Is this a tiger? by limered 2021-04-27T02:58:21Z
What utter customers those tourists are! And what a charming concept this is to make a game out of.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → AbigailCorfman
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | She Waits Below | jam | 179 | 4.03 | 3.64 | 3.99 | 4.32 | 2.73 | 4.30 |
What utter customers those tourists are! And what a charming concept this is to make a game out of.
Absolutely beautiful graphics. Also the idea of following an angel falling into hell is deeply poetic. I like it a lot.
The gameplay was satisfying, but the enemies took so many hits to kill that it got kind of tiresome to hack at them. And some of your utterly gorgeous foreground set-pieces blocked my ability to see what was going on. Maybe move them to a back layer so that the player and enemies are always visible?
Also liked the ambient music.
I cannot express the DEPTHS of my feelings. I have a major interest in mole society and hat collection. The implicit lore in this game is fascinating. Also, the voice lines are quite good. The duality of vulnerability of fairy vs root was compelling. Though I felt like the rodent ambushing the fairy was a little difficultly sudden. The animation of the root growing was very lush and lively. Thank you!
I loved the little goblin protagonist.
Levels were interesting and the coin side-quest added nice option challenge. It was a little frustrating to be sent all the way back to the start on every death. It might be a little more enjoyable if they only set you back to the start of the room.
This was very sweet and beautiful. I really enjoyed the dialog. Two Hearts was poetic. And I enjoyed how cheeky the dialog got at Dying Light. Needing to fix your ship there was a nice surprise as well.
I second the above note that the tiny planets were hard to maneuver over. That could be easily fixed by widening the range of sensitivity--letting the ship land when next to as opposed to over them.
The art was so simple and beautiful. I just flew around over the stars for a considerable amount of time at the start. The stars were my favorite.
A Ren'Py game! Delight!
Prescribing sunlight is a charming concept. The lore of this game is generally wonderful.
I smiled so broadly when Feronin summoned his cat. And his struggle with impostor syndrome is very compelling.
I think the game might benefit from more choices. The writing is good, but at the moment it comes off more as a visual novel you're here to read than a game you can interact with. I really wanted to follow that furry thing and was sad the choice was grayed out!
This is an interesting concept. It goes on for a bit long without variation. I do like the décor and Alice's butt is cute.
God this game is absurd! I love it!
The plot is charming. The simplicity of the protagonist's motivation really works for a bullet hell shooter in hell. The core gameplay is very fun--bouncing around and grabbing people's guns. The various enemies were interestingly distinct. I appreciate the rainbow-versus-red distinction between friendly and enemy bullets. And the game is so elaborately decorated--up to having voice acting which I appreciated and added a bunch to the experience.
I can't think of any improvements or serious criticism. Great job!
Hey. I wanted to play this game, but when I tried to run it on my laptop it was so slow as to be unplayable.
This was fun! My favorite detail was the light--only having a clear sense of what was right below me, and how that intensified as I went deeper and it got darker.
The difficulty curve was a bit odd, since I found the first part, with the homing fish, the hardest area, and after that avoiding the passive fish was much easier. I enjoyed seeing the new fish designs as I went deeper though.
I think I got to the end? I saw what looked like the bottom of the lake, but I swam past it and continued going down in absolute darkness. Kind of intense!
I also couldn't get doubletap to work, but didn't really need it!
In the intro the timer that only allowed me to advance after a certain amount of time was odd--and almost slow enough that my reading speed outpaced it. Are you sure you need it? Faster readers than I may be irked, and people replaying who have already seen the intro will definitely get impatient.
I love the art. Beautiful use of music and sound effects to bring out the spirit of the items. Light touches.
The note about how posters look kitch when surrounded by other more muted art stuck with me.
The beetle with the saddle made me smile.
PIGGY BANK!
I enjoyed the stabilizing influence of the clock.
In the second run through I stopped being able to look left and right. That may be a bug?
This was an interesting experience. I didn't entirely consciously understand what I was doing, but I had enough intuitive understanding to get through it. I enjoyed the shifting through levels.
A story about a courageous kitten and malicious aliens...
Fantastic opening. The art is lovely. The decoy is such an interesting mechanic. I had trouble using it since it felt like the cat attracted more attention than it did, but that may be intentional. Cats are more interesting than decoys, after all.
This is delightful! It took me a minute to realize that drinking water reduced the bar--my immediate instinct was thinking it should fill it. Maybe rename that status bar thirst or something?
The boss battle was LOVELY. I loved booping him to death with my snoot.
This was fun! I don't know if it's my inexperience with this kind of game, but using your gun as dual purpose weapon and propulsion felt inventive to me.
