anchorlight

Collective Restraint by ThePelranthean 2020-10-07T03:04:05Z

This is a pretty solid proof of concept! If I had one complaint, it's that the rogue bots really don't pose any threat to the player, and that moving the bots can feel like a chore. Also, thank you for disabling SteamVR. It's been a little bit frustrating having it come online every time I open up a LD UE4 game :laughing:

If you were to expand on this idea, I would potentially experiment with a faster-paced take on the game. Add a mission time limit, increase the capturebots' move speed, and maybe use the Capture mechanic as a way to actually make use of the rogues' special abilities as a new bot. Building on that, you could have combat bots that pose a direct threat to the player but are immensely useful if captured, and there could be missions that require minimal manufacturer property damage or require that you entirely purge a certain type of robot using your hijacked combat droids.

Since you went out of your way to render an entire dome, I wonder if you could also have levels that put robots on catwalks or glass floors above you so that you can capture them by forming up right below them.

Just throwing some things at the wall at the end of the day. I wish there were some audio to go with the game, but I like the core mechanic you put together and definitely feel like it has potential.

RevolveWare by Fatsheep 2020-10-08T17:21:32Z

Between that chunky and charmingly hideous 90s CGI, the careful use of programmer noises, and MIDI music, everything about the presentation is 200% solid. That, and being a WarioWare clone, it really nails the spirit of the original though I wish there were a few minigames that went further into the absurd. If you were to extend this, could you perhaps add mouse input to certain microgames?

If I had any criticism, I think the hoop minigame isn't particularly engaging, and may be better if there was a longer recovery between swings. This would force you to time it instead of mindlessly mashing a button. I also think there needs to be a little more feedback when the hoop is in range.

The music is a little boring and slow when the game is just starting, though this isn't a problem once the tempo picks up with the speed.

Just to show you how desperate I am to find **something** to criticize here, the "Speed Up!" sign also has a few artifacts to the right of where it shows up. The glow cuts off just a bit if you pay attention to the sign.

Okay, one more criticism. I would have liked another little song during each microgame, much like WarioWare. Bonus points if you get a kazoo cover of a legally distinct Battle of Yavin for the starfighter!

I'm really just nitpicking at the end of the day, this was nearly 5 stars across the board. Well done!

Recursion by DrunkardWolf 2020-10-07T02:53:23Z

This is the first game I've ever given a 5/5 for every single category. I am in awe of what you've pulled off here.

Since I feel obligated to nitpick, the AI felt a little like it couldn't handle quick turns, which worked out in my favor. I also feel like the gun sound effect could have used a little more bass.

I absolutely love non-euclidean nonsense, and every aspect of this game down to the aesthetic and tone is 100% on point. I have no real criticism. This is easily the best game I've played on LD.

cameo.png

I also want to give a shoutout to pushbox.blend for putting in a quality performance for more than one project this year. What an incredibly talented actor! :laughing:

Lights Out on Pluto by cad 2020-10-07T01:34:23Z

The visuals, animation, and audio here are stellar (har har). I really appreciate the little victory/fail state animations on the ending screen. I do wish there was a little more ambience to the audio, though.

My biggest complaint is probably the fact that it seemed like you can't pull airlock switches once you have a flamethrower. I haven't really investigated if this is intentional or a bug.

I also got the flamethrower to pick up as an invisible object once, not sure how it happened.

I liked the beast AI and how you can successfully outrun it depending on how you approach the environments, and I once accidentally doomed myself by pulling the airlock helm switch and getting cornered right where the doors seal off.

I do have one major bug report, however. Your game is launching SteamVR when I boot it up on my system. This is a default behavior to my knowledge and a gripe I have with a lot of Unreal Engine 4 games. If possible, a patch to remove SteamVR functionality would be greatly appreciated.

Good work!

Endless Assault by Mau Zer 2020-10-27T04:52:38Z

It's a nice and functional tower defense, and considering how I bailed on my own tower defense idea, I respect the work it took to not only get everything functioning but creating a good and well-balanced game flow. I appreciate the pressure between trying to support long-term income upgrades and affording new turrets.

If I had one major complaint, it's the fact that airborne enemies can be an instant failstate if you have not deployed an anti-air turret. This feels like an oversight, as a single drone enemy can carry more weight than an entire army as opposed to being a nuisance you weren't prepared for.

I also would recommend adding a night-time music track, as the peaceful ambience works great for building but is rather out of place when the lights go out.

The fact that you even included QoL features is awesome! I greatly appreciated being able to increase the simulation speed during combat, though I wish this automatically reset back to speed 1 during the building phase.

I'd love to see where this project goes beyond LD!

Mobius by testuser 2020-10-05T02:17:27Z

Great work on this!

If I had to give any feedback, I'd say my main issues are that the mouse input feels a little temperamental, and could use some smoothing. I also found that I was facing frequent stuttering at the center of rooms, pausing the game for seconds at a time... that said, it's hard to say whether that stuttering is on my end, the game, or WebGL limitations. I also would have liked to see a little more verticality to the game, though I don't know how feasible this would have been for a compo.

I'm definitely interested in seeing where this goes!

Red Snow: The Thirteen Dwarves by undefinist 2020-10-19T17:09:26Z

There's a lot to love about this entry. I do have a few notes, though.

For one, I would highly advise adding some invisible walls to the outer edges of the map. I walked downwards for roughly a minute before turning back. I'm a massive hypocrite for stating this one, but I would recommend giving a better tooltip for the gun-- I had no idea the mouse was used in gameplay at first, and didn't understand how to fight back on my first run. Otherwise, my main issue comes from the fact that a lot of the enemies are rather ignorant. I was able to successfully circle around the boss without triggering the AI until I tried to actually reach a gap in the forest.

All in all, I found this to be a very fun mechanic that was rather polished, and both the artwork and the dark humor added a lot to this entry. I enjoyed my time with it, but as some others have stated, both the mines and enemies could benefit from some additional QoL tweaks. I think you're really onto something here, and the potential's definitely there for a post-jam release of some sort.

WHAT I SAW by Angela He 2020-10-19T20:55:37Z

This was incredible. From the start, I can tell you that the aesthetic and audio design are basically faultless.

I appreciate the ambition on this jam, and the levels were interesting to explore. That said, I wasn't a huge fan of the starting enemies as they were very unpredictable in movement. There was also a frustrating behavior of theirs where they could spot you the moment you exited a mirror and charge.

I'll get a little more into the things that I would have liked to see improved on in a bit, but I will say that I found the character designs and level layouts to be incredibly engaging and distinct. I can't say I've played a single jam entry like this one, and the mirror looping mechanic kept the game from feeling too linear without getting overbearing. It was a nice balance between difficulty and nonlinearity in an area where these games tend to fall short design-wise.

Most of my narrative complaints boil down to this; I found it slightly frustrating that with every major story beat, the player is mostly handheld and forced to take certain actions (e.g. ignoring the shriveled figure). I wish there was a little more open-endedness to how you respond to some of these events.

--

Aside from this, I do have a few bug reports that I hope to post screenshots for in a bit. I'll try to keep it as spoiler-free as possible.

- I was able to break the story slightly by moving past the first major mirror without actually breaking it; the story didn't actually account for this, so I'm assuming it was supposed to be forced. - There is a section right before the "midpoint" of the game where walking into the wall will force you under the level. - A little bit after this midpoint, if you jump over a gap in the terrain with certain enemies chasing you, they will fall into the pit and continue to audibly jump in place for the rest of the section trying to reach you-- you may want to despawn any enemies that fall like this, similar to how player respawn is already treated for these gaps.

--

All in all, exceptional work.

TRiXIT by tulipekoni 2020-10-05T18:35:33Z

I'll start with the negatives. I don't like the fact that the controls don't appear in-game, and tried to use arrow keys at first. Alternative arrow key bindings would be nice. I can also see new spheres pop into existence at the edge of the screen, which would perhaps look better if they faded in or rose out of the ground by starting from a low scale or Y position and slowed down as they reached the normal value. Maybe this is just my questionable love of post processing, but a little lens distortion on edges might be nice too.

That's just about as much negativity as I can possibly throw at this game. It's a simple game, but it works as intended, and the presentation is absolutely stellar. I appreciate how the ball gets stuck in the middle of the loop on death-- it was a neat touch.

The controls are snappy, the movement is pretty well tuned, the default-diffuse objects look amazing with the use of color and moving lights, the background is interesting but not distracting, and the music...

OH BOY. THE MUSIC. The sound is this perfect mix; the 8 bit crunchy sounds, lo-fi synth score, vocoder voice announcer, it works so well. And-- DID YOU MAKE IT DYNAMIC? THE MUSIC SEAMLESSLY CHANGES BETWEEN GAME OVER AND PLAYTIME?

This is insane. That was the easiest 5 star rating I've dropped, hats off to you.

The Hall Of Anubis by Patrick Sweeney 2020-10-05T19:29:35Z

I like the visual design of this game a lot (especially with the sky visible at all times, giving the recursive rooms a pretty strange feeling when the sky loops back to where it was a second ago), and props to the incredible voice talents of "Gate Slowly Opening with a Loud Rumble" among a few others for a dramatic performance.

Jokes aside, I actually stumbled on the solution entirely by accident after falling. I just wonder if the signposting for the actual objective could have been a little bit clearer, since even while knowing what to do for the Gold Key area, I still had trouble finding where to go. A little extra brightness on the area in question might have helped; I would have added a Bronze Key that was hidden behind the Gold Cage, with a lower platform that was a little visible when looking down from the cage and a brighter wall behind it to catch the player's attention.

I also appreciated your little ending. I won't talk about it for spoiler reasons, but I liked it.

It was a nice take on the theme, the visual aesthetic was great, and I had fun trying to figure out what you had in store for me. Great work.

Purgatory Hospital by riwmd 2020-10-27T04:43:10Z

This one kept me on my toes. The moment I figured out the physics system it got a little too easy, but the Reapers gave me a 'lil fright as I had no idea how they worked. The way it turned to face me, I wondered if it would chase me... then more appeared...

Bah, I'm rambling. Good stuff! I got a big stupid smile when I saw your little ending, just waiting for this to tie into the whole loop theme... and tie in it did.

Great work! Dig the atmosphere and the kinda realistic but-not-really setting, and the sound design kept me in the mood the whole way through.

Chronic Curse by Diego Escalante 2020-10-19T17:22:50Z

Yep... that's a five star entry.

I really don't have much to say for criticism. I got through the entire game and, while its core mechanics _can_ be frustrating, I wouldn't stoop to calling them unfair. Having to recharge your cycle break was an interesting way to balance the feature out, as it would force me to wait a cycle before trying certain jumps again. I found it interesting how you managed to balance out the feeling of fighting against the cycle and using it to your advantage, and the levels were a good mix of carefully curated frustration and some great platforming segments.

As some others have said, props for the music. Having a dynamic score added a lot to the loop feeling, especially when it comes to feedback. It helps that the track was actually nice to listen to, of course.

I will say that the looping mechanic confused me at first-- I had the idea that dying during the loop was acceptable, but that dying after breaking the cycle had to be this measured risk because dying outside the cycle would leave you dead permanently. I was rather disappointed when my character hopped back up in place as I felt that this additional caution outside of the looping mechanic was a nice twist, though I understand why it was done for the sake of the player. It may be something to keep in mind.

Unfortunately I'm just not going to be able to provide much in terms of critical feedback. This was excellent.

Infinite rails by BOOtak 2020-10-07T01:47:38Z

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhh.

These wireframe visuals are perfect, that old school flight simulator look never gets old. Or it does, which is precisely why it works? I don't know.

It's a little bit simplistic but the presentation is spot-on and I enjoyed my time with it. Definitely would have liked some PC speaker esque audio but I get it, it's a jam game. Great job!

Ex Aeternum by John Gabriel 2020-10-19T17:47:30Z

PLEASE make a post-jam release.

It's a shame that your time was cut short, and I totally understand with compo and all... but what is here, I'm 100% on board with.

My primary complaint is that despite these amazing backgrounds, you don't really apply them into gameplay at all. I would love some animated objects, changing frames, and so on. The line puzzles just kind of existed, but I would have liked to see these actually appear in the environment in some way. Perhaps the lines could have been objects on the wall that illuminate with baked glowing effects or particles when connected?

I wish there'd been a bit of music, but the ambience more than makes up for any shortcomings here. It has a muffled feel that really gets the feeling of some greater mechanical system around you. I also don't know if the water was supposed to be used in any way, as I feel like I skipped right past it. To your credit though, it was some very nice pre-rendered water.

This is nitpicking to the highest degree for a compo game, but I would have liked a higher-quality render for HD resolutions beyond 720p. All that artifacting and compression just gets in the way of some great looking renders.

Props to you for really going out on a limb with this entry. It might not have entirely worked out, but aside from a commendable effort, there's some genuinely solid ideas I'd love to see more of here.

S P A C E D O U T by LanaLux 2020-10-07T22:36:23Z

Stuck in the loop of a day job with poor equipment. Yikes. X(

Great work on this one! The assets and use of lighting definitely give the game a nice atmosphere, and the monotony of trying to turn a profit for that final upgrade hit me with a wave of Flash game nostalgia I wasn't prepared for.

I did have a strange problem where the mouse cursor was locked despite being in the upgrade shop. It wasn't a huge deal as I was able to back out of the menu with Esc. I also had the game load up in the wrong resolution, with my UI crossing the borders of the screen.

Overall, I had a good time with this one. I liked that old-school browser game sense of progression and it definitely nailed this LD's theme.

Little TV Escape!!! by Keith Wang 2020-10-20T01:20:44Z

My only real confusion with the game was that I never felt like I truly understood how the color change tool worked. It also took me a moment to realize that there were more than two screens available to the player to use.

This game has some very neat puzzle concepts behind it, and I can definitely see some potential in expanding on what's here. I know it's been stated before, but the screen transition animation is also very well done.

All in all, I don't have too much to say on this. I really appreciate how unique your take was on the jam, and it's executed fairly well in practice. Great work!

Alter-Nate by Codeman1010 2020-10-20T01:46:56Z

I'm a huge fan of the artstyle here... the music is no slouch either. The floating office equipment and piano score definitely give the impression of something just a little bit wrong. Well, that and the fire, of course.

I like the door unlock approach to progression and remembering passcodes from past lives, and the alternating character sprites really sold the gameplay loop for me. That said, I wish you were given more of an idea of what interactibles affect when they are used. I also wonder if the graphics style would benefit from molten terrain geometry that was chunkier (unfiltered textures with a lower resolution) to fit the style of the sprites.

It's a shame that some of the bugs are in the way, but these things happen in a jam. I really enjoyed my time with this entry, and I'd definitely be interested in more for a postjam.

Looper by Play-Pause-Games 2020-10-05T04:49:06Z

I'm going to begin with the negatives, because when I start talking about the positives, it'll be hard to stop.

First of all, just a minor annoyance you may want to patch: the game first tried to start up SteamVR, and having to close that was a little annoying. This happens a lot with Unreal Engine 4 games, and you should be able to disable this somehow.

Second, just a few bug reports. For one, I think the sniper rifle sound effect has a second sound playing afterwards. It doesn't feel like an echo, and for a while I was under the impression that an opponent heard my shot and was returning fire. I also found that your pieces of paper are invisible when seen from behind, appearing on glass walls as a flying wall of text. I also had one enemy spawn inside a wall, which confused me as I thought for a while that I was fighting some kind of invisible enemy with a floating gun and nothing but a few particles to mark their presence. I probably should have looked closer before burning so much ammo... but what's done is done.

As just a few minor suggestions, I would have liked to use 1-8 on the keyboard to pick weapons, though thankfully scrolling the wheel wasn't too cumbersome. I also would have liked to be able to close doors, but Lab/Sec/etc. doors can't be interacted with without the card in hand-- even when already open. Closing normally-locked doors was definitely a huge minor frustration.

Okay, I need to get to what I really want to say now. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW YOU PULLED THIS OFF.

I like the core gameplay loop, and forcing me to pick between whether I want my basic Lab/Armory keycards or good weapons I've found (especially when you get to Tier 1 and 2 weapons) is an interesting dilemma. Your gunplay feels solid, and while the enemies are a little bit basic, they're perfectly capable of destroying you once you have to fight a group. Ammo is not a problem, until it is, and I can never 100% rely on a weapon type-- I'm constantly checking all my weapons to see what I can reliably use in a firefight.

The visuals are clean, and while I can't say I'm a fan of the large voxel decorations in some cases, it feels consistent. The shaders on doorways, custom gun models, it's all just... pristine. I am in awe of ALL of this. I also like the worldbuilding notes, despite the fact that I really have more important things to do than read them-- my particular highlight being a report on an unusual Shotgun overstock.

Your enemy models definitely made the most of what you had, and your particle-monsters were a particular sticking point. You did NOT mess around.

I'm just going to set the bar unfairly high for a sec, but I would have liked some stronger ambience/combat music with some good synth riffs here and there. As another user noted, an animation on death would have been nice. A sprinting mechanic might have been nice (if there was one, I had no idea), and some kind of right-click function (melee? iron sights?) could have spiced up what eventuallyboils down to shooting at targets.

I have all four keycards but have not successfully stopped the collapse yet. I cannot WAIT to play more. Seriously, congratulations. This is exceptional.

Fleder Flopin by Diefleder 2020-10-19T17:59:33Z

That was chaotic. :laughing:

It took me a second, but the gameplay loop worked pretty well. I'd say the platforming felt solid enough, but by the end of the game it's just a wall of giant glowing capsules and spheres designed to cause pain... which is entirely fine.

As most have said, the visuals are a serious high point for this entry-- particularly for a compo game. Your sound design is also very strong with all the unique flanged sounds; that said, I would have liked to see the music get a bit more hectic once you've made enough mistakes to warrant it.

More than anything, I appreciate the fact that a higher and more difficult path was usually available for players, often becoming the only option when things get crazy.

