Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → alpacalypse
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | π₯ | Raid Simulator: A Raid Reborn | jam | 831 | 2.52 | 2.42 | 3.71 | 2.87 | 2.57 | 3.07 | 2.67 | |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | π₯ | Witch Solar | jam | 652 | 3.11 | 2.88 | 3.63 | 3.07 | 3.01 | 3.00 | 2.59 | 3.21 |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | π₯ | Lunglight | jam | 209 | 3.83 | 3.37 | 3.94 | 4.43 | 3.87 | 3.23 | 3.16 | 4.14 |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | π₯ | Magical Girl Danmaku Dandelina | jam | 372 | 3.71 | 3.45 | 2.71 | 3.51 | 3.65 | 3.68 | 2.40 | 3.42 |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | π₯ | Witch Courtier | jam | 440 | 3.70 | 3.35 | 3.80 | 3.97 | 4.05 | 3.87 | 3.14 | 3.88 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | π₯ | Witch Contractor 2 | jam | 1030 | 2.95 | 2.84 | 3.02 | 3.60 | 3.15 | 2.60 | 3.04 | |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | π₯ | WitchDelivr | jam | 422 | 3.72 | 3.57 | 3.23 | 4.25 | 4.01 | 3.66 | 3.45 | 3.80 |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | π₯ | Witch Contractor | jam | 356 | 3.71 | 3.69 | 3.16 | 3.77 | 3.41 | 3.45 | 2.84 | 3.63 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | π₯ | =< 1001 Nights | jam | 452 | 3.70 | 3.52 | 4.25 | 4.06 | 3.22 | 3.48 | 3.44 | 3.61 |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | π₯ | Witch Reactor | jam | 1289 | 3.05 | 2.75 | 3.65 | 3.59 | 3.33 | 3.34 | 2.70 | 3.46 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | π₯ | Raid' Simulator | jam | 1899 | 2.36 | 2.40 | 3.02 | 1.52 | 2.38 | 2.19 | 2.54 | 2.31 |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | π₯ | Express Without Remorse | jam | 1506 | 2.85 | 2.80 | 2.62 | 2.68 | 2.95 | 3.07 | 2.51 | 3.04 |
This is a fantastic premise, though it was particularly difficult for me because no scroll wheel on my touchpad. It sounds like you've already been tackling things people have raised so I hope you go further with it.
Great visual design but a bit obscure mechanically, and very small text (for me).
I love the idea of making a game entirely within the UI system, and it paid off with a great look and feel to this.
I like how the theme organically emerges as I go round and round with the dog.
It's so cool to see someone make something in a NES emulator. It's hard for me to find substantive criticism besides the point already made that it's easy to make the game effectively unwinnable as obstacles pile up. The core gameplay is really solid, and RNG dependency isn't so bad for something that plays a round so quickly.
Control of the character is very finicky because they move very fast on a small grid. But besides that this is a well-made and -presented puzzler.
edit: also, I stopped playing when my character got stuck in a block and couldn't move lol
Being able to affect your previous loop is a nice twist compared to most games with similar premises.
This game has great presentation and atmosphere in general, but the twist where a 'friendly' game element turns against the player in later levels was particularly strong. Great job and extremely impressive for 72 hours, especially in a constrained system like PICO-8.
Really impressed to see a multiplayer game, especially with a server from scratch. Good job!
I'm always impressed by these LD games that deliver a small, high-quality and polished experience, basically a small but complete game. Like others the respawn/transition could be a little shorter, though that's not such a huge deal because it's not a game where you die constantly.
Like a combination of Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy with a cowboy theme. I especially liked the credit sequence, fantastic job.
This is a really nice concept executed well, it's simple, complete and polished which is a great approach to take to LD imo.
Bug report: I had the game freeze after restarting after my first completed round.
I went around a few times, thought 'cute, I'll drop it in a moment' and then kept going as more and more twists appeared. Great implementation of a good concept. The intermittent drifting limousine is a good way to keep the situation shaken-up, too.
Small gameplay loop executed very smoothly, which is nice to see. Could maybe be extended with obstacles and scores if you felt like it.
The graphics are simple but come together to a really strong look, and the core concept and gameplay are very solid, even the controls which are often poorly-tuned in LD games. Only problem is after a couple of tries I was able to work out a way to almost idle through a lot of the loops and only needed to play actively at the very end. If you plan to develop it further maybe a random element could improve this, or just more and larger loops.
This is a great puzzler, a simple concept that can unfold into very complex situations. I hope we'll see more of it.