Gathering treasure was a little tedious. It would have been nice if they were attracted to me--perhaps there's an upgrade that facilitates that?
I never managed to find the shop and in the third map I broke out of the mini map through the bottom and started wandering and endless black void. I'm not sure if that was intentional, but it was very on-theme.
This is utterly charming. I like the sorting mini-game. The type-to-hack was ENCHANTING the first time I did but unfortunately got a little boring on repetition.
So good! So polished! So bunny!
I had trouble figuring out how combat works so I ended up just avoiding it. Once the jam is over I will poke around more and perhaps figure it out.
I particularly like the shrinking light bubble as a measure of the torch power--very intuitive!
I liked this! I think my favorite parts were the little bits of humor, like: "We Provide Refunds!"
I feel like I got stuck when I got emails from trying to get the movie tickets using Ogre? I got a virus that changed my background (delightful) but the other links didn't seem to work.
What a neat, ARG-like concept.
I agree with Nerzal-- if you expand the game it would be lovely to be able to copy the text from the in game messenger. Not necessary for something of this size, but for a longer game I can see it getting tedious.
I particularly liked the part where you had to watch a video to go forward. Neat use of multimedia.
Ren'Py represent!
I like the proportion of choices to dialog--makes me feel engaged to be making a choice every few clicks.
I got suspicious of my client at "MONETARY REWARD."
I LOVED the inspection mechanic! A slight graphical touch made the world seem so much more engaging! The slight audio touches, like the ringtone, were also great and I'd love to see more of them.
I have no idea if this person is an alien or a magician or an alien magician but I am very curious.
That was fun! I found the extra game of being motivated to keep heavier enemies on the lift to go down faster hard to keep in mind but engaging when I did!
The falling blocks were a little sudden--it might feel more organic if the warning shadows started small and grew to give me a sense of when they'd land.
I would have appreciated the ability to dodge or block--something defensive or ability to reposition. As it was my main defense was killing everything. Which is a good defense!
That was REALLY good. We started playing and we were like: "Oh fun! A real world horror game!"
Amazing mood. Cutting commentary. I liked the increasing complexity of the busywork mini-games.
I might speed up the pictures a touch more to accelerate the pacing and prevent people getting bored before they get to the good part, but I'm not even sure. I understand the rhythm is part of the feel.
It spoke to my ancient lizard brain.
That was fun!
The ability to grab walls and then jump with your axe was really neat! I tended to deal with the long falls by falling most of the way and grabbing the wall at the very end, which I'm not sure was intended but was faster.
The art was lovely. I particularly liked the flower. Beautiful. Very satisfying to get to.
Did the gemstones do anything? I initially thought they might heal me, but that didn't seem to be the case. Just fun destructables?
Enjoyable! Very mellow gameplay. I liked the intro cinematic. Nice cartoony style.
It was initially difficult to tell the difference between the background illustration, which let me pass, and the foreground illustration, which blocked me. I think it's because they're shaped and colored very similarly. Perhaps more differentiation would help? Or making the background more uniform and only having the craggy ship edges as blocking foreground elements.
Iby's delightful sprite instantly endeared her to me. The shadowy figures are nicely ominous.
While everything worked perfectly initially, when I reset the game from within the game, I was no longer able to shoot my wand, and enemies no longer hurt me. And even when I could shoot the wand, it didn't seem to affect anything? I loved the animation of it, though, so I did it often.
Good luck Iby. Hope you find your brother.
I would die for Fishi.
I accidentally saved Elanor before killing the anglerfish.
Jellyfish are scary. I enjoyed the imprecise nature of the controls. The fish all swimming together are very pretty.
It was hard to orient myself in the first few second because the walls and floor looked the same. Confusion only lasted a moment, but those are pretty important seconds where people are deciding if a game is for them or now.
That being said, as I play more I see the game is hugely about disorientation, so I'm not sure what to do about the above critique since I don't want to take away from that theme.
I liked the subtly changing lights of the halls, and the descent of the music into distortion was cool. The first time I saw the silhouettes was CLUTCH. I was like "What the HECK is that?"
This was simple, but hit hard. Well done. The ending made me happy in that achy way of earned happiness.
That was so inventive! And I had fun in all the sections. I think my favorite was the jumping (in the lungs I think?). The dynamic nature of the platforms--that they were always moving and spun when you hit them--was interesting to manage.
The combat part was a difficulty spike. I'm glad the character agreed with me--that dialog line was vindicating.
And the dialog was very funny. Loved the opening.
This is a delightful little puzzle game with rpg trappings. I really like the time/tactics balance, and I appreciate the framing story--it really motivates me to keep going.
I wish the game paused while I'm taking an action--frantically going through the menu is a little stressful.
