very uninformative, there's room for a game to let you explore of course, but mostly I felt like I knew what everything did, but didn't really understand to what degree. The force of each thruster, the metal generated, the energy cost of each component, how electricity flows, all of this was a mystery. It was nice that there's visualisation for active components which helps, but more info would be great. Finally, the middle mouse to rotate causes issues in browser! Gotat be careful with inputs like that and make sure your controls work on all platforms!
Overall really cool and unique idea, lots of fun, I made a cube that could fly around and turn in midair and it was super neato. I have a lot of criticisms above but I actually really liked this game and had loads of fun, the concept is super fresh and it was pretty functional all around, and delivered on the premise really well!
LD54 — Limited Space (67)
SpaceRaft by Bytomancer 2023-10-15T03:43:27Z ♥ 3
Really cool cosmoteer-like. All the weapons feel juicy and powerful and there's lots of explosions and debris and lasers, all around just loads of fun to play.
I do wish the player ship moved a little faster but it's a nitpick. Really enjoyed it overall.
Obelisk by Untitled Studios 2023-10-15T03:22:47Z ♥ 1
*psychically explodes your slug*
Interesting concept and very very polished, love the aesthetic and the music is a vibe. Great all around.
I do find it clunky mining and dragging and such, I know to some degree the sokoban-ness is part of the game but digging is quite a pain, it would be nice if it was slightly more easy to maneuvre and fuel up drills, but asside from that its a lot of fun.
Turrets seem rarer than gold and it wasn't obvious the player can just kill slugs by hanging out near them, I'd tweak those to make the on boarding process a little smoother and more interesting, but other than that it's really really solid. I had a lot of fun digging holes and pushing crystals, great stuff!
Incident on Outpost 17 by irwatts 2023-10-15T03:00:30Z ♥ 0
exploit.png found a minor exploit.
That asside interesting attempt at a twin stick shooter, some unusual but fresh visual style to this one, weird choice to have enemies be clouds but it kinda works and it's neat.
Lack of mouse aim was a bit of a pain, had to go dig up my controller to play, the control scheme is kinda wonky and optimal play is to hold the shoulder buttons and triggers down permanently which is pretty uncomfortable to say the least.
The overall concept is interesting, losing floor tiles as enemies approach is a cool idea, but the enemies are so easy it never really came into fruition for me, I just slaughtered wave after wave, and since they don't target me in any way there's not much need for moving around. Eventually I quit because I was bored not because I lost :(
Some good ideas both design and visual wise, but really needs more polish and iteration to turn it into a proper game, very half baked sadly.
P.S wheres the JUICE!? sound and screenshake and hit feedback! Juice is like oxygen to a twinstick shooter!
Great job smashing out a game in a weekend and submitting! Congrats!
Pyramyth by MontyM 2023-10-15T02:41:45Z ♥ 1
Top notch art and presentation, some great animation and VFX, but the core gameplay is a little jank, the character seems to get frozen or something regularly and I got out of bounds twice accidentally... There's also a really long delay between turns that just puts me to sleep.
The core concept is neat so I think it's just an iteration thing, more focus on snappy gameplay and responsiveness and a little more testing to spot bugs and you'd smash it.
Despite the issues it's really well done and the models are so good. Awesome work!
Refugees of Oblivion by arzi 2023-10-15T02:34:53Z ♥ 1
Really cool conceptually and the mood and vibes are fantastic, the UI, flavor text, sound and visuals really work together to sell this mysterious universe. Reminds me of cultist simulator. I dig it.
Unfortunately the gameplay itself is a little flat which is a shame, it's mostly just picking the right room repeatedly and the tooltip telling you how tension will grow takes away any thinking anyway, which is a shame.
Really interesting concept and executed pretty well, just needs more depth. I really like it despite the gameplay problems!
Great work!
Trash.exe by Natano 2023-10-15T02:25:44Z ♥ 2
Really cool and creative idea with some awesome art but the controls are really finicky and the fights feel overtuned. I'm not sure if I missed something but I couldnt delete any of the bosses after surviving long enough, and the word boss just kicks me out instantly.
I'm guessing those issues are just bugs or control scheme things I couldn't figure out, but I basically beat chrome and discord and really liked what I saw, just needs some more polish and tuning to make it more approachable and clear what to do.
Awesome work, I'm really impressed, great work!
Payment Comes on Friday by Tetracold 2023-10-15T02:19:32Z ♥ 2
Really great art and all the functionality feels great, picking up and dropping boxes is super smooth, good feedback and juice on everything, fundamentals are A++ but the gameplay itself is just so boring. Maybe that's the point but idk it feels like a waste to have all this great game quality squandered on an incredibly boring game loop.
Great work, I'm really impressed, congrats on submitting :)
Quantum Dungeon by Nestral 2023-10-15T02:04:28Z ♥ 2
Really nice visual aesthetic and loads of content but has some major balance issues, certain items are insanely strong while others are kinda useless. I'm also not sure what happens when the board fills?