If there was one gameplay tweak I would make, I would try to tone down the number of obstacles on the first lap and put up some large signposts to guide the player forward consistently. I think it would add something to the game to have a more clear course at first with in-your-face directions before it gets cluttered with all sorts of nonsense. As something to consider for postjam releases, you may be able to tie successful laps to an obstacle cleanup that takes care of one or two spawned objects, or alternate between different course obstacles as you continue.

Great work!

Hudson by Dharby 2020-10-19T17:35:26Z

The moment I understood the upgrade system, I was able to get through this with relatively little trouble. I'm a huge fan of game loops that trap you with one-shot recovery items that stop you from achieving the goal, so being able to use your orbs to replenish health in emergencies was a nice touch.

I'm not sure I entirely understood how "gem thieves" worked; in gameplay, it gave me the impression that my powers would deplete over time, as I did not see the thief. I would recommend adding a gameplay sound of some kind that indicates this happening.

Good work!

The Legend of the Stormer by josephdevelops 2020-10-05T19:00:54Z

I really liked the artwork and got some strong Dante's Inferno vibes from the game.

I wish the combat had been a little stronger-- the delay between attacks is a little excessive, and the enemies don't really react to being struck. I would recommend having them get moved away from the player slightly on hit, and adding a two or three hit combo where the delay between attacks is reduced up until a third hit. The combat also felt entirely unnecessary as enemies don't pose a threat-- I would have balanced this with quick enemies that chase you in a very loose circle, letting you either combat them or outwit them since you're Naruto-running too fast. I get it though, it's a jam game.

I like the music for the game, which fits it surprisingly well, but the lack of audio feedback for events was a little disappointing. I would have liked a hit sound effect and portal sound effect at the very least. I also didn't really understand any of the audio in the intro, partially because the music was still at full volume.

The flat shaded artwork was pretty strong in some segments, and definitely got its environments across well. I do think there were a few areas that could use a little extra detail, but again... jam game.

I scrapped an entire idea because of my fear of getting a dialogue system done on time, so congratulations for actually implementing one! That said, I would probably auto-complete the dialogue when players move away from the speaker. It's strange having to run through the conversation when your character is now halfway across the map.

All in all, well done. I really like the spin you took on it, I played it to the end, and I'll admit I got a good laugh out of the upbeat 80s montage music kicking in as I began to narutorun.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-05T02:55:53Z

@Ale I tried to be as cryptic as possible with my signposting here... but I went way overboard, sadly. My biggest omission is the fact that I was very unclear about the Red Interactibles.

The area where you went forward to is actually the end of the game, except that if you didn't please the GM, you are looped back to the start. Go back to that area, and it'll say something else.

To complete the game, you need to also use the mouse cursor. I believe this is first mentioned on your fifth loop. Click on red interactibles to... interact. You also get an upgraded jump height after two loops! The text at the spawn will change to "spacebar" then "spacebar+".

In testing, I assumed that the player would decide to push the box away, but I neglected the fact that someone might consider it a part of the jump-- rather silly on my part. :grimacing:

One of the deep cuts I made to ship this was that originally, the pyramid taunted you in the loop screen. I wish I'd gotten this into the game, because you are "granted" the ability to jump, and unfortunately I ended up moving these hints into the game world on the far end.

Sorry for all the trouble, I definitely learned from a few mistakes here. Thanks for giving my game a go, and I definitely feel the same way about your questions! :smile:

EDIT: I went through the code for a little refresher. Any falling death after your third loop will switch the text to "spacebar - red click". It's... still not great, but it's something.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-05T03:27:53Z

I plan on putting up a walkthrough later. It definitely seems like there's a serious communication error in the way I've presented info, and I'm thinking of ways I could potentially remedy this. For one, the next patch might replace the cursor with the default-particle just to point out that it's accounted for in gameplay. I REALLY wish I'd just put down a few sprites of keyboard/mouse prompts on the spawn point, but I never really got around to it.

The animation is actually NOT playing out for its full duration, and I may shorten it in a patch. I was... really proud of it, and it also served a gameplay purpose at one point. So, yeah. Chalk that one up to amateur hour as well. :laughing:

I intentionally wanted to keep the movement a little bit stiff, but I could probably fine tune the handling a little bit without too much trouble. More on that tomorrow.

Some actions reset, some don't-- that said, I don't know of any situations where the game is actually unwinnable. Just try to think about which parts of the environment you've interacted with, and which parts you've explored.

Thanks for all your comments and giving the game a go! I've definitely learned a lot from this run. I plan on putting out a day-one postmortem on the ItchIO and dropping version 0.13 with a few allowed QoL tweaks as soon as I can.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-05T19:19:00Z

@diego-escalante @dharby @jonathanfdr Thank you for giving the game a look! I'm glad the ambience worked out in the end given the pretty drastic shift the game took in style halfway through. The profile picture I have is actually one of several character sketches from my first LD47 attempt, which was going to be a music based tower defense with hand drawn art... needless to say, things took a pretty drastic turn.

That said, as @Ale mentioned, there is definitely a black screen issue that can happen. I believe it's a very specific set of circumstances, and I'm looking for it in my free time. I'll probably leave out any gameplay improvements for the sake of complying with LD rules, but if anyone is able to find that blackscreen bug, please let me know with a description of how you were doing (how many times you looped, what you had moved, etc.) so I can finally find out where the point of failure is. I'm hoping to release a v 0.13 as soon as I can while I work on a postmortem and some other boring life-related things.

It's honestly hard to say why the ball continues to move at startup, and I'm frustrated by that too. I *swear* I keep zeroing out force and velocity in the transition screens, but there's a lot of spaghetti in the codebase that I'm not exactly proud of. Just something to consider for a patch, I guess.

PS: I may include the original Blender AVIs that I produced for this as a separate download, make a 4K render of it, or go back and render it without the "rest" text. More on that another time.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-06T00:07:47Z

So, an update on things. My 0.13 patch originally was going to cut back on the video time, but I feel like adding this dubbed "Impatient Mode" would be a little bit of a feature upgrade I'm not comfortable with providing until after the LD competition ends. I'm really concerned about adding a cursor for the same reason. I'll be reverting all my gameplay changes except for an additional tweak to the box weights and keep the game intact (warts and all) until the contest has ended. I may also put out "Disqualified builds" if it's allowed, ones that are purely meant to improve the experience and not to be judged. More on that later.

Now, some good news: I'm happy to report that I've actually found and [potentially] squashed the black screen bug! As with all of my problems, it's Red/evilBall's fault. I have a full breakdown of what was happening in the patchnotes for when I put this out.

@diefleder Thanks for giving the game a look! Can you describe what you mean by freezing? One involves a black screen-- this is a bug, and I'm 99% sure it's fixed in the upcoming patch. The other has the video slowly come to a stop with a special ending song and disembodied voice-- this is the actual ending, but the game doesn't auto-close on its own. I'm not aware of any other bugs at the moment.

In the post-LD releases, I'll include my alternative video for this ending to set it apart. It has a brighter palette and was rendered out at 60 FPS, but while this video was actually made before the one that shipped, I didn't end up sending it in the final game.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-06T00:46:09Z

You're close to what caused it. Slight spoilers, but the red ball is directly tied to the f/light switch. The black screen happens if you trigger the light switch but leave the ball, which is SUPPOSED to attack the player... if you can call it that.

The original idea behind f/light was that you had to close the curtains. The "maybe there's something left?" message was truncated; originally, it complained that it "felt drafty" as well. When you toggled the curtains, the red ball would attack you from your normal spawn point. The warehouse tweak was done to prevent it from falling down and add a little bit of a jump scare when it came crashing through the boxes. ...well, in theory. Everything about the red ball was rushed and could have been done better with just an hour or two more.

As for sound, I recorded a whole lot more than what shipped, and I was disappointed as well in the lack of it. Originally, the box was supposed to make a loud reverb-heavy THUD when it despawned, and it was meant to signal the fact that it was pretty dang important. The actual death sound is a random note I pulled from my first LD47 idea that I scrapped at the 18 hour mark. You do get a few extra ambience sounds based on the number of loops you've been through, all the same file but slowed down.

There's a lot to unpack about what could have been, and I can't wait to share more of it in a postmortem. For now, I've got a little bit of QA to do to make sure the auto-quit is working correctly.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-07T01:13:09Z

@amin-jk000 @cosmicpickle Thank you for giving it a go! I actually have some basic plans in the works for continuing this game-- as much as I expected this to be one-and-done for compo, I had enough fun making it that I've already put together a post-jam version of the source code that I plan to polish up and make additional content for. Part of this does include a new OST that consists of a little more than the three sounds and notes you heard in game (two of which were originally designed for proceed, and one of which was originally made for my first LD47 idea that I dropped early on-- more on that in a postmortem I hope to finish later this week).

As for your questions CosmicPickle, you did in fact beat the game. You did sequence break a bit by clicking on Red; I thought it would be neat to let the player peek behind the box a bit, but Red is more or less the end-game state of the level and is inactive until meeting all conditions. The text in that room only updates on intermission loop (when you exit the warehouse), so this definitely could have been improved.

As for why Red didn't come back-- believe it or not, it's not a bug. I thought it was a smart and clever thing when I originally did this, unaware that the lack of communication made it seem like a bug. I would definitely love to go back and add text to the intermission screen as well as tweak the behavior of the final instructions room to allow for more states.

The video itself cuts off after a few seconds (and due to a few leftover functions it was much longer in the first two builds!), but when it is allowed to complete the game also calls a special ending tune. I wish I had implemented an alternative video with a brighter palette that I made **before** the one you see, but it never shipped. More post-LD things, I suppose.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-07T11:08:55Z

@drunkardwolf Hey, thanks for giving the game a look! Also, again... congratulations on your compo entry, I was absolutely blown away by Recursion.

So, two things on that matter. You're far from the first to get frustrated by the movespeed. I considered tweaking it, but as a design choice (no matter how questionable) I've decided to leave it intact for now. If I ever get a stronger prototype off of the ground, I'll most likely throw away the ball entirely; I mostly did it because a ball rolling game just used the rigidbody tools I was used to with minimal hassle. I've also never made a 2D game outside of Unity tutorials, and my point of reference was actually games like Flashback, Inside, and Oxenfree where the gameplay is a little more subdued. I originally planned on making a character out of primitives and animating it through Unity, and had this been my project idea from Friday that's probably how I would have handled it from the start.

The latter part about rolling off the platform... yeah, that's a bug. There is a fix in place where the game learns to zero out velocity, but it's not working correctly. The entire cutscene transition script is kind of like walking on eggshells. I was close to fixing this in my second hotfix for the game, but the patch got rushed a bit to clean up some serious gamebreaking bugs. I do believe I have it fixed on my end now, but I'll need to fire up the project and give it a test run before building it one more time for Linux/Windows.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-08T04:08:50Z

I appreciate all of your feedback; I'm definitely getting a sense of what works and what doesn't in *proceed*, and I've taken a whole lot of notes for what to do in any post-jam builds. I also especially want to thank @blue-pin-studio for playing my game on stream today; watching a live play of the game opened my eyes to how many of the errors take place in practice, and I'll definitely be able to put together a better signposting rulebook for any future stages I develop. Whether this level will stay in the game or not, it's hard to say just yet. (if anyone else has streamed proceed, thank you so much for spreading the word!)

I'm also happy to say that I've finally figured out what was causing the movement bug on respawn. It turns out that I wasn't accounting for angular velocity, so the ball would touch the ground and begin spinning again despite zeroing the velocity. Long story short, it's finally fixed, and I'm releasing one more mini-patch that fixes the infinite box bug that @blue-pin-studio drew my attention to as well as this dreaded respawn momentum boogeyman that I've been chasing since before the game shipped.

With that, I think proceed in LD form is in a finalized state; bugfixes released, technical isusues resolved, and ports created. After the upload of v0.135, I'll be focusing on the post-jam version unless anything crazy pops up.

Thank every single one of you for making my first shipped LD47 an incredible occasion! I've checked out a number of your games and came away quite impressed, and I can't wait to try more of these.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-08T05:24:50Z

Pardon me for a moment, I'm just trying not to scream now that the game's hit 20 votes.

---

Okay, much better. Where was I...

@jammygunns Thank you for giving it a go! You're definitely right about the ending, and I already have a plan in place for a better ending scenario.

Many of the issues from the game definitely came from sequence breaking with Red, including a rather hilarious infinite box spawning bug that @blue-pin-studio showed me a few hours ago.

It would have honestly been smarter just to end the game when Red is destroyed or change the text to reaffirm that you succeeded after destroying it in retrospect. I also would have made sure that you had to trigger the red ball's "disturbed" status before clicking would actually work, a one line tweak. (when you complete all objectives, the ball will come bursting through the crates) The ability to sequence break this was a foolish part of my design, however, so I'll leave it intact for the compo build. I honestly thought I was being clever! :laughing:

I'm hoping that tonight's 0.135 will finally resolve the last LD-friendly issues so that I can focus my efforts on a new fork that can properly rework the game.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-08T11:36:56Z

@eduardo-yukio Did you play the latest version of the game? I ask because the animation used to be even *longer* due to a fade-to-black animation I didn't finish in time. :laughing: I got a little carried away, I'll admit.

On the topic of "death" as a fundamental mechanic... this is a massive telegraphing problem and probably the biggest failure of proceed's compo form. I do have a solution for this lack of communication. that I will ship in any later versions. This is something you'll see a lot in the comments: "I went into the room on the right and died," and so on. This is NOT a death-- it's looping you back because there was more to do. You actually NEED to use this room on the right to advance the game because this is how you reload the warehouse hint box. Sadly, the fact that I used the same cutscene instead of plugging in one of my variants, followed by the fact that I removed the text that was supposed to come on screen at this time, ended up completely destroying anything good about this mechanic.

I fully intend for these video failstates to return in the next version of the game, and without getting into the fine details, I have some ideas for keeping each stage mechanically fresh. The intermission-loop mechanic is actually something I'm quite proud of, as since I am running a script to alter the game back to a previous state as opposed to just reloading the level, it can potentially send you right back into the stage with no loading screen. This does mean that once my code is a bit cleaned up, I'll be able to carry these benefits into the actual gameflow somehow.

Thank you for giving proceed a look!

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-09T02:34:47Z

@fatsheep Thanks for giving it a look, and sorry I couldn't be there for the stream! I checked the VOD and um... yeah, beats me. You got every objective down, then Red never jumped out. Never happened during testing. But hey, at least the boxes worked this time. :shrug: This probably took place when I was fixing the script for the boxes, which were infinitely respawning in v0.13. I'll take a look at the warehouse cleanup code to see how Red managed to break it this time. I'm now convinced that Red is actually just cursed as this single object has singlehandedly managed to create 80% of the soft crashes and progression bugs in this game.

You ran past the warehouse after turning on the lights _multiple_ times... a red ball should have come at you. This is a new bug, I've got no idea what could possibly be causing it, and I'll get back to you ASAP on what happened by copying your VOD actions. Hoping to repro and patch soon!

EDIT: I found the bug. I updated the game to clean up anything with the Warehouse tag for respawns. As it turns out... Red had this tag, and I threw Red out with the bathwater while cleaning up the game assets. ...oops.

As for the "instructions..." you're being far too kind. :laughing: I've already got some much better instructions for this stage that I will implement for post-jam builds, earlier if I'm sure that it's acceptable for the build. (e.g. "right" instead of "flight")

Fifty five bug reports on the wall, fifty five bug reports... track one down, pass new builds 'round, fifty six reported bugs!

By the way, _fantastic_ work on your WarioWare style game. I might need to inquire further on how you put together the art for that, becuase that chunky 90s prerendered CG just speaks to me.

proceed by anchorlight 2020-10-09T06:48:56Z

Update v0.137 will launch tomorrow, addressing the Fatsheep Red bug and cleaning up three other Red related behaviors.

Tunnels by CosmicPickle 2020-10-06T10:47:03Z

I dunno, this is pretty solid as far as programmer art goes. I appreciate the fact that the game saves, too. Good use of light sources, an easy-on-the-eyes color palette, unique shapes based on object type... you could have fooled me. I didn't even mention the animation. The ball jump anim is simple but it works! No complaints here, except for the camera-- I appreciate the dynamic way it follows you, but I wish the stop was just a bit less abrupt.

The sound is... fine so far, but I do wish there was a little bit of ambience. Water droplet sounds, a room tone, just something to fill the noise a bit.

The game was off to a solid start and the snappy controls combined with the nice visual style kept me going for a bit. Unfortunately, I was under the impression for a moment that I'd broken the game. I'd highly recommend changing your geometric shape for power-ups in any post-LD builds. When I saw blue shapes coming from the main key, I assumed that it was an effect showing that I was supposed to interact with the key holder.

Once I figured out what the game was trying to tell me, I breezed through it. It's solid platforming, not exactly frustrating. I liked the progression going from a ground-only dash that I disliked to a proper air dash, and all in all the platforming was fairly well measured out. Good stuff!

An Hour Long Minute by Squeed Fingars 2020-10-05T18:19:41Z

You definitely nailed the atmosphere of this game. To be honest, I'd say you did the whole cryptic theme a whole lot better than I did. The phone message that you can cancel out of was a very clever way of handling a tutorial, as it eats a chunk out of your time on your first playthrough but can be skipped any other. I also like the cryptic messages on the loading screen.

My main complaint is that the thermite solution appears to be dead-simple compared to any other solution, and I had won the game before I really understood the rules of it or how I had accomplished it. I also think a slower enemy walking speed would make gameplay more interesting as it makes them more of a lurking threat than an instant death.

Unfortunately I had the safe bug you mentioned, only two notes came up with a digit. I assumed that I was supposed to just guess my way to opening the safe, and I think only having three digits revealed is a lot more interesting from a gameplay perspective.