The core game is solid and looks great, and I like the incorporation of a leaderboard. Unfortunately I am very far down it because I'm touchpad-bound, but I think that's my problem - this game is a very natural match for kb+m control.
Very good presentation, solid core gameplay, but sometimes caught by enemies with little chance to see them. The approach to 'lives' is great (except there's always more people in the car visible through the windows, even on the last two lives).
I like how it's secretly a game about memorisation and precise control rather than solving a maze as such.
This is a very cute little game and the temperature control mechanic is quite clever. I found it awkward to pick things up however, maybe the radius for that could be more forgiving.
This is my single favourite implementation of the theme in the whole jam so far, good job. Frustrating, anxiety-inducing, absolutely cursed, fantastic work.
Got around to checking this out after the stream. Unfortunately nobody else was on, but it's incredible you were able to make an online crafting sandbox in three days.
There's a lot of solid puzzle games in LD, but this is the only one I've played that is also incredibly funny. What a great little game and kudos to whoever devised the gimmick.
Just the puzzles would be a worthy small LD game, but the twist really elevates it and ties the atmosphere and theme together.
This is a cute little game but I'm particularly impressed with the style. Those 3 weeks of experience paid off.
I really feel that 'The main goal for this game was to actually finish a game', we were the same in our team. Good work!
This is a really good combination of minigames in a coherent and very funny but also atmospheric package. The 'challenge mode' is a great bonus too.
Like a lot of people above I'm really impressed with how this game looks, it's beautiful use of minimalism.
I love seeing a well-crafted puzzle game in LD and this is a great example.
I can't run this but I really admire projects like this in LD. Thanks for adding a video, it looks like a great achievement.
The use of sound and lighting here to build atmosphere is really good, and the conclusion genuinely creeped me out.
Short but good and complete, the ideal jam game. Great work.
I'm impressed this bus company has Solid Snake for a janitor.
But more seriously, solid voice acting, which is unusual to see at all in an LD game, and kudos for the most developed take on the 'daily grind' interpretation of the theme. Nice job!
Of all the platformers-with-a-twist I've played this LD this is my favourite, it's a great small coherent game.
The monitor graphics effect here is interesting.
The player movement is a bit finicky, and I found click-to-fire a bit difficult when there's no other mouse involvement. Maybe worth putting it on a key too.
This is viciously hard even knowing what's coming, I honestly couldn't get very far (figured out the knight, but couldn't do the next part consistently). But the spritework is really good and the premise and atmosphere are pretty funny.
Good art, great music, a nice little complete game. The combat with the slimes was a little bit finicky and a drag though, I think I agree with the above that they're maybe unnecessary for what's mainly an exploration/puzzle game? I think if you have time to develop the game more, you could develop the combat more, or go the other direction and cut it back to give the other areas more focus.
Great style and execution for a puzzler, though slightly tenuous connection to the theme...
I love the setting and atmosphere for this, and the mechanic for the puzzles was pretty clever. For constructive criticisms, I personally find first-person platforming very awkward so I'd have preferred the rooms be less dependent on it, and it could have done with finding a way to more clearly introduce the core mechanic that you can loop carrying a box. But I know that sort of thing is tricky to do without breaking the atmosphere.
Good job with the lively animations and cute character models.
I have one quibble with the controls. I'm using a laptop with a touchpad right now, which makes it awkward to reach for the left 'mouse' button at the same time as using keyboard controls. An alternate control for shooting (right shift, maybe?) would have made the controls more flexible for people with different setups.
Also, there's no reason to move left or right, if you expand on this that'll be an obvious route to go.
@princesschoochoo I excluded audio because it was all third party (direct or generated), but definitely didn't intend to exclude graphics, which was all original by @ruruie ! I was rushing and exhausted at the time and must have selected both by mistake.
Disaster! I guess way too late to fix now.
@wendel-scardua Specifically, that's the harder of the two missions (which the player is dumped into at game start, but which is impossible at that time).
For me (running in firefox) the first note is a lot louder and harsher than the others. I don't know if this is intentional or occurs on other browsers. Cute little game regardless.
I really enjoyed the surreal graphics of the first section.
Nice graphics and it works well enough for something made in a single day, but the game seems to have a huge resolution that I can't display on my laptop screen.
This is a solid jam game. If you're looking to extend it you could give the player more variables to configure level layouts/spawns (as well as more terrain and obstacles). There could also maybe be a puzzle mode with smaller fixed maps and certain constraints/win conditions?
