Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → adam
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Transform-A-Bot Chaos | compo | 313 | 3.38 | 3.55 | 3.28 | 3.38 | 3.72 | 2.54 | 3.04 | 55 |
The visual style comes together really well (I enjoyed reading your blog article about creating the textures). The puzzle mechanic seems promising - I wonder how much scope there is for creating more levels with it?
I like the colourful graphics and the music! Would be nice to have a bit more of a sense of progress like a score counter, and it's a bit hard to keep track of how much damage you've taken (is there any significance to losing a life, or do you basically just have 100 hit points?). I felt like the dodging aspect of the game would have been a bit more fun if the enemy bullets moved a bit slower - the difference between those and the debris is jarring.
Great core mechanic, was a bit puzzled at first but actually you introduced it gradually enough that everything made sense. Would have loved to see some more challenging levels. Graphical style was nice although the collisions felt a bit off due to the size of the shapes' bounding boxes.
I love the premise and the production is off the charts. Sadly I couldn't really figure out the mechanics - nothing much seemed to happen unless I got trigger-happy and started executing random crewmembers. And that airlock is begging to be used for something ...
Really great production and clever puzzle design, will be coming back to try to finish this one!
Excellent use of audio - loved it! The collisions felt a bit arbitrary - sometimes when I died I didn't think I was any further out of the hole than other times when I succeeded. Would be nice to have an 'accelerate' button akin to the 'fast drop' in Tetris for when you're sure you've lined it up, and maybe some way of varying the shapes?
You get a lot of value out of simple graphics and audio. I lie the way the enemies transform into wolves to attack although it would be nice to get some feedback when an enemy is defeated (sometimes I couldn't tell if I had killed them or just walked through). Controls were a little frustrating combined with the short draw distance - not sure cursors for turning and WASD for movement gives you the response time you want in a twitchy suspenseful game. Is it intentional that you can skip the knuckleduster?
The graphics are cute but I couldn't really figure out how the big and small versions of the laser worked. It would have been nice to have a bit more longevity even if it's just "how many waves can you beat?"
I like the premise - it has a sort of Lemmings or Lost Vikings feel. Unfortunately as many others have said I lost patience with trying the game very quickly since the lack of restart means figuring out how the mechanics work by experimenting is not encouraged. Couldn't work out level 3 (would have spent more time trying if I hadn't had to exit and reload the app every time!)
Very neat little game. The concepts were clearly introduced although it's a bit odd that square and circle limit how many times you can change into them whereas triangle limits how many times you can jump. I appreciate the fact that you didn't make individual levels too long since it's easy to make a minor slip-up and lose progress. Level 18 took me longest by far as the limits came into play on that one unlike level 20. It can be annoying when you end up with a circle rolling really slowly but you know it will get where you want if you just wait for ages and ages.
Running the executable pops up a window which then immediately disappears. No output at the command prompt either.
You get really good mileage out of a simple puzzle mechanic. Would have loved to finish this in more than one sitting so a save or skip feature would have been nice. Some levels take a lot of steps - a way to checkpoint or undo moves would have made me less anxious about pressing the wrong key and wasting loads of effort!
Nice overall vibe and generally simple-but-polished. I like the fact that there was obviously some subtlety going on with the sequence of shapes to make it not just complete chaos. I found it pretty unforgiving all the same and normally died as soon as I had to do more than a couple of changes in a row. While your shape is changing it's visually pretty small and hard to see if it's lined up. It's also difficult to remember which button is which when you haven't changed in a while - some sort of visual cue for that would really help.
Solid platforming, satisfying to kill enemies. The three hitpoints seem a bit of a joke since whenever I made a mistake the hitstun usually meant I was dead before I could do anything else. Don't understand the theme or what's the deal with the powerup that gives you a hat.
Really clever puzzle design, but it's frustrating to go back and set everything up again after it fails. Extending the interface so that I can rearrange the shapes I placed last time rather than start from scratch would make experimenting with setups a lot more pleasant. I wonder if there is some visual cue which could be used to make the direction based on modulo-4 more comprehensible to the player. A good tutorial would also go a long way!
Definitely my favourite of the physics-body-switching games I've played this competition - you've done a lot more to build a theme around it. The timing of some of the changes is quite difficult, and the delay before being allowed to change again made some bits frustrating. The parallax background and relative lack of detail on some of the scenery can also make it quite difficult to judge how far or fast the pastry is moving.
I think there is potential in this puzzle design, particularly the need to keep the cubes together or in pairs. It was quite hard to see early on how the position of the cubes lined up with the wall due to the perspective. It would also have been really nice to be able to fast-forward. I was surprised when I won since I usually expect this sort of game to last until I lose!
One additional comment: there's no need to distribute the .pdb files with your game - they just make the download biggert!