I do wish you had put out a Windows executable build, as I tend to run into lots of performance problems with HTML5 games, but I understand the choice from a convenience perspective.

That's basically all I have to say on it. Good stuff!

An Hour Long Minute by Squeed Fingars 2020-10-05T19:06:33Z

Haha, on-the-fly design things happen. I get that.

AFAIK, you are still allowed to port games over the next day or so, but I would read up on the LD rules about it just to be safe.

Hamster Dash by Jamster 2020-10-28T07:09:39Z

I like the simple models and solid game loop. That said, I wish there were more low hurdles to jump in the early game, as it feels like the game is more or less wasting your time a bit when you only have A/D. This complaint does NOT hold water in the late game as your levels have speed modifiers and more intense obstacles, however. I know this is just time constraint stuff here, but a little bit of music would be nice.

Good work on this one! I sure wish I ran across this during the jam! :laughing:

Hamster Dash by Jamster 2020-10-28T07:50:01Z

Sounds like a jam game, alright :stuck_out_tongue: Nonetheless, that's a really interesting way to go about level creation and I commend the effort! I have a feeling that it would have paid off a little more with more time to design obstacles and levels; any more time with my game would have just shown how volatile the codebase was as features stopped working in random intervals.

My core idea for LD47 was only in development for about 28 hours, the rest of the game was made on day one while pursuing an _entirely_ different idea in every way. This understandably wreaked havoc on the game design as features and scenarios had to be cut down for time's sake. I'd say the game was unplayable up until about an hour or two before submission.

I think there's a lot of good stuff in your entry, and I'm definitely looking forward to what you have to offer next time around!

Corporate by Peche et Tradition 1867 2020-10-05T00:28:54Z

I really like this take on the "loop" theme. All in all, well done!

My only real issue is that it feels like the transition from orange $$ to red $$ particles can be a lot slower than the actual transition to a slacking employee. I found that I would frequently hover over employees to find them slacking when they looked to still be putting in some effort.

Ancient Maze (starring Mathilda Ayume) by Linky439 2021-05-18T08:42:53Z

I apologize for how long it took me to get around to playing this game.

Stellar work on the presentation. The art is very clean and conveys the purpose of most objects well. I did end up dying plenty to stage hazards anyway, but that's my own fault. The level feels a little convoluted at times, but as far as the theme goes I wouldn't have it any other way.

The music is great for the style. I do feel like some measures get a little chaotic here and there. The unusual time signature and syncopation gives off a sort of sea shanty feel to the track that really adds something to the game, and I'd love to hear the song on its own outside of the game.

I did have the audio cut out once or twice, and I'm not sure if this is a game issue or the fact that I ran the game on Linux. That's basically it for bugs.

All in all, this is a great entry, and that's ignoring the time it took. The fact that you not only submitted it for Compo but didn't even use the full Compo time is awesome, and makes me wonder what you would have changed with a little more time.

HELIUM by milieu 2021-05-01T10:15:19Z

I love the fact that you went for something a little different from the genres you normally see front and center, and for a jam I think the visuals really do hit on the right beats for a retro game. Since I mentioned visuals though, you should probably set the sprites for your drill to no filtering so there's no blurring on it.

Your narrative is cool, and the survival side is awesome... but I feel that your game needs a little bit more explanation for how your rig works in-game.

I think @iellswo has a good point about the controls, and the fact that the itch page runs on its own fullscreen tab means you can't see those controls in-game; if you're willing to do some messing around, you could edit the index.html file to include the controls below the game in plain text. Let me know if I can help out with that, I'd be happy to assist.

I'd like to see where you go with this, maybe a short point-and-click/adventure game of sorts with some crispy audio and more dialogue.

DESERT BUS 2 LETSGOOO! by homeworld 2021-05-09T23:54:34Z

The scope of this jam game is a sight to behold. I love the random events and the overall feeling of a wasted world you've built up here, and the movement feels weighty enough that it all works. Overall, very few complaints. I have a few annoyances here and there, though:

For one, I felt that the map really lacked verticality. Now, I did have one time where the world didn't load, and when I realized you were rendering out the game as squares of terrain, that limitation entirely makes sense and ultimately doesn't matter for a jam game. That said, some taller dunes and cliffs would be a welcome addition.

I'm a huge fan of the visuals, they really get the wasteland feel down. That said, a little screen shake or flare on the bullets would go nicely; the gun just feels like it lacks any real impact. Speaking of impact, I found myself frustrated by the amount of static debris that puts your car into a dead stop, and wish some of that random debris on the ground could be rammed through and turned into dynamic rigidbodies for a health penalty.

Random events would be nice with a little more story. This note is here PURELY in terms of post-jam content. They're fine as quick events for the jam, but should you take this further I see a huge opportunity to place some more involved side content here.

As for bugs, I did have one instance where the map took a few seconds to load in and one instance where a random event spawned an enemy inside a rock. I also had one game freeze after colliding with a rock, but it's hard to say if that's the game or trying to run said game through Wine on Linux.

I think you're really onto something, and with more of a world to explore or other gameplay elements like mapping routes to destinations or a Fallout 1 style world map, I think this game could be something special. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next!

What Swims Beneath Us. by DrunkardWolf 2021-04-27T02:15:48Z

560m. I'm sleeping with the lights on now.

At first I thought this was a little bit too easy, since you can just outwait the shark... then I realized that air meter wasn't a pressure gauge for an endgoal, it was a timer. I played it _way_ too safe. Then, the tablet, your instant cheat sheet... has a limited use... that's a neat design. I do wish I could look up or down, though, and I had a little trouble clicking the descent button because of how small the pad is. Maybe that's by design though, the fumbling on my end definitely added something to the atmosphere.

I love the visual aesthetic, but I hate sharks. Your sharks and underwater monsters in particular have all of the qualities that I despise about sharks. Trying to be a bit more neutral, I'm impressed by how many fish models that save for a little clipping here and there managed to look the part in a Compo game. Seriously, rigging and setting up all these 3D models on such short notice is really impressive.

Editing my comment to add this in: I didn't even comment on this, but aside from the chunky graphics the audio actually carried the weight of being underwater incredibly well. I don't have too many comments on that front because it all just built on the atmosphere without sticking out. The heartbeat indicator was also a nice way of conveying player info, but I like the fact that it can potentially hurt your score if you're overreliant on it. In short, there's just lots of little things that really make this game something special.

Incredible work, and worth five stars... but please, no more sharks.

Date Night by Togis 2021-04-27T11:18:18Z

@wheffle Honestly, that coffee order sounds about right.

Date Night by Togis 2021-04-29T05:10:07Z

This is a bad joke. I'm sick of constantly being used like a tool for an emotionless machine that just keeps piling more papers on my desk and expecting me to keep up the pace at 120% efficiency 24/7 for no meaningful reward. Somehow the only answer to this is to make it even harder? What, you think I like this kind of constant stress, like I just want to burn out on menial tasks *every second of my life?*

---

Oh, right, the game, sorry. It took me a while but I finally got around to playing it, and... yeah, you did a pretty good job. The graphics/color palette and audio both get the job done in a clean and charming way, and the gameplay has a solid loop where you start to prepare yourself for every button press just to save every millisecond; it's a neat idea. I feel that your printer minigame needs more feedback, and I'd like to see a better button highlight or a better animation on said printer. I like the little decorations and the typing game was probably a highlight since it works so well in practice.

It's a funny take on the theme I didn't think of, and executed well in practice. You start to dread that muffled voice blabbering on about having even more work to do, especially on Hard Mode when you already feel like you're doing everything you can just to keep your job.

As for flaws, I had a similar issue to Wheffle. If you click twice, you'll find another route, which can potentially lose some time; I would maybe add a quick check to make sure your new destination and your old one are actually different [and that the player is moving faster than 0, in case you *need* a new path] as a quick fix for this. I also like keyboard controls for games like this personally as they're more tactile, but that may make the game too easy.

I do wonder if the hard mode is a little *too* hard, but maybe that's the point. I got a score of 89 and survived the shift on Normal the first time, I think my score was in the low 70s on Hard and the mood at date night got spoiled by a pink slip.

It's an easy 4+ star rating, great work! You also get credit for one of the single most menacing antagonists I've seen this jam, next to DrunkardWolf's "creature."

all the king's men by otresnjak 2021-04-27T01:58:58Z

Everything felt very deliberate and feature complete in this game-- I like the clean aesthetic, the smooth transitions, and the music score. Nice job tying the mechanics into the actual presentation, too. I kind of wish the game had a second stage of gameplay, but that also might have messed with the pacing.

All in all, great work!

The Space Between Us by LaneDavis 2021-04-27T05:13:45Z

Reporting in from Simpathey's stream! This game is stellar.

There's so much character and polish to the whole experience, and the minigames never get in the way of the experience. My only suggestion would be to detect if the player has caps lock enabled by checking to see if all letters are capitalized/excludes all non-capitalized characters. It could return a message along the lines of "you left caps lock on again" or something else that still adds to the atmosphere while cluing in the player.

Otherwise, all I can say is that you should definitely take this project further and at the very least get a Google Play Store release off the ground. If you needed to come up with a game loop for a more premium version, you could potentially have a survival time at which you've fully harvested the planet and have different stages with new difficulties for minigames, then have planets that have different dangers (like a tundra world that causes your machinery to freeze up, or a paradise planet where your gerbils desert/go on strike). I think you're onto something great and to some extent, you're already there.

Also as a quick heads-up, Charlie Bruber's name link is broken on this page.

DeBlockhas by Sode 2021-05-18T09:05:03Z

This entry just screams "Ludum Dare" in all the best ways. You decided to do something completely different with no promise of good results or actual benefits, simply because it might be a challenge. You narrated the intro yourself, the graphics are squares and color values... it just has that programmer feel, everything is so hand-crafted and I love it.

I wouldn't dare take a risk like this, as I barely reached the finish line even _with_ some industry-standard tools in my belt. Yet, you pulled it off, and the game ended up being just fine! It's a simple arcade title with a nice little tune to go along with it, and everything just kinda works as intended.

As for criticism, the bad-block placement feels a little too random and uncontrollable for the precise player movement, and that might need a little more fine tuning. I also feel like the music could use a little touching up here and there as some chords hit me the wrong way, but I'm just nitpicking at this point.

Great work!

SUBTERRA by daniele 2021-05-18T09:24:32Z

What an entry! The music is awesome, the graphics are perfectly executed, and the miner voices are brimming with LD charm. Pulling off RTS style character selection and pathfinding for a jam game can't have been easy, but here it is!

It took me a second to really understand the controls and how getting more miners worked, and I felt like pausing the engines automatically on miner move sometimes got a bit frustrating. My biggest problem was probably the lava, as it kind of just creeps up without warning. Once it appeared, I went from 0 casualties to being unable to stop for any reason and losing everyone aboard; I think the lava moves just a bit too fast for you to really do anything about it, and a one-time ability to boost past the lava with some permanent stat reductions might be a nice compromise to counter this without ruining the tension. Otherwise, the controls feel a little unwieldy trying to keep the engines actually moving while ordering your miners, and I feel like the system could use some general QOL. I would have also liked a stronger musical sting or sound cue for the lava wall.

The whole premise of the game is awesome, and long before the lava appears you feel a constant pressure to keep moving that keeps you from wanting to waste time on the smaller gems. Once the lava's on you, there's a real feeling of hopelessness when you're past a certain point and just trying to outrun the inevitable as your power dwindles. Despite this, the music is a nice beat that complements the gameplay nicely.

Overall, I think you've got a really solid game concept here, and maybe even a strong candidate for further development. I'd love to see where this game goes if you keep working on it. I think doing a little more with the actual Subterra 88 ship or stringing together a more fleshed-out world could easily justify a price tag on this game.

Soaring Under by jitspoe 2021-05-02T10:30:59Z

Between the beautiful lowpoly artwork and the great music score (not to mention the bad piano stings that ruin said score as a little salt in the wound for failure), I'm amazed by what you pulled off in a compo entry and dare I say it, it blows my game out of the water. The map feels vast, the flight physics take skill to master, and the presentation is stellar.

Exceptional work.

6 Feet Under by theStoff 2021-05-18T10:05:50Z

Incredible polish and presentation for a jam title. It's a shame it took me this long to get around to playing it.

The controls and platforming were way more polished than I expected, so much so that a few of my early deaths were for overcorrecting where I expected to run into unresponsive controls or didn't expect momentum to carry over cleanly. It's a tough game, and I haven't reached the end yet, but I'll accept the blame for that. It felt well paced, even if I couldn't keep up.

What really sells this game for me is the presentation. The single color with palette options was a neat choice, the art and animations are stellar, and the music is perfect (especially with the changes underground).

Unfortunately, I really don't have much criticism or feedback for this one. It just kind of felt complete in execution to me, and I really don't know what I could possibly change about it. All in all, awesome work on this entry!

Zombie Movie Marathon : A Game Remotely about Zombies by Codeman1010 2021-05-18T09:42:10Z

I'm a bit late to comment here, but got the chance to take a look a few days earlier when you were streaming.

While the game might not have reached the finish line, I can at least appreciate the work that went into it. The artwork being this bizarre 2D backdrop mixed with 3D models was a really neat idea, and I like the monster designs (playing as an Evil Dead style possessed hand was a pretty neat platforming concept that I'd love to see with more mechanics, like ledge grabs). That said, I think the backdrops feel a little colorful, and need a little grime or desaturation to really match the models.

Unfortunately, I found the level progression to be very unclear, and I was never sure if I was going the right direction or not. The levels themselves seem to be alright in design, and the music is a great bridge for mixing that horror theme and an action platformer. The controls also felt tight while moving across the map.

Despite the hurdles, it's a solid effort that I can definitely appreciate, and I'd still like to see what this game might have been with a little more time.

Explory Story by Blue Pin Studio 2021-05-18T09:34:25Z

I feel bad for not commenting or rating this one earlier in the jam. This entry ended up being a real highlight, if not for the absurd premise then the perfect execution. You can get a vague sense of certain word placements based on the actual text, but otherwise the large font size and small player acts as a great fog-of-war for your actual objectives. I can't say I've ever taken this approach to old literature, and it was amusing to say the least.

I think there's some missed opportunities here and there-- for example, Lawyer not spawning a demon or a few other instances of words acting differently from how you'd imagine. There's also some cases where I felt like words had larger hitboxes than expected. Most of that criticism can be chalked up to time constraints, and they're footnotes compared to the overall experience. It's also much harder to criticize difficulty problems thanks to the included practice mode.

I wonder if you could incorporate a number of other works from H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and the like to expand this further, with different authors bringing their own themes and positives/negatives into the mix.

Thanks for putting together one of the most interesting entries I've seen in any jam. :smile:

Whispers of Life by MidnightMist 2021-04-27T12:54:44Z

Your entry is very polished and I like the unique mechanics. It only took me maybe a few seconds to figure out the mechanics, and the controls felt very smooth. I appreciate the light palette and music, and the presentation in general just removes the game of any sense of danger or dread (not that it's a bad thing).

Above all the game just feels very complete, and that's not something every Compo game can pull off. Well done!

Rex's Wizardspace by RexTGun 2021-04-30T03:58:06Z

pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasePLEASE make a postjam. Your magic system feels intuitive and unwieldy at the same time, and the potential is here for a fun interaction system that only games like Magicka ever pulled off. I have a special love of first-person control schemes that break the mold a bit with unusual mechanics, and this one ticks all the boxes.

Awesome work!

Solar Subs by Simpathey 2021-05-18T08:27:14Z

My first score ended up being a 49, though I wonder if I could improve that with a little more practice.

I want to first address the gameplay side itself, ignoring presentation-- it's a real neat concept, and executed fairly well. The game getting darker with further depth naturally makes the actual gameplay loop harder to score on, and the player getting more hurried/frantic hardly helps with scoring those final points before the timer runs out. It carries that theme of going deeper brilliantly. Overall I have very little to report, it just works as intended and I never ran into problems with the rotation or the sub registering. Maybe a small light pulse from the sub might have been nice purely for some kind of validation on a successful click, but that's nitpicking.

It is just a sort of clicker game of sorts at the end of the day, which would still be fine as it's working as intended and still has some sense of difficulty/progression. It's just a solid game through and through, and I feel like there's potential going either way-- it's solid enough as an arcade game, and could probably be expanded on for a more traditional title as well. That said, calling it "serviceable" doesn't do it justice after bringing presentation into this.

The art, audio, etc. had to be addressed on its own-- the ambient score, the tones on click, the simple sprites and light masking, the 2D shadows, the particles and background objects that distract the player-- it all comes together for something spectacular. The music score reminds me of something I wrote a while back on a _good day_, but with way more polish and actually fitting into the game's atmosphere. It feels like you used every hour of the jam to _master_ the atmosphere. I love that background audio that's somewhere between a distant siren and a space pad-- it makes just enough of a tune to be distinguishable, but blends into that atmosphere so perfectly. Just... bravo.

As for criticisms... it just comes down to the WebGL build. I was entirely unable to play it due to scaling problems. I won't let that affect my opinion of the game as I know fully well that Unity's Web Player is a total toss-up.

Everything about this feels perfectly scoped, perfectly executed, and finely crafted. Excellent job!

Dante's Refrigerator by josephdevelops 2021-04-27T07:03:42Z

Starting off with the critiques, the main issue I had with this game is the Input lag. I will say that I played on keyboard, so part of it could be down to this. I felt like the response time between pressing a button and having the character move were two entirely different things. Same goes for switching characters. Brushing that aside though, the controls for attacking and jumping were entirely fine and I never had an issue.

The artwork, score, and little gameplay twists with the gelatin travel points were all incredibly well done. Props to your team for pulling this off!

Dante's Refrigerator by josephdevelops 2021-04-27T08:56:29Z

@josephdevelops Well, the input lag I get is highly inconsistent, so you're right in that it probably isn't coming from the game itself. When it lets me, the input comes out frame-perfect; other times, I can't stop or can't start the character's walk for a few frames. It's weird, and definitely not how Unity normally handles.