I feel similarly to a lot of other commenters--I'd love to see an expanded game.
This game is EXTREMELY fun. One of those lose track of time while playing it games. I like jumping between the different stations, and it feels very natural how they're all linked together. The timing of the meteors/how long things take are very well balanced to preserve a sense of urgency.
The one difficulty I had was I couldn't for the life of me catch the uranium in mid air (as I think you're supposed to do?). But I ended up collecting it by making a layer of iron on the ground so that the uranium landed on that instead of the ground. Innovation!
It was rather hard to figure out what to do. Also the checkerboard pattern was very distracting.
We had a very hard time hitting any of the little ore monsters. It might have been more engaging if we could throw the pick while moving? Or perhaps we missed something?
I love these kinds of games, and your puzzles are inventive. I managed to unlock the ring and get to the younger man's area, but then I got stuck.
I enjoyed the cleverness of this. The anchor mechanic, and the requirement that you have it with you, was neat.
The first boulder puzzle was my favorite. Figuring out I could block the walls with the boulder was a lightbulb moment.
The sheep was very cute.
I agree with the above note about reducing initial enemies.
Would be nice if enemies took their turns faster.
Cursor movement and selection could be refined.
This is solid! Fun to play. I particularly love the different armors.
It took us a hot second to realize we didn't need to be right next to the enemies to click on/damage them. A way to visually indicate the range of your weapon would be neat.
Clipped through the left wall in the second area and got stuck.
The time-as-health idea is cool!
I really like this concept and I want to explore further, but I don't understand what I'm supposed to do once I've pressed space over a text box. If I press backspace, it seems to take the letters, but I don't know how to get Peter's letters back into the book. Help?
This was adorable! Great art. I loved the note about not getting distracted by the map.
I couldn't figure out how to use attack. Trapping the enemies in holes was fun. Found the key. Couldn't figure out how to open the chest.
Also sometimes holes appear in front of other items? I completely hid the chest behind holes, eventually.
I really wanted the walking to be similar to the digging: i.e. one click moves me one square. I feel like that kind of precision would make the game more fun!
Good job on game though! Adorable graphics!
@imdigitalji @mizatorian @snickers-cat @twigg @vincent-abel-grimalt @pink-spaceman
Based on your feedback about the difficulty, I've added a hint system and a couple more in-game clues. I hope that will point people in the right direction if they get stuck!
Thanks for the feedback and, if you have time, please let me know if I overlooked giving hints for any of the parts you found difficult. <3
@cheeks @mizatorian
Thanks for letting me know about the bug! Frustratingly, I haven't been able to recreate it. If you have any more details about what preceded it I'd be grateful. I've been going down to the web area and flipping in and out of the menu and inventory.
In order to at least ameliorate it, I'm implemented a more formal autosave as you go down each of the levels. That should keep people from being pushed back to the start.
@badabooom63
THANK YOU--That piece of information was what I needed to fix the bug. It turns out the transformation code doesn't like having two inventory items if either of them have commas.
It should be able to tolerate that now! Hopefully that will prevent more people getting lost in the darkness.
(MILD SPOILERS)
@ynneblack Not very graphic, I don't think. The image in the above screenshot is as intense as it gets visually. In terms of description, you have descriptions of the features of spiders (legs and eyes). There is one sequence where you can transform yourself into a giant spider lady.
You're this was an intense subject to tackle. I appreciated much of the language and the acknowledgment of the fraught difficulty of the healing process.
The music was very compelling. Really added to the tone. The image of the demon was very scary.
An accessibility note--the changing inkblots on the first screen, while really cool looking, change so fast it might distress or hurt some of your players who are sensitive to that sort of thing. Maybe slow them down or put up a warning?
Love nose guy. The bit on the platform where you have to jump the right way was very cool and satisfying. overall amazing aesthetics. Ending was a bit jarring. Great job!
There's elegance in the simplicity of this--the timer combined with pressing the right button. But there's no real feeling of progression. The numbers go up, but since there's no plot or milestones, I don't know what that means.
...which is a pretty apt metaphor for how divorced the stock market is from reality.
This was real good! One of the first games I've played here where I got that nice arcade thrill. I really liked the kill enemies to regain health mechanic. My only sadness was the practicality of survival encouraged me to slow down when my true desire was to scream down into hell like a manic murder rat.
The homing enemies are the worst! But in a good way.
I LOVE THAT THE ROBBERS ARE LITTLE ANIMALS.
I wish that I could toggle the doors/cameras on and off. On the second screen I closed a door and all my little burglars lined up outside it and couldn't go forward.
The darkness on the second screen obscured the menu buttons. Those should probably always be visible.