I really like how the humour sits on top of what turns out to be an actually quite dark setting and narrative. Good art and music too.
I've not seen a text adventure in LD before. How is the text adventure engine you're using? My co-developer and I have some text-based ideas.
The surreal escalation here is a lot of fun
Making a game in React is such an interesting idea, good job
@zkassai we were planning a series of bosses as you got deeper into the raid, but had to make some harsh cuts as the deadline approached :[
Great across the board, short and simple like a jam game should be but packing a ton of development of the concept into that space.
The mechanics come together here really elegantly to produce good gameplay and a great comic tone, well done.
It's very hard and very sparse, but I'm always impressed by these Pico-8 games
We've pushed an emergency patch to fix the game not restarting properly, and reduce energy thresholds that were set too aggressively.
Make sure you hard refresh if you're returning to the game, I had a lot of trouble with getting old cached versions when testing!
Looks and sounds great and good fun to play, but very buggy platforming.
I wasn't sure it hit the theme at first, but there's a real feeling of instability arising from the inability to stop moving. Could be a gem with more tuning.
A little frustrating, but just turning out a solid little game like this is an achievement in itself for a first jam.
This is a neat little game but I have to agree with the others that the arrow not shooting toward my mouse really threw me.
@madeline Oh no! Can you tell us which browser you were using?
This is a great little game with a great, innovative execution of the theme. Good sound too.
I definitely sympathise with getting your cool little machine set up and not having enough time to refine gameplay out of it - it's a beautiful looking and sounding little game with some cool systems regardless.
This was a fun little puzzle/city builder game, with great presentation. I hit some bugs when I tried to do this in the last level though: npClImn.png
In particular, the power-down sound never finished and began to run continuously. I think there's also some uncommunicated soft caps on energy production & storage.
Very clever idea.
I think the general gameplay speed was fine but the levels themselves maybe take too long to clear. A light jam game might benefit from a faster pace.
Great twist in NG+
The core is good but the movement is frustrating, which is a problem when time is so tight. I can think of two possible issues: 1. Diagonal movement. You said you excluded it deliberately, but the design of the game makes it feel missing, not absent. I think the fact that the gameplay and sprites include a lot of non-right-angle elements invite the player to think diagonally and then feel frustrated when they can't move diagonally. So more strictly square, maybe even grid-based graphics might have made it feel more natural. 2. Grab-and-drop felt frustratingly hard to do precisely. Partly this is just a skill issue, but maybe having objects be held centrally would have made it feel more intuitive.
Besides that though, this is a solid entry.
My favourite use of the theme so far hidden in a powerup here.
I love the animation for the gun guys. In general this has strong art direction, good job.
There's a bug where entering options and leaving fullscreens the game the first time on a fresh reload. Besides that, great job.
This is very finicky to actually play, and probably wanted larger areas to account for mouse jitter. But to make a whole game in HTML/CSS is incredible.
The 'Warning! The following features required to run Godot projects on the Web are missing: Cross Origin Isolation SharedArrayBuffer' error happened on itch.io as well.
This is good-looking and free of control issues so a great outing for a first jam. As a game it could have had a success state, or a more clearly communicated success state.
Also maybe a failure state if you do what I did and see if you can block the blood vessel entirely.
The cog in the nook in the left corridor is a good piece of level design, lets the player know there's 1. something down there and 2. more speed to gain elsewhere. Without that someone who missed one of the side passages might give up, since jam games have low retention.
It's not gonna get rave reviews but you squeezed a meaningful puzzle in here and the last paragraph of the victory card made me smile.
Worked for me in firefox! Throwing the box defeats enemies but they're hard to hit.
The big drawback is the frustrating jump physics. After trying it for a bit I think the specific problem is that you can't control your horizontal position precisely, due to the combination of gradual deceleration when hands off controls but immediate acceleration when pressing a direction. It makes fine-tuning extremely difficult, which is a big problem with the narrow platforms.
I admire any team with the vision and steel nerve to make an LD game for an obscure platform. The game is very delicate, but I love the pixel art and the docking animation.
Just stopping by to say I'm stoked you guys made it over the line.
Thank you for not limiting the power of the launch when zoomed out.
This is a crisp little game, good jam content.
the lack of a tutorial only contributed to the obtuse and miserable vibe (<- praise). I hope the gloop corporation makes me a manager soon, or fires me. mood rated 5. good use of theme also.