I really like the core idea though and would love to see more balance tweaks to polish it up. The game would also really benefit from a bit more juice, item specific animations, more sounds and snappier movement so you aren't waiting for the character to move all the time. Given the already huge scope of content I definitely understand why some of these things are lacking though.
Awesome game, really really cool. Great work!!
Healthbound: Survive by LucaDev 2023-10-15T01:44:04Z ♥ 1
Interesting concept, some good ideas in here like indicating enemy spawn points. Variety in enemies was good and it plays fairly well.
The audio could use some tweaking, the guns feel a bit meh, it's serviceable but could definitely be better. The art has a nice style to it that I actually like, but it's let down a little bit by the boring grey background and the default looking UI. Simple art can be good if it's applied in a consistent way and I think if there was a simple background and the UI matched the characters you'd be golden.
Finally this type of game needs JUICE!!! I can't stress it enough! Screenshake, flashes, explosions, blood, damage numbers, however you have to do it, do it! With just a few minor tweaks your game could look and feel amazing so try and set asside time for it next jam!
Congrats on submitting to ludum dare, great work!
Boxes and Webs by Unentokku 2023-10-15T01:32:17Z ♥ 0
There's clearly a lot of effort in this considering how many features there are and how complex the mechanics are, but not enough of that effort was spent making things clear or improving the game flow.
The complete essay frontloaded at the start of the game in a color that blends with the background is not a great start, and the description on itch "Use Tab and QWERASDFGXC to control." does not really explain anything.
Some effort has been made to explain abilities as you try to use them which is great, but again the font color blends with the webs and is just an information overload.
I would say in future jams the best way to improve would be to slow down on adding features and ideas, and focus on making a small set of mechanics that work well and are easy for the player to pick up and understand. The game state is also quite obscure for the player which is a great place to introduce juice and feedback, walking into enemies kills them but also seems to hurt you, feedback such as sounds/vfx etc can be used there to indicate whether its a good thing or a bad thing. My gut says you aren't supposed to deal with enemies that way most of the time but it's not really clear to me.
Finally the game is very difficult, onboarding is already hard due to all the complexity but the enemies are relentless, fast and come early. A variety of enemy types, some easy, some hard can let you ease the player into combat without being instantly overwhelmed, and making sure there is room for failure early in the game to allow the player to learn are both simple but effective strategies for fixing those issues.
Great job finishing and submitting such a complex concept! I hope to see more iteration in future for a more approachable game. Congrats!
Societies Stranding by UnitedFailures 2023-10-15T01:23:18Z ♥ 1
Interesting idea, I like the visual designs of the planets and the overall aesthetic, the minimap is a good idea and dragging pods behind you is pretty funny.
The game is not communicated very clearly, I get that I'm meant to deliver pods but it's hard to tell when i have successfully delivered a pod or if it is destroyed or what have you, I spent most of the time confused about what was happening. There is also some kind of reputation mechanic that I didn't really understand?
Not a bad submission but I think more effort needs to go into making the game state clear to the player and helping them onboard.
Great work!
The Crypt by Yury Kozhenov 2023-10-15T01:16:58Z ♥ 3
A bit half baked for me, aiming and shooting requires rapid inputs to shoot the foe before you are killed and you have no possibility to kite or avoid him making the game a bit jank to play.
The visuals are not super cohesive with a mixture of art styles and texture scales which makes the game feel unfinished.
Skeletons spawning on top of the player is particularly unfair and I think easily solvable.
Hope to see a more finished and polished game in future jams, keep learning and good luck :)
Field of Flowers by AtlasFlame 2023-10-15T01:14:02Z ♥ 1
Interesting idea but mashing space is tedious and not knowing plant behaviour before you plant the first one is really irritating. Multiple times I spent ages saving up just for my plant to instantly die because I didn't know how it would work which is really annoying.
I also think the balance of the economy is off, it takes too much time to turn profit which makes the game extremely repetitive for no real reason.
Simple tweaks can fix all these problems and the core idea is good so I'd say the most important lesson here is to playtest and tweak the game so it feels smoother.
Great job finishing and submitting a game, well done!
Shrinking Space by Ruben Rosenmeyer 2023-10-15T01:02:39Z ♥ 0
Definitely some issues with difficulty here, instantly being thrown in with no time to get your bearings is a pain. I literally died in the first second of my first run which doesn't feel great.
The walls being color coded doesn't work for me, they all look so similar it doesn't feel like a meaningful enough difference for a first time player to absorb the situation around them and make informed decisions.
Overall just needs a difficulty tweak downwards, especially at the start to give the player time to find their bearings, difficulty can escalate as the game progresses but dying 5 times in the first 2 seconds is not ideal.