It might be WebGL, or it could be WebGL specifically on my system (I run Linux now, so not sure if that makes a difference-- this is way out of my field of expertise.

Dante's Refrigerator by josephdevelops 2021-04-27T21:08:22Z

@josephdevelops You can see reviews? If you mean the Ratings Received, I believe it's only counting total reviews.

Dante's Refrigerator by josephdevelops 2021-04-27T22:30:31Z

@josephdevelops How do you check LD ratings? I didn't know you could see them early.

Diggy Diggy Dwarf 2 : Deeper & Deeper by Rujum 2021-05-18T10:22:51Z

This is probably the last entry I'll play for LD48 in time for ratings. It's a shame it took me this long, but on the bright side, I feel like with this game it ended on a very strong note for me.

I really like this kind of worker management-survival game, especially when it's turn based. At first I didn't really understand the game, idly throwing Bill and Ted around until a bunch of X's stopped me from doing things and only one dwarf remained. Once it all clicks, the mechanics work well together and the real pressure of long-term welfare vs. profits draws you in.

The art design has this awesome diorama feel to it, and the sort of middleground between a board game and stylized 3D was executed very well. I was at first worried that the music would end up being too intense of a score for the game, but it ended up being a really solid orchestral loop that carries the theme very well and hits those minor notes at all the right points, and it gives the whole thing a sort of ominous tone.

I think Recher's suggestions are a great step towards improving the first time experience with a little more transparency, but overall I think this is a really fun entry. Great work!

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-26T08:12:55Z

@otresnjak Thank you for checking it out! I poured a lot of time into the aesthetics to get things just right and I hope that the later areas reflect that. Unfortunately, QA for those later areas... well, let's just say I've got a really long list of things to take care of for 0.124. If you get really frustrated slamming your head against a certain doorway and wondering why you can't fit, it's not just you :stuck_out_tongue:

As for Controller support, I'm using Unity's default Input system with Axes and buttons so IN THEORY controllers should be pretty much good to go. I unfortunately stripped most of the default inputs out for the interest of time, and it does count as a new feature. That said, getting controller support going should be a very simple task once the Compo ends. Stay tuned and I'll probably add it! No new features yet unless they're 100% critical as per compo rules, but I may code in the special features to save time when it's all over.

I highly recommend switching to the latest version as soon as it releases, as unfortunately the main objective is going to be a little problematic with one of the nastier bugs that slipped in. I'm pretty new to 3D environment workflows, which shows in some of the more glaring technical problems I found just hours after ship.

The sound effect you're talking about was one of the last things I added to the game, and every time you get knocked on your face while trying to get through the tighter spaces it still gives me a good laugh. The one thing I felt the game really lacked was an underwater feeling, and for me that SFX is what kind of carried it back into that territory.

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-27T02:57:37Z

@msipp27 Which area are you referring to?

In an ideal playthrough, the lights _should_ guide you to areas that are visible enough even in Exploration Mode. It's really tough to navigate the pipeworks no matter what you're doing, but the longer-range flashlight and the glowsticks are both pretty useful in marking your way.

I'd be happy to help as I know the level layout isn't exactly optimal.

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-27T03:20:22Z

You may be able to navigate easier in Interaction Mode (right-click); you won't be able to tell colors apart or turn the camera, but even the darkest parts of the map will be closer to normal colors. You also have a flashlight, but the default one is very short-range and narrow; once you find a few mementos or loot a few boxes, you can buy a much better one.

You may like the later areas of the map better, as those have neon decorations that are still working and are generally well lit.

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-27T04:24:10Z

@mahalis Hm, yeah. That thought crossed my mind some time _after_ the game shipped. I definitely agree with you, there's nothing telling the objects apart.

You're actually supposed to tell the difference based on music. There is a Cello solo that's entirely 3D audio; that audio was also going to be the only thing that outright ignored the muffled audio filter, for plot reasons :eyes:. The problem is the code behind it isn't working. I've tried to fix it, believe me. The Mementos List was a last minute attempt to make sure players weren't 100% in the dark on what they were looking for, and by last minute, I mean it was one of three additions I pushed to the game minutes before I made the first Windows build.

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-27T06:13:28Z

@Sode Hm, that doesn't sound good. Can you roughly describe the area you were in when you passed through a wall? A few of the meshes have "collision" but let the player through anyway, I have to basically patch in little box colliders wherever they didn't work. I was so sure I got them all, too!

Your actual goal is to look for the items that are on your list (hit Shift for some vague hints on the objects you were looking for). As a general hint, you definitely passed one or two based on the places you went to.

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-27T21:59:51Z

@taft-punk The general consensus is that the opening area is poorly lit, and the un-upgraded flashlight was something I changed last minute for game balance. I get the sense that I may have turned down the lighting via post processing afterwards, causing the flashlight to be even less effective; I'm still trying to figure out how to properly address this as I'm not entirely sure it's acting as intended anymore.

There is still supposed to be a very faint light after the lift flies off, but again, it may not be strong enough. I also recommend that you play the Windows version, as I have just removed the WebGL release due to Point Light problems.

@tero-pulkkinen The tutorials were something I made about an hour or so before submission, and I think you can tell. In retrospect, I wish I'd put more time into this as the controls lack an explanation for Interaction Mode. It's not a bug as much as documentation error, so I won't be fixing that until after LD ends. I appreciate the feedback!

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-28T21:22:38Z

I appreciate all the feedback!

@simpathey First of all, thank you for playing my game on stream! The build you played is a lot harder than the last one published. I messed with the material of the Pipeworks area and shrank the layout of the pipes to make it easier to traverse, as the severity of players getting stuck on said pipes made the entire last half of the game basically unplayable. I think you'll find the latest versions to be a step in the right direction (arguably too much so) for a less punishing air system. Also, the Pipeworks area isn't nearly as bad anymore.

@badabooom63 All very fair criticisms. On the other hand, the build YOU played was made a lot easier by these changes. I agree with your opinions-- I completely forgot to add more boxes to the later areas, and as a result my game has a severe problem between hot and cold difficulty. Either you have an intro segment that's agonizingly difficult (see 0.1254 and before), or you have a game that's a breeze the whole way through.

---

Some of these problems come from post-launch changes. For example, the Air system was easily exploitable (you could infinitely click them due to a scripting bug), so I simplified it. The simplifications made it much harder to actually refill air, and from this point on players struggled to even make it up to the first lobby/"Fountain Room." I had to make other changes to compensate such as expanding the air meter. The shop menu also had prices drastically reduced, for example the air upgrades used to be $2000/$3000/$4000. I'll take the fact that you finished the game as a sign that I'm on the right track, but the next hotfix will probably walk some of those changes back to a happy medium. Other changes that impacted your playthrough include a much stronger default flashlight that's almost on par with the old upgraded flashlight and a bugfix for the rusty metal materials that makes them properly glow when making contact with the flashlight.

This is all ignoring the fact that I'm just putting postjam bandaids on an inherently unbalanced design. I'm not actually fixing the game, for the sake of preservation. Redesigning the pipes area didn't end up turning the area into an interesting maze, I just stretched the obstacles differently. I didn't actually fix the problems with my mechanics, I just made some numbers higher. I feel that to do anything more would be unfair for LD.

The major design flaw here is that you have to get through a really complex maze of rooms that are sometimes a struggle to enter just to get back to the upgrade station, all at a blisteringly slow pace. That design choice basically means you either don't need the upgrades to progress or you will have a nightmare trying to get through the game-- there's no in-between where the upgrade system feels both necessary and fair. I feel comfortable altering balance to make the game playable, but to actually change the position of items or otherwise add new features to the level would be too much for an LD patch. I'll see what I can do about some proper difficulty after LD ends.

The defeat/victory screen was put off until the last minute while I was working on the final rooms of the game. I think you can tell as it's very rushed and doesn't offer a lot of options. There's also a bug I have to correct, as $10000 is a placeholder value that is overwriting the actual monetary value you had (it only happens on victory). It would be easy to add a "Keep Exploring" option and originally there was supposed to be an "End Game" button when Resurfacing, but I forgot to implement that until I had no time left and phoned it in.

I'll try to search for a happier medium between the 0.126 rebalancing and previous releases. Once LD ends, I'll actually add a second point where you can enter the AirLift and implement some upgrades that didn't make the cut, like portable air tanks and a power cell that lets you power on parts of the ship. Thanks for the feedback! I figured the balance would still need a little more fine tuning. :laughing:

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-28T23:42:12Z

@linky439 Thank you for the kind words! The Pipeworks are the path ahead, but as you're probably now aware it's the single greatest fault point in this game-- and that's AFTER the patch that made them easier. There are also other pipeworks areas that are sealed off, such as above the entrance; that's just bad design on my part, and I'd love to actually put something there in a postjam build.

The default flashlight isn't quite as powerful when it comes to range, but when you exit the pipeworks you should be able to look around. The Interaction Mode wasn't originally designed for this, but it's sort of turned into a great way to get your bearings in darker areas. The fact that you already saw the Pipeworks means you're on the right track. If you find yourself crashing into objects and getting lost, the Glowsticks are a great way to mark where you've been (but there is a small collision bug with them that I haven't gotten around to fixing yet).

@badabooom63 I definitely agree with you now. There's a few ideas running through my head on ways to spice up the gameplay and properly add the survival threat/tension I originally wanted, so hopefully I can get back to that in 20 days or so. I know I said that before with LD47, but the difference is this game leaves a far stronger foundation to build on.

---

As a side note, v0.1265 just released and should tone down *some* of my rebalances with a slightly weaker starting flashlight (still stronger than original builds), some visual fixes (the AirLift actually comes back down to the ship on time now!), and some audio balancing work that some people will definitely appreciate.

Small side note: When your volume is a float between 0 and 1, be careful not to set it to 100. Lessons were learned.

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-28T23:56:40Z

@josephdevelops Thanks for checking it out! ~~Apologies for asking but what does ADD stand for?~~ (I was thinking computer terms, my bad) I'll take a look at the VOD in a bit.

Unfortunately based on the time stamp, you might have _just_ missed the new patch today.

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-04-29T00:16:56Z

@josephdevelops

Okay, I watched your VOD. A few comments:

- You had a pretty rough first few seconds, but I don't know if I can fix that. It seems to stem from letting the game fall out of focus as it starts up. - I have no idea where the performance problems are coming from. It runs great on my Linux system, but Wine/Windows builds have some really odd framepacing. Until I figure out why this is the case, unfortunately I won't have any good answers for you. The game does run at native resolution, but as the game's default view runs at 512x384 I don't think it's a graphics card issue. My guess is that you're hitting a CPU bottleneck from livestreaming at a high quality and having lots of dynamic objects on screen (already-intensive scenario + poorly optimized game). I have a system that I'm developing to reduce the amount of physics interactions happening out of sight, but it's on the backlog for postjam. - Your complaints about the loudness of the game are valid, and were actually the focus of the 0.1265 Patch that released after you played. - It clearly took a while to figure out Interaction Mode. This is pretty common among playthroughs I've watched, and it's entirely down to the fact that I did a poor job introducing the mechanics. The only way to fix this would be a tutorial sequence, which I will add postjam. The idea is the same as proceed, I wanted to use the mouse cursor to interact with objects in a unique way. Just like that game, I didn't explain it in-game and as a result you can easily miss it. - You found another missing collider... NOOOOOOOO! Does it ever end?! - The airlift caused a little confusion when it showed up because it took way longer to arrive than it should. This has been fixed in 0.1265.

I definitely appreciate you checking out the game, even if it decided it didn't want to play nice today. :laughing: Hopefully I can do something about the collision issue at the very least.

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-05-04T04:24:09Z

For everyone that felt the movement system and collision were ruining the experience... 0.127 launches in a few minutes, and I hope it's enough to turn your experience of the game around.

To sum it up briefly: - DOF tweaked so close objects don't blur until they're RIGHT in your face - FOV Slider and Crosshair added after complaints of motion sickness - Fixed an old menu bug that zoomed it in - Flashlights are now marked as Important in renderer - Glowsticks are cheaper, Overpriced Flashlight bug is fixed - Player Collider is smaller and closer to camera object - Player Rigidbody no longer rotates at all (player is always in full control of movement) - Some other minor things, check the Itch page or readme for full details

https://anchorlightforge.itch.io/resurface/devlog/249781/resurface-0127-release-notes-yesthisisthemovementupdate

Thanks for sticking around!

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-05-04T05:33:31Z

@homeworld Thanks for the feedback! A few things:

For one, level design is easily one of the weakest points of this game. Besides the room scaling issues, there's a distinct lack of signposting. Can you tell the breached storage room and pipeworks were the first two scenes I made? You can see them in their more or less completed state at the end of my Day One blog, and a final pass would have given them a lot more clarity. You probably passed the Engine Room because I threw it there to fix a gap in the wall, then made the ladder path as a compromise. I thought making the ladder glow would be enough, but I failed to account for the fact that you can only see that ladder at some very specific angles.

For movespeed, you're right. It was my plan from the start to add a boost function, it was at first going to be tied to air canisters; you could collect them then either use them or expend them for rapid movement. Sadly, I got sidetracked and didn't even get enough time to implement it into the movement system. To actually increase the move speed would be a design decision, so despite how much I badly agree with you and want to change it, I plan on getting that one post-patch.

As for glowsticks, they don't light up the scene... but they also NEVER despawn and are almost always visible. Originally, the whole game looked a lot closer to the Pipeworks, so ~~until you got the power on in Engine Room... wait, that didn't get implemented~~ until you reach the more decorated and functional rooms towards the end, the idea was that you would need them to guide your path and know which way gets you back to the Resurface point. They used to also be one of the only objects affected by gravity, further increasing their usefulness by showing you which way was down. I hope that a little bit of polish can make them more useful.

Useful or not though, I really like them: Screenshot from 2021-05-03 23-45-29.png

I do have a few ideas on how to continue this game in particular, so stay tuned! I'll try to have a clear and descriptive vision for the future of this project some time in the next two weeks.

Resurface by anchorlight 2021-05-05T16:06:13Z

@etrealjunior Thank you for your feedback! As it stands, my postjam plans will radically shift the direction of gameplay to a nice in-between of the slow movement system it has now and a heavily streamlined reinterpretation of the Resurfacing system. As for environment art, you're 110% correct; there's not enough landmarking, especially in the opening areas. Future rooms will be designed with a properly modeled pathway on floors and distinctive colors per area.

I hadn't planned on a Mini Map, but it really depends on how the new mechanics play out. It might be a cool addition depending on implementation, so we'll just have to see on that. As for character speed, there's two huge changes planned that I think you'll like a lot.

My LD experience is going to be on pause for a few days while I take care of things on my end-- I'm really amazed I even got the last patch out before Friday as planned. All that said, I'll get back to your game some time this weekend and let you know how it goes!

PANEMUAN by etrealjunior 2021-05-18T08:10:24Z

I'm a huge fan of the art and presentation, and for a solo effort jam I think it's very solid. The theme feels like it's a little heavy handed at the start, but it's carried by the artwork and stage backgrounds as well as the actual level design. I do feel that the gameplay for the second half isn't exactly clear on objectives, and there are lots of little issues and things that are probably more due to lack of time than anything. I think the second half of the game just needs a little more clarity, which is of course a tough line to draw when you're trying to leave some things up to player discovery. As a stopgap, I think the backtracking all the way to the intro on failure might be a little too strong of a punishment as it leads to a lot of repetitiveness.

Overall, great work! It's cool seeing a more story/presentation-oriented entry in the jam.

So Below by metadept 2021-04-27T03:57:57Z

I'm going to start with two criticisms: I felt that the player controller was a little floaty due to a lack of air control, and on a certain type of staircase that ends with a small drop off to the floor, the collision can get the player stuck without a little speed to pass the invisible bump.

The one thing I simply can't get over are these art assets-- seeing painted objects that hold up on close inspection with fine-grain detail is really incredible. I feel like all the atmosphere needs for improvement is a little lighting contrast, and even then, the sort of displaced look on the bricks more or less takes care of that.

Save for a single hole in the ceiling I saw, I couldn't even tell it was Procedural until I restarted the game and saw it was a different layout.

I do wish the atmosphere had a bit of audio or that the gameplay were a little more involved, but for a compo entry I really like what you were able to put together here. Great work!

Ludum Dare News Network by SecretJuice 2021-04-27T06:19:11Z

This is wonderful. Congrats for the first 5 on Innovation I've given across two LD events. It's so hard to go through those textboxes while trying to be serious.

This is a small nitpick, but I think the mouth would look better if it had no frame interpolation and had no texture filtering. It also should have a metric for scores to give players a general estimate of what to expect for a decent score, good score, great score, etc.

That's really the best I can do as far as criticism goes. Thanks for making the most out-of-left-entry I've seen yet.

Deep Mine by MM gamedev 2021-04-29T12:40:41Z

It's a neat little game. The audio compliments the gameplay nicely and the graphics are nice. If I had one major criticism, I wish you'd made sure not to use texture filtering on the character sprite as it ruins otherwise charming pixel art with a blurry look.

The status messages were cute and I liked some of the variety in the game. Also, thanks for the Linux port. :thumbsup:

Vertical Diamond Deliveries by reecpj 2021-04-29T07:58:43Z

The aiming took me a while to understand, but all in all this is a solid entry.

A few critiques. Starting off, I ran into some pretty bad performance problems with this game. If this isn't the case for anyone else, it may be because I'm playing your game on Linux with Wine, but I found that holding down the mouse button to prepare a jump would cause the framerate to plummet until I let go. I think your method of calculating the jump or displaying a preview arc may be very performance-intensive, possibly from some expensive calls running every frame. It's not an issue here as the game more or less waits for you to be ready for a jump, but I figured it was worth mentioning in case you're able to fix it.

