Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Jacius
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥉 | 2004 | 4 | Infection | T-Cell | compo | Theme | 4.50 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Cl | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 4 | Infection | T-Cell | compo | 31 | 2.75 | 2.50 | 3.42 | 4.50 | 2.83 | 3.00 |
A fairly good implementation of the pen-and-paper game, but rather unoriginal. Some small twist to the gameplay, perhaps "Whoever gets 3 wires surrounding a computer wins that computer," would have added a lot to the originality. The isometric viewpoint would be nicer if it had better detection of which wire I was pointing to. Different laughing sounds for each player would help too. Multiplayer over net is a nice feature, though.
I wonder why you went to the bother of making cubes, when they are so small, and unshaded, so that you cannot tell what they are except by looking very closely. The sound is nice, not distracting. The graphics could be a bit more complicated, though. Having a web high-score table is an interesting development not seen in many games.
A beautiful game, very polished visually. The particle effects add a lot to that. The music isn't great, but it isn't bad either. The only real problems I noticed were that it is impossible to destroy a barrel that is not being tractored, and that the barrels cannot be shot. It would have been nice to have a level select, so as to skip stages (such as the training mission) when playing again.
The "Yeah!" effects are great, it's nice that there are different pitches to spice it up a bit. "Num num" would be funny, except the sound effects are slowed down too much to be very intelligible. "Game Over" is very hard to understand as well. The graphics are pretty good, simple but not ugly, and they don't really need to be any more complex. The gameplay mechanic (zombies + brains = people) is simple but fun. Being able to leave a brain for yourself to recover from zombification is very cool. The zombies sometimes get stuck in "corners" and do not come free, because they are chasing someone on the other side of the blocks. Other than that, very good. One does wonder where I get all these extra brains from ;)
Pretty good, graphically quite polished. The controls were a bit hard to use, particularly rotating the bonds. While the 'story' is about fighting pathogens, the game does not give a feeling of an infection occuring. That is, you are merely solving isolated puzzles, which do not seem related to the other outbreaks around the world. Perhaps if the hex vaccines grew or mutated each round (for example, you would start with 3 orbs, then next round those three would be there, but with 2 extra orbs), there would be a better feeling of infection.
You've probably heard this a lot, but the collision response with wall is pretty bad. It highly resembles the collision response from the original GTA, but that isn't a good thing at all. A little rotational force (aka torque) would have been nice, instead of merely bouncing backwards. It also would be easier to steer if you could "turn the wheel" while stopped, to get a greater turning rate.
It would also be nice if the level started with a certain number of zombies, and no more appeared. Zombie-ism would still spread from zombie to human with contact, but more zombies wouldn't just pop up out of thin air.
Still, the game is pretty fun. The particle effects when you killed somebody (zombie or otherwise) were quite cool, as were the glowing green footsteps of the zombies. The katana was a nice touch, too :)
A very interesting game, and the collision response from the bacteria (bouncing off each other) gives a nice solid feel to the game. Unfortunately many of the bacteria become unbeatable if you place the antibodies incorrectly (which can sometimes happen when a bacterium crashes into the antibody), and eventually end up with two open spaces, but on opposite sides of the bacterium. I hope to see this game with win/loss conditions, the concept is very good.
I couldn't move, because the arrow keys were not working; probably a side effect of running the game in Wine. The story seemed interesting, unfortunately I couldn't beat enough levels to see much of it (because I couldn't move). The graphics are nothing special, same goes for the sound.
A very fun concept, but unfortunately my expectations were greater than the actual game. When I ran the game in fullscreen, everything was moving much too quickly, but it was ok in windowed mode. The controls for starting a level and going to the next level ('s', 'n', or whatever) were odd, it might have been better just to use 'space' or 'enter' to do both. Also, while the game is about a virus, you don't really spread... there is always one virus, and you merely go from host to host. Still, you *do* infect the hosts, so I can give you a few points ;)
A description of what the three different weapons do would have been a very good time investment for this game. That is, for the small effort of putting some text about what the weapons do, you would have had an interesting playground for coming up with the best combination to kill the sheep. From experimentation, it seems that the green disease is highly infectious, the red disease kills the sheep after a short period, and the blue disease makes the sheep move and turn more. But, who knows? Unfortunately, many people would not go to the effort to discover this.
I don't know if this is true, but perhaps time could have been spent better by making a simple sheep sprite in the GIMP, rather than making a 3D model. It seems a waste of the model, because it is only viewed from the top anyway.