Some more animation and movement on different objects would also go a long way to improving the feel of the game, bright colors can work but the visual aesthetic is very flat and static, not much is happening asside from player movement, theres lots of room to improve there.
Great job submitting a finished game!
Small Plot Agriculture by SimonLarsen 2023-10-15T00:53:30Z ♥ 2
Awesome little game, I love all the personality in all the animations, so much character in such a small package!
Really well polished fundamentals but I did find it hard to figure out how the mechanics worked, the hammer was really confusing for a very long time but eventually I figured it all out. A bit more explanation on the clock could have helped me plan out my season better too as I kinda got surprised when the game just ended. But the fun part was tending the garden anyway so it doesn't really bother me.
Awesome work, really good jam game!
Pickle Packer by Tiseno 2023-10-15T00:17:30Z ♥ 1
I envision this would be an excellent minigame for a warioware style game. Very silly and very fun. I love that it's basically impossible to turn a profit. The only winning move is not to pack pickles.
Solarkid Sacrifice by SirMilkman 2023-10-14T23:45:07Z ♥ 0
Great presentation but definitely needs work on balance. Insanely difficult with zero breathing room.
Great sound + animation, good job. Go rate more games!
Wizard n' Slims by rickylee 2023-10-14T23:41:04Z ♥ 2
Very slick presentation and everything is smooth and well explained, loads of content. Really impressive work.
I have no real criticisms except I didn't notice the upgrade panel for over 10 levels!!!!!!! I don't know if that's me being stupid or what but I feel like a little more fanfare on it would be nice.
Amazing work!
Pack Your Ship by SpaceyLake 2023-10-14T23:23:56Z ♥ 1
Nice sub, would have liked a little more visuals like maybe some stars or something for visual interest but other than that the art is great, decent music and SFX and the gameplay is pretty fun. I got decently far but ran out of ammo. Scored 20 points.
It wasn't super clear what each item was initially but I figured it out pretty fast through trial and error. The cargo in particular wasn't really very obvious, I assume it's literally just what gives you score but it wasn't communicated by the game well, some juice on finishing a run to let you know you did well by bringing as much cargo as possible would be a great addition.
Great work!
Crazy? by Danial Jumagaliyev 2023-10-14T23:13:25Z ♥ 1
Not the most fun or prettiest or best sounding LD game I've ever played. But it absolutely is the most disturbing. I'm afraid of rats now, thank you.
Very few horror games have really creeped me out from LD, but this one definitely did it which I find hilarious because the game is also hilarious. I love it.
Great work!
LD54: Closed Capsule by Thvald 2023-10-14T23:04:04Z ♥ 2
Pretty simple but nice presentation and idea. Would like to see a bit more decision making than just going to a thing to press a button, maybe some light resource management or simple repair minigames could liven up the experience.
Congrats on submitting to your first LD! Looking forward to seeing more in the future, good luck!
Kill Circles by Rehdev 2023-10-14T23:00:52Z ♥ 1
Fun little minigame with great juice and feel, upgrades felt a bit weak and it would have been nice to have some classics like multishot or some other kinda powerups or abilities to keep it a bit fresh but overall it's a great solid little game that nails exactly what it was going for. Great job!
F.R.E.D by Mr_Field 2023-10-14T22:47:29Z ♥ 1
You made a whole immersive sim in a weekend and that's absolutely incredible.
It's so cool how different features interact with one another, trying different ideas to beat the slime in different ways was loads of fun, sucking them out of airlocks, burning them with steam, but good old fashioned space lasers are clearly the way to go. The enemy design is amazing, a really really cool concept for an enemy in a tile based environment.
My only gripe is the control scheme on keyboard is absolutely horrible. I'll let it go because the game is great, but the amount of times I used or dropped an item at the wrong time because the keys are all grouped together was ridiculous. I definitely think tweaking the controls could make the game much more enjoyable.
Overall one of my favourite entries. Go rate some more games so people see yours on the games tab, it deserves to be seen!
Sowscraper by Teto 2023-10-14T22:22:31Z ♥ 3
Interesting game, a weird juxtaposition of political story and comfortable garden simulator which kinda works, but it feels a little mismatched at times.
It was nice planting stuff and watching it grow, and learning from my mistakes to tend my garden better, but I did feel it's still a bit overwhelming. I played a bit of sandbox after clearing the game and wasn't really able to fill the space which was a shame, I was hoping as I got better at managing my time I could fill the garden entirely but it's pretty hard to do.
The interface and gameplay was pretty well explained and understandable, I think the objectives were very harsh but maybe that's intentional? Tooltips were pretty good but it would be nice to know if a plant is going to wilt next day, it's hard to keep track of them all.
Overall I liked it and it was a cute little game, great job :)
Space Bar โ Porter q(โงโฝโฆq) by Kuchinashi 2023-10-14T21:54:18Z ♥ 1
Neat concept with fairly good level design, nothing too hard and nothing too easy which was nice.
