Scratch Track by playvue 2014-12-11T16:50:00
A well polished rhythm game! Spinning record sounds quite fun as well. For extra hardcoreness you could make lanes spin at different speeds. :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → alfadur
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | Gridfold | jam | |||||||||||
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Room Service | jam | 476 | 3.29 | 2.97 | 3.65 | 4.35 | 3.42 | 3.13 | 3.03 | 60 | ||
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Sorter of Antiques | jam | |||||||||||
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Darumaban | jam | 468 | 3.24 | 3.11 | 3.32 | 3.56 | 3.18 | 3.21 | 2.75 | 3.31 | 72 |
A well polished rhythm game! Spinning record sounds quite fun as well. For extra hardcoreness you could make lanes spin at different speeds. :)
I quite liked the movement mechanics in this one, with having to watch out to not trap yourself in ice and everything. Being rushed by snowmen on restart though... :)
Impressive job! I kept expecting wolves to jump out of the trees though, would make a lot of sense. :)
Nice hacking puzzle! I didn't feel the single screen limitation to be really encumbering, more of a reason to think twice before entering a command. :)
Nice story, and presentation generally feels very polished. Also, story branch based on what character thinks seems quite original.
These are certainly very original controls, the resulting gameplay is quite refreshing. Well done!
Well done, the combination of attacking down with mobs' high jumps creates quite challenging fighting mechanic!
Very impressive for a compo entry! I found the platforming puzzles pretty engaging.
A small suggestion: it would be nice to have the ability to lock the cannon's direction. It's very much playable as it is, but when moving between screens using "cannonball flight" having to cross the whole screen with mouse is slightly inconvenient.
Such games with multiple feedback loops are quite hard to balance, so an admirable job on making it feel about the right difficulty! On the 3rd try after having more or less understood how the stats work I managed to complete it in 5 days 4 hours, but it's
*still didn't feel like being too easy. The art and music create great atmosphere as well.
Sorry for multiple posts, accidentally pressed submit too early.
Quite impressive collection of behaviors for the characters! No wonder it's very replayable, with all possible combinations to sit them around. Also the best use of theme I saw so far.
Nice level progression, I actually find the rate of making distinctions finer established quite well.
Very impressive! A sliding puzzle rises to a whole new level of tension when you're about to get killed by minotaur. :)
Impressive presentation! All the little detail create very nice atmosphere.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to solve the puzzle without the hints as well. It's seems that, along the lines of what torcado194 said, the design is at odds with the common setup for password puzzles: there's one item that has the password, another one that maps the password symbols to some other symbols, and the third item for entering the resulting symbols. Since the book acts as two former ones combined, there's a lot of space for possible interpretations (my most reasonable theory was that the numbers in the book are sums of the numbers assigned to a pair of symbols near them, but it obviously didn't quite work out).
Sorry for the long rant, I just thought it was interesting to think why is it hard to figure out the solution.
@Raiyumi: Glad I could help, would be great to see more of these puzzles. :)
> get back to work
That action doesnt apply at the moment.
:D
Cool adventure idea, I think if it was to be extended it would be nice to have some ways to recover a bit of screen zooming, right now it gets out of hand pretty quickly.
Nice, a very well-rounded game! I especially like how the King flies off the ladders when going up. :)
Nice brawler! The camera zoom/inversion bonuses are quite cool as well. :)
I'm not quite sure, but it seems like the characters would benefit from simple round shadows under them so that it would be easier to grasp their relative position.
Cool concept! I suppose it was already planned, but it would be nice to have some penalty for going too far off the screen so that the player couldn't just fly off backwards while keeping shooting towards the center.
Nice improvement over planar paddle! I too feel that it starts a bit fast though, it wasn't until the ball has slowed down to about half the initial speed after some hit that I was able to appreciate the ability to vary impact angle by positioning paddles appropriately.
Great use of match mechanic! I only wish the monsters would have some memory to follow the player around the corners, so that it would be easier to lead them in traps. :)
It's cool how the same items are used for different purposes during all 3 stages. Very impressive for speed-gamedev!
Great puzzle! 45degree rotation is quite unusual for a square grid, seems to work very well.
This is actually pretty cool! I think there's a lot of unexplored terrain with this tuning mechanic. Nice job for a mere 6 hours!
Nice entry, haven't played the original one as well, but I can see how additional mechanics add a lot of possibilities. I wonder if the grid could be put to even more use, for example giving a bonus for matching with 4 neighbors at once.
Very impressive level design! Especially the last level which is pure frustration in a good sense. :)
I must say the controls felt unusual at first, but after a while they became pretty natural.