Second, I feel that the risk of falling isn't fun as it _never_ leads to any lucky landings. It basically means that you should retry the jump right away as you will certainly miss by a longshot-- I feel that if a few bridges were longer than others, it would at least give the player a fighting chance of landing before it's too late.

I found your graphics to be very appealing, and as for audio, it's a 48 hour compo and I can't complain too much about that. The jump itself felt solid and predictable, and if not for the rough UI I'd say you have a pretty polished mechanic ready to go.

I do have a small bug report, though. When retrying near the edges, I was occasionally able to glitch the game so that I respawned inside a wall at the wrong distance from the objective.Screenshot from 2021-04-29 03-48-54.png

Another small thing, and this one IS entirely on me because I'm on Linux; the ability to quit the game with Esc would be very helpful as I am unable to Alt-F4, and otherwise have to end games from the System Monitor. It's not a huge deal, but it would be greatly appreciated.

All in all, you put out a solid entry and I'd be interested to see if you added more gameplay elements to spin this into something greater. Nice work! :slight_smile:

2001 Unstable Oddyssey by nopogo 2021-10-12T03:43:58Z

I love the atmosphere on display. The game definitely feels a bit on the floaty side, and I wish there were a bit more of a goal beyond an endless collection of asteroids-- just a little something to either reward the player or keep it going, like an upgraded beam or some sort of visual flair like your spaceship dispersing energy to make the background behind the player more colorful and dynamic. I also wonder if faster movement could potentially cause more accidents, giving the game a little more of a chaotic feel.

Ignoring my constant insecure need for gratification through meaningless stats, the mechanics all work well together and the presentation is simple but polished to a t. It really does justice to the space setting with some great lighting and an impressive ambient score.

Is there any chance that @dephon could release a score/soundscape for the game later on? The ambience is top-notch and I'd love to add it to my playlist.

YuraYura! - Tidying up the tilting tower! by Cornflowerblue 2021-10-21T02:38:56Z

The artstyle isn't for me, but from a fidelity perspective this is one of the most polished games I've seen as far as visuals go. Audio is also decidedly punchy, though I don't care for the sort of lunge forward the player does when attacking-- when enemies damage the player on collision, this tends to lead to frustrating and unnecessary damage.

The gameplay has some neat concepts that seem to be executed well enough, but I would definitely recommend some easier first few levels before introducing the hardest challenges. It can feel like you have to catch your bearings on stages where you can lose in seconds due to being just short of stpoping a growing weight or a jumping rabbit. In short, a solid entry-- nice work!

Improbability Fighter by Wendel Scardua 2021-10-12T03:30:17Z

It was all fun and games till I turned into a tree. How am I supposed to check my digital watch now?

Aside from the obvious in that it's cool to have a working NES game here, it's a competent and interesting idea. I don't have any particular issue with the control schemes, but some of them aren't exactly intuitive or convenient. It's a fun take on the theme and kept me on my toes.

Unfortunately, the lack of unique projectile patterns really does make the combat a bit too predictable, and there's no real challenge when you figure out how to fit between the consistent bullet paths-- my first playthrough ended up being entirely damageless. I'm not saying it's anywhere near as bad as vogon poetry, but this exploit does end up hindering the combat from being as fun as it could be.

Even if you are unable to add enemy movement, I would try to randomize or iterate on the bullet spawn patterns more so that projectiles have a more unique pattern to dodge-- for example two bullets that aim towards the center, two that aim outward, then both skewed right, then both skewed left. I would also add more forms to a postjam as the more chaotic this gets, the better.

This was a great entry, and bonus points for grounding it in such a fun HHGttG concept.

The Salatroitsk Incident by DrunkardWolf 2021-10-05T02:39:48Z

The atmosphere is stellar! Sadly running through Wine seems to be a complete chore for this game thanks to the heavy particle effects. I'd love to give the game side another look with a Linux port if you have the time, but your PSX artwork is incredible as always!

The Salatroitsk Incident by DrunkardWolf 2021-10-05T11:30:07Z

@drunkardwolf No worries, I'll put it on the backburner for a Windows setup. If you do end up putting out a build, I'd be happy to take a look for you though! My own game lacks a Linux port at the moment for known issues, hopefully that will be rectified before tonight.

The Salatroitsk Incident by DrunkardWolf 2021-10-09T03:45:13Z

Today I downloaded Unity 2020.3.20f1 (closest I could get to the original game on Linux, 14f1) and tried to port the game myself. There was a pretty bad flickering bug where the black bars flash random colors, so it's probably for the best that you didn't release a Linux version as it could easily be headache inducing. It is a _constant_ flashing due to the method you used in limiting the aspect (not faulting you for this, there's absolutely no way you would have known this and for Windows it clearly works perfectly as intended).

All that said, I finally played through your game in the editor preview window. WOW. The atmosphere is stellar, the enemy is just enough of a threat to keep you on your toes, and best of all, it's a horror game that doesn't make you _entirely_ powerless. I can't stand the Amnesia approach of making the player useless, and having a small arms that can deter but not stop your greatest fear is a fun mechanic I wish more developers understood.

I found the game to be a little bit easy, but maybe this was because I didn't run out of ammo if there is any kind of limit. The vignette was a nice touch as it warned me of the monster's presence just moments before it took me down, and from that point onwards it was a mad dash for that last rock. You once again have proven that you know exactly how to tell a story through atmosphere and give away only the bare minimum for context.

I would like to point out that I did run into an input bug, whenever I was walking diagonally there was a chance that my input could get stuck moving in a certain direction and refuse to change. It wasn't ever a gamebreaking problem, but occasionally got on my nerves and stuck out like a sore thumb in what was otherwise an incredibly polished entry.

The technical hurdles were all worth it. This was spectacular. Congrats on yet another Compo entry that leaves everything else in the irradiated dust.

Now, on the topic of what went wrong when building for Linux... I'll have to do some further investigation but it seems like the issue I ran into is because no camera or any other rendered _anything_ is present on the left and right sides of the screen. I believe that you may be able to work around this by rendering entirely blank UI canvases or cameras on the left and right sides of the screen, but I may need to do more investigation.

EDIT: Creating a camera that sees only the solid color black with a W/H of 1/1, no letterboxing script, and a culling mask of nothing seems to have done the trick. By setting depth to -500 it stays out of the way and simply covers areas of the screen that would otherwise be a don't clear.

I now have a working build on my system. The issues were as follows:

- If you used a technique to posterize colors or cut down on resolution, it appears to be broken in this version. Looking at the Inspector, I believe the cameras in the source code are missing a Script responsible for the low resolution buffers. - Intense Z-fighting on the Giger Counter-- fixed by slightly raising the meter/display plane above the geometry - Color flashing on black bars-- fixed by a dummy camera that renders solid black at depth -500, culling mask of nothing, in both game scenes

I have footage of a second playthrough on this scrapped-together port (built just before fixing the z-fighting issue I mentioned) which can be seen below: https://youtu.be/Cv38HnY0k4c

For fixing the posterization, I think it may be doable using Unity's 2D Pixel Perfect Camera package and the posterize script from dsoft20's PSX shader. If you're interested, I could probably have this port tidied up and sent to you some time early next week.

The Train Station Mage by Togis 2021-10-06T22:29:30Z

I don't know how I'm supposed to load a train when gravity's gone up!

This was a neat take on the theme with a lot of thought put into it. I think a cheat sheet for which trains take which materials would have helped me on the first few rounds, and the spells feel unwieldy but effective-- as they should be!

If you were interested in a postjam, I'd like to see more uses for spells or world rule modifiers, or a focus on modifying the actual platform for materials/sorting before the train arrives so that you have more prep work involved in getting a good score before the train arrives.

Great work! Bonus points for the highly realistic train sounds.

Balancing Act by Madbeagle 2021-10-06T00:53:34Z

This is an incredibly simple and polished idea that clearly has a lot of thought put into it. My only concern is how the scoring system works-- would it be possible to exploit the mechanic by scoring close to perfect and deliberately _not_ using the speed-up function? Random thoughts aside, I have nothing to complain about except that I wish the game could continue for longer if you reached the top with most of your blocks covered as a sort of endless mode. I would have liked to see the game expand so that you had to account for higher numbers like 11-15 with the same scale of balance as before and try to accommodate this.

First playthrough results: firstattempt-balancingact.png

I found your game out of curiosity since my own game was registered as balancing-act-2 on LD-- I'm glad I stumbled on this as it's quite polished.

Deep Space Defenders by megalukes 2021-10-21T02:47:38Z

Incredible aesthetic and audio, though the game over crunching sound was a bit much volume-wise. It took me a moment to really get my bearings with the controls, and I feel like the Raccoon doesn't really serve a purpose in the game. Otherwise, this was a solid entry I might need to play more of later. Thanks for the submission!

By the way, any chance you'll release the music track separately?

Pillars of Stability by AMastryukov 2021-10-21T02:22:07Z

This was a really solid entry, with a clear aesthetic and a lot of thouht put into its mechanics. If I had one major criticism, it's that I feel like you can easily be roped into bad decisions out of bad luck-- there were points where I would be trying to bring my economy back down to earth only to have three factory tiles in front of me, rendering my playthrough hopeless as every single tile I rolled from there ended up being a positive to economy. Other than some general balance quirks like that, the game sets out everything it tries to accomplish rather seamlessly, though I'm not sure how I feel on the hard two year limit to gameplay.

Great work!

Gecko's Chronicles: The Miserable Men by RAFFE 2021-10-18T23:29:36Z

The photoscanning technique was a really cool concept. As mentioned on a stream, I would definitely recommend adding a short delay to the time it takes from falling off something without jumping to no longer being allowed to jump; the main issue comes from hitting uneven geometry at a high velocity and having that force translate to upward momentum like a ramp. Otherwise, the presentation is charming and the environments are fun to explore; I especially appreciate the warped developer models complete with dramatic camera angles during cutscenes.

All in all, this was a fun out-there title. For better or worse the game appears to be entirely shaped by the environment photoscanning method your team employed, and despite some annoyances here and there the final game is something that easily stands out from the rest. Well done to your team.

Fellowship Manager by Honest Dan 2021-10-09T14:30:24Z

Incredible ambition on display here. I have no idea how you pulled this off in time!

It definitely felt a little overwhelming at first, and it's hard to tell what you're doing playing around with systems like battle formations on the first few turns. I did eventually figure out what was going on, though, and the rest of the game was a pleasant surprise. The enemies didn't ever feel too challenging, but they don't have to be when it seems like your units are perfectly capable of degrading on their own.

The two things I really would have liked to see are some wandering enemies and random events; supposedly the world is unstable, but it doesn't really feel that way. Having friendly villages slowly get destroyed, the water turning brackish, and other world disasters [as well as reasonable ways to slow them down, such as destroying the related attack party] would add to the atmosphere and make the Mad King's threat a lot more present. Otherwise, I think you really have a great project on your hands, and these Darkest Dungeon esque games about managing a crew that falls apart on its own could easily have some large appeal for a paid product.

Weasel Words by eldogg 2021-10-21T02:57:02Z

I love it when I play an LD game and it just leaves me utterly bewildered beyond any kind of criticism, feedback, or even logic. Congratulations. Your game BROKE me.

5/5

Weasel Words by eldogg 2021-10-22T00:07:48Z

Congrats! Your game scored #12 overall, and well deserved. Also #3 Fun and #8 Humor!

https://twitter.com/ludumdare/status/1451337510752227330

Super Stable Tower Constructor by Jonathan Lorenz 2021-10-20T18:57:26Z

That was a neat project! It took me a second to process, but I got the hang of things pretty quick. I like the main bitcrushed BGM a lot, especially as there's enough variety in the loop to keep it from getting repetitive.

If there's one criticism I have, it's the fact that you've made a distinctly 2D game that plays in a 3D space anyway. I feel that certain types of structural weaknesses become unfair to the player because you can have pieces of your building fall along the Z axis and continue to block the corner of any piece that falls near it. Because the player can't control the Z axis placement in the slightest, this just doesn't feel fun-- if you plan on keeping the game 3D, it may be a fun addition to allow the player to move back and forth with W/S and have full control while the X axis remains a claw-game. If you don't want to give the player any control, I'd just lock the Z axis physically-- I do like the visual aspect of buildings collapsing in 3D, but it does hurt gameplay at the end of the day.

Otherwise, the physics are very solid and pieces have enough friction to stick together for the most part. I also appreciate the whimsical and polished UX, though I think the in-game visuals would look better with some post processing. All in all, great entry!

Skew Pong by Vladadamm 2021-10-21T02:30:40Z

The instability setting does _NOT_ mess around. I feel like I'm not built for this game, as I simply can't wrap my head around the precise kind of reactions you need to counter the tilts. I would say that the AI can feel a bit brutal when maxing the instability, as the player already has the cards stacked against them without an average-strength AI. Despite that complaint, this is a cool entry with a great vaporwave aesthetic I can get behind. For all my complaints, the instability system is very smoothly executed and has a visually interesting layout-- I like the visual of the gyroscope around the map that twists as a reference point for how the map is tilting, a very minimalist but more than adequate approach.

I'm also pleased with just how many little QOL things you got in there, like customizable colors-- little things you'd never think of for a 72 hour competition. It makes the game feel relatively feature complete.

Solid stuff. Thanks for the submission!

Reliance (Working Title: ~Generating Cosmic Forces by Eric Schmiel 2021-10-10T02:11:58Z

This is actually a very similar concept to what I took on with LD47 and its unreleased postjam game, a game where you deal with incomprehensible cosmic Monoliths that control the flow of reality and repeat the timestream whenever they dislike the results of something.

Your story is incredibly interesting, but I'll admit that appreciation came after exiting the game and reading what you had in mind. The placeholder responses and lack of unique visuals or any kind of change on screen hinder what it could have been. The audio and text otherwise is definitely neat. I completely understand that you gave it your best shot for Compo, an uncaring and brutal timeframe where the cutting room floor is the whole building and surrounding estate... not to mention doing it on Pico8 as opposed to a toolkit that can automate more of this process.

I guess the gist of what I'm saying is that I'd love to see you keep going with this idea, whether you continue developing on Pico8 or bring the idea to a more modern engine. If you have any interest in continuing this, I'd be happy to chip in wherever I can!

Osaka USA by Moritz Jaeger 2021-10-20T01:38:39Z

I like the Crazy Taxi meets Paperboy approach, but I wish the gameplay had more of a bite to it-- the lack of a fail condition or drift encourages the player to slam into walls headfirst because it's the only way to move relatively quickly.

With a game like this, the street layout is important; I can see that you used grids to properly build this in time which is a completely reasonable approach, but having more curved corners to roads as opposed to a strict grid layout could make for some very fun main roads. The highlight to me is when you have just enough space on a slight turn to keep your speed up, and I would really like more opportunities to build that environment. I also wish the turn control was just a little tighter, with slightly more acceleration on the bike. I know you're just on a bicycle here, but the game tone really leans itself into full-blown craziness and I think a more arcadey vehicle simulation may add to that.

Another thing you might find to be fun is destructible decorations. Something Crazy Taxi does well is making the player feel like they're on a total rampage through the streets, throwing caution to the complete wayside. I think you need to add traffic cones, boxes, trash bags, and other objects that break on the moment of impact, not affecting player movement (or negligibly so) but shooting debris pieces everywhere with a crash sound. The longer you keep the smokescreen of chaos over the player, the more invested they'll be in as they feel like they're barely in control.

With more music, a refined vehicle control system, and more of an impact to your collisions with a game-over timer and score on delivery, I think you'd have a pretty solid game here.

My biggest criticism is the gameflow-- I'm going to guess that a failstate just didn't get implemented. It's definitely hindering this version of the game. I would recommend losing ramen bowls one at a time as a condition for the ramen tipping, and a timer that extends on delivery for a game over-- that way, the penalty for losing balance is having to prematurely go back to restock. A low-poly chef model that appears on would also be a great inclusion.

Another small thing, but I'd like to see a little more post processing to bring the visuals out. If you restrict the WebGL version to WebGL 2, you can still use Linear color space and ACES tonemapping in WebGL without any issues (this is how we approached post-processing in our own LD49 game).

Aside from that, the presentation is great-- the character model and low-poly aesthetic is pretty much perfect. I only wish the city itself had less normal low-poly buildings and some more decoration to distinguish certain areas as you begin looping back around the streets. The ramen stacking is wonderfully executed with the way they lean towards the left/right with your balance, but a light beige particle effect on the top bowl might be nice to simulate broth splashing out of the bowl.

Small side note, but can you add wheelies and ramps? Asking for a friend. Great submission!

The Town of Clarity by IvanPavlov 2021-10-20T01:21:45Z

That was neat, and the visual style caught me off-guard-- having a 2D view and using DOF to mask the backdrop was a nice touch. I do wish the camera didn't clip on foreground buildings as much, though.

I wish there were more gameplay to it or more conversations/interactions, but all in all it was a neat little experience.

Reactor by Birdwards 2021-10-19T06:08:03Z

There are some games on LDJam where I forget it's a Ludum entry and and start to see the game as a standard browser game-- this is absolutely one of those cases. It's a simple concept that works exactly as intended, and with very clear matching rules. I like the fact that you have to start to get a feel for which isotope circles expand and contract over time, and getting overwhelmed can happen a lot faster than you might have come to expect after accumulating enough points.

All in all, a solid entry where I have trouble really picking apart anything about the game. It's not a genre I typically play, but what you have is a solid arcade game that keeps the player engaged as the pace picks up.

This definitely feels like an easy postjam sell. Other than some visual flair and general presentation polish, it already feels like an IO game and just needs a little more work to be commercially viable-- the kind of work that a weekend would never account for.

Nice work!