Protagonist is cute and I pretty much skipped through all the dialogue as it seemed to have no relevance to the gameplay.
Theres loads of art on each level which is really cool, a nice vibe and theme throughout all the levels really elevated the game.
A few too many pixel perfect jumps/teleports for my liking, I think most of them weren't really intended to be hard so I think the best way to iron out those clunky parts of the level design would be to playtest more, but this is a nitpick.
Great work, I enjoyed it :)
Limit at Infinity by APG 2023-10-14T21:26:19Z ♥ 0
Graphics are decent and the concept is cool but the game is ridiculously punishing and offers little in recovery options. It's possible to softlock yourself in any number of ways immediately which is kinda lame and there is no explanation for any of the construction options so you just have to trial and error to figure out what each thing does, losing entirely each time.
I don't think the game is complex enough that it needs a front loaded tutorial, just basic info for the player to make informed decisions early on.
Enemies also appear early, do critical damage and unless you optimise your build perfectly basically end your run instantly.
Overall a decent idea but I think execution is unfortunately pretty poor, I would focus on playtesting and user experience for later games.
Great job submitting! It's always hard to finish a game so don't take these criticisms too harshly! Keep it up!
Girder Panic by matt1will 2023-10-14T21:14:59Z ♥ 0
Cute simple game, would really like to see a bit more variety in enemy behaviour and spawning because the fundamental idea is good, encouraging you to be aggressive to keep combo meter up and prevent the girders closing in is a good core mechanic but the simple npc behaviour makes it a bit too easy to optimise.
Cool art and aesthetic, solid execution for the most part, great work!
Moon Settlers by Alex Duh 2023-10-14T21:06:32Z ♥ 1
Interesting idea, I think it would have been a bit more user friendly to have slots for buildings rather than trying to cram them in pixel by pixel. The economy also feels a little straightforward, not much to think about once you have food and water online.
There's also a bit of an exploit where you can place buildings in space.
I like the idea of having to destroy and replace buildings to manage needs, but the build time is a bit tedious for that and the clunky building placement makes it a bit annoying.
Congrats on submitting a game to LDjam!
wild maid by thyoi 2023-10-14T20:58:56Z ♥ 1
Awesome game, really nice polish and animations on everything, good learning curve.
Overall excellent submission! Great idea!
Shop 'n Block by Franci 2023-10-14T20:45:03Z ♥ 2
Cute game, I think there's definitely some bugs though, I ended up getting 20+ customers in a row that just didn't buy anything which flooded my inventory and I have no idea what I was expected to do in that situation. One guy also got confused and just never left the store and half the time the customers would walk straight through the wall... A lot of stuff going on lol.
I like the idea and the cat is a great way to add dynamics to the pathfinding puzzle but for the most part the game was a bit too unclear in what I was meant to do but also at the same time very easy as I could just drop everything pretty much anywhere and as long as I didn't block the main path it was fine.
Cool concept needing more polish, great job :)
Limited City by xCarl 2023-10-14T04:45:25Z ♥ 1
Nice graphics and functional but a bit straightforward and easy to beat without much strategy or thought. A few more simple mechanics would really help keep the game a bit more engaging.
I liked it and it's a finished jam game so great job!
Soffie's Tiny Garden by FTZ 2023-10-14T04:36:53Z ♥ 1
Great concept and good level design that teaches concepts one at a time and has plenty of little surprises and clever moments which is awesome. Most jam games have very iffy difficulty in puzzle progression (I made a puzzle game for a jam and it's by far the worst jam game I ever made lol) so it's awesome to see a simple mechanic executed so well.
Great work!
Tiny Kingdom by spider__the second 2023-10-12T12:19:00Z ♥ 1
Really cool idea, not sure if the aggressive timer is necessary though, it's a pretty interesting puzzle to solve but I don't have enough time to really make good decisions.
Great work!
Quantumine Capture by VicoXue 2023-10-11T12:45:50Z ♥ 1
the cats 1-53 better be sleeping or i'm going to cry
Packed to the Gills by npckc 2023-10-09T10:05:17Z ♥ 2
It's so cute, I love it.
The jellyfish are so cute. I think they are my favourite.
The concept would work really well for some kinda warioware style game and the vibes are so good, I love the music and the art, honestly can't find anything to criticize, it's perfectly short and sweet. Great job!
Whack-a-Soul by JavaSaurus 2023-10-07T10:46:48Z ♥ 1
Onboarding is a little awkward, once I figured out what to do it wasn't so bad though. Pretty fun little masher. I love the animations on the character and he feels great to move around which is great, the basic idea is pretty sick but the game feels like it needs a bit of tuning as the optimal strategy seems pretty simple and braindead but also nothing can really go wrong after a point.