Incredible job, as others have said it would be even greater given proper control feedback and more content. I especially liked how the towel is a bit hidden in plain sight with this art style, seems like it would be an interesting challenge to hide around other items similarly.
Nice idea! I think the gameplay would benefit from people having some inertia instead of beelining straight towards the cat.
Great idea, it seems like there's also a lot of potential for adding environmental hazards like jump pads or holes.
Very cool idea! The balance is the hardest thing to get right for this kind of games, so I think for a jam game it's balanced quite nicely already. I wonder though if there's a way to also make a meaningful positive feedback loop for Gaia Energy generation. Maybe something like ability to build natural wonders that give additional energy until Humanity reclaim them? Could make gameplay a bit more dynamic.
Nice puzzle, climbing over sideways furniture fells pretty original! The only minor quirk I see is that the puzzle interface is a bit counter-intuitive: the arrow points anticlockwise while the rooms rotate clockwise.
Nice idea with distance! As it's been said, it would be much improved by having ways to significantly reduce fear, that way it would be more balanced gameplay where action would need to be selected carefully. Great start nevertheless!
Awesome rhythm game! I don't think I've ever seen the ability to collect notes partially, feel very original. As others have mentioned it's not quite obvious which cursor is which at start, this ambiguity however naturally leads to the question: wouldn't it be totally insane to have several note-collecting cursors at once? :D
All in all, impressive job, good luck with making the next version!
This looks very good indeed! The darkness is a bit too extreme though, I feel that it would play smoother if turrets were easier to spot.
Impressive start, I feel this could become really great if taken in the right direction! Looking forward to see how the interaction with colonists develops. Also, when you mention how predators will attack from different sides, does it include attacking from above as well? :)
Some quality sniping mechanics in this game! It would be nice addition if the sniper had to escape somewhere after completing the mission, since right now it's a bit easy to get up close to the target and shoot without caring for consequences.
Nice idea! Apart from dead ends the generator does a good job on creating challenge, I feel I had to do just about right amount of backtracking to get where I tried to.
This is just awesome! Everything fits together pretty much perfectly.
Had to play it twice to find the exit from the End window. :)
Nice Game&Watch-like! The setting is quite unusual. :)
One thing I noticed is that either I'm extremely unlucky or the fish never goes to the rightmost cat.
Impressive movie props aesthetics! I'm not sure if it's intended, but ability to jump over cops and run away is nice too. :)
Very nice dungeon crawler! Would be nice to give player some room when spawning though, both for monsters and items. When a chest spawns directly on top of you and opens right away, it kinda cancels the effect of intrigue. :)
Great stealth game! Slipping past the guards and running off to hide in the secret room feels quite good.
Well done for 18 hours! I like the contrast between the ships on different rails. Shooting down bullets might be a bit overpowered though, I accidentally found a spot a bit off the center where it was possible to just stay in one place holding the fire button. It would be nice if the bullets had a bit more sideways motion to them.
Impressive job! Looks absolutely stunning. The fun thing is that I made a similar prototype a while ago, so if you're interested in additional battle-proven mechanics, here's a couple:
Some kind of demons might leave footprints that are only visible in the spotlight to help player track them down.
There could be windows in the walls that demons could escape through when they're about to be burned, just to enter back from the other side (I guess this only works when they're in limited quantities).
This plays quite nicely, if a bit slow, I would definitely like to see more of it! Though it desperately needs a log if players are to make sense of what's happening in longer scenarios.
While not really compo-related, I played the new version for a bit, and it felt like there's room for putting the command line to more extensive use. For example, instead of scanning a ship's engine automatically, there could be a two step process: first scan the ship to discover its parts, then scan a specific part to discover its state.
Also, it won't let you run "INTERCEPT MC-BETH". :)
With right levels, it's quite a solid puzzle! The road-laying theme suits it naturally, and the music creates just the right mood. :)
I think it might be an interesting addition to have a way to deal with unused funds in case when it's not possible to connect another village within the next two or more turns. Maybe an action to put them in a bank for a couple of turns, and use the interest to build more roads.
Cool idea, and all the hand-drawn assets look very nice :)
A small thing I noticed: sometimes the key spawns in the same "section" of the level as the chest. Making sure they're separated by at least a single wall could add some consistency to levels' difficulty.
More dragon-evading measures proposed above sound great as well. :D
Thanks for all the feedback! There's probably a bit more that could be done with this, but I agree that its scope is limited unless it's a part of a larger game that doesn't rely solely on technology knowledge.
@MiniBobbo: the description idea is neat! Although it would require pretty good writing to pull it off.