I like the idea but it's strange to have to guess at what I myself am supposed to remember. Presumably I should know if Mary is telling the truth. I found the "twist" a bit puzzling - is that supposed to be the reason for the first comment? Then who is the fourth character?
I assume the "solid clue" is the part where the player character says "I smell a lie!"?
Easy mode was quite fun for a few minutes ... would have been nice to find a way to make the normal and hard modes similarly challenging without needing to use numerical values for hue which makes it feel so artificial. I tried extreme and laughed out loud!
Sound is great and some of the graphical effects are neat too! I like the concept but there's too much going on to parse at any one time. I think it would benefit a lot from some sort of staged introduction to the mechanics. Due to the way the different shapes move, staying in triangle form, shooting the circles and dodging the squares seems better than ever trying to actually shapeshift. Minor gripe: the menu buttons on the title screen seem weirdly unresponsive.
I'm not rating because I assume what I encountered was bugs rather than the intended gameplay. I saw odd flickering of characters against the background and a progress bar which seemed to count down to nothing and then restart. I think I would have had trouble anyway as the game was too large to fit on my screen.
Nice idea for a variation on the Lemmings theme, but I found the physics frustratingly unintuitive - particularly the way the circles accelerate up slopes. Gave up the second time I got to level 4 after I ran out of shapelings while trying to get triangles to skid to a stop in the right places and couldn't retry without going back to level 1.
Exhausting but pretty fun! I think the difficulty is about right but it would be nice to ease the player in slightly. The pulsing screen when you hit a shape made the game feel a lot more satisfying. Definitely needed the numbers on the shapes. I scored 493 (eventually!).
I am intrigued by the idea but don't have the hardware ...
I like the concept! It's a bit weird how you can 'test' someone for being a werewolf by poking them with the net - it means you don't have to bother much remembering which citizens transformed from wolves previously. It took me a while to work out how the net worked - I thought I was waving it in front of me but really above the head is the 'neutral' position and to either side is 'active'.
One request: please don't make me use the mouse to start the game when everything else is done with the keyboard!
puppetmaster, are you talking about the helicopter? That was intentional, since helicopters aren't designed to slide along the ground! It seems to be confusing for players, though, so I think a better design would have been to make the helicopter lift off when you try to move sideways while it's on the ground.
You get bonus points from me for the name alone! I liked the mechanics but it's a little too fast-paced to explore them properly - it seems like anything other than absorbing and then subtracting means you get overwhelmed. Making 21 seems almost impossible ...
I don't know what to make of this ... the soundtrack taunts me every time my ball falls off of the near or far side of the platform while I try to work out how to jump ... oddly mesmerising ...
Nice clever mechanic. Would have liked it to be longer - I think there's more scope for puzzles and clever level design that you didn't manage to explore. I understand why health doesn't regenerate but the stress it caused being down to only a couple of hearts was at odds with my inclination to explore and experiment!
You get points from me purely for the concept of a 'werectangle'! Also platform physics which feel pretty decent which I know is not easy. I have to say I didn't really understand the game mechanics though which made the final boss a bit of a trial and error affair (I hadn't figured out how the rectangle's attack worked as I'd never had to use it).
Really clever use of the theme. I thought there was the potential for some interesting puzzles but I guess you didn't have time to explore it as much as you would like. Ice/water seemed to have too much flexibility compared to the others which made the final level feel too much like a regular platformer (although it was a relief after trying to accurately judge all the grass circle jumps!)
I like the range of enemies and the fire effect produced by the laser. Using the circle shape (big bombs) seemed far more effective than the other two.
From a usability point of view it would be nice not to have to use the mouse on the post-game menu since I'm playing with the keys the rest of the time.
Graphics are cute even if the enemies are a bit basic! Shooting is responsive but the controls are a bit awkward as I have to have my hands on the arrow keys, spacebar and mouse at the same time (can't use ZQSD on a QWERTY keyboard...) I like the wizard's hairdo!
I love the premise (best hole-in-the-wall game I have played) and the robot voice is hilarious! I like the use of the speech samples and the audience effect but I'm not rating you for audio because the music is such a big component and you didn't make it.
Main objection is that it's far too hard. I only managed to pass "The Redeemer" which meant that I ended up trying the same few poses again and again. (It's not clear why occasionally you get a new one to try anyway but usually you have to retry.) I also think it's a bit of a miss how sometimes the robot doesn't fall into the pit given that it means it doesn't add to the pile. Maybe a big scoop should push it down there like the lane reset machines in a bowling alley?
I thought this idea was quite promising with the different ways the character interacts with the environment. Unfortunately the movement controls are quite frustrating to use which means that it's difficult to appreciate any other part of the experience. In particular, the way you lose all your vertical momentum when you brush a wall makes jumping onto a higher ledge trickier than it needs to be, and it's agonising how slow the character ascends in liquid.