But, I do not want to give you only negative comments! To make a game at all in 48 hours is quite an accomplishment, even if the game is not complete. Good luck with your veterinary studies, they should help you keep all of your sheep infection-free :)
It seems very similar to LiquidWar, but it has a few differences: the ability of the player to directly interact with the protoplasmoids via touching them or using the missile and bomb items; the lack of purpose behind the movement of the protoplasmoids; and the seemingly random behavior of the AI infectatrons. Of course, a game written in 48 hours can't be expected to compete with a game that has had much longer to be developed. But, I would expect something a bit more original.
I'm sorry if you had no intent to make a LiquidWar play-alike, but it definitely comes across that way, primarily because of how the protoplasmoids interact with each other: touching allied objects heals, touching enemy objects harms, and if weak enough, the color will be changed to that of the object touching it. These mechanics are exactly the same as LiquidWar's!
Perhaps if more focus had been put on the items, and if a more original way of gaining units had been invented, this game would be a good in its own right, rather than a mediocre imitation.
The gameplay seems slow, and the AI movement very random (which, statistically and in the game, over time will average out to little or nothing). I wish I could give you a better score, but from what I've seen, it would not be deserved.
Very cute graphics, and the concept is good, although a bit simple. The end of a level tends to get very slow, when you are trying to get the last few squares, but do not have an active mushroom nearby... you must wait for the gophers to clear a spot, so that you can hopefully lay a spore there, and it can hopefully lay a spore on the last spot... perhaps in future versions, there could be more interesting levels (perhaps some stones, or rotting logs), and maybe very old mushrooms could decay on their own and provide fertilizer for new mushrooms. A nice game in general.
The game has viruses in it, but there is no infection going on (they don't spread), so I can't give you much for theme. The gameplay is simple and effective, although not particularly innovative. I liked the player sprite, but the wall tiles are very ugly. However, seeing this complete and running game, written all in Ruby (SDL is C of course, but the game itself is Ruby), has made me interested in trying to pick up Ruby again. The thing I liked most about your game was the level design: not too hard, but you still have to think.
Very neat and interesting gameplay, although the 'infection' theme was not as present as I would like. The story was about infection, but there was no apparent spread or infecting in the gameplay.
After further playing, I have returned to upgrade my vote! This game is really really funny and original, has sound *and* music, and is one of the most complete games I have seen this contest. The only category that was a bit lacking was graphics, but the sprites are certainly 'good enough,' and better than some of the others. Excellent job!
An interesting idea, although when I think "Nano" I don't think "countryside." The theme would have been more complete if the board looked like the inside of a body, or even inside of a cell, or something on a smaller scale.
Like you noted in the log, it is a bit hard to follow what is going on; I noticed that the numbers in each square change color depending on strength -- this is a start, but I think even more could be done to visualize the strength/power of each square. All those numbers are somewhat of a distraction, and while playing I mostly just tuned them out. It would also help the player understand what is going on to show the process of capturing other territories, so that it looks more like the process that it is, rather than an instantaneous thing. But, I realize this can be more difficult, and that there were time constraints.
The random map generation is a very nice touch, as is having AI players (however simple) but still allowing multi-play (on one computer, at least; nice for playing with your family and friends ;)). Again, a more nano-scale look to the map would be more appropriate.
The game is too easy, even on higher levels (20+), and the car seems to move too fast. There isn't enough happening to hold a player's attention (not mine, at least). Perhaps if you had to avoid hitting the healthy boys, there would be some challenge to it.
An interesting game, I liked the 'powerups' and the mix of different types of gameplay. (Space shooter, color matching, and more!). However, there was not a lot of "infection," that is to say that the viruses did not infect anything, they just appeared from the "infections"/generators.
Too bad it is not complete, this game looks like it could be really fun. The fairly scientific concept is very appealing, I hope you finish it up later.
The mouse doesn't work right when playing with WINE (not your fault, I'm just mentioning it), but I tried it on real Windows and it worked ok. Still, a mouse control scheme was a somewhat odd choice, perhaps a keyboard control scheme would have been better. But, it wasn't that bad. The infections spread a bit too fast sometimes, but I guess that's the way things go.
The download size is somewhat impressive, but the very large level.raw file is distaseful. It might have been easier to simply create a PNG or JPG of the map, with collision data either as another image file, or in a text file. Anyway, it's a nice game. Cheers.