Great stuff, good job making compo!!!
Exodus by Lachlan James 2023-10-07T10:44:55Z ♥ 5
Very cool game loop with some fun moments, events were a bit iffy but I understand why.
The balance was reasonably good but I think fixing degenerate strategies (running skeleton crew and never having resource issues) is paramount. The midgame was great where I was desperately balancing resources off eachother, but eventually I found stable equilibrium and smashed through the rest of the game.
I think there needs to be more ways for things to go wrong, more incentive to carry extra crew and probably some limitations on how much you can stockpile. The game is also paced a bit too slowly. Potentially turn based or at least a shorter timer would be much better I think, most of my gameplay time was spent waiting unfortunately. Oh yeah and it would be nice to color code resource icons to help identify them faster.
Great art and concept, solid execution too the actual interaction between systems etc. works great! No bugs!
Overall very cool idea, huge scope pulled off pretty well but needed a little more time to cook, great stuff!
Sky Aisle by ZeeHatcher 2023-10-07T10:40:51Z ♥ 3
Should definitely have a mood rating on this one cause it has great mood. Nice vibes, cool mechanic, started a bit worryingly simple but thankfully the b-sides were there with way more depth and playing around with the puzzle ideas which I really liked.
Love the visual aesthetic, chill skycastle is a great place to put a game. Good stuff!
Critical Core by Benjamin Halko 2023-10-07T10:39:12Z ♥ 1
Very cool arcade game, I love these super stylistic score attack submissions, there's some real depth to getting further in too which shows it was well playtested and thought through, different strategies have different strengths and weaknesses and it's definitely skill testing in the best way.
The music is great and the fact it's integrated with the game is awesome. Super fun entry, might play some more and try and get that top ten position I wanted so bad.
Into the Vents by Phaix 2023-10-07T10:37:25Z ♥ 1
Cool and moody, impressive amount of content for a jam, especially in 3D.
I do think it's a little flat with just default textures and could probably benefit from a bit more environmental work to make the exploration a bit less repetitive, but I think if you had more time you definitely would have done that.
Great work, next time you'll be faster and hopefully have more time to go even further :)
DONTPRESSSPACE by Nikaiaa 2023-10-07T10:33:44Z ♥ 2
Bizarre but very funny and creepy. Love that this gives us the Ludum Dare lore we've been missing all this time.
It did feel a little telegraphed to me and to be honest I have seen this type of thing before but it was executed pretty well. Excellent audio-visual effects as well to sell the creepiness and clearly a lot of work went into creating the full sequence.
Great job!
Introvertigo by Scott Steffes 2023-10-07T10:31:38Z ♥ 5
Very cool idea and I love the graphics.
Taking it at face value it's pretty fun and unique, but design wise it is a bit unclear how you are expected to win and what will work and what won't. Some of the prompt words were pretty hard to work with too but I don't think either of these complaints are a big deal.
It seems like parsing your response is also partially through AI prompting so I guess that explains why the responses can seem so random, and admittedly you can't expect it to understand everything so I think it's important to acknowledge those limitations when I'm making these criticisms but yeah.
Really really cool.
Oh yeah and the art is incredible, it sells the situational comedy so well and really helps elevate the surreal conversations the AI loves to spit out into some really funny moments.
Amazing work.
Bit Golf by badcop 2023-10-07T10:27:14Z ♥ 2
Really cool concept and executed really well. There's some clear thought in how the levels are designed to interact with the mechanics and the concept is fun.
Not much to say really, it's simple, fun and well executed. Can't really ask for more.
Contact Range by QueenOfSquiggles 2023-10-07T10:24:49Z ♥ 1
I really like the surreal visual style here and gave it my best shot but unfortunately there were so many progression blockers I couldn't complete it.
I think a greater focus on playtesting and stability to make sure the game plays and runs well is the biggest thing. Keeping the unique ideas and visual aesthetic is paramount because I think you have a very different design voice and that's awesome.
Hoping to play another jam game in the future with less issues and less clunky combat, but hopefully with just as quirky art and keeping the style you've got going, cause it's sick.
Micromachines by HolyBlackCat 2023-10-07T10:20:27Z ♥ 1
This game is a lot of fun and very novel, some great puzzle design as I had to think about each level exactly the right amount to solve, fun brain teasers all around.
The graphics are solid but sadly there's not really any sound which would have elevated the experience, but I was so enamored I barely noticed.
Lots of fun thinking about alternative paths and orderings and experimenting to see how they work.
The perfect being gives it's regards.
Crime Critters (Rob the British Museum) by Pen Island Games 2023-10-07T10:18:34Z ♥ 1
Awesome concept, sad I have nobody to coop with, the art is fantastic, the gameplay is fun, the puzzles were great and it's just very silly in the best way.