BLOOPS! by jitspoe 2021-10-20T19:04:16Z

I've played lots of physics based Tetris games this time around, but this is the first time I've ever had so much uncertainty attached to my current board. It's neat having an entry where instead of the main threat being falling blocks, your own paddle is the greatest factor to destabilization-- the blocks are just so prepared to leap out of the containing area that every movement becomes an ordeal. It really kept me on edge when moving the paddle, which is something none of the other Tetris-likes really managed to do this jam-- there's not a single moment where I was actually worried about that top block, just the bottom blocks. I also appreciate the audio design, as the foley audio is incredibly lifelike and sounds exactly like how I imagined the shapes and collisions would sound.

All in all, a fun concept and well put together. I do wish I could call the next block manually as the automatic timer sometimes took a little longer than I'd like to recognize that the tower was stable (well, 'stable') but that's just nitpicking.

Good stuff!

HONK III by Tricky_Fat_Cat 2021-10-17T18:05:06Z

I'm gonna start with the negatives because I feel obliged to be as critical as possible with a game shooting this high in every regard.

I had a lot of bugs going through this one that dragged the experience down a bit-- guns would stop firing after a few bursts of fire, then the gun would be useless for the remainder of the level. I had this happen on the Plasma Rifle three times and the default gun once. This was the Linux Postjam version.

I also think the first level has some severe design issues-- the early enemies weren't particularly fun because they were usually placed next to doors that would shut the moment you walked away, and I would recommend holding the door open for five seconds before allowing it to close as it would allow you to actually fight enemies from room to room as intended instead of needing to step away and hide behind the door just to get a good shot. As I'll get into, it's mostly contained to this first level.

Now that I'm done bashing it, I get to talk about the game. For a moment here and there, I forgot I was playing an LD game. The 3D models look perfect, the environments are the right blend of retro, and the weapons are fun. It's described as a Doom-like, but it felt closer to me like a faster, tighter Serious Sam-- I would like to see more air control and maybe some Ultrakill-esque mobility options, but otherwise I was absolutely floored with what you accomplished.

I think most of my issues really do stem from E1M1 as beyond that the level design increases in quality dramatically, with way more verticality and more interesting enemy placement. I also love the little Quake 3 jumppads you snuck in there... I'd recognize that sound anywhere. Ignoring the qualms I had, it's amazing what a game you turned out, and with a sizeable amount of content as well. Multiple enemy types, multiple levels, extreme visual polish, multiple weapons with entirely different functions... it's just exceptional.

All this without mentioning the audio. Incredible OST, and generally solid SFX all around. I'd like louder and more distinct enemy sounds, and maybe some slightly punchier rifles, but that's about it.

I'm begging you... PLEASE take this game postjam. I would happily put down some cash for Episode 1: Knee Deep in the Bread. I want to see exactly what you have in mind for Gooseguy's upper-tier arsenal and a full campaign.

Hats off to your team for an incredible entry. HONK.

---

As a side note, thank you for porting your UE4 game to Linux. It's a first for me on LD to see this and made running the game a whole lot easier.

EDIT:

I put together a list of my favorite projects this jam, and I feel fairly confident putting yours in the runner-up/honorable mention for Best Overall. I was blown away by what you accomplished and, again, desperately hope that I can play an expanded version in the future. HONK!

overall2.png

Emily vs the Unstable Creatures by JPatchZ 2021-10-19T20:40:56Z

I wish I'd played this one earlier. From the artwork, to the music, to the characters... this feels like a herculean effort and a 5/5 across the board. To let this game die with LD would be a travesty.

The sheer amount of original artwork and music fully implemented is staggering. There's genuinely fun banter in between waves. The upgrades system (while kind of horribly broken and unbalanced) does exactly as you expect and actually adds components to the game instead of just being a raw damage/speed boost. In short, I don't know how this got done.

PLEASE take this postjam. I'd love to see more content and mechanics in this game to expand on it. You managed to do so much, and all polished to a T... even localization and dialogue skips, small QOL things that are unheard of in LD.

Please let me know if the soundtrack is available separately.

Drunk Fist by Nicolas Revillon 2021-10-21T02:11:55Z

The words "Big Obstructions in a Mall" are engrained into my brain now.

EDIT: "There's cockroaches in the mall" makes way more sense, now that I've read the blurb. :joy:

I like the visuals and audio work a lot, but I'm not sure how I feel about the gameplay itself. On one hand, I like the risk/reward of having to waste bottles just to fully fight, and needing to jump around enemies to actually save your bottles for objectives. On the other, you're rewarded for drinking so I feel that the combat buff is just a bit too short considering how you'll be expected to fight an endless horde. It took me a while to figure out what exactly I was supposed to do with said bottles as the arrows seemed to point towards the machines without a more distinct arrow leading to the bottle-lock mechanism.

I'm not sure what the point of the drinking was outside of that, as it feels like an unneccessary screen blur with a temporary boost. It didn't really serve a gameplay purpose outside of using the bottles, though the animation has a lot of style to its timing and sound.

I'd also like slightly more jump height as I kept getting caught on knocked-over shelves, and the bugs may need to get a little closer to the player before attacking as they would regularly group up and start swinging just out of their own reach (thankfully within the player's reach). This made many early groups easy to dispatch before they grew in numbers enough to push a few bugs forward.

Otherwise, the presentation is solid, even if the default mouse speed is a bit much. I like the PSX shaders and psychadelic screen effects, the unabashedly campy metal track, and other than the walking kind I don't think I ran into too many bugs in my playthrough. The audio is quite nice too with some punchy sound effects. This is a solid entry, though I hope that some of the simpler tweaks like the AI distance before attacking can be corrected in a postjam version. Good work!

Turnip Boi and the Forest Lost in Time by Codeman1010 2021-10-06T21:07:09Z

You created a very tight platformer with a lot of love poured into its presentation. All in all, not too many complaints here. I like the aesthetic and a lot of care was put into the assets and mixing pixel art with stylized 3D. I have very few complaints in terms of the level design itself, and the atmosphere created by the chippy audio and lightweight music fits the color palette quite nicely.

I normally highly disapprove of WebGL because of the input lag and performance problems that I have playing games in a browser. While the framerate wasn't great, I was able to get by surprisingly well and the controls felt responsive. Still, I'd prefer a standalone Windows/Linux release if possible.

My biggest complaint comes from the gravity. You can fall to your death in less than a second; while it feels snappy, it makes accidental death much more frequent, and when the game sends you all the way to the start this feels quite unfair. There weren't too many jumps that felt unfair as the camera was fairly reliable, but the gravity issue combined with the lack of a safety net really hurt my experience with this game.

All in all, great entry! I hope your team releases the OST separately at some point if it uses original tracks.

Rocky Rhodes and the Cracked Case by Brainloaf Studio 2021-10-11T00:39:59Z

what

Rocky Rhodes and the Cracked Case by Brainloaf Studio 2021-10-11T00:41:31Z

Jokes aside, easily the best entry I've ever seen on LD. I don't really understand any of what I just saw and need to emotionally recoup now.

Cooking Papa is life.

Rocky Rhodes and the Cracked Case by Brainloaf Studio 2021-10-17T19:12:05Z

I just wanted to tell you that I personally found your game to be the single best submission this jam overall. It was an incredible experience and something I've been sending to friends left and right. Congratulations on an amazing LD49 submission!

overall.png

Rocky Rhodes and the Cracked Case by Brainloaf Studio 2021-10-22T01:08:58Z

You made #6! Congratulations!

BUMBLING BUILDERS by Oroshibu 2021-10-20T19:13:58Z

This one's getting a perfect score. Elegant UX that generally works as expected, fun puzzles that take a try or two of catastrophic and hilarious failure, lots of enemy and block types, and a fun gameplay loop.

Add more worlds with new puzzles and background environments, and you honestly have a commercial game ready to go here. This entry is exceptionally feature-complete and a pleasure to play through. Congratulations on a fantastic entry!

U-49 Meltdown by Blue Pin Studio 2021-10-10T04:09:17Z

Gah, forgot to post a comment!

It's a fun little entry and I appreciate how incredibly RUSHED you feel going through this game. My biggest annoyance is the little trip/knockout function as it feels arbitrary when you land it. Otherwise, the platforming mechanics are neat because the level really forces you to keep track of where you're walking, and the short length of the level keeps the restarts from being frustrating.

I like most of the game, but the audio logs are very hard to reliably listen to because it gets lost in all the chaos of the platforming. My main issue otherwise is the framerate, which tended to get a little choppy and make platforming more difficult than it already was.

In short, it's a fun bite-sized entry and I can't stay mad at that happy li'l uranium.

Wobbly Pagoda by Ramble House Games 2021-10-07T03:35:42Z

All in all, a solid entry. I made it to the end eventually, but it certainly took me some tries. It's also kind of neat that your LD48 game involved descending a tower, and now we're climbing one.

I'll try to be thorough, overall I enjoyed the game but there's a few things that hurt the experience for me. Thankfully, they're mostly minor issues and some of them are an easy fix.

For one, as TastiHam mentioned, the jumping is a set height every time. The platforming itself isn't hurt by this, but I found myself frequently jumping into projectiles and had difficulty when trying to fire shurikens to the right place.

The artwork is charming and fits together to form a more upbeat atmosphere, along with the great little synth track. However, the enemy sprite and a few HUD elements are set to Bilinear filtering, and it hurts the quality of the original pixel art-- especially for the large enemy, where the low resolution filtering is about ten times the normal size. Point/no filtering is a MUST for these textures. Another minor thing in presentation, the text speed should probably be a little faster.

There weren't too many bugs, but one or two floors had some odd collision and I managed to make the character disappear once. A hit sound effect would have been nice, but now I'm _really_ nitpicking for what was a 72 hour gamejam entry.

This post may seem mostly negative, but I enjoyed playing this entry a lot. The moving rooms were a neat concept, and I have zero complaints about the shuriken system which was reliable and useful without being too easy on the player. Despite my complaints with the jumping system, landing a shuriken on the head or leg was always satisfying when you managed to get around enemy projectile defenses. The game kept you focused on every enemy encounter and how to get a good vantage point before the fight, and the risk of falling kept platforming tense without a risk of falling all the way to the start over one missed jump.

Thanks for the submission!

youwin.png

Crysterra by Teto 2021-10-20T00:57:35Z

For some basic criticisms... I would definitely recommend a UI overhaul and small tutorial as it can feel a little unintuitive at first. I didn't feel much feedback on the Crater/Raise tools and the lack of a more distinct design for your crystal-throwers and knights makes differentiating the two troublesome. Some of the sound effects are a little too loud, particularly the world movement.

Okay... bashful criticism out of the way, let's get to the meat of the comment. There's one question on my mind: how'd you do this in time?

This game came as a total surprise to me, in that I genuinely don't know how it was done nor how it works so well in what amounts to a single weekend. I like the concept and the world-shifting mechanic is a very unique way to handle your defense, setting up a unique compromise where you take damage to avoid an even worse penalty. I feel that some balancing may be in order, but that doesn't take away from the accomplishment-- you have my full attention and I could genuinely see myself playing more of this with more content.

Really, the part that blows my mind is the execution-- the world shifting feels like such a natural part of the game and adds enough variety to chasing enemies that I would want to leave nothing to chance when they got anywhere near the crystal, regardless of elevation.

Aside from this, the art and music (the presentation in general, really) is very nicely put together. I just hope there are more enemy designs on the way.

A part of me wonders if you could also put together levels that leave the levelshifting you control behind, where you attack an enemy crystal nation that controls their own worldshifting crystal to act against you.

Whatever you might have in mind to expand on this concept, I hope to see more of this game postjam!

Manicat by RexTGun 2021-10-17T17:36:20Z

I'm at a total loss for words, and my eyes hurt.

theme_ultracursed.png

I'm concerned for my long-term emotional health but that's alright. Incredible game, visuals are like bleach to my retinas in the most aggressive way possible. Anyway, it's a 5/5 all around, let me know when you get the LimeWire mirror up and running. I'm gonna go take a depression nap now.

The Nuclear Ball by 0X_VOID_X0 2021-10-05T20:29:37Z

Congrats on an incredible first jam! Simple, well thought out, has a variety of challenges that are all reasonable, and controls are fine tuned-- it's just a reasonably well made game through and through. The ball can feel hard to control at times, but only so much so that it makes you sweat a bit at tight corners-- the actual controls are surprisingly precise.

It's possible that the game could be made a little more tense by adding some kind of timer or mechanic where the element could need to be pacified, maybe a system where there are checkpoints in the level that you need to rush in between but save your progress per point, but that might have changed the flow of the game. All in all, you set out to make something and did it to absolute perfection, and the completeness of your project is commendable.

Falling Tower by Simpathey 2021-10-18T23:11:09Z

I wish I'd played this one earlier in the jam! It's a simple but incredibly well-executed concept. On my first run, by the time I realized the blue blocks were supposed to be solid foundations it was too late to save the top half of my tower.

It took virtually no time at all to figure out the concept, and there isn't a single moment where you're not furiously connecting nodes to pull together the blocks that fell on course and save the blocks that are a little off the path. I liked the electric snapping sound and the wire physics were very trustworthy-- I never felt like I was going to risk stability with ropes that might just bug out the physics, and every structural weakpoint was entirely down to my own carelessness. Mechanically the tower climb is executed perfectly, keeping you focused on exactly where you need to watch while giving you enough screen space to snap blocks as needed. I also like the BGM, with the synth pads and vocal textures. It's a very calming and upbeat tune that fits the gameplay and visuals perfectly, even if the gameplay was anything but calm.

I only have one small nitpick, but in the interest of criticism I'll say it anyway. The music doesn't quite seamlessly loop. It fades out, then comes back to full volume, then skips; that's about the most I can really knock the game for. Fantastic work!

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-05T11:34:23Z

@blue-pin-studio No subs, but technically Zoe is in the elevator the entire time playing a Cello. You just can't see her or hear her. :shrug:

On the particles, they are... um, RE-PULSE rounds. We had prototype bullets that "exploded" as several bullets, and I thought the visuals could use some neon so we got weird sci-fi explosive bullets instead. No real thought process behind it otherwise, you know how I am about neon.

The freeze-up is actually the way the game handles failure. It's supposed to have a little failure tune that's pulled from a cancelled proceed sequel, but for some reason audio isn't coming through-- that will be fixed alongside the elevator animation in today's hotfix. After that, I want to fine tune the wave system because the stability multiplier and elevator zones are both incredibly temperamental right now.

Now that you bring it up, having a nuclear submarine themed tileset would be a hilarious one-off room type. I guess that's something to look forward to in postjam!

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-06T03:01:11Z

@elittk A few things:

First of all... the AI. I lose sleep at night thinking about Unity pathfinding. I've noticed that the AI are pretty terrible at understanding the edges, mostly because they run at a high speed and they can get stuck bettween the edge of their path and the outside kill box. We left this behavior in because it led to enemies hurling themselves out the window on their own, which we thought was hilarious in testing. I have a few ideas to fix the stuck aspect, but they took a backseat to much more urgent issues in past updates-- hopefully we'll get that figured out soon with most of the critical bugs ironed out earlier today.

Off the top of my head, the game shouldn't allow you to survive Instability maxed out, wave or not. The actual end game triggers when the number is a little HIGHER than the meter's maximum so the meter scares you a bit earlier. I'm going to guess this is why you perceived the meter as full, but I have no idea why the elevator didn't show up as this behavior hasn't come up at all in testing. I'll see if I can break it with high instability on the next testing run, thanks for the report!

The part that confuses me about your comment is "Clear Fl." I have no idea what string you're talking to as to my knowledge there's no text mid-game other than the "ELEVATOR AVAILABLE" prompt, the elevator counter, and the Enemies meter. A screenshot would help a lot in finding the area where this happened.

I'll start looking into your report next time I'm in front of Unity. Thank you for your feedback!

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-06T05:22:24Z

@elittk Okay, this helps a lot! This is... strange. I'll need to do some further investigating. If you could tell me your operating system, it'd help a lot in narrowing things down.

Not sure if I'll narrow down the exact source, but at the very least I can add a failsafe.

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-07T02:11:23Z

@elittk @sploky @simpathey @blue-pin-studio

To anyone that had elevator issues before, we now have a solution worked out. v0.19LD will be properly announced later when we have a graphic to go along with it. In the meantime, here's what we got for it:

- Working WebGL2 port - Essential Elevator fixes - Bullet collision system updated to be more reliable and avoid self-collision - Input and enemies disabled during wave intermissions - Results screen should properly display text

Thank you for all of the feedback we've received! Patches may slow down until postjam unless something urgent comes up.

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-07T14:58:48Z

@proxy-games Thanks for your feedback! We did bring up Hotline Miami and Mr. Shifty a few times behind the scenes as reference for the pace and style, and we even planned on having the black background start pulsing colors when the tower started to destabilize. (This unfortunately didn't make it in, along with some particles like sprinklers and rubble that would start to fall at a certain percentage)

The bullet mechanic definitely needs a bit of work, unfortunately this one probably comes down to miscommunication. Our original developer designed explosives that had a decent range, and when I was bugfixing and polishing the VFX, I mistook it for a much smaller explosion then increased knockback in testing-- effectively making the bullets high velocity micro-missiles instead of the original area-of-effect attack. Once LD is over, we can add an alternative particle or sound when you hit non-destructibles so you know when you actually hit an enemy or not.

As for the finale screen, the reason it's so unpolished is because we only got the slowdown in. It was supposed to have a screen effect, but everything related to rising instability got cut for time (it was that or the elevator sequence, and we already had the elevator model from the tutorial screen). Before the patch, I even forgot to call the audio file in and just had a delay exactly as long as said audio file, so that was embarrassing :sweat_smile:

Again, thanks for giving our game a look!

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-07T21:02:50Z

@jitspoe Honestly, the fact that this never occurred to me during development bothers me a lot. The destruction was something I pushed for because it looks cool, but in retrospect the destruction alongside the theme of saving the building from attackers feels like conflicting information. We'll keep this in mind for postjam builds as we continue to fine-tune the Instability system.