This is a cute game and I always like to see pico 8. I found the delivery bubbles scrolled mostly off the screen however which was slightly hard to follow. Great look.
I like the blocks of windows that keep things varied without being fully random. We just relied on randomisation for our window placement.
This is a fresh game with a good look and sound but a little difficult. I think I would have balanced it a little easier to start with.
This is very well tuned, the difficulty started to become unmanageable just as I hit 10k on both my successful runs.
Very cute little game. The score reveal in particular made me smile. Cute and/or alarming logos on some of the boxes might have spiced things up.
this made me laugh out loud so I gave it a 5 which I have only done a couple times before. thank you.
This drips with character but I had the same trouble as ruruie, the delivery is either unintuitive or buggy. But the art and sound design are top-notch.
I knew I recognised that opening musical riff. I liked Tower of Kraduul and I like this.
I do think the movement and hitboxes could be slightly more forgiving - I died plenty of times due to my own errors, but also some times when I felt like I was fighting to have my inputs properly recognised, or dying a frame/pixel earlier than I expected brushing spikes. The former is great, the latter was frustrating. This is a very fine-tuning type issue however.
Also, my muscle memory for controller strongly wanted jump and dash to be the other way around for a 2d platformer.
High innovation score here, great idea.
I loled when I saw the first train bearing down on me, real fever dream game.
The control scheme here is really good.
Great first outing, plays clean, challenging but not impossible opponent, no big bugs.
However, on the itch hosted version ause and drop package seem to both be on space bar, which makes dropping packages an odd experience. Also, the game only uses WASD despite being keyboard-only, even though most players are right-handed, which is a bugbear of mine. WASD is the standard because it's normally paired with a right hand on the mouse. Without that constraint I think it's appropriate to allow both WASD and arrow keys for movement.
Lastly, the game puts out various game data into the browser console window. I assume that's for debugging/dev but you might want to remove that when preparing a game for release just as a general polish thing. Not a big deal though, I only noticed because I took a quick look at the javascript.
This may be unfinished but what you have here is really nicely done and very innovative.
Besides the clever ideas this game oozes personality in its art, well done.
The spritework and 'feel' of this are really impressive over such a short time.
Nice little game. I wonder if it would be possible to put more emphasis on the tide and less on the pirates to match the theme more strongly but now I say that I'm not sure it would be at all easy to make work in gameplay terms.
We've all been there running out of time after doing the basics. But I thought the title screen and hangar presentation were pretty good and the music popped. For a critique I think I would have slowed down the enemy bullets but increased the quantity, but thats really just personal preference.
This makes a simple and innovative concept go a long way. My only criticism is the hitbox for the player/enemies felt larger than my instincts thought they would be, and the bullets smaller.
I love games that give me some kind of completely new set of controls, well done.
The presentation here is very good but like some others I had trouble with the controls and often pressed the wrong keys on the right-hand side. Maybe using shift and space or other more strongly distinct keys would have worked better? I could have gotten used to them over time I think, but for a jam game there's not a lot of time to do that.
The controls were somewhat clunky but anyone who makes their own engine gets big props from me
The controls were a bit tricky to get used to, but besides that a solid puzzler.
The minimalist presentation is very strong here. As people have said the gameplay is a little *too* minimalist, but I can imagine ways you could expand it with more time. Also, the feel of execution on what is there is very good. It feels good to play.
This has great pixel work and atmosphere, it's a shame you had to pull up the scenario short.
Obviously it's very short due to the constraints but there's some solid ideas on display here. The variable death text, the characterful falling animation, even just letting the 'puzzle' to win stand by itself rather than handholding the player every step of the way.
Took a bit of time to work out what I was doing, but it was fun to cause mass destruction once I got going.
I wasn't sure what to expect going into this but it's a really complete package. A novel and pretty good puzzle mechanic, really good graphic design, solid and extensive music and even decent dramatic writing which most LDs don't attempt and those that do rarely succeed. Great entry.
This is good. Pungent. I had to use some of the hints but tried not to. I think the puzzles were a little too obtuse for my taste but for a strongly individual game like this you should follow your own justice. That said the piecemeal, individually-hidable nature of the hints was itself very good presentation, letting people only compromise themselves as far as they wanted and no further.
The strong filter made the otherwise limited 3D very characterful. Likewise, the muted and sparse sense of the music, and the stiff presentation. All these things came together to create 5* mood.
I enjoyed allowing creatures to live and seeing them (all on top of one another, admittedly) abide under the window. A good small feature.