DARQY by Euler Moises 2023-10-07T10:17:28Z ♥ 1
An interesting concept but I found the lack of guidance for objectives pretty frustrating, the game is essentially trial and error with no direction or meaningful input from the player other than listening for foes and avoiding them.
Some neat variety in enemy sprites is nice, I saw a lot of unique enemies in my playthrough and the sound behaviour works pretty well.
Tiny Factory by AncientEntity 2023-10-07T10:15:45Z ♥ 1
Cool music and great concept, I think it would be cool if eventually sources/receivers turned off over time, so you are encouraged to redesign the factory to deal with changing conditions.
There are definitely some issues, it can be way too easy to lose at times even when you're doing well, and some spawns can just straight up murder your run, some small tweaks to make it a bit less evil would be nice in that regard, but overall it's fun and I really like placing belts.
The UX on placing stuff was a little annoying, it would be nice if I could click and drag belts and they would orient correctly, and I think underground belt entrances should automatically swap you to exits when you place one to make it a bit easier.
Finally the game state can be a bit muddy, better highlighting of which producers and items arent being handled would really help identify problems faster rather than hunting for the straight square.
Overall very cool and fun little minigame, loved it.
MIROH by Wendel Scardua 2023-10-07T10:13:00Z ♥ 1
Really cool mixture of games that works pretty well but I do think the maze and the polyominoes needed to interrelate slightly more. But it's a lot of fun to play and I love the art + music.
The fact it should run on real hardware is so cool, great work :)
Function f by Notinatal 2023-10-07T10:11:24Z ♥ 1
Really cool concept for a game I've never seen before, some minor ui jank with sliders not being ideal but overall pretty fun. I like that knowing the maths does actually help you reason out answers.
The music is pretty great and I love the transitions, great stuff.
Neptune's Wake by feor 2023-10-07T04:38:56Z ♥ 1
Interesting concept but very hard to balance and it shows, the game is a bit too swingy and the RNG of the passive sinking can really throw a game into chaos outside the players control.
I think the main things that need to change here are balancing tweaks to reduce the swinginess, make the sacrifice mechanic more relevant, and more obvious future gamestate (in particular the sinking) so you can plan ahead more effectively.
The core ideas are great and I enjoyed playing it, great submission!
Hardpoint by kankje 2023-10-07T03:54:05Z ♥ 4
Really cool concept executed pretty well, I love the vfx and juice but wish there was a little more in certain places, footstep noises and servo sounds would have gone a great way to making a good vibe an excellent one.
The balance is unfortunately an issue and the game is far too easy, the cannon is also plainly overpowered but the core concept and execution of it is great, I loved seeing the weapons physically on the mech and it was a lot of fun customising and upgrading.
Awesome submission great work!
EVENT HORIZON by JakubBala 2023-10-07T03:31:20Z ♥ 1
This game has gorgeous graphics, the visuals and colors pop and it's just a feast for the eyes. It's a shame theres no sound but it is what it is.
The game loop is pretty fun and I got a high score of 80 after trying a few times.
Really cool submission, I enjoyed it. Short and sweet.
Wellslide by Alfred Clark 2023-10-06T08:32:06Z ♥ 2
5878 is my best score.
The game gets much more interesting later on when blocks start coming faster, but the early game is frankly miserable, avoiding bats is basically pure luck and missing a platform drops you down way too far.
Falling a significant distance is also extremely irritating as the character fully goes off screen becoming essentially uncontrollable.
Once you get past about halfway the pace picks up enough that I'm able to combo through blocks and go a bit faster, but at that point mashing space becomes pretty optimal strategy which is also a problem, but at least it's pretty fun at that point.
I think more air control, more blocks earlier on, removing the birds entirely and tweaking the player movement/block sizes to make platforming feel more solid (i found myself constantly missing jumps by tiny amounts or bonking my head and losing all my progress)
Overall the concept is pretty neat and the visuals + sounds work nicely, but the frustrating early game sections make it harder to appreciate them.
Yarn by manabreak 2023-10-04T14:56:34Z ♥ 1
I like the mechanic's concept and the art is really cute, the music is great and the game as a whole has a great upbeat mood that I love.
I think the mechanic has some minor issues, it's a bit tedious to move long distances so it would be nice if there was some mechanism to move with the player, the level design mostly avoids the issue and there arent too many long distances, which is great design and shows you were thinking about the limitations of the mechanic in level design!
Controlling the box is a bit annoying at times, I've seen similar games to this one use dual control schemes where you can move characters and the extra mechanic simultaneously which can be a bit overwhelming initially but is more deep and enjoyable once you get better at the mechanic.
Finally the level design is pretty solid, theres some nice platformer fundamentals here done well, many jam games have poorly paced levels, or jumps that are tedious or annoying or with poor metrics, I didn't see any of that here and both levels flowed naturally to me. I think level design can be one of those things you only notice when it's bad, so I want to call out the fact this game does it really well!