The focus of the Instability system was originally that enemies would stand on opposite ends of the towers, and when everyone was on one side it would cause instability because the building was being weighted unevenly. The final implementation is a heavily simplified version of this because it was temperamental and not very fun. Hopefully we can clear up any confusion with a better description in a future patch!

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-09T04:53:40Z

@megalukes Thank you for giving our game a look! As for the slowdown... I know it's there because I put it there. :sweat_smile: When you die,the Timescale is set to 0.1 while the final sounds play. It was an attempt to make a dramatic moment out of the final collapse of the building, but we didn't have time to put the particles or background color changing in. The music cue is too quiet and the game still has input enabled, so I can't blame you for thinking something went horribly wrong... it's not executed very well. We'll need to find a way to clean that up a bit in a future update.

@duckonaut BALANCING ACT is an endless horde based game. Enemies present in the building weigh down and destabilize the tower, so you launch them out of the building as fast as possible before moving onto the next floor. Every second, the stability decreases based on an algorithm that counts the number of enemies on the floor and applies a base multiplier that increases as you go further up the tower and away from the solid foundation. You also have stability replenish slightly every time an enemy falls out of the building. I realize that the naming scheme as well as the destructive environments imply something more complicated, and unfortunately I didn't catch this confusion in time for shipping. A simple tutorial would have gone a long way, which is why we even have the first floor with the grey tiles; classic case of time constraints, really. In any case, thanks for giving our game a look and apologies for the confusion you had along the way! Hopefully we'll have this clarified in postjam builds.

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-09T13:27:32Z

@drunkardwolf This is the first time Heat Signature's been mentioned. It wasn't a specific game we mentioned during development, but now that you mention it I can see the resemblance.

The final combat system definitely feels like we should have designed a full auto weapon. We planned for a single shot with full auto and big grenades as a powerup that would spawn at the end of the wave with limited ammo, but these features didn't make it. I liked the sound itself, but I'd agree that a) it gets repetitive and b) it needs way more bass-- the sound itself is just me going "KAH" into a mic with excessive distortion, so it could have used another sub sound to beef it up.

Thanks for checking the game out!

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-13T07:35:16Z

@codeman1010 The enemies that get stuck on corners can be a real pain. We'll definitely be taking a look at what we can do to make them more fun in postjam.

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-18T02:31:20Z

@tricky-fat-cat @matias-correa @llaumegui Thanks for giving the game a go!

@matias-correa in specific: if you need a little extra bonus fire rate in your favor, here's a consolation prize for the fact that we didn't get a full auto weapon into the game in time: on any of the downloadable desktop versions, you can still use Left Ctrl as another fire button so you can spam out Ctrl and click together to double your fire rate. It's a default Unity binding and there's no maximum fire rate. I wouldn't recommend trying it on the browser versions though, the risk of hitting Ctrl W is too great. We might correct this since as the online leaderboards roll out, but we'll see how the first postjam version turns out.

The postjam versions will have some additional weapon types, and semi-auto weapons may have an additional slow automatic fire attached to them.

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-19T22:01:44Z

@togis It was a pleasure tuning into your stream as always!

@teto All valid criticisms. I definitely feel like the bullet sound gets repetitive, and you're hardly alone in how the bullet impacts on enemies are a bit awkward (launching by Explosion Force instead of force in a certain direction). Randomized pitch is a neat trick, we'll get a 0.9-1.1 range into the next build!

On the elevator: This was a bug introduced in the final patch of the game. It happened because the longer the elevator is present, the more of a risk that it will run through the script for level transitions 2-4 extra times, spawning a 16x difficulty wave that unfairly ends your run; as a dirty fix, I had the elevator slip under the map the very frame that it collides. The elevator system as a whole will see some dramatic changes before release, but unfortunately in its current state it's too volatile to make sense of.

I appreciate the feedback and hope some of the coming changes next month will remedy that. We haven't quite discussed how we'll roll out towards a full release, but it's very much possible we'll have interim demos that will implement certain fixes.

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-20T10:20:52Z

@jonathan-lorenz The focus of the AI before launch was just to get it working, so they're fairly aimless and unfortunately tend to get caught on corners a lot. They'll definitely see some reworking before ship.

I am a little curious as to what you didn't like about the music. There are parts of 'Shaking and Trembling' (the gameplay track) that definitely need some fine tuning as I didn't have enough time to give it another quality pass like the title track got (should be a simple matter of quantizing the notes as they don't line up cleanly with the time signature). If you have any other specific problem with the existing OST, I'd definitely like to hear it so I can make sure the final score keeps that criticism in mind.

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-21T01:48:58Z

@vladadamm All fair criticisms as far as the day-zero submission is concerned-- the hectic development didn't do the game any favors, as our original intent was to make a pseudo-strategy game that played more into the Jenga aspect. We had to cut the strategy layer, so we just gave the player movement and built the game around that idea. The art design was meant to convey having random tower bars slammed together at random with missing pieces being outdoor-type areas, but I agree that the cohesive window borders and lack of variety make it feel a lot more like a random set of tiles than separate blocks of towers. (for example, the playground was supposed to be what happened when the right/left block was pulled, inspired by the skate park in DREDD, while the Hangar was supposed to be the result of pulling the center block-- the idea being that even without the building's main structure intact, the space would still get rented out and used). Hopefully we can convey these ideas better postjam!

The pathfinding bug was especially unfortunate as we had it fixed just after that submission-- it turned out to be a bug where the Navigation mesh was baked with two static walls that we used during testing, and took no time at all to patch out once we knew what was going on. While the elevator was never meant to be anything more than the coolest wave transition I could think of as the game gets harder for every floor you go up, we hope to add more unique floors that take longer to clear so that it actually feels like you're making progress every time you enter. It would also help if the map accounted for the elevator's presence instead of it just spawning-- it was supposed to at least come out of the ground, but all hopes of that went out the window when I realized just how volatile the elevator trigger was.

As for the slowdown, we didn't get the instability effects in. I've got a few ideas for how we can make the building's collapse more visually interesting, but more on that when we're past the drawing board.

Good point about the patch screen as well. I won't have time to patch the game this weekend, but getting a hotfix in for better menus shouldn't take long once I sit down with the editor.

BALANCING ACT by anchorlight 2021-10-23T06:27:24Z

onelast.png @blue-pin-studio @elittk @sploky @proxy-games @jitspoe @megalukes @duckonaut @drunkardwolf @eldogg @cottonfloweryellow @cratthew @deathhound @eric-schmiel @codeman1010 @llaumegui @tricky-fat-cat @matias-correa @togis @teto @lilkrit @jonathan-lorenz @vladadamm

Okay, I think I have everyone tagged here. I sincerely hope I was able to return your favor by checking out your own games-- if there are any I missed, I humbly apologize.

The reception to BALANCING ACT has been incredible-- sitting at the 67th percentile overall, it is both my first Jam game and my strongest relative overall score in LDJam... ever. It's honestly hard to describe just how much of a light at the end of the tunnel LD was this time around. I started this jam devastated over a recent loss, and gave up on Compo before the jam even began simply because I knew I wouldn't have time to submit a game. I owe it to the diligent work of our starting programmer @irememberdfg for putting together the foundations of what would become the first arcade game I've ever worked on, and the incredibly talented @retroalestudio for creating the objectively best artwork to appear in one of my game projects. In short, once we got going thanks to the efforts of my peers, this game took off, and I'm immensely proud of what we put together.

>I never imagined actually reaching the submission stage this jam. I certainly didn't expect to do so feeling so great about our game.

The strengths of our combined team ended up making BALANCING ACT the kind of game I could _never_ make on my own. It's fast, it's frantic, and you can pick it up in seconds. No slow burn ambience or atmosphere, no interpretive cellos or spinning neon fountain lights-- this si the first time I feel like I've been able to work on a game where fun is the primary focus, and it flipped everything I knew about LD on its head. Once again, it was an incredibly close ship where a number of bugs bested us, but with a few days of aggressive fixing we got back on our feet and back to blasting red dudes.

Once again, I owe it to this incredible community-- there's a bond here that can't be matched anywhere else, where developers stick out for each other and encourage one another to succeed. It keeps me coming back every single time, despite the odds, and no matter what terrible impact a 48h programming session may have on the body, it's all worth it going through the rating period once more and getting the opportunity to hang out with an incredible cast of developers from all around. Whether a previous acquaintance from LD47/48 or someone I newly met this jam, it's once again been a pleasure to spend these last two weeks with you.

---

Special thanks to @jitspoe , @togis , @eric-schmiel , @codeman1010 , @simpathey , and everyone else that broadcasted our game over the last two weeks (I know I'm missing a few and apologize sincerely)-- I've certainly taken a number of notes, ranging from "That should be a simple fix" to "How did we not think of this?" I strongly believe that your live feedback will help us turn this humble jam into a proper commercial title that captures the spark of funfound here while ironing out the laundry list of issues.

---

To every single one of you that gave criticism and feedback, thank you for giving us what we need to take BALANCING ACT a step forward. While we haven't fully settled on a Steam release, we fully intend to take this game commercial in the postjam. The next few weeks will be a bit crowded, but if no updates roll out, at least expect a short devlog here and there detailing what the team has been up to while preparing for the year ahead.

Congratulations to everyone that managed to pull together their own projects-- especially those of you that managed to score in the double digits and lower! LD49 had some of the finest entries I've seen yet, and I enjoyed running through all the different interpretations of unstable and collapsing things. See you all in LD50 and [hopefully] when BALANCING ACT is fully released in 2022!

Boat History by etrealjunior 2021-10-09T14:09:54Z

Yep, that's a 5 star entry.

Your main mechanic with the water physics is fun to play around with, and it _feels_ like water. Struggling against gravity to keep your boat on the right course got to be a lot of fun once more obstacles appeared.

My only main concern is that the game played very differently depending on whether I had the game in fullscreen or not. I think the game's physics may be tied to your framerate, and this could potentially cause some problems where systems may have the game slower or faster than you intend.

That aside, you made a fun little jam with an interesting game mechanic, pleasant graphics/music, and a whole lot of content. Excellent work!

Space Ace in: Meltdown Madness by dreamscale 2021-10-19T07:23:33Z

Nice work putting this together in such a short span of time! All in all, it's driven by a fun idea and the point comes across. As others have said, the gameplay has a serious flaw in that enemies can gather out of range for normal fire, and it dampens all of the fun of combat. The presentation is very solid for a LD game with portraits, back-and-forth banter, and all the like-- not to mention the homemade SFX.

As a jam entry, it's good stuff. I do think this game may benefit from a postjam version with some extra additions and tweaks, though:

- The camera is a bit of a problem. I would try angling it just slightly downwards, so that the ship doesn't block the screen as badly when in the center and about 70% towards the top of the screen.

- Enemies should be limited to the range of your fire, keeping their x distance and y distance within a certain range of the player's.

- A game like this really benefits from some good combat music. A BGM track would be nice to have in future updates.

- I feel that the Warp Drive warning should be a little more obvious, like having a flashing icon with a sound effect at 90% towards the next warp. I found myself constantly getting wrapped up in the combat then crashing into a tree because once the warp starts, movement is hopeless-- a fun idea, but a bit frustrating if you don't feel like you had enough warning.

- I would definitely recommend adding Unity's post processing stack and setting up a global volume for the camera as it can really bring some life and flair to the default renderer.

Hopefully I'm not going overboard with criticism here, because I feel like you have a solid entry here. All in all, good work! I'd definitely give it another look if you ever have time to put together a postjam version.

EDIT: I should have looked more closely. I had no idea this was a compo game! This is a tremendous effort for a 48h from scratch entry.

Wayward Warlock by bradjste 2021-10-20T02:49:55Z

This appears to be a fairly ambitious title. The lack of audio is disappointing, but I like the ideas you had.

The first thing I would do is finish what was started with the character model by implementing a walking animation; I highly recommend using Blender Rigify if you need to do this to a custom model as the add-on lets you create a basic armature and fit it to the character model without having to make it yourself. Allowing the camera to rotate with Mouse X would also be a welcome addition to the controls.

After that, I would give the potions distinct sounds and add an ambience or background music to make the game feel less empty. Audio is important to atmosphere. This is also a great way to give more player feedback, as a pickup sound on collectibles would make the effect more obvious (a HUD for your powers as mix would be great as well.

All in all, congrats for getting a functional game out the door! It definitely feels like a lot was left on the cutting room floor, but the core idea is still communicated clearly and the challenges do take some time to overcome-- I actually liked figuring out the quirks of the platform potion while crossing the river.

Dear Ghost by Lancival 2021-10-12T20:10:00Z

I definitely feel like a few tweaks are in order to make sure users go through this game as intended. This is an exceptional effort with high quality artwork and audio, not to mention a surprising amount of dialogue... but unfortunately the structure makes its shortcomings the first thing most players will see.

I had a difficult time getting through this due to the items bug where characters refuse to register anything you do correctly if you picked up the related item before speaking with them. This issue is made worse by the fact that you start the game in the house with no guidance, and don't have the ability to interact with the ghost-- I promptly picked up every item I could because I assumed it was what I was supposed to do.

It was only after replaying and forcing myself to avoid all items that I got through most of the game. I like the range of characters, and the sheer amount of dialogue in the game is staggering for an LD entry-- with branching options, too! My only real narrative criticism is that it could have been funny to give the exorcist no knowledge of the author, mirroring the player's experience.

Mechanically the game presents itself as a point-and-click, but I wonder if this was truly necessary as it feels like the drag-and-drop applications are very limited. I feel that this game may have been better suited as a pure dialogue-driven adventure instead of having a drag-and-drop inventory. A point-and-click adventure typically lets the player interact with lots of things that aren't necessarily game related just to get a sense of the world, and that isn't really present here-- no doubt due to time constraints for Ludum Dare, which is totally understandable. Scrapping this mechanic would allow the game to be entirely focused on the characters and dialogue.

For a postjam, I would recommend the following:

- Add a small notebook-themed questlog that updates as you talk to the NPCs.

- Move Alice slightly to the left.

- Add a check to items to make sure you already talked to the related NPC; if the check fails, give a small description of the item and avoid picking it up. Start items as simple interact points with a different material, then highlight them _after_ you need them or add a sparkling particle effect. An example would be that the Sketchbook is not highlighted until you talk to Harper, then if you interact with the sketchbook anyway you get a simple self-dialogue saying "It's some kind of sketchbook. There's a few pencils and other art supplies here, too." Then after talking to Harper, the sketchbook has the yellow outline indicating that you can pick it up.

- When referencing an item in dialogue, the item should appear in the character's hands. This is the best solution I can think of to the question @angela-he brought up as I had the same issue talking to Delilah's husband.

- Force the player to leave the house immediately after starting the game. Maybe add a scripted dialogue from the exorcist to herself along the lines of "This is haunted, no doubt. I should look for anyone nearby to find out more." before leaving the building automatically. This could potentially cause confusion about whether you can interact with the house or not, so I would highlight the front door when you go near it from the overworld as well.

- Either remove the click-and-drag functionality and purely base dialogue on inventory contents, or add special dialogues for giving the wrong item to certain individuals. This would either improve the feedback for clicking and dragging, or remove frustration from trying and failing to interact with the world.

- Add a Quit Game button to the pause menu that runs Application.Quit(), a small but welcome addition for downloadable versions.

Hopefully this comment doesn't feel too focused on the negatives. You had an interesting narrative for this entry and there's so much to appreciate about the submission, I just feel that some of the bugs will prevent others from seeing any of that since I felt encouraged to cause those gamebreaking bugs without realizing it.

Oh, Hello? by itsBoats 2021-10-12T02:52:20Z

I do have some general criticism over the difficulty of the game. I was extremely frustrated over the second level, and while the first level somewhat made sense it felt like a rather unintuitive introduction to the game.

Getting that out of the way, your entry was a lot of fun! I liked the overarching story and worldbuilding, even if it took some VERY unexpected turns. I think your fourth level is a fantastic demonstration of what the game could be, a more dynamic environment in which getting to the reception point is easy but holding the reception is a constant challenge. The stages in which finding the reception point forms the challenge lack that same kind of satisfaction.

If you were to take this in a postjam direction, I would model all of your stages after that final section, finding fun reasons to distract you from the signal point. Furthermore, you should make the conversations more interactive so as to take the user's attention away from the background elements that will cause a disruption. This would give you a fun gameplay loop where the actual difficulty lies in keeping a long conversation going as opposed to just getting to the conversation point to begin with.

One more thing-- what does a snowman exactly sound like?

Unstable Explosives by Sploky 2021-10-06T22:16:00Z

I loved this! It's such an incredibly simple game, and took all of five seconds to learn. Every moment had me watching from all sides for another hit. It's pure chaos and frantic but fair.

I'd normally beg you to port the game to Linux, but I had no problems running the Windows version through Wine so it feels unnecessary. It ran like butter and I've got nothing to blame for poor performance except my own lack of skill.

The audio is fine, but it can feel just a bit empty without an ambient score or music. I'd love to see you add a few additional stages, more rules (bomb types, etc.), and BGM in a postjam release.

This project was absolutely stellar, one of the highlights of LD49 for me so far and my first 5 star overall. Keep it up!

Unstable Explosives by Sploky 2021-10-17T19:17:20Z

Going over my favorite entries, I went ahead and labeled this as my pick for Best in Fun for LD49. I loved your submission and I'd love to see some additional content, whether it be more stages, a lite adventure mode, gamemodes, or online multiplayer.

I'll be watching to see what else you end up making. Awesome job!

fun.png

绝地天通(Babel Blocks) by ELITTK 2021-10-06T03:34:58Z

This game took me a few tries to understand. I get that with the time crunch, your focus was on the game. That said, I think this game would benefit greatly from more information on its Itch IO page as it seems like there's a lot of confusion.