That was some significant challenge, especially climbing out of the pit. And impressive amount of content even for a jam.
The club swings kinda call for deflecting the projectiles. :D
This plays very well, I actually felt the difficulty is about right.
But for those 5-note runs, it does look like a colored letter soup the first time you see it :). I think I first got through it more by memorizing the sequences, and telling them apart by first&last notes of the group, rather that recognizing each individual note on sight. But after some practice, it does seem to become easier to distinguish each of the notes.
Another random thought, it would be cool if that 5-streak meter was also represented visually somehow, like filling a bar, so that players could tell at a glance how many notes there's left to hit.
The graphics are almost too good for a jam :D That's insane amount of detail in animations. The gameplay is solid as well.
This was very enjoyable playthrough, the story is good, although it gets kinda confusing when the green character still persists in beating you after he's already converted :)
The art suits the game pretty much perfectly, good job on that!
Pretty fun space exploration game. Took me a couple of runs to figure out how the different encounters work, but in the end it all makes sense, except that shuttle bait for enemy ships was somewhat unexpected. :) Still got only to 50 score mark though.
Nice graphics as well, simple style, but fitting!
Not sure how to explain it, but the whole evolving level thing makes surprising amount of sense. :D When you see it, if feels like a natural continuation of the gameplay. The platforming felt solid as well.
Only I think the spawn point for the last stage might be better placed in the bottom left corner. When it's on top, you can just press right when spawning and avoid the leftmost well and all the spikes automatically.
Great graphics and sound, for some reason the title text especially stands out. The gameplay feels quite smooth, though as SeaDads said, it would be nice to have the indicators somewhere in the middle. I found I couldn't track what's happening on the screen very well with peripheral vision, while focusing on the arrows.
The enemy variety is quite extensive. Would be cool if all characters had their own health refills as well :)
Nice to see an entry with painterly graphics, and outstanding as well! The cleaning itself was fun, especially when the levels turn into a real bloodbath later on. Layers of blood which increase cleaning time work extremely well. Though I too couldn't figure out if the traps have any effect, so a lot of units caused a seeming lack of control.
Very cool idea! As others have mentioned, it would be nice if the character could automatically negotiate the corners when it's a bit off from a tile center. Otherwise, figuring out an escape path and trying to follow it was quite fun. Good graphics, too!
Maybe stun traps that stop character/monster momentarily when stepped on could be a nice addition to teleports. :)
Nice way to present a story, and a great graphics. Would be cool to see a whole adventure in this style.
I must say the table doesn't look like in need of cleaning, even later in the game :)
Quite a bit of potential here, too bad the item crafting didn't make it. Looks nice too, given the limited space, the peasant's sprite still has quite a bit of character. :)
Pretty cool, reminds me of Boulder Dash, what's with all the stone blocks falling on player's head :)
Physics does create some strange situations though, like a stone getting stuck between a up-down moving mob and ceiling.
But overall the gameplay is quite smooth, good job on this!
Thanks for the feedback!
@tylerraz you're right about color, what makes it worse is that I forgot to tint the shadows.
@TeamScripta it's still pretty much the same workflow as with plain Javascript, I just don't have the concentration to deal with a dynamic type system while in a jam :)
@awesomerex there are ways to reduce the cognitive load using the order of items in the inventory. Actually it can even be reduced to memorizing a single color, but that's more of a design oversight on my part than anything :)
@awesomerex you're probably right, I might have placed too much trust into game over messages to explain what's happening.
@ragnta when they say something, it's really just a comment on what should've been done before they enter the room. So if a panda says "what is this X doing here", it means X is someone else's item, and it should've been hidden so that they don't see it, and so on.
@ragnta well, it's kinda neither, to be precise. Each panda has its own inventory, which is filled randomly at the start of a level (N items for Day N). Each time they come, they might drop some items on the tables, or take some they've dropped previously. Even if they don't take all their belongings back, they still want to see each item on the same table they've placed it on previously. And they never want any items they didn't bring themselves. I was thinking of having them actually ask for new items, but there was no time to implement that.
@yuigoto that's great suggestion on the sound of approaching pandas :D And actually preventing them from meeting each other is something that would add a bit of context to the game setting. If I ever manage to scale it to something more featured, that would be a thing to try out.
Nice fmv game, doesn't lose much in quality to production ones! Had to go and make myself a real life cup after completing it :D
The music is soothing, the graphics are nice to just look, and the whole experience is very relaxing. Looking forward to see how will the guidance mechanic work. Maybe some rough indication of distance to the nearest pixie, like getting hotter/colder? :)
Great work on what it is in any case!