Great submission!
The Dark Forest of Utharios by Elitemoni 2023-10-04T14:32:05Z ♥ 0
Congratulations on submitting! Based on your blog post it seems like this was a big achievement for you, so please know it's never easy to finish something, and even a game as simple as this one is incredibly impressive to complete in just a weekend. Good work pushing through to the finish.
I think there's a lot to criticize about in your game but I don't want to rail on it too hard so I'll try and give advice based on your blog post and my personal experience rather than the game itself. (which I enjoyed by the way, it has a lot of flaws but the frenetic pacing had it's own charm that I enjoyed)
Perfection is the enemy of done. You need to ship something eventually, and overthinking stuff is a great way to get lost in the brambles. Especially in a jam context where there are no consequences for failure or bad code (asside from maybe a game that's buggy... but cmon its a jam) you can try and free yourself from trying to get everything right first try. Just get it done! I know it's easy to say that but genuinely the less you worry about correctness and efficiency in your work hours the more you will enjoy the jam and the better your end product will be. Don't worry about it so much next time, take it at your own pace and accept that no matter how good or bad the final product is you gave it a shot.
Second, research and learning are skills that you need to learn. ChatGPT is not the answer you are looking for. It can only give you answers to obvious questions that have already been answered a million times online. Learning to search, which resources are trustworthy, building relationships with people who can share knowledge with you, learning to read documentation (and find documentation), sifting through blog posts and forum threads and online wikis to find people trying to do what you want to do, these are the skills you need to build if you want to learn more effectively and not get roadblocked. Next time you have a question you want to ask chatgpt, instead google it, find a few websites and threads, and get better at research, trust me it will pay off dividends in the end!
Finally I want to remind you again that it's a great accomplishment to complete a jam game of any quality. Great job and good luck on the next jam, I hope you have more fun with it. Learning a new tool is scary and hard! I feel your frustrations regularly when I have to pick up a new skill for development or work, it's a fact of life but you can't let it win, and once you solve the problem and emerge triumphant afterwards, it will feel truly amazing. I hope you felt that joy as you submitted your game :)
Grid Bots by Ayced 2023-10-04T14:14:14Z ♥ 2
Bit of a strange game here, the visuals are nice and crisp and make the combat pretty clear, but I think isometric is just not a good view point for an action game or twin stick shooter, at least not without a lot of care to make it feel right. Bullets are hard to aim and dodging is tricky, mainly cause of the isometric camera, and wobbling the isometric camera around as you move is a camera no-no I've never seen before, but it's definitely a no-no.
I really liked the variety of colors and environments as I progressed through, it kept me drawn in as I was curious to see the next biome, not sure what happened at the end, the final floor never came I guess, I fell down and the boss did as well and we both died and kinda broke the UI? It is what it is.
A nice submission and I think the world shifting mechanic was implemented pretty well, asside from visual issues caused by the isometric camera I think it's a pretty good submission, great work!
Critter Crunch by ScrapMetal 2023-10-04T14:05:06Z ♥ 2
Simple but cute, I got all 27 cause I refuse to let the critters die.
Next time aim higher! The vibes were good with this game but it's so small :)
Lightbringer by Kabura 2023-10-04T08:09:00Z ♥ 2
Excellent polish and juice in this game, very consistently high quality pixel art and nice animations on everything! The core concept is a great starting place, but I found myself a little disappointed that the torch mechanic felt like it was encouraging me to explore and find stuff, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything to find.
I think the difficulty needed to ramp up a bit, I found a position on the map I could stand still and shoot basically every enemy approaching and never be in any danger which is a shame.
Overall it's simple, well implemented and very nice looking and feeling, I think it's a great submission, awesome work!
Scorched Asteroids! by svkj 2023-10-04T07:57:08Z ♥ 1
This is a genius idea, I'm shocked I've never something like this before! It feels pretty solid, the movement is a little wobbley but feels bug free which I think is impressive, it must have been tricky to calculate the movement paths.
Graphics are simple but nicely made which I think suits the game perfectly, a shame there's no AI so I couldn't really play it, but I imagine it's good fun. Hard to screw up a great formula like scorched earth.
My only gripe is the aiming system feels a bit clunky and unintuitive, I prefer the classic style where you manually adjust angle and force by holding keys.
Overall a great little jam game that nails it's scope perfectly, great work!
Poe's Woe by Carlos Murillo 2023-10-04T07:48:53Z ♥ 3
Some nice environmental design even if the assets aren't produced by your team, the lighting transitions and visual design of the levels themselves was pretty pleasing.
In terms of platforming there are a few annoying close to pixel perfect jumps I'm not a fan of, and a few places where it's not clear you can make a jump until you try it, or you bonk your head doing a jump. All of these feel clunky and should be avoided in a platformer.