To my understanding, the game works like this:

- You start by going to the shop and buying blocks. - Click on blocks to spawn them from your inventory, then place them in the scene. Blocks can't be changed after starting the round, so choose carefully! - Click Start to properly start the game. Do NOT click the Refresh arrow as it will erase all progress and start over. - Press F until you are allowed to build again. Your tower will have to withstand disasters-- anything ranging from an off-the-charts earthquake to a book not being very good. Some will barely leave a scratch, and others will tear everything you've worked for apart in an instant. - If your tower survived past the goal mark, the HUD displays a Start and Shop button again. Shop and build! Your existing tower can't be touched, but you need to keep building upwards with new parts.

My biggest complaint is the fact that the Reset button makes it too easy to completely undo your progress-- I would recommend moving it somewhere else as I click on it intending to shop only to wipe my progress away. Otherwise, I would have liked the ability to rotate blocks as some of the blocks seem like they're designed to fit others.

All in all, it's a fun little prototype with nice art and I got a good laugh out of the events-- the UFO one definitely caught me off guard. Great work!

绝地天通(Babel Blocks) by ELITTK 2021-10-06T03:52:53Z

@guinytime This is LD, the cutting room floor is basically the whole building here. :laughing:

Congratulations on shipping a game! I look forward to seeing what your team does next.

Split by Zeit 2021-10-19T20:07:43Z

This is a good effort for LD, and with a massive team I'd imagine organization certainly played a factor in development. All in all, there's one thing this game does great, and it's the abstract feeling. I like the idea where each door has a silent environment around it and you open each door to a completely different game style. I think there's some general things that need a lot of polishing if you were to put out a patch, as there's good ideas here that are buried under some problems.

ROOM SEARCH:

The worst of these games is easily the search for shards-- a severe bug and feedback problems make it hard to play. the mouse cursor seems to be slightly off center and makes things harder to click on, while the objects themselves give no feedback. You should have any containers, drawers, etc. highlight when you hover over them with the mouse; that way, you can actually tell what you're supposed to open. I would also try to add some moving objects to the foreground, as I like the unstable room idea but it's a static image that ends up getting stale after a few seconds. A few moving objects e.g. a floating lamp or clock would make the scene more interesting to look at.

DUNGEON BLOCKS:

A good idea, but I felt like it was very hard to tell which areas would end up being blocked off. I would maybe swap every two moves with a sound effect instead. The other way I would expand on this game would be to add some kind of object you have to collect before reaching the end, with a much more relaxed move limit.

Another important thing: the pattern should not feel random-- it should be a maze. You should be rewarded for paying attention between movements to try to discern a path.

This is a visual thing, but when doing pixel art in Unity I highly recommend selecting the textures and setting the filtering to Point instead of Bilinear. This gets rid of the blurring on small textures and makes pixel art appear as crisp as it should look. I'd also add some kind of sound effect to the movement.

THIRD:

...not sure what this game was supposed to be. I'm going to guess it was cut for time, which is unfortunate but understandable.

OVERALL:

Finally, I'm going to have to really get critical about this: the narrative really didn't work for me. Again, this criticism comes with the understanding that you worked under severe time crunch and only had so much time to do everything, but for criticism's sake I'd still like to give some suggestions.

My main issue is that the games themselves didn't feel like they had anything to do with the subject topic. I feel like I played minigames then got a screen where I made a choice-- the games had no actual bearing on the story other than a pass/fail check. The characters themselves didn't say anything comprehensible, so until reading the description of the game I had absolutely no clue what was happening.

As others have said, I don't know what the clock was supposed to represent. The same goes for the dungeon, and the shards, and the personalities. These elements really don't mesh together because I don't see a single connection between them.

I think the game needs some more consistent symbols and goals between the experience to give the world some sort of cohesion. Otherwise, it feels disjointed and none of the games belong together.

---

I don't want to make this comment entirely negative as there were some neat things here. Conceptually I do like the game, and the art and music were actually quite good. I'd probably give the game another look if you put together a postjam patch with fixes and a more polished narrative.

To sum up my feelings on this, I like the intent and the attempt to make something cryptic, but I didn't understand the final result at all. There is still potential for more here, and I'd definitely give a revised version a look. Even if things didn't really turn out as you hoped, I'm interested to see what your team does next.

Turrim by Proxy-Games 2021-10-07T14:49:32Z

Leaving me at the mercy of a physics engine is a fate worse than death! At least it's not Unity >5 physics, though.

Simplistic concept, and very well executed. It took all of two seconds to learn and while there's certainly a lot that can go wrong, it's mostly due to my own poor judgement.

I was pleasantly surprised by how stiff the blocks can feel. Dropping a block from the top certainly has enough force to destabilize loose blocks, but otherwise the blocks are able to hold together relatively well in circumstances where other physics based games would throw in the towel and start launching the objects apart. (I am talking about your 1.0.1 release so I can't speak for past versions)

The lack of a rotate button caught me off guard, but I feel like it really forces you to take some unusual risks in block placement.

To make this short, nicely done! I hope you get a chance to add some SFX in a postjam release as a good collision sound and some little blips on input are all I feel the game is missing.

The Collapse by Cratthew 2021-10-21T03:28:59Z

All in all, an incredibly solid first jam! The music loop can get a little repetitive without more variation, though.

I think my biggest criticism is that you've opted to make any damage at all a restart. That's nice and all, but for any of the levels that involve more vertical movement, the falling rocks become an unfair and unlucky death sentence as you don't have enough time to react to them on the way up. I think this particular aspect needs more fine tuning, maybe a replacement with rocks blowing in the wind or something along those lines to replace the falling ones on vertical stages. Otherwise, I thought the level progression was neat, especially with the stage where you end up on lots of falling platforms.

Nice work!

Apollo's Lab by Graylure 2021-10-09T02:11:23Z

There's a few polish issues here and there-- the main mechanic didn't click with me at all until reading these comments. As some others have said, the animations are excellent... but they can be a bit long on repeat.

Once I understood how to play the game, I cleared through the whole thing without a problem. Its puzzles were creative, its artstyle and tone are wonderful, and the characters have so much expression to them. I have mixed feelings of terror and amusement over the hot-dog possession and the use of dumpsters as a respawn point for a raccoon is adorable.

Overall, a strong entry. I'm interested to see what you might have in store for this game postjam as its core concept is quite unique and fun to play around with.

Park Lane by DrunkardWolf 2022-04-05T13:40:24Z

I wish I could leave a rating at the moment, as the presentation as always is perfect. Amazing sound design, and the PSX style with PBR materials are a welcome addition.

I do wish there was a little more activity involved in the gameplay, but as far as setting the scene goes this was masterful.

Seed Of Time by theStoff 2022-04-08T00:21:10Z

First run: SeedOfTime_timer.png

All in all? I had a good time with this game! Very solid mechanics with a good amount of predictability. I found myself panic-running through many areas and using my dashes to avoid fights, and between that and the timer it adds an air of desperation to the whole game. I wish there were something more gradual, though-- for example, a shifting background hue that goes from dark blue to dark crimson/orange as the final hours near.

I know there's a time pressure involved, but the level design towards the end did start to get to me. I had a lot of issues dodging the circular fire flowers at first, and I don't feel like I did anything particularly different successfully dodging them-- I just stopped dying to them eventually. It didn't feel like a satisfying experience and I think this particular type of enemy drags down the experience considerably.

I played the postjam version, and while most of it was fine I do wish this particular platform was addressed as I think I've uncovered a bug: SeedofTime-Feedback.png At this platform, the safest angle is to go straight. Instead, you'll find that you don't fall to the platform below, but instead fall to your death. I think this area needs to be a gap to properly communicate that as the death I experienced here felt very much an issue of the game instead of my own.

This is all coming across as a very negative post, but I had a great time with your game. It's a functional top-down shooter with some very tight platforming, great art, and a clear UI I never struggled to understand. I liked the use of the bubble travel to increase the scale of levels and I never felt like I was blindly guessing where to go. Aside from the point I screenshotted, I felt like the level design made great use of the dashes and even with the circular turrets each level had me at the edge of my seat believing that my next run would be "the good attempt."

I know this is as of now a one-off, but I think what you have here is a great foundation for a small-scoped game with a few additional tricks added. Congrats on the submission, everyone!

QUADRATORUM by Blue Pin Studio 2022-04-05T13:24:08Z

This was great! Excellent presentation, and syncing all of the timing to the music was a neat touch. I thought the background was decent enough and tracking the player was cool, but then the upgrade animation started... wonderful.

I didn't mind the spawning system too much since you have enough health to get past it, but I think the game would be better off if you had an ability bound to left-click that cools down after use-- something like a piercing gun, or a radial knockback on enemies.

The web browser version didn't work for me at all sadly, some kind of bug was happening where enemies would never trigger (or a single enemy would) and the music fell out of sync after some time.

It's a shame you couldn't get the upload issue worked out, but you might be able to talk to Mike directly about getting that worked out if you made Jam submission time and that bug stopped you from participating.

PSA to Linux players: Make sure both chrome_crashpad_handler and QUADATORUM have execute permission, then start up ./QUADATORUM from the terminal. :)

QUADRATORUM by Blue Pin Studio 2022-04-05T18:45:00Z

@bahska Congrats on the strong debut!

QUADRATORUM by Blue Pin Studio 2022-04-08T02:41:29Z

@Yaen I played in Firefox as well and found that enemies didn't spawn at all. Give the client version a try, it seems to be a lot more stable that way.

10 seconds or less by DrunkardWolf 2022-10-03T02:18:37Z

Now this one was a surprise. It feels like the complete opposite of your last entries, forgoing anything story related for pure gameplay and replay factor. And yet... you pulled it off seamlessly. The music, modeling, and everything gets the job done perfectly and parkour is simple but effective. All the little touches like developer par times and quick restart shortcuts go a long way towards making this entry feel polished and I was surprised by the sheer number of levels you managed to cram in there, especially for Compo time. Awesome work as always!

Groceries, Please! by Togis 2022-10-03T22:28:19Z

@martenscedric When you see a bar code, you can hold down Left Mouse Button to scan the item with the scanner equipped. If it's smudged up, the bar code won't work. We'll update the page real quick to reflect that.

Groceries, Please! by Togis 2022-10-04T18:04:20Z

@fireslash Thanks for checking out the game, and glad you enjoyed it!

I would attribute the bar code clarity to the pixel density. As an LD title this was primarily designed to be played in a small window or web browser embed, and at these resolutions you'll find it very difficult to read the labels without magnification.

Groceries, Please! by Togis 2022-10-04T18:51:51Z

@bredera Thanks for checking it out!

@velvetlobster Yeah, the angry customers can be a handful. :sweat_smile: You have a red button you can mash to get the manager and clear the air quickly, but if you ignore it for too long you'll be pressing the button a whole lot. I can neither confirm nor deny the legal status of contents in each scanned item.

Ludum Date by JohnnyR 2022-10-06T02:57:58Z

I like the concept, unfortunately I got about two dialogue options in before I abruptly hit the credits trying to check the phone. After that, I got "Test | Test" cutting to a developer logo and "0 | 0" with no ability to advance dialogue.

I know you're still working on this, and it's already a lot further along than my Extra; I'll hold off on rating and check back next week to see how things are coming along. Good luck!

Dead End Job by Codeman1010 2022-10-05T23:19:07Z

We sure did love our minimum wage simulators this jam, huh?

Loved the art, presentation, and general QoL to this one. The monster theme was unexpected, but well executed with some great designs. Atmosphere, ambience, and artstyle alike just kind of works, and the layout of the store never feels frustrating to get around. Visibility is a non-issue, while you can't always see items directly off the shelves being able to see customers' intentions without the clouds cluttering the screen gives you a good idea of your store at all times and you can always tell when customers are rushing to a single location. Sometimes these games tend to be a little too frantic, but this game feels like you can really maintain your store as long as you keep paying attention. Having a score ranking also helps push things towards a fun game loop.

All in all, this was a pretty great entry in both intention and execution. Great work!

Panopticon by Blue Pin Studio 2022-10-04T03:18:59Z

This was a really interesting take on the theme, and the design choices in general scream experimental. Just like LD 50, I love the more musical approach to gameplay indicators and the Evil Eye mechanic manages to balance frustration with predictability in a way that will have you trying to stay in "safe" areas you know until the next reload, even if that "safe" area is still barely known to you. I was surprised by the lack of indicators for the key and door, but thanks to the level design the lack of these QoL features felt more like a way to keep players out of their comfort zone than a glaring omission. All in all, the execution of this idea does exactly what it needs to do the whole way through.

My biggest issue with the game is a bug where music stopped after the first level, leaving the game entirely silent save for the death tune. This undermined the feedback of the game significantly and hurt the otherwise great atmosphere. Beyond that, no complaints here. This was a great entry.

Swappy Bot by Ramble House Games 2022-10-04T04:00:04Z

I'm not normally one for puzzle games, but this one worked pretty well for me.

Only one real bug report. When moving crates, the tile furthest from the camera will almost always be blocked by the crate, stopping you from clicking on the space until you rotate the camera; it's a minor annoyance at worst.

I think with more levels and a different camera backdrop you're well on your way to a commercially viable platformer here, as all of the mechanics work well and the artwork has a certain charm to it. You really did play with a whole lot of different mechanics here, and surprisingly *none* of them felt like they were extraneous or poorly implemented. If you got around to implementing the escalator/elevator tiles and/or color switchers as originally intended, I think you could easily stretch this into a thirty-some level puzzle game with room for more content.

From a design perspective my biggest nitpick (and I say this with no idea how to fix this issue) is that when you play as a colored robot, you now have a ten second delay between inputs. Sometimes this can be interesting when you're on conveyor belts headed towards either certain doom or a nifty solution; other times, you're just waiting out ten seconds of your time, which is just unsatisfying. The best QoL feature I can think of to solve this would be the ability to skip a turn if nothing (boxes and players alike) are actively moving this turn... but I fear this might open up a whole can of worms design wise and might not be worth implementing.

All in all, great work on this entry!

SENSATIONS by etrealjunior 2022-10-04T02:58:17Z

Well, "Thomas Was Drunk and Alone" wasn't really anything I expected this jam.

It's on the short side, but given how aggressive the effects are this was probably for the better as the game did not overstay its welcome. The platforming felt very snappy, which is near-essential with visuals so impaired. It was a fun novelty executed very well and while frustrating, I never found it unfair.

The visuals and audio are both executed perfectly, though I would have included an audio slider... and the level design of course manages to turn what seems like just a silly gimmick into a genuine challenge without going overboard on the difficulty. This one ended up being a near-perfect five star entry.

Great work on this entry!

Harvest Season by DrunkardWolf 2023-01-10T04:34:08Z

You've really got these survival horror compos down to a science. :laughing:

Great design on the maze and visual effects, a number of times during the encounter I was wondering whether I'd backed myself into a corner. Yet, as many times as this happened, there was always an alternate route that was somewhat close if I _really_ picked up the pace-- something that kept the encounter tense and high-stakes without just killing the player in a slow and frustrating repetition. I do wish that ammo was scarcer as collecting close to 80 bullets by the time my first run was over severely diminished the challenge. All in all, most of my issues come down to Ending 3/3 as the harvester's slow turn speed and high health made for a fight-or-flight scenario that wasn't as rewarding as it could have been if you chose to stand your ground in a newly opened field. The fire effects were great, but the first few sparks were a little hard to see from a distance and the damage sounds didn't always trigger, so it took me a second to realize I could really go through with it. Having the option was a bit of a surprise as I never expected the shotgun to do anything more than maybe buy some time or fight a secondary enemy I'd yet to see.

Something you really nailed down with this game [as with many of your other horror submissions] is the retro artwork. Here in particular it feels authentically old-school and the filters cover most of the limitations of your grid-based approach to the level. Not only this, but the rain effect and the physical impact of droplets on stalks gives the walls more of a presence in the game. The fact that your sprint isn't just a "walk but super fast" but an actual left/right stepping motion is a kind of neat detail I rarely get to see in these types of submissions and, once again, goes a long way to making the player feel present and fully within evil-harvester range. I do wish there was some kind of hit impact on shooting stalks, but this is beyond nitpicking now.

Instead of walling off certain paths until the trigger occurs, the game actually manages to sell the illusion that there's choice to the encounter and gives you the right advice without forcing the player to go down a certain path. I appreciate the additional triggers and nonlinearity to how the main event plays out, something you don't really come to expect from jam entries due to the extra complexity.

Bonus points for Ending 1/3, which ought to be the only choice... if I see a field like that I'm not going anywhere near it. Despite that, I loved the entry and saw all three endings. Excellent work as always.

COSMOSIS [unfinished] by anchorlight 2023-01-10T02:31:18Z

@drunkardwolf I think the plan going forward is to give it a little more love first. I made a judgement call this afternoon and decided that with only greyboxes and no real implementation on mechanics yet the game wasn't worth publishing. I'm hoping that by the end of this week I'll get a chance to refine what I have into a workable prototype.

Thanks a bunch for taking a look! Unfortunately this weekend was a bit too crowded for me to really participate as much as I would have liked.

Night Job by AdamPhoebe 2023-01-10T04:08:40Z

That was morbid. :sweat_smile:

I'd love to see an expanded version of this with a little more interactivity, I think the dark theme and weird artistic decisions [along with the writing] go a long way towards finding a darkly comedic balance with a lot of potential for crazy scenarios. Also probably one of the better applications I've seen of film jitter and grain I've seen in an LD game.

There's a very fun dynamic to be had here with the sock character pulling you along into increasingly more strange and dangerous scenarios, and the artstyle of a more palatable 3D body with the most egregious wounds covered by stylized paper or comic art was a really neat idea. I feel like in such a short time you managed to put together a very stylish MVP for something bigger and I feel that there's a great commercial game and story just waiting to be crafted out of this.

I did run into a couple minor bugs but all in all, the only complaint I really have is that there isn't more of it... yet? :eyes: I'm asking for more content because I enjoyed it, and definitely not because there'sasockbehindmeandhehasaguntomyheadohplease.