Technical issues: The music cut out after a while (half an hour?) and I couldn't exit fullscreen. Running the .exe on Windows 10.
I'm really glad I can resolve issues in my life by matching 3, it's much easier than what I was doing before. Thanks!
There's been a lot of drawing games and this one is by far the most innovative I've played. It's all very skeletal as jam game can often be but the core game idea is there, works well, and doesn't overstay its welcome.
It's very rare for a ludum dare puzzle game to be as well-tuned as this. Every part of this is excellent. My only reservation is it'd have been nice to have fullscreen, but I can guess that's tricky given you're using a custom game engine(!).
Good mechanical twist on the survival genre. I like that there's no resource management for the summoning (besides needing a crystal of the right type), it keeps things nice and focused.
I will always support PICO-8. This is very crisp for a monday game, my only real complaint is the hitbox for the fireball feels way too large.
This is like a perfectly formed sprint jam game. One mechanic, a handful of art and sound assets, all executed at a really high level so they're all you need. That scoundrel Carlsen.
I've already forgotten :v
But I showed a non-jammer friend and he made a good point: the invocations being in latin and repeatable raises the skill ceiling in an interesting way. I did a couple by memory from looking at them.
@alaah Thank you so much! We never expected a video playthrough. We're both learning audiovisuals and were pleased with what we were able to lash together for this entry on a focused vibe; we also had a lot of discussion about timer tuning so I'm glad that paid off.
It's true the King's dialogue is difficult to read. We couldn't find a solution we were happy with in the context of the jam, all the obvious ones (longer pause between rounds, click to advance rounds) would have compromised other aspects of the experience.
I promised to comment and I am a gamer of my word. The wizard sprite is cute.
Lovely voice clips and cute graphics, and the keyboard controls were very smooth once I got the hang of them.
honestly very impressive to hide a twist this strong in a jam game
That circle-drawing challenge is fiendish, how does the scoring work?
Some very funny descriptive text in this, laser and tesla towers in particular.
The graphics put a lot of charm in a small package.
Another ludum dare, another lovely cassowary puzzler. Well done!
So, obviously this is unfinished, but that's just how your first jam goes. So instead I wanted to say that visually you're onto something - the heart, the ground tiles, the title screens all look crisp and communicate something, and every sprite is distinct and easy to read.
Keep developing!
This is really something, just incredibly full of character and complex emerging gameplay in a tiny package.
I'm impressed by anyone who gets online multiplayer working for a jam, well done.
This is very good at selling action and impact with the effects, good job.
The sprites are very characterful here.
wonderful crisp little entry, my only gripe is it would have been nice not to back all the way to the start each time
This at its core is quite a clever twist on the horde survival genre.
Thank you for letting the game run when the window is unfocused.
LoopDungeonCrit.png
Very atmospheric with good use of light and vision, good job.
I had a bug (HTML5 Firefox) where the camera would continuously rotate to the very bottom unless I held up to override it. But as ever while you unfortunately had to cut material I am extremely impressed by anyone who comes to LD with a custom engine.
I enjoyed working out how to efficiently move my ants around each other and the map, but UX on selection and movement would be the thing I'd say to focus on if you had more time. It should be crisp and reliable to select and command an ant.
Unfortunately this was extremely laggy on my machine (W10, i7, 16+11 GB) for some reason. However, I can echo that it has a condensed charm.
cassowary_stamp_collecting_finish_screen.png
every LD I go to find the new cassowary. this one the controls for moving the hand were a bit awkward so I often tied myself in knots. however it's quite a creative mechanic. I would also love to hear about your process if you can spare the time.
This is charming with a good day-night cycle, though the longer slow stretches can be a bit agonising.
Had a remarkable amount of trouble with that last one, had to get out pen and paper. Very crisp little puzzler, just slightly bumpy UX. Maybe mouseover rather than right click for dog attributes?
I didn't expect that ending. One piece of constructive criticism that I haven't seen posted yet is that the graphics aren't integrated stylistically. The knight who crosses the map, the jaunty icons for the bottom bar, and the map itself (genAI or no, I appreciate the nasty fork there) don't quite fit together. Maybe a sprite based on the bottom bar icon for the knight on the map?
This has a striking look, but if you were not aware already: you can point towers back at earlier towers and create escalating chain reactions, removing the need to signal. I had to quit out because of the spiralling effects from tower cycles were blotting out the screen and causing slowdown. That said, it was fun to find that out.
Funny and unexpected at every turn, you had the vision.