The character controller is a bit weird. I noticed a few weird issues where I would lose all speed while walking occasionally, and the character collider being a capsule makes corner collisions while platforming unwieldy. The actual accel/decel/handling of the character feels good, it's just some weirdness with collision that hurts it.
Another thing is the character animations feel very off? The timing of the animations doesn't really line up with the gamestate properly, for instance the jump and landing animations are much longer than it feels like they should be.
Overall a decent little metroidvania platformer, I think most of my criticisms are easily fixed by iteration so that's my main tip! Iterate iterate iterate! Play the game and make tweaks! Congratulations on finishing your game! Great job!
Super Earth Spacer by OWC 2023-10-03T13:35:23Z ♥ 1
Great juice and use of sound + music, really nice art and lots of vfx etc and it all just feels great, I think it's really solid!
Unfortunately the design is pretty questionable, from the get-go it's kinda easy for the player to abuse the level design system to spawn all the enemies far away where they can't get to you, there's little incentive to actually build interesting levels and I think the biggest problem is the enemy designs don't quite work with the concept. It would be much more interesting to have enemies that could spawn, destroy or transmute tiles, so the level is changing not just because of the player, which would also mitigate the player being able to create kill traps. Another strategy might be to have enemies get stronger if they are close together to punish kill boxes. Leaning into mechanics along those lines would really elevate this from a juicy jam game with nice art to something much more exciting to play.
That's strictly a design complaint though! Everything else is great! It's solid and I have not much to say on anything other than the design because every other part of the game is so solid! Awesome work!!
Rocket of Sand by Paul-Maxime 2023-10-03T13:22:40Z ♥ 3
Cool game, a bit easy to optimize but balanced well enough, it definitely felt like a close call at the end. The graphics are quite cute, theres some minor issues with overlapping sprites but it's not a big deal, great use of music and the build up to the end is great.
Solid cute and fun little game, great work!
Metagirls by MetaGen 2023-10-03T13:14:22Z ♥ 1
I'm terrible at shmups sadly but this was pretty cool, I found a few things weird or confusing, after a few runs it clicked, but I think minor tweaks could really help the onboarding:
-There's no sound or visual when you take damage, making it hard to know when you make a mistake
-When you die the game stops immediately, so if you aren't looking at the ship/girl you won't actually know what hit you
-It feels like I should leave the yellow zone as soon as the centre of my character passes over it, rather than the entire hitbox.
-It's hard to differentiate enemy projectiles from their target position sometimes, I think bullets should look a bit different
These are pretty minor nitpicks though and I enjoyed the nice retro aesthetic of the chunky rgb colors and the tune was nice as well. Cool game and great work! Making shmups is hard in a jam! I made one a while back and making the levels was the hardest part, so great work there :)
Riven by JunaGames 2023-10-03T12:38:16Z ♥ 2
Cute little game, fun game loop I haven't seen before, mostly intuitive although the kraken was a bit hard to understand at first. I'm guessing the growing circle is a placeholder for an animation of the kraken approaching? or maybe it's meant to be a shadow under the water? I didn't really notice the circle until my 3rd or 4th death.
It's a little brutal and I wish it escalated more than being completely static? as far as I can tell the only progression was a point where the buoys teleported, its pretty rough in the first few seconds, but quite fun once you get a handle on it. I also wish there was a little bit of music to set the mood, but it's not a big deal.
I love the animations for the ship dying! They need a little elbow grease but the heart of them is there and it's super cute.
Nice submission, great work!
Space Invearthion by mspecter 2023-10-03T12:17:31Z ♥ 3
Really great art and the music is pretty cool, the background art is really really cool, the cute color palette makes the game pop so well and I was definitely jamming to the music.
Unfortunately it's not really playable? Grabbing asteroids was really inconsistent, I couldn't figure it out at all, and I'm not sure if you can win or lose? I got softlocked holding an asteroid I couldnt throw again after killing 10 or 12 aliens.
It would have been great to have a little bit of juice on the interactions to make them feel a bit nicer, explosions when enemies die, a sound when the player shoots or sucks an asteroid in, and some screenshake would be sweet!
Overall I think it's great looking and a really good concept for a game, it's unfortunate the gameplay wasn't quite there this time, but there's always another jam!
Tinycrawl by ehgoodenough 2023-10-03T12:01:26Z ♥ 0
Very cute little game, nice juice on movement and super intuitive controls. I enjoyed it! Turns could probably end automatically when you are done moving, and also enemies were a bit hard to tell apart from my soldiers, more color or maybe a separate base sprite for enemies probably could have helped there, but pretty minor nitpick.
The sprites and music didn't stream well over the internet! i got ambushed 2 or 3 times by enemies that weren't visible because their sprite hadn't downloaded!!! the music also cut out repeatedly I assume because it was loading too slowly, it was a shame because everything else in the game was so solid.
Really great little jam game, I'm a fan!