This gets quite fun after grasping the various timings involved in activities. The happiness mechanic is a bit exploitable, though, I ended up lining the guests by a pool and periodically dipping them in to reset the boredom. Maybe having a separate weariness value per activity that take times to clear would add to the balance. I also caught myself trying to swap the held guest with a placed one and ending up grabbing both at once several times.
Otherwise, it feels very well put together. Nice and clear graphics, too, the happy animations are especially amusing. And the story provides much needed change of pace between rounds of hectic clicking. :)
A nice bit of tactical platforming! Maybe the character's height problem could be solved if the player couldn't jump as high, but could also climb on things :)
A cool idea, the available customer descriptions and equipment look logical, but something feels off in the evaluation,
for instance, some hobbyist painters like the museum tickets and some don't. If there's a deeper reasoning behind this, I can't figure it out. :)
Nice art style too, simple and clean.
Great snaily tale! Well written and the graphics are appropriate.
Got a bit confused at first, thinking that two storage fields are somehow different, but soon it started to make perfect sense. There seems to be some issue that prevents placing presents on almost full field even if the indicator shows green, but that might be for the best, or I'd have continued playing past 20000 points. XD
Altogether, it's extremely smooth experience, all details from 3d presents to queued elf commands combine pretty much perfectly. Outstanding job!
That's some impressive graphics, and with fluid animations! Vampire-throwing is quite fun, but it took me some time to figure out how it works, ammo counter would certainly help there. :)
I tend to like navigation puzzles, so this was very enjoyable to solve. Even more so with the incredible amount of detail put into graphics, with falling glasses and all. And props for a whole demon model put in just to indicate the level completion :)
I only wish the path dots were at least partially visible through the level geometry. While it's possible somehow to mentally track the path behind furniture, it feels like unnecessary effort that detracts from actually finding a solution.
It feels very much like an authentic classic adventure. Couldn't figure the solution even with the hints, but then it's not representative, I used to get stuck in the old quests a lot too :D
Nice blend of lemmings with action, feels both familiar and novel :)
The graphics and music/sounds are all very fitting, especially the splashing menu sound work great! Falling planks to signal the water streams are a cool idea, only it would be nice, if their generation was more spaced. As it is, sometimes a couple of them are created in the same spot at once, giving even more free water. :)
I think it might have worked better if there was some frame of reference, so that you could tell how far did the screen scroll. Before trying the color version I didn't realize there was scrolling at all :)
Neat idea nevertheless, looks like it could be fun to play with an actual goal.
I managed to find right items for all 5 people, but then forgot one of them when putting together the final solution XD. I wish there was a quick restart button, both reloading and following through to the end start to drag a bit after a while. Great concept, though, the mutually exclusive item combinations really add some depth to it. And the blink when getting a solution right is a real lifesaver :D
This was extremely weird, in a good way :) Nice touch on having to cycle between characters each day, adds a lot of variety to the gameplay.
This is actually pretty fun, though it appears that there's a high chance to get the flag from the tower nearest to the base, so you rarely need to go to the other end of the room. Seems like there are a lot of possible extensions to increase the challenge, maybe have the projectiles knock pencils off the car or something :D
Quite ingenious crafting mechanic, and nice closure having to put all those crazy devices to final use. It really feels like a properly complete game beyond LD limitations. The lack of a rollercat was a bit disappointing, but one cannot plan for all possible combinations :)
This was extremely fun, quite a lot of replayability here. When the number of items increases it becomes a bit hard to predict what will get picked up without highlighting, but that's not a big issue. It's nice how clear the graphics are, pretty easy to tell what needs cleaning. A cool idea with progress bar as well. Great job!
This is impressive amount of polish all around indeed!
Having damage reduce the timer is a neat idea as well.
Only the jetpack boost feels somewhat weak compared to movement boost, it took me some time to notice the difference.
Very meditative experience! Would be cool to also have models with some straight lines and a speed boost to go with them :)
That's one of the most original takes on a rhythm game I've ever seen, quite impressive :D
There could be a minor issue in that it seems to be impossible to fail the last obstacle, so players can just spam K without looking there. Maybe an ability to overshoot a ball by pressing too much, or something similar, would make for a better balance.
Otherwise, it plays quite solidly, good job!
@witchkun https://alfadur.github.io/gridfold/color.html :smirk:
@cottontshirtz I had this scrolling problem with previous entries, that's why I keep adding wasd as backup. Should look for a real solution sometime :thinking:
@Ace17 it's a small world in time, as well as in space :smile: